FLOURLESS CHOCOLATE TORTE and other adventures in gluten free baking.

When we were chez nous in France a few weeks ago, we invited friends round for a BBQ.  One of them can’t eat anything with gluten in it so we had to put our thinking caps on and be careful what we planned to eat.

A starter could be fairly straightforward and the main course was the usual BBQ food, no problem there so long as we paid attention to any marinades and dressings, but dessert was the tricky one.  I didn’t want to do the obvious fruit salad, meringues or chocolate mousse.  What I really wanted to do was to bake a cake.

My favourite cookbook at the moment is the “Popina book of baking”.  I had taken our local library copy with me and in it was a recipe for ”very chocolate cake”, which was gluten free, so that could be a possibility for our dessert.

However, I continued browsing through my selection of cookbooks that I keep in France ~ always a complete joy, to be sitting on our little terrace overlooking the rooftops of the village with a cup of tea and a pile of recipe books ~ and found a recipe for gluten free cherry cupcakes in “Baking Magic”.  I didn’t have any cherries but I did have some delicious raspberries which I thought would do instead.  The recipe uses ground almonds and a lot of whisked egg white.  It was a few days before our guests were coming so I decided to have a practice.  It’s a good job I did.

They didn’t work.  The cakes rose beautifully in the oven then at the last minute sank horribly, producing a crater in the middle where the raspberry had sunk to the bottom of the cakes.  They tasted lovely, but unless I was prepared to fill the crater with loads of icing they were not exactly the thing I wanted to serve to guests.  (Further reading suggested that over-enthusiastic whisking of the eggs can cause last-minute sinking.)

But I did glean an important snippet of information from the recipe.  It said:

“1tsp baking powder, or, if you want to make the recipe gluten-free, ½tsp bicarb and 1tsp cream of tartar”.

Sure enough, when I looked very carefully at the small print on my tub of baking powder, it said it contains wheat.  This is something the Popina book didn’t mention, in fact it said quite clearly in the recipe for “very chocolate cake” that it was a “seriously rich and creamy gluten free cake”, yet it mentions nothing about the need for gluten free baking powder.  Naughty, I thought.  I could very easily have made this cake with my ordinary baking powder, not realising it could be a problem for our guest.  It only takes a little gluten to upset the applecart.

 

In the end I decided to use another recipe for “flourless chocolate torte” which I found in this Sainsbury’s recipe book .  It uses no baking powder at all, so I decided to go with that.

If I had paid more attention to the recipe before I started, I would have noticed that it made a huge cake, baked in a 25cm springform tin.  I had nothing anywhere near that big in my French kitchen, so I filled my largest cake tin and put the rest of the mixture in a loaf tin to make a second cake.

Its appearance was not too attractive when it came out of the oven but with some icing sugar sprinkled on top and a few berries to decorate, it looked very presentable on a nice cake stand.

It was seriously chocolatey with an intensely chocolate flavour, definitely for grown-ups and not for the faint-hearted.  For myself,  I would be tempted to leave out either one of the bars of chocolate or the added cocoa powder next time.  But if serious chocolate is your thing, this is the recipe for you.

Here’s the recipe for flourless chocolate torte.

Ingredients

2 x 100g bars of dark chocolate

200g unsalted butter

1 tsp vanilla extract

5 medium eggs, separated

150g caster sugar

200g ground almonds

50g cocoa powder, sifted

icing sugar for dusting

berries to serve (optional)

Method

Preheat the oven to 180°C (160° C fan).  Grease a 25cm round springform cake tin.  (I lined the bottom of mine with baking paper as well.)

Melt the chocolate and butter together in a bowl over a pan of barely simmering water (or in a microwave).  Stir in the vanilla extract.

In a large bowl, beat the egg yolks with 50g of the caster sugar until pale in colour then pour in the chocolate mixture.  Fold in the ground almonds and cocoa powder.

In another bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff.  Gradually fold in the remaining 100g caster sugar until combined.

Fold one third of the egg white mixture into the chocolate mixture.  Then gently add the rest until just combined.

Spoon the mixture into the tin, spreading evenly.  Bake for 30-35 minutes.  Let the cake stand in the tin for another ten minutes before turning out.

When cool, dust with icing sugar and serve.

Serves 8-12, depending on how much you like chocolate!

WINDFALL MUFFINS

I have made raspberry and banana muffins before, see here, and they turned out very well.  I had some very overripe bananas going begging so I decided to make them again for my dad’s mates at the club.

We have few raspberry canes in our garden that produce a handful of fruit every day all through the summer and often until early October.  I don’t know what variety they are and they wouldn’t win any beauty contest but it’s nice to have a few fresh berries on our cereal every day if we can be bothered to go and pick them.  Those that go unpicked are no good the next day.

 

 The recipe came from “the sweet life” by Antony Worrall Thompson.

All the recipes in the book use a sugar substitute called Splenda but I use proper sugar instead.  It works if you replace 8 tblsp Splenda with 100g sugar.

However, while I was out with Lulu for her morning constitutional, I picked a few blackberries.  It was a lovely warm and sunny morning, just how it should be in September, and all was well with the world.

Lulu with friends and a young bull watching us pick the blackberries.

When I was looking at the recipe, I thought if it works for raspberries and bananas, I wonder if it would work for blackberries and apples?  So I decided to have a go.

I used some eating apples that we were given by my friend Elizabeth when we were last in France.  She gave us loads and we brought a lot of them home with us.  They’re absolutely delicious and I think possibly cox’s  orange pippins. 

I considered doubling up on the ingredients and then dividing the mixture in two, adding raspberries to one half and blackberries to the other.  I then decided it was just as easy to make a second batch with blackberries whilst the raspberry ones were cooking.

The raspberries turned to mush.

The recipe suggests using frozen raspberries and in fact they are better as they hold their shape in the mixture.  Mine turned to mush when I started to combine them with the other ingredients, whereas the blackberries stayed in one piece beautifully.

 

The blackberries kept their shape.

I decided to cook the apples slightly before putting them in the mixture, just in case they might be still firm when the cakes were done.  It seemed to work.

I also decided to sprinkle the blackberry ones with some crushed sugar cubes, just for a change, before baking.  I bought these in France and have never seen them for sale in the UK ~ not in my part of the UK anyway.

Both types of muffins were scrummy.  I would definitely do the blackberry and apple ones again.

WINDFALL MUFFINS

Ingredients

200g plain flour

2 tsp baking powder

100g caster sugar

100g frozen raspberries, briefly thawed, or blackberries

1 egg

1 tsp vanilla extract

50g butter, melted

100 ml semi-skimmed milk

1 ripe banana, mashed, or two small eating apples

crushed sugar pieces (optional)

Method

Pre-heat the oven to 200°C.  Put 9 muffin cases in a muffin tin.

If using apples, peel, core and chop them in small pieces.  Put in a saucepan with a splash of water and cook gently until beginning to soften.  Allow to cool.

Sift the flour and baking powder into a large bowl.  Stir in the sugar and raspberries (or blackberries).

In a separate bowl, beat the egg with the vanilla, melted butter and milk.  Stir this into the dry ingredients with the banana (or apples).  Avoid over mixing and stir until just combined.

Divide between the paper cases.  Sprinkle with the crushed sugar if using.

Bake for 20-25 minutes until risen and golden.  Cool on a wire rack.

Makes 9 muffins.

APRICOT AND GINGER MUFFINS

Dom at Bellau Kitchen has posted an interesting Random Recipe Challenge for September.  It is to randomly take a recipe from your stash of magazine cuttings and other clippings and cook what ever turns up.

