two types of goo

Today is my favourite's birthday. We celebrated with cake. Joe, who can't share the cake because of the chocolate, celebrated by trying to answer my phone, and broke the screen in the process. He says, in terms of health, our way of celebrating is more expensive. I disagree.

Anyway, Jimmy is allergic to eggs and nuts, so his birthday cakes are always experimental. Every year I've tried a different recipe, and every year I've watched him eat it feeling similar to how I used to feel when my niece was a baby and thought frozen peas were lollies - happy, and also really, really sad. You see, in baking, there really isn't a substitute for eggs. There are vegan recipes, which use vinegar and other stuff and say they're just like non-vegan cakes (they're not - they're the worst!), and there is 'no egg', which you mix with milk or water, and the cake comes out flat and a bit weird, and there's baking soda, which makes big holes and that's about it. It's very difficult for someone who makes everyone in her family's birthday cakes, and, between us, kind of prides herself on how they turn out. It makes her feel like Robert Downey Jr; cool in movies, but a Republican in real life. Ick.

I don't remember what last year's cake was, but I do remember that everyone who could eat egg bypassed it in favour of the other two on offer that day. But this year we will remember - this year, we may be on to something. I don't know why anyone else would want to bake a cake without eggs, but just in case, I'm going to share the recipe with you, because it has turned out YUM. It might give you the impression eggless cakes are okay - don't believe it. This is the exception; this is Amy Osbourne! I'm also going to link to the recipe from which I adapted it, Jamie Oliver's mega chocolate fudge cake (which I had never made before), and my FAVOURITE chocolate cake recipe Orangette's Winning Hearts and Minds cake (which I have made, was easy as anything, and so yum I wanted to eat the whole thing myself).

CHOCOLATE GOO CAKE adapted from Jamie Oliver

250g Whittakers (or whatever, just NOT CADBURY) 70% dark Ghana chocolate

175g butter

1 cup brown sugar

2 tbsp cocoa

pinch of salt

c. 1 cup mashed banana

c. 1/2 cup milk

1 1/2 cups of flour (possibly a little more, but the 2 cups I used was slightly too much)

c. 10 pieces of Whittakers milk chocolate with caramel

Now, Jamie says to throw it all (at varying stages) into a food processor. NICE IF YOU HAVE ONE. I don't, and crushing biscuits in the blender has taught me the blender don't like dry stuff. So I followed his alternative, and grated the chocolate by hand. It was an exercise in humility, love, and sweat. Humility, because I looked and felt ridiculous, scratching an entire block of chocolate against a grater. Love, because it took half and hour (and looked and felt ridiculous), but felt worth it because it was for Jimmy. (There's the second type of goo.) Sweat, because half an hour of grating something when you're unfit is a WORKOUT, my friends. Okay, you add the brown sugar, 1 tbsp of the cocoa, the salt and the butter to the chocolate (I didn't soften the butter properly; I should have), and beat until it's all mixed in. Then you beat in the banana and milk, bit by bit, until that's all mixed. Finally, stir in the flour. If the mixture looks floury at this point, add more milk.

I forgot to tell you the first bit. Preheat the oven to 160, and butter a baking dish (I think a cake tin would have worked just as well, and looked more like a cake than... I won't tell you. You'll know what I'm talking about when you see it.). Use 1 tbsp of the cocoa to coat the butter.

Put the mixture in the dish/tin, push in the bits of caramel chocolate here and there, and bake for about 20 minutes, or until set. If you test the cake, it doesn't matter if the skewer doesn't come out clean; you want it to be a bit jiggly. Also, you don't want the edges to get too crispy, because they lose the chocolate flavour.

Jamie says to serve with ice cream or creme fraiche, but I think it's best on its own; maybe with a bit of icing sugar dusted over the top if you want to put lipstick on that pig. Mine looks very different to Jamie's, but it tastes GOOD.

No photo because I can't find my camera (so also no photos of the birthday boy today), but instead, a song. Happy birthday, favourite.

