Gooey Chocolate Puddings

Okay. So that's not the most beautiful photo ever. But the dessert is depicts is definitely one of the tastiest!

I made this last year as a Birthday treat/cake... so although it's not everyday student food - it is a feasible special occasion food - especially as it's only for two!

This is based on a Nigella recipe - so you know it's going to be good! I've pared down the ingredients list from serving 6 to serving two. Also, I baked the "babycakes" in my Texas muffin pan... so they got a little mangled on the way out... but it didn't matter they were still fantastic!

Because I baked them from fridge cold there was an amazing texture gradient from crispy outer shell, to gooey mantle with a firm, truffle like centre, which I think would be lost if one were to bake them straight from making.

I served them with chocolate ice-cream and a dusting of cocoa-y icing sugar (I'd give the dusting a miss next time)...

Final verdict? Although far from a regular food, on any budget, in any world - these are the ultimate, once-a-year treat! Mmmm!

Jenny's Famous Chocolate Cake

When I was little... Like 12/13ish I "wrote" a cook book. By "wrote" I mean typed out all my favourite recipes, attached clip art images, printed them off and bound them into books which I proceeded to present to my family and friends as gifts. Copyright infringements were, no doubt, abound - but I never sold the cookbooks nor did I claim to have developed the recipes myself. They were just my tweenage favourites.

Served with chocolate sauce and yoghurt.

Featured in that book was my recipe for Jenny's Famous Chocolate Cake(s) - a delicious cake recipe made in a food processor (or by hand if, as a student, you don't own a food processor) that makes two dark, moist chocolate cakes. Which you can then layer or freeze one for later...

In the photographed image provided I've made the cake with 50% wholemeal flour and some rolled oats for extra fibre/texture but this is not necessary. The chocolate sauce I made is a recipe which comes from Edmonds Food For Flatters.

In my cookbook Katies Kool Kooking (don't ask...), when writing out the recipe I neglected to include sugar at all - instead suggesting that an auxiliary 2 cups of flour would be needed... and I left the cocoa out in it's entirety. The following version of this recipe has only one cup of sugar but it does include that all important half cup cocoa required to make the cake chocolatey...

Amazing Not-Too-Sweet Cream Cheese Icing

Computer Board Brownie Birthday Cake...

...Carrot Cake Cupcake...

...Red Velvet Cupcakes... 

...a little Red Velvet Birthday Cake...

...Big Red Velvet Birthday Cake...

...and a slice of that big ol' Red Velvet Birthday Cake...

What do all these cakes have in common? (Aside from the fact most of them are Red Velvet...)

You know it! Cream Cheese Icing... which is, basically, the bestest, most yummiest kind of frosting in the world... along with all the other kinds of frosting, off course!

Now, the problem a lot of people have with frosting is that it is really, really sweet... a direct result of all the icing sugar needed to make it stiff and fluffy... and not just butter or cream cheese with a bit of vanilla stirred in.

You'll often see question in the comments section "But *insert type of frosting here* is really sweet and it hurts my teeth... is there any way to make it less sweet?" and the answer is often "No - it's sweet because of the icing/confectioner's/powdered sugar... and you need all that sugar to get the right texture for the frosting"...

But... there is something else in your pantry with a very similar texture to icing sugar... and it isn't sweet... what I'm thinking of is... CORNFLOUR!!! (also know as cornstarch, I believe?)

Now, I'm not saying I'm the first to come up with this theory... but as far as I came up with it all by myself. :) And it really works for me! I just take out one 1/4 of the icing sugar the frosting recipe calls for and sub in that same quantity of cornflour... et voila! Frosting with the same texture you need but not as sweet as you dread...

I wouldn't sub any more than a quarter of the sugar for flour because then you start to taste it a little bit, which is kinda average. But a 1/4 or less and you have the same taste, only less sweet. Excellent!

Read on for my converted recipe for cream cheese icing...

EDIT: I have successful used this method for buttercream frosting too!

Now I'm Just Showing Off: Callum's Computer Board Birthday Cake

My younger brother Callum is, affectionately, a computer nerd.

For his 18th Birthday this past April, I wanted to make him a computer-styled cake... as I'm a total novice cake decorator a fair amount of artistic licence was employed... but the basic idea was there... and the cake tasted good!

