10 minute, one-bowl dark chocolate cake (with secret ingredient)

 

 

Yet another quick, one-bowl cake recipe? Yes, because you can never have enough, especially when they involve lots of dark chocolate.

But if you have had enough, you will forgive me the next time you have guests coming over and you have to make a last-minute dessert, trust me. This is a trick to have up your sleeve.

The only minor catch is that you need a very specific ingredient to make this cake, so be sure to stock up on it when you come across it (as it might not be as easy to get a hold of where you are and it does keep for a very long time).

I am talking of chestnut jam, or spread or sweetened puree. It comes under many labels, and there seem to be a variety of preparation methods (some follow a basic jam making technique, others use boiled chestnuts mixed with boiled egg yolks and sugar, some simply puree marrons glaces), but I believe whatever kind you have available should work fine in this cake (as long as you do not buy the unsweetened paste).

 

Crema di marroni or marmellata/confettura di castagne is quite common in northern Italy, an area that abounds in chestnut tree forsets. I know it is also a well-beloved spread in France, so you should be able to find it in specialty stores without too much of a problem.

The story of this cake began when, my daughter came home from school one day and exclaimed: "G had the best sandwich today. There was a brown spread in it, but I don't remember what it was called, and it was soooo good!". I enquired when I bumped into G's mother the next day and it turns out it was chestnut jam. After a few weeks of pestering,  I gave in and bought a jar. That Sunday, a happy girl sat at the breakfast table, spreading her chestnut jam on a slice of bread. 

Just that Sunday, I must add.

Week end after week end I put the chestnut spread on the table along with our assortment of  jams and honeys, and week end after week end I kept putting it back into the fridge.

When I opened it last Saturday, there was still that one, lonely dent made by her knife over a month ago. And a tiny little spot of white fuzz in a corner.

I gave my daughter 'the speech', how we do not waste food in our household, that if you buy something it has to be used up, etc. I scooped out the tiny fleck of fuzz and decided to prove my point.

I remembered a recipe a running companion told me about a few weeks prior (yes, we burn calories and talk about cake). I googled it and came up with a few options. I chose the one with less chestnut jam and more dark chocolate, purely for convenience as the brand we had bought came in a smaller jar. That evening, with guest coming at 7:30, I set off to bake my cake at 7:20. At 7:30 it was in the oven and it was baked at 8:10. By the end of dinner it had cooled, I sprinkled over some powdered sugar and served it.

Lesson taught to children - check

No waste - check

Great new recipe - check

All in all, a good result if you ask me.

The cake in itself is pretty grown up*: it is dense, not overly sweet and tastes like the chocolate you used, so choose well. It has a moist, yet chalky texture - excuse the oxymoron, but it is a very difficult texture to describe.

It is not a grand cake, although it is discreetly elegant if you ask me (and you could make it grand by serving it with chestnut jam flavored, rum-infused whipped cream).

My husband, who wrinkled his nose at the idea of chestnut spread in cake batter and went on to declare he wouldn't have any, managed three slices in a row.

Recipe from Il Cuore Arrosto

Ingredients

400gr chestnut jam

100gr butter

150gr best quality dark chocolate

3 eggs

2 tbsp flour

a drizzle of rum (optional)

powdered sugar

Preheat your oven to 180°C/375°F.

In a saucepan, melt the chocolate and butter on a low flame, mixing every now and then.

In a bowl, scoop out the chestnut puree and then add the butter-chocolate mixture and mix well. This should cool off the mixture, but check that it is not too hot before you beat in the eggs one at a time. Drizzle in a little rum and the two sifted tablespoons of flour.

Pour the mixture into a greased and lightly flour-dusted springform pan and bake for about 40 minutes.

Let cool, unmold and decorate with icing sugar.

 

*Nonetheless, my kids scoffed most of it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

La vie en rose

I tend to be an optimist, I have always been that way (unless we're talking bureaucracy, then I am given to looking on the black side). To me the glass is usually half full, not half empty, if you know what I mean.

That doesn't mean I don't have bad days or moments, of course. I most certainly do.

Like the other day for example.

I could tell you the story this way: the other day I left the office to meet a friend for lunch. We were supposed to meet up with another friend too, but she had to cancel at the last minute because her daughter had a fever. Initially, we thought of postponing the lunch, but then decided to go anyway because we hadn't seen each other in ages. We met in front of her office and had a salad in a café across the street. At 3:00 I had to be somewhere for work until 5:00. Then I had to pick my son up from kindergarden at 5:30, go to my daughter's school to meet with her teachers and get her report card, and pick her up.

Lemony sardine pâté

 

 

 Sardines are an extremely underrated fish. Unless you are Portuguese of course. Or Mediterranean.

 

The truth however, is that sardines are cheap, tasty, healthy, nutritious and a perfect pantry item.

 

I will not lecture you about the importance of eating certain kinds of fish for nutritional and environmental reasons. Suffice it to say write that this recipe is a new winner in my book.  

 

 

 

 

Before you get down to making this, a few fun sardine facts from the web.

The word “sardines” is actually a common name used to describe the immature fish of a variety of species all around the world. So when you are eating a sardine you are actually eating one of many kinds of fish, such as herring, smelts, brislings and pilchards, that get caught in nets during fishing.

 

Sardines are named after the Italian island of Sardinia, where they were seemingly abundant in past times.

