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Cobnut and apple tart

27th November 2012 by Regula 8 Comments

I’m very happy to announce, I’ve been asked to write for Great British Chefs
Here I am, a Belgian girl writing about Britain and British food and I am really proud that they have taken me under the Great British Chefs’ wing.

I didn’t have to think twice when I was asked to write about something for a mostly British audience, recently I’ve been quite obsessed with Kentish cobnuts and I have many more recipes up my sleeve.

When
I think of my beloved Kent, apples, cobnuts, cherries and hops are the
four things that define this county for me. They have moulded the
landscape with their orchards and plats and have influenced the kitchens
and culture.

I
discovered Kentish cobnuts on a late summers day when they are sold
fresh in their green husks. The kernels are then juicy and resemble a
chestnut flavour, yet more delicate. When autumn arrives the cobnuts are
ripened, the husks, then turned brown, are removed and they look more
like the hazelnut we generally know. Now they are dried and referred to
as Golden Cobnuts. The flavour of the nut has developed while ripening,
and has gone from fresh and juicy to an intense nutty flavour. When
stored dry they keep till christmas. The Kentish cobnut is larger and
more ovoid shaped than a hazelnut and also has a different and slightly
more intense flavour.

Cobnuts
generally grow in Kent, where the variety the ‘Kentish Cob’ was planted
in the 19th century by a Mr Lambert of Goudhurst.
They
have however been around since Tudor times and were but revived by the
Victorians who considered them to be a delicacy. There are more
varieties of cobnuts but as Kent has historically been the main county
producing cobnuts, the term Kentish cob is often used generally for
every variety of cobnut grown in Britain.
Cobnut
orchards are known as ‘plats’ and the nuts are harvested by hand by
workmen called ‘nutters’. In the old days cobnuts were also sometimes
picked by hop pickers coming down from London as cobnuts and hops both
ripen at the same time. The disappearance of the Hop pickers roughly
corresponds with the decline of the cobnut plats.

The
last few years there’s been a revival in cobnut growing as well as in
hop growing as many people are opting to buy British and the growing
amount of micro breweries are showing interest in Kentish hops again.
Cherry orchards are being planted once more and apples are still plenty
and taking over the British greengrocers.
I
had Kent on my mind when my sack of golden cobnuts arrived and I was
also in need of a cake or tart that is not only comforting and cosy on a
dreary autumn day but also a bit more nutritious than your average
tart.
This
cobnut and apple tart is something between a cake and a tart, I am
using spelt flour and lots of cobnuts and apples so this tart will not
only give you your dose of sweets but also energy.

For the recipe head over to the website of Great British Chefs here >

Special thanks to Farnell Farm for the cobnuts! www.farnellfarm.co.uk/

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: apple, baking, cake, cobnuts, dessert, Food history, Kent, recipes, sweet pie, tart

Kentish Cobnut cake with apple compote – a marriage made in autumn

24th September 2012 by Regula 23 Comments

It seems like in a weeks time the days have started to get more chilly and shorter. The trees are starting to shake off their leaves and we are greeted by cobnuts, apples and plums. Autumn is definitely upon us.

Last week I walked in a sunny meadow in Kent wearing a summer dress and red dancing shoes, today I’m packing a warm cardigan for London where I will stay with friends for a few days to attend this years food blogger conference. This time away from the hectic magazine deadlines and the company of like-minded food lovers from all over the globe will warm me with a fire of creativity.

In Kent, my mission was to find the ‘Kentish cob‘ which is a type of hazelnut that has been grown in England since Tudor times and perhaps even earlier. The Victorians considered the Kentish cobnuts to be a delicacy and therefore are responsible for planting 7000 acres of cobnut orchard or ‘plats’.
Like the cherry orchards, after first world war the amount of cobnut plats in Kent was drastically decreased to no more than 730 acres with a further decline to 250 acres today.
Unlike most hazelnuts, cobnuts are sold fresh and not dried. They are in season from the end of august through october.
At the beginning of the season the husks are green and the kernels very juicy, further into the season when the nuts have ripened the husks and shells are brown and the flavour has developed further to the hazelnut taste that we are used too.

