The destruction of a massive baker

This blog post is so late that I can't even remember how late it is! So much has happened though like moving flat and losing my job and finding a job and breaking a rib and mentalbozoness.

Anyhoots I do absolutely remember the deliciousness of this bake club. It was total amazeballs. We again decided to make something savoury and something sweet. For savoury we decided on a chicken pie and a chocolate tart to finish.


Bake club went off with a hiss. My trusted food processor of eight years is with us no longer.


Lucky for bake club I am eternally single and have developed great wrist action. COZ I BAKE A LOT. Filth. Anyway ... we made the pastry by hand. Shortcrust if you must know. Filth.


The other prepared the filling. Oh. My. Gapes. It was such a tasty filling.


We had to distract him from eating all the chicken goodness ...



So we gave them pearls.


Wasn't distracted for long!



But just long enough for the serious bakers to get things going.

What came first - the chicken or the pie?

Greco-Roman chicken pie. This b**ch is winning Olympic medals baby!

(The chocolate tart wasn't all that great. It was great, but the pastry wasn't all that. I blame my food processor for dying). The chicken pie was just to. die. for. I am actually now dead and I am writing from my grave. It was worth dying for.

Ultimate Chocolate Cake

As always.. My blog is very very late. LOL.. Sorry about that everyone (especially those of you that follow our blog religiously). You know how it is like sometimes, life takes a hold on you and everything you can imagine happens all at once and 24 hours a day is not enough! Well the past few months has been like that for me so here it is.. The Ultimate Chocolate Cake.. 4 months late! :D

As it was my birthday month, everyone at Bake Club decided that it should be held at my place. Birthday boy can't have everything, can he? He's got to clean up as well. I think it was the Bake Clubbers' idea of playing a prank on me.. Not really to be honest. They are a very nice bunch. They think it would be good for me to choose a cake that I like and we all bake it for my birthday :)

I LOVE CHOCOLATE so it is only natural that I chose a chocolate cake (the host of the Bake Club gets to choose the recipe subject to everyone's approval and it's only fair that we host it in one another's kitchen so that everyone gets a chance to clean up :P) I got the recipe from BBC Good Food Guide and the recipe is shown in the link below..

http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/3092/ultimate-chocolate-cake

I don't remember which mixture this is!

Nana pouring the divine chocolate mixture...

And Yusuf mixing it..

Doing his final stir..

And me pouring it gently into the tin.

"This bowl is so freaking heavy!!!"

Finally out of the oven..

And out of those painful tins..

Nana showing off the goods

"Boy it's so hard to chop these chocolates into bits"

The Ganache without sugar added

Yummmmmmm...........

Isn't that handsome?

We didn't have chocolate curls so

we shaved the chocolate using a cheese shaver.

(Please don't ask why)

As Nigella Lawson would say...

"Lovely!"

Nana was impatient and had to go

so we had to cut the cake before it sets.

Still very yummy I can assure you..

We didn't add sugar to the ganache cos the recipe already seemed very sweet and boy we were glad we didn't do that as the cake was very sweet indeed. That means something coming from someone who has a very sweet tooth!

I think every single of the Bake Clubbers agreed that it was a very yummy recipe. Definitely worth doing but try and use the best chocolate you can becos it makes a big difference. The downside is we had to get a bank loan after baking this cake! But boy it's worth it. So moist, rich and..... LOVELY!

Panettone

*This Bake Club session took place on Dec 27th, so I'm only 5 weeks late...*

What happens after the indulgence of Christmas? Well, you indulge some more, of course! Instead of laying off the baked treats and heading to the gym, the dedicated members of the Bake Club headed to my flat instead for a round of panettone baking. 

Working that dough

We followed the recipe from here - but you shouldn't, it's crap. I'd picked the recipe in a rather frenzied moment, while doing 186390 other things, and didn't realise at that time that the recipe left out some ingredients. Some optional, not-so-important ingredients, such as FLOUR (what kind, how much etc)! *There's a comment at the end now that says you need about 4 cups of flour. Well, too little, too late!*

Anyway, as you can see, we didn't let the little details stop us - we mixed it all up, kneaded the dough and waited for it to rise. And waited. And waited...

Baking bread in winter requires a hell lot of patients, folks. Nana eventually suggested we heat up the oven, switch it off and then place the dough in it to help it rise faster. Clever girl, that one. She then left to get her nails done. Gotta look good when you're eating handmade bread, after all!

Oh yes, we added chocolate to the panettone too. Disregard the scale that the blue bowl is perched one, we didn't actually bother weighing it. Like you can have too much chocolate?

Here you have the finished product - like a gigantic fruit and chocolate studded mushroom. There's a huge airpocket in it, and the crust could have sheltered you in the event of a nuclear fallout, but the insides, sooo good! Sweet, chewy, fruity chocolatey goodness! 

I think I'll make panettone again, even when it's not Christmas. I'll just have to look for a better recipe next time, though.