Chocolate decadence - Valentine's Day

I’ve never really been the hearts and flowers type, and I'm not all that into Valentine's Day [due mainly to that ghastly boyfriend who dumped me on 13 February many years ago, but then expected to get back together on the 15th! Um, NO!] 

However, I do love the occasional excuse to have a decadent dessert - and what better excuse than Valentine’s Day. 

This is really easy to make and the cake part of the recipe can be made a few days - or even weeks - earlier and kept in the fridge or freezer. I actually think it tastes even better 2-3 days after it’s been made. The best bit about the cake is it’s versatility - it’s perfect for morning tea, a quick after-school treat, or as a dessert for a dinner party. Oh, and it’s also gluten free.

And if it looks familiar, it's virtually the same recipe as the one for my gluten free chocolate cherry cake [nothing like recycling!], but tarted up for Valentines Day. If you're into that sort of thing.

What you need:
250g dark chocolate,broken into pieces (I prefer dark chocolate that has 70% cocoa solids)
250g almond meal
200g caster sugar
150g butter, softened
6 eggs (ideally 59g - if they are smaller use 7 eggs)
1 tbsp cocoa
1 tbsp baking powder
2 tsp instant coffee dissolved in 2 tbsp boiling water
Cream to serve
Raspberries (fresh or frozen) to serve
Icing sugar* (to serve)

What you do:

1. Turn the oven on to 180c.
2. Line the baking tray with baking paper
3. Place the chocolate pieces in the food processor and whizz until they resemble big crumbs of chocolate (if you don’t have a food processor, place the chocolate in a freezer or zip lock bag and seal, place the bag between 2 tea-towels and bash with a rolling pin or a meat mallet until its crushed). Set aside.
4. Place the sugar, butter, eggs, cocoa and baking powder into the mixing bowl and mix with the electric beaters or a wooden spoon until smooth. Mix in the coffee mixture.
5. Add the chocolate and almond meal and mix well - it might be easier to mix this with the wooden spoon.
6. Pour the cake mix into the baking tray, smooth it over with a knife.
7. Bake on the middle tray of the oven for 30-45 minutes (check it at 30 minutes - you want the centre to be soft to touch but not too gooey).

Leave to cool in the baking tray for 15 minutes then move it to cook on the wire rack.

To assemble dessert
Once the cake is cool, remove it from the wire rack and place it on a flat surface. Cut out heart shaped pieces with the cookie cutter and carefully transfer 1 heart to each plate. You should get 6 hearts out of a cake this size. 

This cake is best served at room temperature or slightly warmed. Serve with raspberries and cream. Dust with icing sugar.

WARNING! This cake is very rich and is easily enough to share. It IS Valentine’s Day after all!
* if you are serving this to someone who requires gluten free, make sure you get pure icing sugar, NOT icing mixture

What to do with leftover cake
All those leftover bits of cake (around the heart cut-outs) are great for dessert or snacks. Serve warmed with ice-cream or cream or thick yogurt. Or just eat them on their own! The cake should keep for 3 months in an airtight container in the freezer or a week in the fridge.

Piroshki - a Christmas tradition

There are two foods that I have always remembered eating over Christmas. One is sausage rolls for breakfast on Christmas morning, and the other is piroshki. Originating from Russia, these little savoury treats were introduced to our family by a Latvian friend of my mother's, who she first met in the early 1980s when studying textiles at Strathfield Tafe. They have been a family favourite ever since.

Mushroom, bacon and onion filled piroshki. It's hard to stop at just 1. or 2. or 5. 

I don't know how they came to be a Christmas tradition, but I suspect the first time mum had them was Christmas. Making these has been a bit of a tradition too. They are quite simple, but VERY TIME CONSUMING! So we have all had to make a few to help.

Sadly this year mum wasn't involved in making them as she unexpectedly passed away in August. So I was on my own. In a kitchen I have rarely cooked in since I left home aged 17. With a few helpful comments from dad {but not actual get-the-hands-dirty help}.

However I KNOW she would have been watching and laughing at me, especially when I ended up covered in flour, and with sticky dough bits all over the kitchen. And when I struggled to make little round balls of filled dough - most of mine have leakages. Oh well. They still taste just like I remembered. The test will be when the rest of the family taste them too! In about 10 minutes. Eek!