This cake has a wonderful nutty flavour, together with the apple compote the flavours are a marriage made in autumn. Just glorious cake.

Kentish cobnut cake
traditional Kentish recipe adapted from English Teatime Recipes


preheat the oven to 160C

To roast the cobnuts
Remove the shells and place them in an oven at 160C for 45 minutes

For the cobnut cake
• 225 g self-raising flour
• 110 unsalted butter, at room temperature
• 110 g light soft brown sugar
• 3 free-range eggs, beaten
• 50 g (1 cup) cobnuts, shells removed, roasted and finely chopped

Method
For the cobnut cake, preheat the oven to 160C°.
Line you cake tin with baking paper.Add the butter to the flour and mix until it resembles breadcrumbs
Add the sugar and eggs and beat until well combined.
Stir in the chopped cobnuts until well combined.
Spoon the mixture into the prepared cake tin, gently spreading the batter into all the corners.
Put the cake in to the oven and bake for 1h 20 min, or until the cake has risen and is lovely golden-brown, when a skewer is inserted into the centre of the cake it has to come out clean.
Set the cake aside to cool slightly in the tin.

For the apple compôte
• 3 apples, peeled, cores removed, finely chopped
• 2-3 tbsp cane sugar
• 2 tbsp water

Heat the water in a frying pan over a medium heat.
Add the sugar and let it dissolve
Add the apples and stir well
Cook until the apples have broken down slightly and the mixture has thickened.

Serve the slices of cake with a spoonful of warm or cold apple compôte.

Enjoy!

 

 

For more information about Kentish Cobnuts visit this website: www.kentishcobnutsassociation.org.uk

Want to know where to find Cobnuts? Check out this page here
or visit www.farnellfarm.co.uk

You might also like
Elisabeth sandwich cake
Chestnut cake
Parsnip and apple cake 
Vegan beetroot and chocolate birthday cake

Filed Under: Sweet, Uncategorized Tagged With: apple, autumn, baking, Best of British, British food, cake, cobnuts, dessert, Food history, Kent, recipes

Britannia sandwich cake – Best of British

3rd June 2012 by Regula 25 Comments

As the reign of Elizabeth I is referred to as ‘The Golden age’, I wonder what they will call the reign of her namesake Elizabeth II.
Elisabeth, born in 1533 was known as the ‘Virgin queen‘. She never married as she never wanted to be ruled by a man. She might be the first feminist in history. As the previous two queens in English history both failed and her reign was of such epic importance, the role of women changed quite a bit. It started with noble men who started to educate their daughters so they wouldn’t look ignorant in the presence of the highly educated queen. But in general, independent women were still being called spinsters, witches or prostitutes.
When her sister ‘Bloody Mary’ died, she inherited a bankrupt nation scattered into pieces due to religious conflict. She had to breathe new life into Britain.
With her came the flourishing of British drama, she was a great supporter of Shakespeare and Marlowe. How would the world have looked like without Macbeth, Hamlet and King Lear?
We wouldn’t suddenly shout “Romeo oh Romeo” when we found ourselves on a balcony, we would just look at the view. The English language wouldn’t be what it is today without Shakespeare as he invented nearly 1700 words for his plays, sonnets and poems. Words you wouldn’t expect like ‘frugal’, ‘gloomy’ and ‘monumental’ were all invented by the man himself.
It is fair to say Elizabeth I reshaped Britain, made it “British”, gave her name to an era and reigned supreme.

This weekend we are celebrating the current queen Elizabeth.
The Diamond jubilee is inspiring people to celebrate Brit style with street parties, cake contests and an explosion of Union Jack bunting everywhere.
If only Britain could look like this every day.
Shop windows competing for celebrating Britishness the best, biggest and most typical.
As an Anglophile, these are good times for me. I can buy Union Jack pajamas, purses and… shoes!
I finally have an excuse to decorate my cake with it, get out the bunting and watch the boats on the Thames while reading a British classic.
I celebrate, not my love for a monarch but for a land, its culture and its pride.

