Black Forest Cake

 Would you like to have a chocolate sandwich with whipped cream and cherries and some sweet alcoholic cherry syrup? If you answered yes, this cake is for you - and topped off with chocolate ganache if the cake and whipped cream and alcoholic cherries wasn't enough. It is my husband's birthday today and he made a special request for a black forest cake. As usual, I scoured the internet to pick the most interesting looking recipe that was also not too hard to follow.  I think my cake turned out looking a bit lop sided - but it tastes just as I imagined it would. It is very moist and not sweet. The only thing I wouldn't do next time is the ganache.  It was too chocolatey for me. And hard to cut, I must add!

Other than that, this recipe which I adapted from Sally's Baking Recipes is quite easy.  Be warned, though: the list of ingredients is long.

Chocolate Cake

 What is it about chocolate cake that makes my children go back to it over and over again?  I will never understand. But if they tell me what they want for their birthday is a chocolate cake, then I will go hunting for a recipe and will try it out - that is my creative outlet after a hard day's work.

This week it was my daughter's 25th birthday. How time flies! I remember turning 25 - it was just a year after my dad had passed. It was a sad occasion and all my mother would talk about was what if he were here today. I do not remember celebrating the day - as a family we were still grieving at the time. 

My daughter is lucky her parents are still alive - and able to celebrate with her as she turns a quarter of a century. The recipe I chose to try was  from Recipe Tin Eats - I like Nagi's recipes. The recipe itself is very easy to follow and execute. I chose to try icing the cake with a zip lock bag and so that was the only process that was time consuming.  The end result was moist, dark, just a touch of sweetness and a great frosting on top.  I added some strawberries which added a nice touch both aesthetically and also in terms of flavour. The tart and sweet strawberries paired well with the dark chocolate and made a perfect ending to the day.

Chocolate Fudge with Walnuts

 I made Tahitian Lime Pie as my main Christmas dessert, but I was left with 1/2 a tin of condensed milk.  I hate wasting food - so I got on to google to see how I could use it.  Something simple with ingredients I had at hand since I had no time to go to the shop and pick up fresh ingredients. That is when I chanced upon this 3 ingredient chocolate fudge with chopped walnuts.  Viola! That was the best and easiest recipe so I used up my left over condensed milk and some dark chocolate that was in the fridge for over a month.

Rose and Pistachio Cheesecake

 We have very little land around our home.  So all the land as much as possible should be used for growing food.  This was my theory.  But my husband likes roses and for a long time he has been telling me to grow roses.  So the middle ground was to grow roses that were fragrant and good enough to eat.

I am delighted that I now have a few roses that are fragrant and good enough to eat in my garden.  I have used them in this recipe to glamourize the dessert.  If you are using roses, pick them early in the morning when the perfume is the best. Pick off all the petals and give it a rinse to wash off any bugs.

Heat the oven to about 40 degrees C (or lesser, depending on your oven). Turn the oven off.  Place the petals in a single layer in a tray on a baking paper.  Place the tray in the oven - I left in in for about 4 hours and they turned crisp and retained their colour.  If the oven is too hot, the petals will burn.

Ensure that if you are growing roses for cooking, not to use chemical sprays.  Play with the colours and create your own mixes.  For this dessert, I used red rose petals for the middle layer and yellow roses for the jelly layer.

A Berry Chocolatey Tart

Why are you making all these chocolatey things if you do not like chocolate, I hear you ask.

Well, these are pot luck dinner goodies - and chocolate in any shape, size or form seems to get a lot of brownie points :-) pun intended!!!!!

I saw this easy tart on the internet and since I am carrying it to a friend's house I have made it in a pie dish.  If you made it in a regular tart dish you would be able to unmould it and present it beautifully.

It does look spectacular, I must admit.  Hopefully the guests like the taste too! I have played around with the fresh berries in season.

Here is the original recipe: https://prettysimplesweet.com/no-bake-chocolate-tart/

Update: By using lightly greased baking paper (we sprayed cooking oil on the baking paper) in the bottom and sides of the pie dish, we were able to unmould very easily and the tart looks and tastes fabulous.

Pallavi's chocolate Truffles

"What do you do with perfectly wonderful chocolate ganache that you made for the Maltesers Cake?"

"Make ganache truffles, of course, amma!"

So she did - and she decorated them and put them in a bottle for a Christmas present!

Don't shoot me - but I am not a chocolate fan.  So this department is usually left to my daughter -and she does a brilliant job of making all sorts of chocolatey goodies!

Malteser Merry Christmas Cake

Deck the cake with Maltesers and chocolate - fa la la la la ...oh, in hindsight, there are lots of things I ought to have done before decking this cake with Maltesers and chocolate ganache!!!! Ah, well, we live and we learn.  I have added some "in hindsight" tips for you in case you are planning to make this.

It is an easy cake - you just have to think practically!  Being a non-cake person, I do not foresee the imminent problems but now that I have made it, I can tell you the best way to do this!

A spectacular cake decked up with everybody's favourite chocolate and covered in more chocolate and if that was not enough, even more chocolate just in white for the Christmas pudding look.

Recipe credit: https://www.bestrecipes.com.au/recipes/malteser-christmas-cake-recipe/a6khwx7c

Chocolate Fudge Cake

My daughter decided she wanted to bake her own chocolate cake for her birthday - she wanted a simple plain chocolate cake and I was like, no, we need decorations, it cannot be plain for a birthday.  So we compromised and used some flowers, leaves and berries along with some icing sugar - and it does look spectacular!

This cake is not sweet - so I loved it - it is moist and pairs beautifully with ice cream.  We had the cake warm with a scoop of ice cream.

Sam's Nutella Money Bags

What do you do when you are stuck in the house and it has been drizzly and miserable all day? You get some chocolate on your plate, of course!  We had some left over poori dough so Sam had this idea of making tiny pooris and smearing Nutella on them - and this then led to the next obvious iteration - Nutella stuffed dumplings.

Deep fried, chocolatey, with a sprinkling of icing sugar and nuts - you cant go wrong with this snack!

Mars Bar Slices

The ultimate naughty snack - it has the potential to add on a couple of kilos to your hips just by looking at it!  And oh - so delicious!  I took a whole tray in to work and I had only three tiny slices left over - so you can imagine how popular it was.