Sniffles...

Typical - I've managed to stay healthy for over a year with not a sniffle in sight and just before we are due to go on holiday, I get ill :-(. Mr Happy Larder is on dog walking duties this morning and I will hopefully be back to normal soon.  Lots of hot drinks and vitamins for me and a bit of sleep - I usually fight these things off quite quickly :-).  For dinner tonight, we will just have a pork casserole - it's so easy to just throw together and leave to slow cook in the oven - the perfect food when ill as there is really just minimum effort required but you still get the goodness of a home cooked meal.

Talking of food and recipes, I have just realised that I haven't yet posted the recipe for the chocolate cake we had for Easter, so without further ado, here it is.

Have a lovely weekend!

 

Chocolate cake

Ingredients:

For the sponge:

50g cocoa powder

6 tbsp boiling water

3 eggs

4 tbsp milk

175g flour

2 tsp baking powder

100g baking spread or soft butter

300g caster sugar

For the ganache icing & filling and the decorations

200g good quality chocolate, broken into small pieces (I used a mixture of dark & milk chocolate)

200ml double cream

3 tbsp jam (apricot or berry works well)

18 x 2finger Kitkats or other chocolate fingers (for the fence) plus marzipan or icing figures or other chocolates to fill the top of the cake (M&Ms, Maltesers, etc)

Method:

1. Preheat the oven to 180C and grease and line two 20cm/8in sandwich tins with baking parchment.
2. Put the cocoa powder and boiling water into a large bowl and mix well to make a paste. Add the remaining ingredients and beat again until combined but don't overwhisk.
3. Divide the cake mixture between the prepared tins. Bake for about 25-30 minutes, or until well risen and shrinking away from the sides of the tin.
4. Meanwhile, for the ganache icing & filling, heat the cream in a saucepan.  Stand a bowl with the chocolate over another pan of simmering water for about 10 minutes to melt the chocolate. Remove the bowl with the melted chocolate and add the hot cream, stirring frequently to combine the two. Set aside and leave until cool and almost set.  The longer you leave this, the more set it will get - if it gets too hard (like mine did because I forgot it in the fridge), simply put the bowl back on a pan of simmering water to melt again - it will firm up afterwards.
5. Once baked, remove the cakes from the oven and allow to cool completely. 
6. Spread the top of the bottom cake layer with jam and top with a layer of the ganache filling.  Put the next cake layer on top and spread the remainder of the ganache over the cake (top & sides). You can now add the chocolate fingers around the cake to create the "fence effect" - I left a small gap between the fingers to make cutting the cake a bit easier.  As it was Easter, I made marzipan bunnies etc but you could also just fill the middle of the cake with chocolate buttons, M&Ms...whatever you fancy :-)