So this cake is for you, Britannia.
May the tea flow plenty in flowery teacups, the cakes be decorated with joy and the discussion scone-cream-jam versus scone-jam-cream go on until eternity.


‘Union Jack’ Britannia Sandwich cake.

I’ve tried a few Victoria sandwich recipes before I came to this one after testing.
This cake is slightly more solid than your average sponge cake.

What do you need

for the cake:
200g softened unsalted butter (I made butter recently, it’s so easy. Go to the tutorial >)
200 g golden caster sugar
200 g self raising flour
4 medium eggs
1 teaspoon of vanilla extract
1 teaspoon of milk.

for the filling:

500 g double cream
if you can’t get hold of double cream, you can use mascarpone
0,5 teaspoon of vanilla extract
Strawberry or raspberry jam
strawberries

decoration:
strawberries, tips for the top and slices for the filling
blueberries
or
go traditional with a icing sugar finish

Method
Preheat your oven to 180°
Line the bottom of two 20 cm cake tins with baking paper.

Put the butter and sugar into a bowl and whisk until creamy.
Add the eggs one by one, whisk well so the egg is completely mixed in before you add the next one.
Add the milk and vanilla.
Add the flour and fold it in gently.

Divide the dough over the two prepared tins and spread out well with a spatula.
If you only have 1 tin, bake one first and then the other.

*If you have smaller tins, you can make some little cakes too!

Put in the oven for 25 minutes, whatever you do do open the oven or the cake will collapse.

For the cream

Whisk the double cream with a hand mixer until you get a stiff mixture.
Add the vanilla

Decorating the cake
Put the cakes with their good side down on a tray.
Spread the jam on the cake for the bottom side, then add the strawberry slices
Spread half of the cream on the other side and then sandwich this side on top of the other, the cream side down.
Press down so they stick together.
Spread the rest of the cream on top of the cake.
Use the tips of the strawberries to create the St George’s cross and then next the other red cross for Northern Ireland.
Now fill up the gaps with the blueberries to create Scotland.

All done!

Now make a cup of tea!

 

 

Please feel free to leave a comment, I love reading them!

 
Other posts in the ‘Best of British’ category can be found here >

You might also like:
Parsnip and apple breakfast cake
Glutenfree Chestnut cake
Vegan chocolate beetroot and walnut cake

Filed Under: Afternoon Tea, Sweet, Uncategorized Tagged With: baking, Best of British, British food, cake, dessert, recipes

Sticky Lemon Curd Cake by Charlotte White

23rd April 2012 by Regula 11 Comments

Guest post*

Today I would like to introduce you to Charlotte, a 50s loving girl like myself and a baker of fabulous special occasion cakes. Charlotte and I met in februari when we were both modelling pretty dresses for my dear friend Sassy and her epic shoot in Birmingham (wanna see? you’ll find it here).
She is sharing with us her ‘Sticky lemon curd cake‘ and the story of how she became to be a professional cake designer.

picture by Carla Thomas                                                picture by Rockabetty Studios

If I could go back in time ten years to tell myself that I would be baking for a living in 2012, I doubt very much that the cocky little film student would believe me. I was studying with the intention to be a film producer ‘when I grew up’ and my baking was limited to delicious treats for our student parties. Honestly, I think that these were probably the most civilised student parties ever – our house was always filled with baked goods whenever we had guests, perhaps as a little something sweet to mask the taste of that cheap student alcohol. When we needed to raise funds for our final year documentary, I made fudge and sold it on campus; when we were away shooting on location, I baked cakes for the student crew. It never crossed my mind that this was a potential career. I had just always baked.

My Nana taught me the basics and my Mum gave me free reign of the kitchen to experiment, with the strict proviso that I clean up after myself. My family photo albums are littered with pictures of me at various ages, proudly displaying my latest cake creation. Each cake was generously covered in a thick layer of that awful cooking chocolate and strategically placed chocolate Buttons and Smarties. You would have to crack the shell to get to the cake! Thankfully, my family all share my sweet tooth so there were no complaints!