"Cake" in the broad sense of the word - it was in fact 2 layers of brownie and one layer of blondie... From each layer I cut a circle which I then shoved into another layer so that each was two toned:

Milk Brownie into a Blondie layer...

... Dark Brownie into a Milk Brownie layer...

... and a Blondie circle in a Dark Brownie layer.

Yes... I deliberately off-centred some of the circles - I thought that'd make it all look more awesome! :)

Each layer was sandwiched to the next with chocolate, cream cheese frosting - Callum's favourite....

Then - I coated the whole cake with the chocolate frosting, save for the very top which I used green frosting left over from when I made the carrot cupcake I have yet to upload... Woops!

Did I do a crumb coat? No.
Should I have? Probably.

Did I fridge/freeze the cake before frosting? No.
Should I have? Yeeeah... Probably.

Will I do so in future? If I remember...
Does the world end if you forget these steps? Apparently not.

I wanted the top of the cake to look like a computer chip/board... thing. Hence - the green icing... over the green I drew little yellow lines in square-ish patterns with writing icing, I tried to use buttercream, but I had issues... and I made the "connections" out of little silver cachous.

At the centre top, you can see the failed buttercream... but doesn't it look a little computer chip like...? If you don't know what computer chips actually look like... ;)

The chocolate chips around the edge are to hide the join between the brown and green icings.

Finally, around the vertical edge, I used tempered, white chocolate to make the binary number 0100 0011 which is the combination used to denote the letter 'C'... I tempered the chocolate to stop it blooming, and to give it snap - it's not a particularly difficult process... I might go into detail, one-day... maybe... :)

Mad piping skills right there... Not.

Further reason behind the tempering of the chocolate was - I hoped it'd hold up better when I ferried it from waxed paper to cake surface... All in all, I feel it was a success!

This is was the cake looked like from the inside after all that circling and shoving...

The final product - not bad, in my opinion!

Below, at long last I give you the recipe for the brownies... Each layer was played around with a little... next to no (brown) sugar and less butter than the original for the white layer (with extra vanilla), 1/4 as much sugar as called for for the milk layer, half as much sugar and butter for the dark... etc... For once, though, I'm going to share the original recipe... which came from a recipe book written by a family friend, Rosie Mitchell.

Red Velvet Comparison

Mostly, I am a student making do with a student flat. But sometimes, I am a daughter luxuriating in the comforts of Home.

Here, I have a photo comparison of two Red Velvet Cakes. The recipe comes, as ever, from about.com and the only things I changed were to, again - as ever, halve the amount of sugar and change the "shortening" for butter.

This first one I made at my flat, last year... I baked it for a dessert party I didn't quite make it to... I even bought the buttermilk especially for it! (I made yummy pancakes with the leftover buttermilk!) It was moist, chocolatey, red and delicious. The icing, guiltily from a can (it was on special...) has put me off ever purchasing the trans-saturated goop ever again, but hey! On top is melted chocolate and jelly crystals.

So although the cake itself was yummy enough to convince me that I definitely wanted to make it again - I wanted a slightly more chocolatey effect and definitely wanted to do my own icing...

Enter the Indian Red Velvet Frisbee - where I experimented with a different recipe... And ended up with a practically deep fried disc - which our hostess gamely tried to revive by serving it in a banoffee-type trifle, but really it was beyond redemption and I was too disheartened to photograph it.

Upon returning home - I had my 20th Birthday all over again (2.0) and I really wanted a Red Velvet Cake that worked! So, I returned to about.com added a little extra cocoa, halved the sugar and made my own icing... The result? Possibly the best cake I've ever eaten... And here it is!

Moist, sticky, even more chocolately, deep blood red - and that cream cheese with vanilla bean icing? To die for! Yum! Guess what kind of cake I'm having for my 21st...

The biggest difference between flat-cake and home-cake was the affordability of ingredients. And with a whole bottle of red food colouring in it - Red Velvet Cake is never gonna be a budget friendly cake. But as a Birthday blow-out, about.com's Red Velvet Cake recipe is a reliable show stopper.

Stay tuned for flat-friendly cakes to come....