110: Chocolate almond cake, p99

An emergency pudding required for a picnic at Glyndebourne... and this leapt out of the book at me. Even though we were out of dark chocolate... It's hubbie's fault that we need an emergency pudding, so he went out to get dark chocolate with the instructions to get 200g fine quality, c.70%+ dark chocolate. He came back with dark cooking chocolate (54% cocoa), which was at least better than the galaxy dark he came back with at some point in the past... Poor hub. He slunk off embarrassed when I pointed out the difference. But he got everything else on the shopping list spot on!

The egg white whisking fest continues - 5 eggs this time, separated, whites whisked to stiff peaks (I'm getting good at this!). I must have used over a dozen eggs so far this week...

Difficult to fold the heavy gloopy choc/butter/egg yolk/flour/coffee mix into the light, fluffy egg whites but managed without knocking all of the air out...

Took c.10-15mins longer than the cooking time in the book, before the knife stopped coming out covered in cake mix, and on removal the top of the cake broke slightly, showing that the top had risen slightly above the rest of the cake, and had formed a little crisp layer. Yummy.

Cake survived the car journey to Glyndebourne, and with the leftover mascarpone cream from yesterday, slightly flatter now the egg whites had lost a lot of their froth, went down very well. A very rich, fudgy chocolate cake, with only a couple of embarrassingly albino bits where I clearly hadn't mixed the egg whites in well enough...

68: My very good chocolate brownie recipe, p325

Oooooh, these were, and still are, very good indeed. Incredibly rich, dense, fudgey brownies, without any interloping ingredients like chopped nuts, just chocolatey cocoay goodness. This is supposed to serve 12, but I cut it into 24, and having tried a half a piece, this is definitely the sort of brownie one can only eat one small piece of at a time...And then need a bit of a lie-down...

Wasn't the easiest of instructions, to fold the flour and cocoa in to the butter/egg/sugar/chocolate mix in the bowl of the food processor, but managed, nonetheless, and soon the flat was full of chocolatey baking smells, making for happy hubby.

Only real problem was that for some reason, inspite of greasing the tin and lining the base with baking parchment, it was a bugger to turn out and I ended up cutting it in the tin and prising out the first few pieces. A few bits crumbled in the process, so it's not a neat brownie, but it was worth it...

Apart from a few pieces, sequestered for T, these are destined to accompany me to work on Monday as it's my birthday, and one must bring cake for morning tea if it's one's birthday.

**Aha, and I've done more recipes in the last week than I did in the whole of April - oh dear!!**