The suggestion that I could bake for a living came from a couple of friends after their Wedding in 2007. They had been working with a strict budget so I offered to bake them enough cupcakes to serve all of their guests as my Wedding gift. 150 cupcakes and a day off work in my kitchen later, I had trays of tasty treats all ready to go. I had iced them simply with flat buttercream and had topped each one with a red fondant rose that I had bought from a lady on Ebay. I wanted to learn how to make my own cupcake toppers so I attended an evening course at a local college. Then another. Then another.

As I learnt more and more tricks of the trade, I grew in confidence and set up Restoration Cake in 2009. I went full-time Cake Designer six months ago now and I have never been happier to get up and go to work in the mornings! I doubt that I will ever win that Best Picture OSCAR but I make a wicked bit of lemon cake…

Sticky Lemon Curd Cake

I have searched all over to find the best lemon sponge cake. I knew that I wanted it to incorporate the lemon drizzle method and contain ground almonds and lemon curd, to keep the sponge moist and slightly sticky. This one rises really nicely and creates a very pale, even sponge. The lemon cream cheese frosting is a delicious accompaniment to this cake as it has a cheesecake taste to it!

There are quite a lot of ingredients required and you will end up with enough mixture to make 3-4 cupcakes too! All ingredients need to be at room temperature before you get started so bring them out of the fridge the night before if you can.

Ingredients for an 8″ cake (half all quantities for a 6″ cake):

300g butter
400g caster sugar
zest and juice 3 lemons
8 large free range eggs
300g self-raising flour
250g ground almonds
2tsp baking powder
8tbsp lemon curd

Oven temperature = 160C

Method

1) Cream the butter and the sugar until almost white. Seriously, the minute you think you are done creaming, add on another 5 minutes! This is best done in a free-standing mixer, to avoid a very tired arm!

2) Beat the eggs in a jug and add the lemon zest and juice to this. Gradually incorporate this mixture into the butter and sugar, mixing all the time and adding a teaspoon of flour if the mix begins to curdle.

3) Add the lemon curd and mix through.

4) Combine your dry ingredients in a separate bowl and fold these into the wet mixture a third at a time.

5) Divide the mixture between two lined sandwich tins and bake for approximately 45 minutes. The cake is done when a skewer comes out clean.

Ingredients required for Lemon Syrup

Juice of 4 lemons
120g caster sugar

1) Heat the lemon juice and sugar in a saucepan over a low heat until the sugar has completely dissolved.

2) As soon as you remove the cake from the oven, poke it right down to the bottom of the tin in several places with a skewer. Pour the syrup over the top of the cake. Really go for it and use all of the syrup but leave each pouring of syrup to soak in before you add more. Leave the cakes to cool in their tins for 10 minutes before turning out on a wire rack to cool completely.

Ingredients for Lemon Cream Cheese Frosting

125g butter
125g cream cheese
4tbsp lemon curd
1tsp vanilla essence
500g icing sugar

1) Using a food processor, cream the butter and vanilla essence until smooth.

2) Add half of the icing sugar, followed by half of the cream cheese. Repeat this with the remaining icing sugar and cream cheese.

3) Add the lemon curd and process until smooth.

4) Use this frosting to fill, top and cover your cake to taste.


Thank you Charlotte for sharing your wonderful story and cake recipe with us!

*This is not a sponsored post, I have not received any payment to feature this article


Please leave a comment, I love reading them!

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: cake, guest posts, recipes

Vegan chocolate, beetroot and walnut cake

28th March 2012 by Regula 16 Comments

Today is my birthday, the day I look forward to all year…

I’m a child when it comes to my birthday, I start counting the days from August.
You would think I have it all planned out, but indecisive as I am about this -on the day- no reservations for dinner have been made and no outfit is chosen.
The only certain thing is that I will most likely be in a little village in East Sussex.
Today is my day, the day that I am allowed to be a child again, sing very loud, blow out candles and dance in the street.
I don’t care what people think, I hold on to this joyful occasion and cherish it.
Because you have to hold on to your inner child and keep that little fire burning. That’s where creativity thrives and tales are invented.
Today anything is possible, I have wings to fly to magical places, where the grass is greener, the flowers enormous and the food, of course the food delicious and plenty.
Today I fall into a hole in the ground and have tea with talking rabbits.
Today is truly mine.

