Paris Pastry Club: A collection of cakes, tarts, pastries and other indulgent recipes (7 page)
Read Paris Pastry Club: A collection of cakes, tarts, pastries and other indulgent recipes Online
Authors: Fanny Zanotti
Tags: #ebook
This is perhaps my favourite cake of all time. It’s moist and slightly chewy, and it tastes like holidays in a chalet with a glowing fireplace and mulled wine bubbling away on the stove. I make it almost every week during winter months as it keeps beautifully in the fridge and warms to that just-out-of-the-oven feel with just a few seconds in the microwave.
It is delicious served with
Caramel Cider-Poached Pears
and/or some vanilla ice-cream. When it comes to the toffee sauce, it could not be easier to make. Cream and sugars are cooked together until they resemble flowing melted gold. And possibly taste like it too – almost nutty and definitely delicious.
Serves 8
FOR THE CAKE
260 g (9 oz) water
150 g (5 oz) stoned dates
150 g (5 oz) plain (all-purpose) flour
1½ teaspoons baking powder (baking soda)
1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
150 g (5 oz) dark brown sugar
50 g (1¾ oz) butter, at room temperature
2 eggs
FOR THE SAUCE
400 g (14 oz) whipping cream
80 g (3 oz) demerara sugar
25 g (1 oz) dark brown sugar
Preheat the oven to 160°C (320°F). Butter and line a 20 cm (8 in) cake tin with baking parchment.
Bring the water to the boil in a small saucepan, take off the heat and add the stoned dates. Soak for a few minutes.
Combine the flour, baking powder and baking soda in a small bowl and set aside. Blitz the dates using a hand-blender until smooth.
Cream the sugar and butter in a large bowl, either with a wooden spoon or electric beaters. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Then add the puréed dates and mix until combined. Fold in the dry ingredients until you have a smooth mixture.
Pour the mixture into the prepared tin and bake for 45 minutes, or until a skewer inserted in the centre of the cake comes out clean.
While the cake is cooking make the toffee sauce. Bring the cream and sugars to the boil in a pan over high heat, stirring every now and then. Lower the heat and simmer for 10 minutes or until you can see the bottom of the pan as you stir with a spatula and the sauce coats the back of a cold metal spoon.
Serve straight away or leave to cool down in a plastic container and keep refrigerated for up to a week. It will thicken a lot as it cools down, but simply reheat a small quantity in a pan over low heat until piping hot.
When the sky looks like it’s been bruised and thunder roars, I love to make hot chocolate. Rich and warm with spices, it makes rainy days the best you could ever hope for. I also like to turn my favourite spicy hot chocolate recipe into lush pots-de-crème just by adding four egg yolks and baking for a few minutes in the oven.
Serves 4
240 g (9 oz) whipping cream
100 g (3½ oz) whole milk
3 star anis
2 cardamom pods, crushed
1 teaspoon hot chilli powder
¼ teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 vanilla pod, with its seeds
4 egg yolks
20 g (¾ oz) caster (superfine) sugar
90 g (3 oz) dark chocolate, finely chopped
Preheat the oven to 150°C (300°F) and boil a kettle of water.
Pour the cream and milk into a saucepan, add the spices, scraped vanilla pod and its seeds and bring to the boil. When the cream mixture boils, remove from the heat, cover with a lid and leave to infuse for 15 minutes.
Whisk the egg yolks and sugar in a bowl. Strain the cream through a fine-mesh sieve onto the egg mixture, stirring as you do so. Add the chocolate and mix with a rubber spatula until melted.
Divide the mixture between 4 small ramekins arranged in a deep baking tray. Pour in enough hot water from the kettle so it reaches halfway up the sides of the ramekins. Bake for 25 minutes until just set and still slightly wobbly in the centre.
Carefully lift the ramekins from the water bath and cool at room temperature for a few minutes before refrigerating. Chill for 2 hours, or overnight, before serving.
GOUGÈRES,
WITH A SIDE OF
RED WINE
WHEN WE FIRST met he was wearing a sweater made of the softest bright-red wool and his hair was the colour of charcoal. His eyes too. That night we kissed on stairs made of stones. By a theatre door. Under raindrops that looked like shooting stars by the glow of a lamp post.
And then, one day, he was gone, leaving a hole in the shape of an empty bed in my life. A bed which would become my fortress for the weeks to come. I would wear that sweater he once loved. Too tired to eat, I would doze into dreams I wished would last forever.
Dreams made of days at the beach, and gin and tonic we sipped through the same straw. Crab-hunting and late-night bonfires by the sea; road trips through the mountains where the clouds blanketed everything around us and it seemed like we were on an island. But mostly dreams made of nights spent in the deserted streets of a Paris under the snow.
Then I would wake up to a cold empty room wishing for more, hoping for more. Hoping for a miracle really. We were strangers again, with an unfinished cup of coffee on the bedside table as the only proof that it wasn’t always so cold in this house. I couldn’t see through my tears. I felt like I didn’t belong anywhere. And I thought I could never fall in love again. But you can only stay underwater for so long. Or so he’d told me, one day when the sea sparkled and the sun burnt, and the fish were an aquatic rainbow.
Yes, you can only stay underwater for so long.
This cake is part of a routine made of paper tissues and drunken phone calls I wish I could forget. And for it we have to thank Nigella Lawson – the one person who turned those sleepless nights into a chocolate cloud, one slice at a time. In fact, it’s the one thing I always make after a break-up and I’m not the only one. My best friend ‘A’ is fond of it too. Off the record, when she craves – or more accurately, needs – chocolate, she’s been known to bake it in a massive cassoulet pot. This recipe makes more cake than you could eat in one go. So make it, bake it, eat half of it, freeze the rest (already sliced) and feel better.
Makes 10 slices
FOR THE CAKE
200 g (7 oz) plain (all-purpose) flour
½ teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
50 g (1¾ oz) cocoa powder
275 g (10 oz) caster (superfine) sugar
a pinch of sea salt
175 g (6 oz) butter
2 eggs
175 g (6 oz) 70% dark chocolate, melted
80 g (3 oz) double cream
125 g (4 oz) boiling water
FOR THE SYRUP
1 teaspoon cocoa powder
125 g (4 oz) water
100 g (3½ oz) caster (superfine) sugar
FOR THE TOPPING
25 g (1 oz) dark chocolate, grated
Preheat the oven to 170°C (340°F). Generously butter a 1 litre (2 lb) loaf tin or a 24 cm (10 in) cake tin and line with baking parchment, making sure to leave a collar above the rim.
Mix all the cake ingredients (except the boiling water) in a bowl with a wooden spoon until you have a smooth mixture. Slowly incorporate the boiling water, then pour the batter into the prepared tin.
Depending on the size of your tin you might have a bit extra. Just bake this alongside the monster cake in a little bowl. Bake for 50–60 minutes, or until a skewer inserted into the centre of the cake comes out clean.
Bring the syrup ingredients to the boil in a small saucepan and boil for approximately 5 minutes until thickened.
When the syrup is ready, pierce the cake a few times using a skewer or a long match and pour the syrup as evenly as possible over the cake. Let the cake cool down in its tin before turning out (using the excess baking paper as handles) and transferring to a serving plate
Sprinkle with grated chocolate and slice away.
