Dark Rich Luscious Goddess

And so I made my own birthday cake for the very first time.

Among the six (yes, count them, six!) new cookbooks I received as birthday presents (no, I suppose it is not quite “normal” for a girl to grin with glee to receive cookbooks as birthday presents, but there you have it) was “How to be a Domestic Goddess” by Nigella Lawson. Now, up until very recently I could not have been described as a fan of hers. I had caught her shows a couple of times on TV, but I couldn’t say that they did very much for me (sorry, Nigella fans; but read on, there’s more). However, as I read more and more raves by other food bloggers about her recipes, my curiosity was suitably piqued. Hmmm… maybe she did have something interesting to offer after all. So, when I was asked which cookbooks I would like as presents, I did not hesitate to put “Domestic Goddess” on the wishlist.

I have to admit, it took me almost two-thirds of the book to get comfortable with her tone and writing style. But when I did, I started to enjoy her – the connection had been made.

While I won’t go into a full review of the book here, I am beginning to see the kind of appeal she has. Her recipes read easily; there is nothing complicated or overly involved. Instructions are pared down to the bare minimum and kept simple and streamlined; but maybe a little too streamlined sometimes, as I came to realize when I was making the cake. The book is targeted at getting those who are intimidated by the very idea of baking into the kitchen and baking… with ease, panache and a suitable touch of glamour. But unless you have a fair amount of baking experience, you would not know, for example, how long to beat the eggs or butter for, what textures to look out for, what to expect or even what to aim for – the instructions do not tell you. I do understand her point of genesis: underwhelm the complexity of baking; remove the mystery around it. For me, I felt at ease enough with her “zen” approach to instructions; I could rely on what I already knew and had experienced baking cakes in the past. However, I can only imagine a degree of befuddlement had I been a first-timer. But perhaps it all doesn’t really matter in the end; as I found out, her recipes seem to offer a large berth (much larger than in a lot of other recipes) for “inexperience” before the cakes tip over into the “disaster zone”. And one thing has to be said for a lot of her recipes: they are so sexy! Making them can be such a sensuous and sensual experience. No kidding!

As I read through the book, one cake caught my eye and held my heart transfixed with desire and longing: her Nutella cake. Oh good heavens! Could there be a better sounding cake than that? Actually, this was my second “encounter” with the cake; but I needed to be reminded of the first, which was when Niki mentioned the cake to me in Alberto’s comment box. Back then, I had made a mental note to bake the cake. I forgot. Now, serendipity delivered the recipe into my lap and made sure I had the cake for my birthday.

Once I spotted the cake, I knew that was going to be my birthday cake. Just as surely as I had known as a child which cake I wanted for my birthday, so I knew that for this birthday it had to be Nigella’s Nutella cake. All the exalted French and Belgian pastry chefs in Singapore could keep their delicately refined creations, I was going to have myself a rich, dense, luscious Nutella birthday cake, and that was that. And since my mum had long “retired” from birthday cake making, it fell on me to make the birthday cake myself.

I also decided that I was going to use Alice Medrich’s low-fat rich (contradiction intended) chocolate glaze/frosting instead of the ganache recipe provided by Nigella. I had been meaning to try out Alice’s frosting recipe again after a rather dismal attempt some months back; so what better time than this to try and tweak her recipe into something I could accept.

I have to say this Nutella cake recipe was the most fun I have come across in a long, long time. I mean, which recipe allows you the luxury, nay, the privilege of licking out a Nutella jar? C’mon. Something has to be said for that. That is like the most sensuous and sexy thing this side of baking! Indeed, there were many opportunities for bowl, spoon and jar licking throughout the recipe. And this is one recipe concoction where you would probably quite happily kill to protect your “bowl licking rights”. Oh what joy, what bliss! Such seductive enjoyment… and we’re only just talking about the making of the cake! We haven’t even gotten to the eating of the cake and… Never mind.

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The recipe that appears below includes the amendments I made or feel I would want to make in the future. First, very briefly, here are some general points about the changes…

I used 25% less butter, simply because I had run out of butter (shows how much forward planning I did for this cake making session!). Still, the cake showed little ill-effects from this shortage. (And it was so rich that a little less butter was hardly missed.)

The eggs I was using were rather small, so I used 7 eggs instead of the 6 large ones stipulated in the recipe. Well, no, actually I used 7 egg yolks and 6 egg whites. Why? One of the yolks broke as I was separating the egg, and the white couldn’t be used anymore for the meringue. So, I stored the egg white, used the yolk, and was too lazy to break open another egg to even out the numbers. I figured one egg white less was hardly going to jeopardize the cake; and it didn’t.