So on this day I bring you a birthday cake.

The past
year
a lot of things changed, I started this blog, got married and got to
know who my friends are. I feel I grew up just a tiny bit more.

One of the new things in my life is experimenting with vegan cooking, especially for cakes and cookies. I love to make sweet things slightly more healthy and as I don’t really have a sweet tooth, I don’t make them overly sweet.
As you might have guessed from my Parsnip and apple breakfast cake, I have a thing for putting vegetables into sweets. The classic carrot cake used to be my all time favourite tea time treat, until this cake came along…
This mouth full of yummyness is moist, full of the darkest chocolate and contains one of my favourite veg: beetroot.
Beetroot is incredibly healthy as it is a rich source of antioxidants, nutrients including sodium, magnesium and vitamin C.

I love the way beetroot colors your hands…

What do you need
Wholemeal spelt flour: 3 cups
cooked beetroot: 2 cups
dark chocolate: 1 cup
maple syrup: 0,5 cup
honey: 0,5 cup (you can use 1 cup of maple syrup if you object to honey)
baking powder: 2 heaped tsp
baking soda: 2 heaped tsp
walnuts: 1 cup chopped
cocoa: 4 heaped tsp
1 cup of soy yoghurt
sunflower or hennep oil: 0,5 cup
a pinch of seasalt
Icing
1cup of dark chocolate
2 heaped tsp icing sugar
1 tsp maple syrup
2 tsp of soy milk
• Peel the beetroots and slice into 1 cm cubes, cook until soft and mash.
• Preheat your oven to 160°
• Get your dry ingredients in one bowl and your wet ingredients in another.
• Add the baking powder and soda last as it has to get in contact with the wet ingredients straight away to give the best result.
• Melt the chocolate and add to the wet ingredients, mix the ingredients.
• Add the wet to the dry ingredients and mix, let it rest for 10 minutes.
• While the dough is resting, line a spring form with baking paper and dust with some cacao.
• Pour the batter into the springform and put in the oven for 55 minutes.
• Be very careful when you take it out of the oven, let it cool in the tray.
Decorate with the icing and some chocolate shavings.
Enjoy with a glass of oat milk or Earl grey tea!

Also check out this vegan chocolate cake by my friend Zita, a fabulous vegetarian and vegan blog. She inspired me to give this vegan thing a go.

29 on the 29th of march

Please leave a comment, I love reading them!

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: cake, dessert, recipes, sweets, vegan, vegetarian

Parsnip and apple breakfast cake

16th January 2012 by Regula 6 Comments

Breakfast is the most important meal of the day, we all know it.
There is a saying: eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince and dinner like a beggar
In Britain and Ireland the day is started as a king with their traditional cooked breakfast “the iconic fry-up”. Cooked well, the “English breakfast” truly is a wonderful dish.
If you want to do it right you should start with a bowl of cereal and a piece of fruit, fresh juice and finish the meal with a slice of toast topped with marmelade. Last but not least, all this must be washed down with a nice cup of tea.
If this isn’t a hearty breakfast, I don’t know what is.
Naturally you can’t eat like this every day, most people only treat themselves on a traditional “Full monty” when on holiday or on special occasions.
So alternatives are beans on toast or perhaps this breakfast cake.
Also perfect with your ‘four O’ clock’ cup of tea and much better than a candybar.
Go on, treat yourself.

“And then to breakfast, with what appetite you have.” Shakespeare
This breakfast cake is very moist and more a cross between a bread and a cake.
Someone from Ireland told me it also resembles an “Irish tea brack” though this is not made with tea.
I left out the “normal” sugar in this cake and substituted with honey and apple sirup. This makes this cake a healthier treat.