Not that long ago I ruthlessly disposed of most of my old magazine clippings.  I had a whole box file stuffed full to bursting with them, some dating back to the 1980’s and one or two to the 1970’s.  I started out by looking at every one, but then decided that if I hadn’t used a recipe at all in the last 30 years, it probably wasn’t worth keeping.  I ended up throwing most of them out without even glancing at them.  And I don’t miss them at all, not one bit……..sob……..

I was left with a few magazine cuttings, some favourite handwritten recipes copied from friends’ cookbooks ~ some of them still dating back to the 70’s ~ and quite a number of A4 pages printed more recently from websites and blogs.  I had put them all neatly in plastic covers in a ring binder – which is unusually well organised for me.I flipped the pages and came up with a recipe published by Craig in his blog” Boris in Ayrshire” a few months ago, for APRICOT AND GINGER MUFFINS.  I had been meaning to make them for ages and now I had a reason.

My other reason / excuse for baking regularly is that my dad has rejoined Derby Model Engineering Society.  He is in the process of building a model steam engine himself (something called a Speedy) and is at the stage where he will soon be finishing it and hopefully running it around the little track at the club.  In the “station” at the club there is “buffet car” and I promised him I would bake something for him to take with him whenever he goes, which is most Sundays.

My dad’s Speedy locomotive, on the back yard, ready for a trial steaming.

  A member of the club giving rides on his own engine on a Sunday afternoon.

I digress !!

The muffins were as usual easy and quick to make, except that it took quite a while to gather together a record number of ingredients.

(Mental note to self – must re-organise cupboards so that all baking ingredients are in one place.)  (Reply to self – that would be such a marathon task that I can’t see it happening for some time yet!)

 

I adopted a tip I found in a Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall recipe for whisking the dry ingredients together in a bowl to aerate them instead of sifting.  It seems to work well, so far as I can tell.

I used another tip I once read somewhere, to use an ice-cream scoop to fill the muffin cases, making it easier to put the same quantity of mixture in each – and it’s less messy too.  That works well as well.

Just before I put them in the oven the phone rang.  It was my dad, checking what time the “buns” would be ready.  When he rang off, I was so keen to get them in the oven that I forgot to do the last bit of the recipe, which is to sprinkle some brown sugar and place a piece of crystallised ginger on top of each one.  Rats !!

But, even without the decoration, they turned out very well.  My dad and his mates at the club really enjoyed them.

Here’s Craig’s recipe for APRICOT AND GINGER MUFFINS.

Ingredients

250g plain flour

120g caster sugar

60g dark brown sugar

2 teasp baking powder

1 teasp ground ginger

1 teasp ground cinnamon

¼ teasp salt

142 ml crème fraiche

125 ml vegetable oil

1 tablesp honey

20g crystallised ginger, chopped small

2 eggs

200g dried apricots, cut into small pieces

extra brown sugar for topping

Method

Preheat the oven to 200°C.  Line a muffin tin with paper cases.

Mix together the flour, sugars, baking powder, spices, and salt in a large bowl.

In a separate bowl whisk together the crème fraiche, oil, honey, and eggs.  Fold this mixture into the dry ingredients.

Gently add the apricots and ginger pieces and combine without over mixing.

Divide the mixture between the muffin cases.  Sprinkle a little brown sugar and place a piece of crystallised ginger on top of each muffin.

Bake for 20 minutes or until golden brown.

Makes 12 muffins (I found it easily made 14)

SUMMER VEGETABLE TART

Not long ago I went to lunch with a friend in a French style restaurant near to home in Derbyshire.  We both chose the same thing from the menu – a nice slice of summer vegetable tart which had in it green beans, peas and broccoli.  It also had some caramelised onion on the bottom, which gave a lovely slightly sweet taste and made a nice change from the usual very savoury flavour of fried onions.

So I decided to have a go at something similar myself.

I used a pack of ready-made shortcrust pastry and a selection of fresh summer vegetables.  I had some peas and broccoli and used broad beans from my garden instead of the green beans in the restaurant quiche.  I don’t like the fine green beans sold in our local supermarkets, partly because I have in the past found them tough and lacking in flavour, but mainly because I just don’t like the idea of buying beans flown half way round the world to our shops.