(mid-winter) CHRISTMAS!!!

I LOOOOOOVE Christmas. I always feel a bit sad on Christmas day, knowing it's going to be a whole year before the next one, and I never make it much further than June before I start sneaking Christmas songs. This year, I've had Christmas on the brain since May, when we spent an afternoon pine-coning, and went into overdrive when it snowed, and even Jimmy has been singing carols this week (usually he has to regulate me and Christmas, or we'd have a tree up all year). I was never this excited about mid-winter Christmas in Auckland; it seems snow isn't the only benefit of a colder climate! (The southern hemisphere really needs its own carols; neither of us have ever had a white Christmas, yet the suggestion of snow means we immediately go there.) To be honest, I only realised it was the 25th today when I was looking up festive desserts for something else we're doing tonight, but still; it's the 25th of June, so every day from now we're closer to next Christmas than the last, there's a wind up that may blow the house down, snow only an hour or so away (by car), and I'm making pumpkin pie for dessert tonight. Six months to go until the real thing!!!

So instead of looking at clothes, today we're sharing a recipe adventure: mulled wine, and the pumpkin pie recipe I just found online because last time I combined two recipes and have forgotten both (don't judge me; it was a very stressful thanksgiving - and in case you're wondering, my family are not American; we just love special occasions and turkey). It's an adventure because we haven't yet made either; we haven't tweaked them to taste (just according to what we have in the cupboard), and we chose them for weird reasons (the mulled wine because the only alcohol in it is wine, and the pumpkin pie because it's eggless - one of us is allergic - and looks easy).
(Photos from Jamie Oliver and Divine Taste.)

MULLED WINE adapted from Jamie Oliver

2 oranges

1 lemon

1 lime

200g caster sugar

6 whole cloves 

c. 2 tsp cinnamon

3 fresh bay leaves

c. 2 tsp nutmeg

2 bottles red wine

vanilla

Roughly peel the fruit into wide bits, squeeze the oranges, and place in a large pot with spices and vanilla, over a medium heat. Add enough wine to cover the sugar, and simmer until the sugar has dissolved. Bring to boil, and let boil for about 5 minutes, until you have a thick syrup. When the syrup's ready, turn heat down to low, and add the rest of the wine. Mix and heat for about 5 minutes, and serve.

PUMPKIN PIE from Divine Taste

Crust:

1 cup flour

75g butter

1/2 tsp salt

5-7 tbsp water

Filling:

2 cups pumpkin puree

400g (1 can) sweetened condensed milk

2 tbsp cornflour

1 1/2 tsp cinnamon

3/4 tsp nutmeg

1/2 tsp ground cloves

1/2 tsp ginger powder

1/2 tsp salt

To make the pastry - Mix the flour and salt, then cut butter into it using your fingers, until it resembles coarse breadcrumbs. Add water, and form into a soft dough (not handling any more than necessary), then chill in the fridge for an hour or two. When the filling is ready, roll out to fit your pie dish, and put in.

To make the filling - Cut a whole pumpkin into wedges, and scoop out the seeds. Place cut-side down on a buttered baking sheet, and bake at 180 for about an hour, until soft. Mash by hand, and maybe finish in a blender to really puree it.

To make the pie - Preheat oven to 180. Add spices, cornflour, salt, and condensed milk to pumpkin, and beat until smooth. Pour into chilled crust, smooth out the top, and bake until filling is set and crust is brown (c 45 minutes). Serve with cream or yoghurt (lady says cold, but I think warm will be right nice.)

I've got the pumpkin in the oven now, and I'm going to squeeze in a nap before I make the crust, so I'll let you know how it turns out tomorrow. Happy mid-winter Christmas, everybody!

(update: I realised part-way through that the recipe didn't have any sugar in it so I threw in some brown sugar; I'd guess about 3/4 cup, but I'm not sure, and then I sprinkled more on top before baking, thinking it would caramelise, but it didn't.)