This was the first time I used salt to whisk egg whites; my standard was normally either sugar or Cream of Tartar. And I had a little difficulty with this salting of the whites thing. My meringue came out rather foamy; not the glossy smooth whisked egg whites I was so used to doing and getting. I was worried. Perhaps at that point, it would have been better if I had been blessed with baking ignorance and didn’t have past experience to compare with. But I did. And I was concerned about using this foamy egg white. The recipe of course provided little help. It said nothing about what the whites should have looked like; it stated simply that they were supposed to be “stiff but not dry”. Well, mine were “stiff but not dry”, yet also foamy. Any input on this would be appreciated. Would you have any ideas whether the whites are supposed to be foamy when whisked with salt? Anyway, I think the next time round, I would much prefer to fall back on the Cream of Tartar option; besides, I like my whisked egg whites looking glossy, shiny and satiny smooth. And sexy.

The recipe didn’t call for the hazelnuts to be toasted; but I always toast my nuts when it comes to baking (or indeed cooking). I just feel the aromas and flavors are so much better, richer, fuller and more complex after a few minutes in the oven. Sure, it is a little more work, but hardly more than a few minutes extra, and well worth the effort, in my opinion. Of course, un-roasted nuts would work perfectly well too.

I also melted my chocolate in a double boiler; it’s a habit. And I’m quite a creature of habit when it comes to baking. I’m sure Nigella would probably frown on so much “fiddling”. But I personally don’t think it is at all difficult to fill a saucepan with a little water, pop a bowl that fits nicely over its opening onto it, drop in the broken-up pieces of chocolate, put everything on the stove, have the flame on the lowest setting, and leave it to melt. How difficult is that? It probably takes all of 2 minutes to get that together. Then walk away and do other stuff, and leave the chocolate to melt happily on its own. Come back in 5 minutes, stir the chocolate to make it smooth, turn off the flame, and just leave it there, right on the pot to cool until you are ready to use it. Now, that really isn’t so fiddly is it?

Other than that, this recipe is as easy as can be…

Nutella Cake
[adapted from “How to be a Domestic Goddess” by Nigella Lawson]

7 medium eggs – separated
¼ teaspoon Cream of Tartar
95g unsalted butter – softened
400g jar Nutella *
1 tablespoon water or hazelnut-flavored liqueur **
100g blanched hazelnuts – toasted and finely ground
100g dark chocolate – melted ***

* Yes, you read right; one ENTIRE 400g jar of Nutella. Is that chocolate bliss or what? It really isn’t that sinful in actual fact; there is no additional sugar in the recipe, and the final cake was not overly sweet at all, and I have a fairly low tolerance for cloyingly sweet stuff.

** I opted for water. I was actually tempted to use Amaretto, but felt it would be a little too strong, and I also wanted the hazelnut flavors to come through strongly.

*** I used Lindt Excellence 70% Dark Chocolate. I had intended to use Valhrona, and had even bought the chocolates, ready and waiting. Alas! Unfortunately, family members got to the chocolates before I got round to making the cake, and there were none left by the time I needed them. So, it was back to my standard dark chocolate fall-back.

• Line and grease a 23cm springform pan.

• Preheat the oven to 180C.

• In a medium bowl, whisk the egg whites and the Cream of Tartar until stiff but not dry.

• Put the butter and the Nutella into a separate bowl (pausing to lick the Nutella jar clean), and beat together. Add the water (or liqueur), and beat to combine. With the mixer running, add the yolks one at a time, letting each incorporate before adding the next.

• Beat in the ground hazelnuts.

• Fold in the cooled melted chocolate.

• Add a large dollop of the whisked egg whites, and mix well to lighten the chocolate mixture. Gently fold in the rest of the egg whites, a third at a time.

• Pour the batter into prepared cake pan; bake in the oven for 40 minutes or until the cake begins to come away at the sides. Let cool on a wire rack.

[Nigella advised, and I followed her advice, not to remove the bottom of the springform pan – that is, to leave the cake sitting on the pan’s bottom after the sides have been removed. According to her, the cake was too dense and moist to be shifted. Now, this was fine for me as I was only serving the cake to family and very close friends, and presentation wasn’t overly important. But if you want to make it into a presentable birthday cake, then I think you can tip the cake face down onto a wire rack, peel away the bottom, place a cardboard serving platter over the bottom of the cake, and then flip the cake right side up again, before proceeding with the frosting.]

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The first time I made Alice Medrich’s chocolate frosting from her book “Chocolate and the Art of Low Fat Desserts”, I was rather disappointed. The frosting was bitter from too much cocoa powder, and the flavors lacked a certain smoothness and full-bodied depth. I wanted to try and tweak the recipe to see if something that I liked could be made out of it.

That first time I had been struck by the 1:1 ratio of cocoa to sugar listed in the recipe. Most unusual, I thought. Rarely have I seen a recipe that used a 1:1 ratio. Cocoa – even Dutch processed cocoa – is just too intensely flavored and too “edgy” for that. And I was proved right. So this time around, I reduced the cocoa by half. Correspondingly, I reduced the liquids by 40%.

I had to skip the vanilla extract this time too; I had run out. (Boy, was I organized for this cake baking session!)