I blind baked the pastry case and then smeared a couple of dessertspoons of caramelised onion chutney over the bottom and arranged the vegetables on top.  I didn’t know whether I should part cook them first but I decided not to and they cooked fine.

I wasn’t sure if there was any cheese in the restaurant tart, probably not, but I decided to add a couple of dessertspoons of grated parmesan cheese to the egg mixture.  The kind of ready grated parmesan-esque hard cheese that everyone says is rubbish but which I really like.  We often buy ready grated parmesan which comes in little re-sealable bags in French supermarkets, as it seems to be more flavourful and less dry than the tubs I have previously bought in England, and also seems to stay fresh for a long time.

I baked it for about 30 minutes and it was delicious.  I thought the next time I would cut the broccoli florets into smaller pieces but otherwise it was a nice alternative to my usual “Quiche Lorraine” style of tart.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

A couple of weeks later, whilst “chez nous” in France, I decided to make individual versions of the tart as a starter.  My friend Nicole suggested using a muffin tin rather than the mini loose-bottomed tart tins that you can get specially for the purpose.  I think she was right as they were quite a bit deeper so room for more filling and less likelihood of the egg mixture boiling over.  She also suggested using puff pastry instead of shortcrust as she found it turns out more easily and holds its shape better – less chance of bits of pastry breaking off in the struggle to get the tarts out of the muffin tin!

I used an old Bon Maman jar to make circles the right size for the muffin pan.  I had taken a jar of onion chutney with me from the UK but you can buy similar - “confiture d’échalote” -  quite easily in France.  I also used some lovely French green beans –” haricot verts”  but I decided to cook them briefly for a couple of minutes, thinking that the small tarts might cook a bit quicker in the oven and I didn’t want them to be too chewy.  Because I was using puff pastry I decided not to bake it  blind before adding the filling.

They looked wonderful, in a rustic kind of way, and tasted good too.  They made a lovely starter, with a few salad leaves and a cherry tomato on the plate.

SUMMER VEGETABLE TART (OR TARTLETS)

Ingredients.

1 pack of ready made or ready rolled shortcrust pastry*

A handful each of shelled broad beans, peas, also green beans and broccoli florets cut into small pieces.

125 ml whole milk

125 ml cream

3 eggs

2 dessertspoons of grated parmesan cheese

1-2 dessertspoons of caramelised onion chutney (sometimes also called marmalade)

salt and pepper

Method.

Preheat the oven to 180°C.  Grease a 23cm flan tin and roll out the pastry to fit.  Prick the base of the pastry case, add a circle of baking parchment and baking beans and bake blind for 15 minutes*. 

Remove the paper and beans and reduce the oven temperature to 160°C.

Smear the onion chutney on the base of the pastry case.  A very thin layer will give a good flavour so don’t overdo it – a little goes a long way.

Pile the vegetables into the pastry case.

Beat the eggs with the cream and milk.  Add the parmesan cheese, salt and pepper, and pour the mixture carefully over the vegetables.  Don’t fill to the top of the pastry case or it will boil over and brown too much around the edge.

Bake  for 30-40 minutes until golden brown.  Serve warm but also very nice served cold.

Serves 4-6

*For the tartlets, use puff pastry, “pâte feuilletée” and don’t bake blind before adding the vegetables.  They will cook slightly quicker – check after 20 minutes at 160ºC.  A pack of ready-rolled pastry and the above quantity of egg mixture would probably make 8-10 tartlets. 

“ALL IN ONE” CHOCOLATE CAKE

Dom at Bellau Kitchen had another Random Recipe Challenge, this time to cook something from your favourite recipe book.  I decided to have a go, confident that I knew instantly which was my favourite cookbook, The Homepride Book of Home Baking.