What do you need
180 g unsalted butter
1 cup of honey
0,5 cup of apple sirup, plum sirup or golden sirup
3 organic eggs
330 g selfraising flour
2 tsp baking powder
1 apple, grated
0,5 tsp mixed spice (see here to learn what goes into mixed spice)
2 parsnips (250 g), grated
80 g walnuts, chopped
2 tsp of fresh orange juice
a little bit of orange zest

Method
Grate the parsnips and apple.
Preheat your oven to 180°C.
Grease a loose bottom baking tin or line with baking paper
Melt the sirup, honey and butter, allow to cool
Mix the flour, mixed spice and baking powder.
Add the egg and sirup mixture to the flour followed by the grated apple and parsnips.
Finally add the orange zest an juice.
Pour the mixture into the prepared cake tin and bake for 1 hour.
Let the cake cool in the tin and dust with Icing sugar when cooled.

My cake tin was a bit smaller so I made some smaller cakes from the leftover dough, ideal to stick into boyfriends’, husbands’ or childrens’ luchboxes.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: baking, Best of British, bread, breakfast, cake, recipes

Chestnut cake from Monteriggioni, Tuscany

25th November 2011 by Regula 13 Comments

A beautiful farmers market in the heart of a fortified town.
It was a sunny autumn morning when we left for Monteriggioni, the fog had slipped away and gave way to a yellow and brown colored landscape.
We changed our clocks one hour ahead that night so when we awoke the dew had already dried up and the sun was giving a warm glow.
We drove trough the rolling landscape of Tuscany to reach the hill where the quintessentially fortified town of Monterriggioni lies.
From a distance the town looks like a giant fairytale castle, as we drove towards it my thoughts wandered off to the Middle Ages when Monteriggioni was at the very heart of the conflicts between Florence and Siena. I imagined large battalions of knights approaching the town and peasants going about their business. The knights have all gone now but the farmers remained and were the reason we were driving here today.
Today was a special day in Monteriggioni because in the heart of the fortified town there was a farmers market going on. It was only for one day and there were no certainties for it to happen ever again. The town square was filled with food stalls, producers were proudly presenting their new Organic olive oil and wines were given to taste generously. There were smiling faces everywhere, from the stallholders insisting we’d try their food to the people who were enjoying the scenery and the sun. It was like at this moment, everyone was happy here. There was no music, no dancing but nonetheless this was a feast, a food fest.
The produce at this market was absolutely beautiful, if I could I would have bought something from every stall. But luggage restrictions bound me to making choices, a choice like this is hard to make. What do I leave behind, the glorious organic chestnut flour or the tasty Boar salami… I decided to leave the Fava beans behind and regret that choice every day since. What if I could have fitted an extra bag in my luggage?
Oh well, you can’t have it all and I went home with a beautiful selection of food. 

Monteriggioni
Chestnuts roasting

Fill your own cone of tasty chillies
Proudly presenting the new Organic olive oil of 2011

Snail ragout, suprisingly delicious
Wild boar delicacies

Chestnut cake, recipe for my version of this cake below.

Chestnut bread and chickpeas

I baked a cake with the organic chestnut flour I bought at the market. 
My friends and I tried to bake this cake in the evening as we tasted chestnut cake at the market that day. The heath of the oven warmed Giulia’s house and filled it with a lovely smell of chestnuts, on this chilly autumn evening.
We loved it so much at the market, I decided I wanted to have another try at reproducing this wonderful cake. After a few tries I came up with this recipe, it’s not at all the cake we tried at the market but I think this one tastes more of chestnuts, which was something I was going for.

Ingredients
200 gr of Chestnut flour
75 gr of corn flour
175 gr good quality butter (unsalted)
1,5 teaspoons of baking powder (check the pack, not all brands of baking powder are gluten free)
4 organic eggs
50 gr of cane sugar
3 teaspoons of Ricotta
1 teaspoon of Cocoa

Method
Preheat your oven to 160° (gas)
Cover a cake tin with baking paper
1. Mix your butter and the sugar, whisk until creamy
2. Add the eggs one by one
3. Add the Ricotta to the butter and egg mixture and stir
4. Add the two types of flour to a bowl and add the baking powder
5. Add the butter, egg and sugar mixture to the flour and mix together.
6. Pour the batter into your baking thin and put in the oven for about 50 minutes.

When you take it out of the oven, leave it to cool in the baking tin.
Dust with Cocoa when the cake is still warm.

