Chocolate Pecan Tart

This is my new favourite cake, I just can't get enough of it.  I have made it a few times in the past month, and every time it tasted better.  I found this recipe in the book 'Ultimate Chocolate Recipes' by Green&Black's.  I have changed it a bit and added a recipe for the pastry, it said to use ready made short crust pastry, which is a good idea if you want to make a delicious cake but don't have much time. I also changed the syrup type from golden to maple, but any kind of syrup will do.    

For the pastry; 

100g butter

1 tbs suger 

2 egg yokes

180g flour

First make the pastry by mixing the butter and sugar until smooth, then add the flour and egg yokes.  Mix well but not for too long, it might be easier to do this with your hands.  Make a ball from the pastry and put it in the fridge for later. 

For the filling;

100g chocolate 

100g butter 

2 eggs

150g maple syrup (or syrup of choice) 

1 tsp vanilla

100g ground pecans

100g halved pecans for on top

Melt the chocolate and the butter together and let it cool for a bit.  Mix the eggs and maple syrup together in a big bowl and then add the cooled chocolate mixture. Mix well and add the ground pecans at the end. Roll out the pastry and place it carefully into a 20cm tart/quiche tin and make sure it is even all over.  Pour in the chocolate pecan mixture and use the halved pecans to decorate the top.  Cook in the oven at 180'c for 40-50 minutes or until the pastry is golden and the filling is cooked but still soft. This tart goes very well with vanilla ice cream. ;-)  

Rainy afternoons are for Cake making

 It was one of those days again, when the rain does not stop and the girls get fed up with being cooped up inside all day.  Its moments like those that are perfected for cake making. There is plenty of time to make, eat, enjoy the cake and of course clean up the mess.  So the girls and I made cup cakes.   

I used one of Nigella's cupcake recipes but I didn't have enough sugar so I used some Stevia as well. Stevia is a natural sweetener extract from a plant called Stevia Rebaudiana Bertoni. It is a little bush that grows in Brazil and has been used as a sweetener for the past 400 years.  It is much healthier then Sugar and all other food sweeteners, but for some reason it was illegal in Europe until 1 month ago and still is in the USA. Now it is available to buy in most health food shops.  The only problem with stevia is that it is about 300% sweeter then sugar and only a very small amount is needed.  This means that when using it for cake making it is hard to work out the corrected proportions.  So using stevia is a little bit experimental for now.  
Nigella's recipe says to use 125g of sugar but I only had 50g so I added 10 drops of liquid stevia and added more flour to make up the bulk.  The cakes were not very sweet but I like that.  Here is the recipe I came up with.

Home made Eclairs

 We went to a party on the weekend and we were asked to bring with us something to nibble. So we made eclairs.  When my boyfriend was 15 years old he worked every Saturday night in a bakery making all the delicious dreads and pastries that bakeries sell. One of the pastries being my favourite handmade eclairs.  Every now and then he feels inspired to make them and this time I asked him for the recipe. 

-The Dough.
Ingredients: 
¼ lt. Water, 
100gr butter, 
150gr 00 Flour, 
3 1/2 Eggs, 
½ tbs. Icing sugar.

Mince Pie Pastry

Over the past week I have made three batches of mince pies and I used three different recipes for the pastry, some of which can be found in Nigella's Christmas.  Like the mincemeat I have combined some of the recipes together to make the best one.  

Chestnut Cake

  Making a chestnut cake takes a lot of time and effort, but as I only make it once or twice a year I think it is well worth the effort. Some shops sell ready peeled and cook chestnuts, but they are very expensive, and there are plenty of chestnuts to be found at this time of year in the forests, parks and in friends gardens.  We have a few chestnut trees in the garden and there lots and lots in the forest nearby.  My favourite way to eat chestnuts is to roast them on the fire, they become warm and soft and have a lovely nutty taste. 

Here is a recipes for chestnut cake, the chestnuts are used instead of flour which makes this cake gluten free. 

Raspberry Brownie Cake

This is a really great recipe for raspberry brownie cake. A very good friend of mine told it to me and we made it as one of my daughters birthday cakes. (she had three). This is a very rich chocolate cake maybe not the best cake to make for a child's birthday, but like me she is mad about chocolate and so we could not resist. 

Wild Blueberry Tart

We are very lucky to live next to a forest filled with lovely delights.  One of best things about the forest is that it has wild blueberries growing under the pine tree's.  On a hot day the sun shine's through the tree's and the wind blows a cool breeze, smelling of sweet pine and blueberries.  There really is nothing better than to sit, pick and eat under the cool shady tree's. It takes a long time to pick these little berries and we only had enough to make a tart, but hopefully next time we will get more and then I can make some yummy blueberry jam.