I also ended up boiling the chocolate mixture for a lot longer than stipulated in the recipe. I had initially used only ¼ cup of cocoa, but after boiling the mixture for the requisite time, I found it to be overly liquid and also too sweet. So I added another ¼ cup cocoa, and boiled the mixture again until the additional cocoa had been incorporated. All in, the boiling time had probably been doubled. This did not make the frosting too thick to work with. What did make the frosting almost too thick to work with was me being caught up in a tele-conference during the time I left the cake and frosting to cool. By the time I came back into the kitchen, the frosting was a tad on the too cool side. It was still spreadable, and as you can see, I had no problems frosting the cake, but it would probably have been easier if it had been slightly less viscous. No matter.

This turned out to be a great frosting: dark, luscious, very chocolatey, with just the right balance of bitter-sweetness and richness. I thought it went rather well with the super-rich Nutella cake; the bitter-sweetness provided a wonderful counter-balance to the dense heaviness of the torte. To have topped the cake with a true ganache made with heavy cream and milk chocolate would probably have been a little bit of an over-kill on the richness and sweetness scale. This, I felt, was just nice.

I also think this recipe is great for use as a chocolate fudge topping over ice cream; to sandwich cookies with and all sorts of other things. Simply adjust the desired thickness of the frosting according to the use. And if a more pronounced bitter-sweet flavor is preferred, use ¾ cup cocoa and 70% dark chocolate instead.

Rich Chocolate Frosting
[based on recipe from Alice Medrich’s Chocolate and the Art of Low-Fat Desserts]

1 cup sugar
½ cup Dutch processed cocoa powder
¾ cup 1½% milk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2.5oz (70g) dark chocolate *

* I used a 55% dark chocolate.

• Place the sugar and cocoa powder in a heavy bottom saucepan.

• Using a wire whisk, combine with enough milk to form a smooth paste. Stir in the rest of the milk.

• Heat the mixture on a medium-low flame until it simmers and begins to boil. Stir constantly with a wooden spoon, scraping the sides and bottom of the saucepan.

• Allow to boil gently for about 3 minutes, stirring constantly to prevent burning.

• Remove from the heat, and let cool for 5 minutes.

• Add the chopped dark chocolate, and stir until melted.

• Pour the mixture through a fine strainer. Let cool before using.

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I kept the cake decoration simple. I wanted something homely and comforting. So, it was simply a generous layer of chocolate frosting all over the cake, with lots of chopped toasted hazelnuts adhered to the sides. It doesn’t look too bad, does it?

I deliberately kept the hazelnuts fairly chunky; much chunkier than would be normal for decorating a cake with, but I thought the texture would be a lot more interesting this way.

Okay, okay, enough already. Let’s get to the eating.

Well, just one word: divine! This cake was gorgeously rich, luscious… and yes, sexy. It was really more a dense torte than it was a cake. Yet, at the same time it didn’t have that uncomfortable heaviness that made you feel like you had a lump of rock sitting in the pit of your stomach after you had devoured the cake. And most importantly it wasn’t overly sweet. I was in fact pleasantly surprised at how “not overly sweet” it was; after all, a whole, entire jar of Nutella had gone into this baby.

Oh! I loved its rich, intense chocolatey flavors, with the heady aromas of the hazelnuts; and all lightly balanced out by the bitter-sweet frosting. This was a cake you ate slowly, savoring every mouthful. It was not something you shoved hungrily into your mouth. Every bite was a sensual and sensuous experience in of itself. If I had not felt like a Goddess whilst making the cake, I certainly began to feel like one whilst eating it!

For those of you in Singapore who were familiar with the now-defunct “Cakes by Jeremy”, this torte was somewhat similar to Jeremy’s famous chocolate cake: rich; dense; luscious; intensely flavorful; and outrageously chocolatey. Only more moist, not as cloyingly sweet and, in my opinion, so much better for the gorgeously fragrant hazelnut aromas.

As with all good things, you didn’t need a lot of it to be satiated. We quite happily got 16 servings (okay, so I had 2½ of those 16 servings, but that’s beside the point; it’s a birthday girl’s privilege after all, right? ) out of the 9” (23cm) cake; and if you worked that out, it was hardly a sinful indulgence. But oh, it was a happy one!

[Note: I made the cake the day before it was served (who wants to be laboring in the kitchen on their birthday, right?) and kept it in the refrigerator. It was very good straight from the fridge, but even better when brought to room temperature.]

So, that was my birthday present to myself. I’m not sure I’m anywhere close to morphing into a Domestic Goddess by making this cake; but I do know that it certainly provided a rather sexy and sensuous highlight to my birthday gastronomic experience. Now, that is always a good thing, no?

P/S You guys sure are a “persuasive” bunch. Due to the “overwhelming” response and the flood of emails that was waiting for me this morning in my in-box, “grumbling” about me pulling my photo too quickly, and since it would be rather difficult for me to respond individually to each of those emails (I do apologize), I have decided instead to put my photo in the previous post back up for a short while more. After which I am really returning to anonymity.

Copyright © 2004 Renee Kho. All Rights Reserved.
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