Black tea velvet cake by Emine Hassan

Black tea velvet cake

Regardless of the childish excitement a brilliant red cake instils in me to this day, I can no longer handle the tang of a red velvet – the entire bottle of food colouring,, which is needed for a “proper” red velv, gives the cake a really noticeable sour tang.

In with the tealeaves! The tea flavour is faint in this ‘tea velvet’, perhaps slightly masked by the cocoa powder, but we much prefer it to food colouring flavour.

There are a few lengthy steps in this recipe, like steeping milk and letting the cakes rest in the fridge before slicing. Set aside a couple of days to make this cake. Continue reading

Chocolate meringue cake by Emine Hassan

Chocolate meringue cake

Homemade meringue has always made me feel a bit uneasy because it always comes out just a bit too eggy to stomach. But last week I had a thought, what if I add meringue on top of a cake, purposefully over-baking it by baking the meringue for as long as the dense chocolate cake that will be at the bottom? Perhaps the secret to abolishing the raw egg aftertaste was to over-bake it. It seems, my incompetent oven could finally be put to good use. Continue reading

Chocolate orange and cardamom cake

It’s December tomorrow. Seriously? I know me, you and everyone we know is saying the same thing but HOW IS IT DECEMBER TOMORROW?! It just freaks me out how quickly this year has gone. With December comes party season and with parties comes at least one fancy ass cake. I like to think this would be a great addition to any dessert table this Christmas. It’s dark and chocolatey but perfectly flavoured with orange and a hint of cardamom. Cardamom is hands down my favourite spice and I’ll find a way to work it into most desserts if I can. Continue reading

Basic pumpkin bread

I feel like by calling this basic I am insulting it but what I mean is, this is a delicious no frills pumpkin bread that is easily adaptable should you wish to add any kind of browned butter, chocolate chip, cranberry frills. I’ve made this a few times and each time I felt like I was adding too many frills, at one point you wouldn’t have known there was pumpkin in it (largely due to too much treacle) so I stripped it back and there it was, a super simple but delicious loaf perfect for afternoon coffee.

This was what I had been thinking about just before I made this bread. Stop overcomplicating life/recipes. The reason my last few recipes had failed was because I had made them too complicated. I like a strong ginger flavour so I put 1.5 teaspoons in but you can adjust the spices to your taste. I’ll be sneaking a slice of this into work for my 3pm sugar craving. Continue reading

Apple, parsnip & rosemary syrup cake

I go mad for vegetables or herbs in cakes. It’s like, it shouldn’t work but it does…and it tastes better than any cake ever made before. This is why carrot cake reigns supreme. Rosemary is just my absolute hands down favourite herb in the history of herbs forever amen. I sprinkle it on as much as I can get away with and now I want to bake with it for eternity. I’m getting carried away? Ok. I took this cake into work, left it in the communal kitchen and it was gone within ten minutes.

I’ve had a few posts recently with chocolate in so I decided to try something different, otherwise I’d have been all over the salted caramel chocolate cake.

Continue reading