Too Young To Be Grumpy

Yesterday was a big baking day for me. I made 2 cakes in the afternoon. As my Dad had been so kind on Friday night, I decided we should bake him a nice cake - however, he's wheat intolerent, so it was with glee that I noticed Esurientes had posted a nice chocolate orange cake that didn't use flour. More about this after the marble cake recipe.

The flourless cake requires the boiling of 2 oranges for about 2 hours, so while that was happening I went ahead and made the peanut butter marble cake. Again, it's from Cakes & Cake Decorating by Angela Nilsen, Sarah Maxwell and Janice Murfitt. If that first picture whets your appetite for baking, then here's the method.

Ingredients

115g chocolate, chopped
225g butter or margarine
225g peanut butter (smooth or crunchy)
200g granulated sugar
200g light brown sugar
5 eggs
275g plain flour
2 tsp baking powder
¹/₂ tsp salt
120ml milk
50g chocolate chips


For the glaze:

25g butter or margarine
25g smooth peanut butter
3 tbsp golden syrup
1 tsp vanilla essence
175g plain chocolate
1 tbsp water


Preheat the Oven to 180^oC and grease a ring mould. It's lucky I'd bought a big ring mould as this recipe makes alot of cake mix.




Melt the chocolate in a "double boiler" - that is in a bowl suspended above a saucepan of simmering water.

Place the butter (or marg.), peanut butter and sugars in the bowl of a food mixer, or in a large enough bowl to use a hand whisk, and beat until light and creamy (about 3 to 5 minutes). One at a time, add the eggs and beat each in well.

In another bowl, stir together the flour, baking powder and salt. Add the butter (or margarine) into the mixture alternately with the milk until just blended (don't over mix, as it will remove all the air from the mixture).

Split the cake mix into two and into one blend in the melted chocolate, and in another stir in the chocoalte chips.

Spoon the cake mixes into the cake tin one spoon at a time, running a knife through the mixture to create a marble effect. Don't let the knife scrape the sides or bottom of the cake tin, also don't over mix otherwise you'll lose the marble effect.




Bake the cake for 50 to 60 minutes until the top springs back when pressed lightly.




Cool in the tin for 10 minutes or so, then turn out onto a wire rack and leave to cool completely.




Once cool, make the glaze. Put all the ingredients into a saucepan and melt over a low heat, continuously stirring until well blended and smooth. Take off the heat and continue stirring. When slightly thickened pour over the cake allowing the glaze to run down the sides.






Here you can see the final marble effect in the cake. It was a very nice cake, and you can really taste the peanut butter, but not overpowering. The cake mix makes a huge amount which completely filled our rather large ring mould. However, I think we'll be definitely making this one again.


Once my marbled cake was finished I went ahead and make the flourless cake. It's very easy to make - basically just bung the cooled boiled-oranges into a food processor with some other ingredients and cook it. We had to go up my folks for tea, so I was hoping we could get it finished so Dad could have some. However, we didn't have time to make the topping, so we made that up my parent's house. I made one mistake though - and that's that I didn't leave the ganache (the topping) to cool quite enough before pouring it forth over the cake. It went everywhere. But it was still a lovely cake tasting very much like Terry's chocolate orange. I honestly don't think my Dad has had such a nice cake since he went wheat-free. The recipe is on Esurientes blog. Here's some pics of it: