Black Forest Gateau

Somehow I've actually ended up doing quite a bit of baking this term. This was for another friend's birthday. It tasted *so good* and had the perfect ratio of different components, even though the actual cake came out way too crumbly (I'd had to convert from grammes to cups and may have got some of the quantities slightly wrong...)

Makes: 1 cake, serves 8-10 (generously...)
Ingredients:

175g salted butter, plus extra for greasing
200g bar dark chocolate
300g plain flour
375g golden caster sugar
25g cocoa
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
2 medium eggs
200g buttermilk or natural yoghurt
425g can pitted cherries - save the juice!
100g morello cherry jam
500ml tub double cream
3 tbsp icing sugar

Method:

1) Pre-heat oven to 180C/160C fan/gas 4. Grease and line the base of 3 x 20cm cake tins (my version uses a fillable cake with two halves). Boil the kettle.

2) Put the butter and 75g chocolate broken into chunks in a small pan and gently heat, stirring until completely melted.




3) Mix together the flour, sugar, cocoa and bicarbonate of soda with a pinch of salt in a mixing bowl.



4) Whisk the eggs and buttermilk or yogurt together. Scrape the melted chocolate mixture and egg mixture into the dry ingredients, add 100ml boiling water and mix until the cake batter is lump free.



5) Divide the mixture between the tins and bake for 25 mins, swapping the tins round after 20 mins if they’re on different shelves.

6) Prick the cakes a few times with a skewer.  Drizzle the cherry juice from the tin of cherries over the cakes. Cool the cakes.

7) Make ganache: tip 200ml of the cream into a small pan and heat until just below simmering point. Chop the remaining chocolate and put in a heatproof bowl, pour over the hot cream and stir until melted.

8) Construct the cake: I filled the holes in my fillable tin with the cherries, spread over cherry jam and then whisked together the remaining cream and icing sugar and spread over the jam. Placed the top half of the cake on top and then poured over the ganache, filling in all the cracks!
Or:  Mix together the remaining drained cherries and jam. Spread the cream over two of the cakes, then spoon over the jammy cherries. Stack the cakes together. Spread the chocolate cream over the third cake and place on top.

Ancient Greek Ricotta and Honey Cake

We made this cake for a friend who studies Classics at uni. The trickiest part is rolling out the thin dough. But it wasn't helped by a small student kitchen with only a tiny amount of counter space!
I think good ingredients really help with this cake (especially the honey) because there are relatively few of them.
(Credit to Ella for having the imagination to find this recipe!)

The top is supposed to look more neat but I quite like this rustic aesthetic :P

Makes: one cake

Ingredients:
400g flour
250g ricotta
200g honey
a few bay leaves
oil

Before you start: pre-heat oven to 165 degrees C

1) Mix the flour and some water in a bowl. Keep adding water until you form a solid dough.

2) Divide the dough into 6. Keep 2 clumps together.

3) Get a shallow baking tin/tray. Roll out the largest clump as thin as possible so it's the length of the baking tin but twice the width (basically, you need to be able to fold this sheet of dough like a parcel)

4) Then roll out the other clumps of dough thinly, the dimensions of the baking tin



5) Leave these sheets to dry.

6) Meanwhile, mix the ricotta and honey in a bowl until smooth



7) Put the thin dough, brushed with oil, in the oven briefly so it dries out further

8) Line the tin with baking paper. Place a few oiled bay leaves in the bottom of the tin.



9) Put the largest piece of dough in the bottom of the tray, with the extra hanging over the sides. Then put a sheet of dough in the bottom of the tray.

10) Add a layer of ricotta and honey, follow with a sheet of dough and repeat until you've used both up. Finish with ricotta and honey.



11) Fold the dough over the top of the cake

12) Bake for 25-30 minutes in the middle of the oven