 

Omega 3 fatty acids, highly present in sardines, reduce the likelihood of Alzheimer's disease, dementia and heart disease and lower blood sugar levels.

 

 

 

Canned sardines are however high in cholesterol, also because of the oil they are preserved in.

If you eat the whole sardine, including the tiny bones, the canned variety also ensures a good calcium intake.

Napoleon greatly helped in spreading the popularity of sardines: tinning the fish was an idea of two Frenchmen, Appert and Colin, but he started the canning industry at the beginning of the 19th century to feed the growing population and military. Sardines perished easily, so canning them was a way to ensure that the inhabitants of the farthest reaches of his Empire had a cheap and plentiful protein source.

Canned sardines have been known to hold up to 30 years.

  

 

 

 

Have you ever heard of the South African sardine run? Between May and July billions of sardines spawn and then move along the eastern coast of South Africa in shoals, which are often more than 7lms long, 1.5km wide and 30 meters deep and are clearly visible from the surface.

 

In the early 1900s Maine counted large numbers of canneries, producing up to more than 4 cans per American at that time, but now there is only one sardine plant left.

 

During the Cold War, sardines were extremely popular in the US. The US government apparently bought great quantities in the bomb-scare years and they became the number one convenience food for Americans. Now the average American does not taste a sardine before the age of 40.

 

Many expressions have arisen from the sardine canning industry: “packed in like sardines” originated in the 1800s from the practice of close packing this fish, describing any situation where people/things are crowded together. Then there is Alan Benett's "...Life, you know, is rather like opening a tin of sardines. We are all of us looking for the key..."

 

 

 

 

This is one of those examples of Pinterest actually being useful and not just a huge waste of my free - and not so free - time. I saw this idea ages ago on Food52 and loved it, pinned it and forgot about it. Until now that is.

  

It is so fast it won't take more than five minutes to make (and for half of that time, it is actually your food processor that is doing all the work). It is quite delicious and much cheaper than pate.

 

It is creamy yet tangy, and not very fishy at all (if that worries you) and the contrast of this cool, buttery spread on a slice of warm toasted bread will make you swoon. Guaranteed.

 

Adapted from HalfPint

My Nana's chopped chicken liver

As a young child I remember my Nana B serving this appetizer when she had company, often together with pickled herrings and sour cream.

I know you can’t but help but picture us in the kitchen, preparing this together, my Nana letting me peel the hard boiled eggs and chop them up while she deglazed the pan. My grandma passing down the fabulous recipes of her Jewish heritage whilst telling the stories her grandparents from the Old Continent had told her.

Well, that is the wrong Nana you are picturing. My Nana did not cook, ever, not as far as I can remember. I don’t even think she knew how to hard boil the eggs required for the recipe.

The closest she would come to deglazing the pan as indicated in the recipe was getting out a bottle from the liquor cabinet to prepare her daily pre-dinner scotch on the rocks.

She was not maternal, not the kind of grandma on whose bosom you rested your head when you needed comfort. She had a sharp tongue and a quick temper. She smoked, she drank and she gambled pretty much till the end. She could be stingy with many, but never with the backgammon board.

She was a great story teller, that much is true. She was well-travelled and well-read - her study table was always stacked high with books, papers and dictionaries alongside an ashtray filled with lipstick stained cigarettes - and was curious about everything. She played the piano, loved music and collected art. She had a more active social life when she was 90 than I did when I was 20. She played tennis well into her eighties, donning white mini skirts and pompoms on her socks without a second thought. She spent her winters in Florida lunching "with the girls", her octagenarian friends.

She hurt her head after falling while dancing at a party and never recovered. I think she was pretty ready to go. Before the fall she often said to me: "My friends are all dead or sick. My body is starting to fall apart. I have had a full life, I did pretty much anything a gal can do. I’m bored." It frustrated her that she couldn’t drive as well as she used to or that she needed her stick to get out of her armchair because she was a fiercely independent woman. Despite marrying twice, she spent most of her life on her own, doing things exactly the way she wanted, when she wanted. And that was that, thank you very much.

She may have not been an apron-wearing, pie-baking kind of grandmother, but we had a grand time together, she and I, and I will always miss her dry sense of humor and enthusiasm for everything that surrounded her.

　

I was pretty excited when I found a tray of chicken livers and hearts being sold at the meat counter. When I was a kid I remember they always sold those not so noble parts inside the chicken when you bought one. Nowadays you just don't see them as much anymore. I immediately bought some and when I found this recipe by Ina Garten, I just couldn’t resist. So here’s to you Nana B.

　

Ingredients

1 pound chicken livers

about 3 tbsp butter

1 yellow onion, diced (about 1 cup)

¼ cup Port, Madeira or Sherry wine

2 eggs, hardboiled

1/8 cup minced parsley

1 tsp thyme (I only had dried thymebut fresh is better)

salt to taste

black pepper to taste

Hard boil the eggs, let cool, peel and chop.

Sauté the livers in 1 tbsp butter over pretty high heat, until just pink inside. Be careful, if you overcook them they will dry out. Put into a large bowl without draining the butter.

Using the same pan, sauté the onions in the remaining 2 tablespoons of butter over medium-high heat until browned. Add the sweet wine and deglaze the pan. Pour onions and sauce over the livers.

Add the chopped eggs, parsley, thyme, salt and pepper and mix. Process in a  food processor until coarsely chopped. Season to taste and store in fridge until ready to serve on crackers or with carrots and celery. I did both.