You wouldn’t believe how much this cake tastes of roasted chestnuts, just divine!
A good thing about this cake is the low amount of sugar used.
Enjoy!

Next week I’m attempting another dish I discovered in Tuscany: Fagloli al fiasco
Have you missed my previous post about our Tuscan escape? You will find it here

Special thanks to Giulia from Juls’ kitchen

Please leave a comment. I appreciate every single one.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: cake, dessert, foodandtravel, foodie, glutenfree, Italian, Italy, recipes, Tuscany

Chocolate and ricotta spelt cake

4th November 2011 by Regula 10 Comments

Chocolate cake, don’t we all need it once and a while?

I do, not even being a chocaholic I do crave chocolate cake sometimes.
But my needs are specific, I don’t want it to be to sweet, to spongy or to dry. I want a moist, firm cake with a bitter taste of chocolate and some nuts.
I spent years baking chocolate cakes trying to perfect the recipe, they all came out wrong. Some were to moist, to heavy, to sweet, to salt, to dry, to burned… you know the story.
A few weeks back Zita a fabulous vegetarian food blogger from Hungary I met in the summer, shared a vegan chocolate cake recipe with us, using whole grain and white spelt flour. I love Spelt, I use it for bread all the time but for some reason I’ve never tried using it to bake this cake before.
I decided I wanted to use Ricotta, because I had cake in our favorite Italian restaurant that had Ricotta in it and made it taste so creamy.  That, and because I just LOVE Ricotta in every way.
The best chocolate cake I ever ate was in a small tearoom in Glastonbury when I was 18 years old, it was the first holiday I went on without my parents.
This means it took me 10 years to create a cake that equals that cake I ate in 2001.
To be fair, I didn’t bake for about 5 years. And perhaps the fact that I was on my first holiday alone had something to do with it.
But here it is, my favorite chocolate cake.

Ingredients
6 teaspoons of cocoa
2,5 teaspoons of full fat milk (I use raw milk)
250 gr of Ricotta (1 tub usually)
2 eggs (free range)
1 teaspoon of vanilla extract
150 gr wholemeal spelt flour
1,5 teaspoons of baking powder
150 gr of good quality salted butter (I used salted Jersey butter as I had some in the fridge)
140 gr of cane sugar
a handful of roasted hazelnuts and pecan or walnuts, crushed
a few pieces of the darkest chocolate you can find (I used Cote d’Or 86% noir)
Optional: about half a teaspoon of Whisky, you can leave this out or substitute with another type of liquor. It gives the cake that little extra touch.

Note: Spelt is not Gluten-free, some people may tolerate it better than others. For a completely Gluten-free cake you can use chestnut flour instead of spelt.


Method
Preheat your oven to 160° (gas)
Cover a baking tin with baking paper
1. Crush your hazel- and pecan nuts in a mortar, not too fine as we want bits in it
2. Mix your butter and the sugar, whisk until creamy.
3. Add the cocoa powder, the chocolate, the vanilla, the Whisky and the crushed chocolate to the butter mixture and stir.
4. Add the baking powder, 2 eggs and the milk to the flour and mix it together.
5. Add the Ricotta to the butter mixture and stir.
6. Add all of this to the flour mixture and stir well so you get an even batter.
7. Pour the batter into your baking thin and put in the oven for about 50 minutes.
When you take it out of the oven, leave it to cool in the baking tin.
Decorate with some icing sugar.
Enjoy!

Please leave a comment. I appreciate every single one.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: cake, dessert, recipes

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Regula Ysewijn is a food writer, stylist and photographer, with a particular interest in historical recipes. he is a Great Taste Awards judge and a member of The Guild of Food Writers, as well as one of the two judges on 'Bake Off Vlaanderen', the Belgian version of 'The Great British Bake-Off'. A self-confessed Anglophile, she collects old British cookbooks and culinary equipment in order to help with her research. She is the author of 5 books: Pride and Pudding the history of British puddings savoury and sweet, Belgian Café Culture, the National Trust Book of Puddings, Brits Bakboek and Oats in the North, Wheat from the South. Read More…

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