The hardest part of this was actually finding the recipe - I knew it was on a very yellowed scrap of paper, but the mystery was where! Luckily I found mum's recipe folder, and there it was - covered in much flour and oil stains (and yes, it's now been scanned and copied)!

As we eat these as part of many meals over Christmas and usually have hordes of people popping in, I made double the quantity. They also freeze well and just need about 5 minutes in the oven at about 180c to reheat.

Ingredients - dough
11g dry yeast (or two sachets)
2 1/2 tbs sugar
3 cups plain flour
1 1/4 cup milk
125g butter
2 tbs salt
1 egg yolk, lightly beaten
beaten egg to glaze

Ingredients - filling
olive oil
3 large onions, finely chopped
250g bacon, finely chopped
250g mushrooms, finely chopped
fresh ground black pepper

Method
Combine the yeast, 1/2 tbs sugar and 1/4 cup milk in a small bowl, stir and leave for about 10 minutes so it can react, become frothy and rise. {I didn't have scales OR any measuring spoons so had to guesstimate the amount! I was a bit worried I had under-estimated so added a bit extra. THAT was unnecessary! But it turned out OK. Phew!}

My frothy, yeasty mix. This continued rising to almost over the bowl!

Heat the butter, salt and remaining milk and sugar in a saucepan until it's lukewarm. Stir occasionally. {I overheated mine and then promptly burnt my hand when I started kneading it all in a later step. D'oh!}.

Butter, milk, sugar and salt - DON'T LET IT OVERHEAT!

Place the flour in a large bowl and make a well. When the milk and butter mix is ready {and not too hot!}, add it, the yeasty mixture and the egg yolk. Stir it with a wooden spoon until all the flour is incorporated. Knead it with your hands for about 3 minutes until it's smooth and elastic - note that it will be very sticky and this is how it is meant to be. Sprinkle some flour on top, cover the bowl with a tea towel and leave it in a warm-ish spot to rise, for about an hour.

This was my dough before it rose. It rose to the top of the bowl.

While the dough is rising, heat a large frypan with a tablespoon or so of olive oil, add the onion and gently fry until clear (3-4 minutes). Add the bacon and mushroom and cook through (about 5-8 minutes). Once this is cooked, let the mixture cool.

This is where I realised I had miscalculated the time as it was 4pm and we were going to a Christmas party and needed to leave at 5pm! Eek! I left the dough to keep rising and when I came home I popped it in the fridge for it to rest overnight. On the plus side, this made it a bit less sticky when I came to use it the next day. I also put the filling mixture in another container and kept it in the fridge overnight.

So the NEXT day I did this bit.

Heat the oven to very hot - about 230c (or 450f).

Crack the egg into a small bowl and mix together - this is the egg wash for brushing over the piroshki before baking.

Turn the dough onto a lightly floured surface {I just used the kitchen bench - easy to clean after!}. Knead it lightly until it comes together. Because it was still quite sticky I used a bit of flour on my hands too.

Lightly kneaded dough

Get the filling mix and give it a bit of a stir.

With the dough, tear off pieces that are a bit smaller than a golf ball and flatten it out on the bench. Add a teaspoon of filling to the middle of the dough and roll it up. In theory it should look like a ball. In practice this didn't really happen.

Squashed dough with filling in the middle, before it was rolled up

Place them on baking trays lined with baking paper (or similar) so they don't stick. Leave them for about 10-15 minutes to rise a bit more, then brush with the egg wash. Place in the oven and bake for 10-15 minutes until golden.

Yeah, yeah, they are not all round. But they still taste the same!

CAUTION - the filling takes longer to cool down that the outside once they are out of the oven {Yes, I was impatient. Yes, I burnt a few tastebuds. Yes, I RACED to get a cold glass of water. No, I doubt I learned from that moment of greed. It's the once a year piroshki after all!}. 

Et voila. YUM. 

Making these piroshki was a bit of a comedy of errors {if you were following me on twitter you would have felt my horror at finding the HUGE weevil at the BOTTOM of the bag of JUST PURCHASED flour immediately AFTER I had added the wet ingredients}. 

Sorry loved ones who have just read this after eating. Think of the extra protein {smiles}. 

Do you have any Christmas traditions? I'd love to hear them! 

{And yes, I'll post a sausage roll recipe too!}