Chocolate cake.

Today's treat is a chocolate sponge cake.

For the sponge you'll need:
5 eggs
200g caster sugar
200g flour
2tsp baking powder
2tsp cocoa powder, if you want your sponges to be chocolate
(mine weren't)

For the icing you'll need:
200g chocolate of your choice
100ml single cream
50g unsalted butter (softened)

To make the sponge, beat the eggs and the sugar to ribbons, this should take about 5 minutes. Sift the flour, baking powder and cocoa (if you're using it) into the eggs and gently fold, without losing too much air. Bake in tins of your choice for 10-15 minutes, until golden brown and the skewer comes out clean. I baked mine in small 7" tins, simply because I detest having to slice sponge, it's a dirty messy business. The amount of batter makes for 3 small layers. Do feel free to bake all of yours in one big tin and slice it into layers, if that's what you prefer.

While the cakes cool, make the icing.

Melt together the chocolate and cream in a water bath, cool to room temperature. This is very important, because if the mixture isn't cool, the butter will melt and instead of icing you'll get a split disgusting something. When the chocolate is cool to the touch, whisk in the softened butter.

Assemble the cake, layering the sponge with the icing, decorate to your liking, I used sugar pearls.

Enjoy!

Things I want the most.

There isn't really a limit to the amount of kitchen things that I want, but right now, at the top of the list is a microplane. A proper one like this. With a safety guard, preferably.

Chicken and corn chowder.

Yesterday's dinner was an easy to make, but very yummy chowder.
The things you need:
-3 chicken thighs
-2 slices of bacon (optional)
-2 large bell peppers
-2 medium tomatoes
-2 sticks of celery
-2 large spring onions
-1 medium carrot
-1 large can of sweetcorn
-5 medium potatoes
-2 small chilies (or 1 large)
a bunch of fresh parsley
-2l water
-salt

Put the chicken into the pot with cold water and get that going, meanwhile chop up all the vegetables bar the potatoes into small pieces, like so.


By the time you're done chopping, the chicken should have boiled up and you've had time to skim all the nasty off of it. When this is done, put all of the chopped up vegetables into the pot, add a little bit of salt, stir, let it boil up again, then reduce to simmer, cover and leave for about 40-45 minutes.

While the vegetables cook, peel and chop the potatoes into small cubes and chop the fresh parsley (not too fine). At the end of the 45 minutes, add the potatoes and the parsley to the soup and cook until the potatoes are cooked through.

Fry the bacon until crispy, crunch it up small, dish up the soup and garnish with the bacon.


P.S. You might feel tempted to skip on the chilies, if you don't like spicy things, but trust me on this, don't. Just de-seed them properly and it won't be hot at all! They add a certain extra to the soup, so keep them in.

Enjoy!

Cupcake!

Good time of day, Internet!

Two days ago I got a new cupcake form from my husband, so yesterday I decided to try it out! The recipe is just the standard cupcake one and on top of that I soaked it through with condensed milk, it was very yummy! Here's a picture for you!

P.S. Yes, that is my tea mug next to the "tiny" cupcake :p