Last weekend we celebrated Fredrik’s birthday with this lovely and easy to make chocolate mousse cake. We also cooked a great japanese inspired dinner for just the two of us which I will blog about in the future. I asked Fredrik which cake he wanted and his only desire was chocolate so I decided to combine a couple of recipes which resulted in this super easy chocolate mousse cake with raspberries marinated in vanilla scented vodka. Chocolate and rasperries are a perfect match, especially when the raspberries have a hint of vanilla vodka :-) The cake turned out delicious and I’m thinking that I maybe should have spent my money on some new cook books instead of the cake class which I’m taking this weekend :-) Just kidding, I’m sure that it will be fun and that I will learn a lot of tips and tricks.

Chocolate Mousse Cake with Vanilla Vodka Marinated Raspberries

Cake:
200 gram almond paste (or marcipan, but almond paste is better as it contains less sugar and more almonds)
1 egg
1 egg yolk
1 tbsp cocoa

Filling:
200 gram raspberries
50 ml Cariel T & C (or any other vanilla Vodka)

Chocolate mousse:
125 gram dark chocolate
2 eggs
3 tbsp icing sugar
1 tsp vanilla scented sugar
300 ml double/whipping cream

Pour the rasperries in a bowl and cover with vanilla vodka.

Pre-heat the oven to 175°C. Grate the almond paste and combine with the eggs and the cocoa. Pour the mixture in a buttered spring form (about 24 cm wide). Bake the cake in the middle of the oven for about 20 minutes. Let the cake cool. Remove the rim from the spring form and wash it up. Then put the rim back on the spring form.

Whisk the eggs and the sugar in a bowl, using an electric mixer. Melt the chocolate (I was lazy and did it in the microwave) and then pour it slowly into the bowl while you continue to whisk. Continue to whisk until the mixture has cooled. Beat the double cream in a separate bowl until it’s stiff. Fold the whipped cream into the chocolate mixture, gently but thoroughly.

Place the raspberries on the cake bottom, just make sure that it’s cool first. When you’ve placed all the raspberries on the cake, a nice pink raspberry vodka mixture will appear on the bottom of the raspberry bowl. Just pour the liquid into a glass, add an ice cube and then drink it :-) After placing the raspberries on the cake bottom, cover everything with chocolate mousse. Chill the cake in the fridge for at least 3 hours.

This chocolate truffle cake is really simple to make and it’s delicious as well. The truffle is creamy and smooth and is perfect to the crunchy nut crust. I think that the crust was a bit too fragile, but nobody else complained. I made it for this year’s Midsummer Eve while Fredrik did the raspberry sauce. The recipe is from a book called Chokladfabriken which was one of my foodie gifts from my dear colleagues when I quit at my old job last year. The original recipie calls for Pecan nuts but as they didn’t have them in my store I used Walnuts instead (which they suggest as a substitution in the recipe). I used my smallest spring form (also from my colleagues) which is about 15 cm wide and 4 cm high, the truffle cake fitted perfectly. But don’t try to use a smaller spring form than that though.

Chocolate truffle cake with Walnut crust and Raspberry sauce

Crust:
70 g Walnuts (or Pecan nuts)
40 g demerara sugar
20 g unsalted butter (room temperatured)
10 g flour

Truffle:
120 dark chocolate
150 g whipping/double cream
20 g eggyolk (1)
50g unsalted butter

Raspberry sauce:
400 g Raspberries
about 30 g icing sugar (how much depends on the raspberries sweetness)

Crust: Coursly crush the nuts and combine them with the rest of the crust ingredients. Press down the mixture in a small spring form and bake in 200 degrees C for 5 minutes. Let the crust cool completely.

Truffle: Chop the chocolate finely. Bring the cream to boil and pour it over the chocolate. Stir until the mixture becomes smooth, add the egg yolk and stir smothly again. Pour the truffle over the cool crust and let the truffle cake rest in the fridge for 2 hours.

Raspberry sauce: Mix the raspberries in a food processor. Add icing sugar a little at a time and taste so the sauce won’t get too sweet.

Espresso Cake

Espresso Cake

200 ml pine kernels and blanched almonds
200 gr butter
300 ml sugar
100 ml cocoa powder
2 tbsp vanilla sugar
3 tbsp espresso ground coffee
3 eggs
180 gr flour
1 tbsp coffee liqueur (Kahlua)

1. Heat the oven to 175 °C. Roast the pine kernels and the almonds in a dry hot frying pan until they get coloured.

2. Melt the butter in a big pan. Remove it from the stove and add sugar, cocoa, vanilla sugar and ground coffee. Stir, don’t whip. Add an egg at a time and finally add the flour mixed with the pine kernels and almonds. Add the coffee liqueur.

3. Pour the cake mixture into a buttered and bread crumbed pan.

4. Bake in the bottom part of the oven for about 25 minutes. The cake should be moist and sticky in the middle. Serve the cake lukewarm with whipped cream.

Rhubarb Cornmeal Cake

After being stalked by rhubarbs lately when surfing food blogs I finally surrendered….It was my turn to go to my brother for our weekly dinner, and I wanted to bring an extra nice dessert as Fredrik was home from Stockholm all week and also would join us for the dinner. As I’ve never tried any of Nigella’s recipes (shame on me…) I decided to go for her Rhubarb Cornmeal Cake from her book How to Be a Domestic Goddess. I started baking the cake very late and when it was done I quickly covered it with a checked kitchen towel and then me and Fredrik took our bicycles to get to my brother. Having the warm lovely cake in the bicycle basket was almost like having a carrot on a stick in front of me, I guess that I cycled pretty fast :-) After the great dinner that my brother had prepared (baked fish, potato and root vegetable gratin and tomato sauce) we finally had the rhubarb cake. Not too sweet, not too sour; it was perfect! And even Fredrik that isn’t especially fond of rhubarb liked it a lot. The cake is very juicy and moist and goes very well with whipped cream. For those of you that don’t have Nigellas book, the recipe can be found at A Spoonful of Sugar .

Lovely fresh rhubarb for the cake filling