The book was published in 1970 and I sent off for it using a coupon from a pack of Homepride flour.  There are more coupons inside the back page that you can give to your friends so they can send for one too, for the princely sum of 13/6.  That’s 13 shillings and 6 pence in old money, about 65p in new money.  

Every page has several recipes on and I kind of knew instantly which page it would fall open at – the book almost opens itself at the same page, it has been used so often !!  So I decided to bake the “all in one” chocolate cake, my absolute favourite in the book.

It has to be the easiest cake ever to make.  You put all the ingredients in a bowl and beat for one minute.  Bake for 25 minutes, make a simple butter icing, sandwich the two halves together and it’s done! I always make the same pattern on top, dragging a fork through the buttercream, just like the picture in the book.  Then I sprinkle a little icing sugar on top.

A chocolate cake that is moist, chocolately, dead easy to make and has been presented at many a birthday party over the decades. 

All in one Chocolate Cake

Ingredients

For the cake

150g self raising flour

a small pinch of salt

3 eggs

150g whipped fat

150 caster sugar

1tablespoon cocoa powder

1tablespoon warm water

For the butter icing

50g butter

100g icing sugar

1tablespoon cocoa powder

1tablespoon water

Method

Grease two 20cm (8") sandwich tins and line the bottoms with greaseproof or baking paper.  Preheat the oven to 160°C.

Mix the cocoa powder and water to a smooth paste, add to a mixing bowl with all the other cake ingredients and beat for one minute until thoroughly combined.

Divide the mixture between the two tins and level the top.

Bake for 25 minutes until firm to the touch.

Turn out and cool on a rack.

While the cake is cooling, make the buttercream.  Cut the butter into pieces and beat until soft.

Sift the icing sugar into the butter a spoonful at a time and beat until smooth.

Mix the cocoa powder to a paste with the water, add to the buttercream mixture and beat again until silky and smooth.

When the cakes are absolutely cold*, put one upside down on your serving plate and spread half the buttercream over it, making sure you go right to the edge.

Spread the other half of the buttercream on top of the other cake and smooth with a knife.

Sandwich the two halves together.  Make a zig-zag or swirly pattern in the topping with a fork and sprinkle with a dusting of icing sugar.

Serves 8-10

*I learned the hard way many years ago that if you are in a hurry and try to put the topping on the cake when it is still slightly warm, it melts and slides off !!

GOOSEBERRY COBBLER

I harvested my gooseberries last weekend and have the scars to prove it.  You should get danger money for jobs like that.

Anyway, I made my favourite gooseberry pudding, using a recipe from Delia’s Summer Collection – gooseberry cobbler.  It includes an interesting mystery ingredient – elderflower cordial.    You can see the recipe on Delia’s website here.

It’s the simplest of puddings to make.  You simply pile the gooseberries into a dish, sprinkle on the cordial and some sugar, make a sticky dough and dollop that on top and hey presto – you have a pretty swish pudding.  Impressive enough for visitors, too.  Especially if you make fancy ice-cream to go with it.

Here’s my version of gooseberry cobbler.

This is what you need

900g gooseberries (I only had 500g and it still worked well)

110g caster sugar

2tblsp elderflower cordial

225g plain flour

½tsp salt

3 tsp baking powder

110g butter, diced

170ml buttermilk (or half milk and half natural yoghurt)

demerara sugar to sprinkle

This is what you do

Preheat the oven to 220°C/200°fan/gas mk 7

Grease a 23 cm round deep baking dish, or equivalent oblong dish.

Wash and top and tail the gooseberries and tumble into the dish.  Sprinkle the caster sugar and cordial on top.

Put the flour, salt, baking powder and butter into a food processor and blitz until “breadcrumbs” form.  Add the liquid and pulse until a sticky dough forms.

Dollop tablespoons of the mixture on top of the fruit and sprinkle about a teaspoon of demerara sugar on top of that.

Bake for 25-30 minutes until golden brown.  Serve warm with custard, cream or ice-cream.

Serves 6