The Last Crusade - Arabian-styled Chocolate, Fig and Pistachio Cake

It's time again to put these glasses aside, hang the suit into the cupboard and get the leather jacket, hat and bullwhip ready. Well, usually I don't wear a leather jacket and a hat for baking, but sometimes you have to whip things up. By the way, now it has been quite some time someone called me Professor or Doctor, but that doesn't matter now.
Anyway, I didn't want to call this post 'Dr Jekyll and Mr Cake'.
Just remember: "We do not follow maps to buried treasures and X never ever marks the spot." We are just baking an Arabian-styled Chocolate, Fig and Pistachio Cake (note: Arabian-styled is just for the atmosphere and for a reason revealed later).

This now is a 'leap of faith' ... "Only in the leap from the oven shall it prove its worth." Kind of. Let's start our cake adventure ...

What we need (apart from the leather jacket, hat and bullwhip):
3 eggs
100 g sugar
300 g spelt flour
2 tsp baking powder
100 ml olive oil
1 tbs rosewater
40 g dark chocolate chunks (feel free to use more)
Juice of 3 lime
3 tbs honey (feel free to use more)
100 g dried soft figs, chopped up
2 tbs water
50 g pistachios, roughly chopped up

The quest begins:
Originally, the whole idea was, to bake something with chocolate and honey and ... soon things got out of hand. Such things happen, when the mind gets the chance to roam freely (ah, I hate those long drives to work).
Get yourself the average round cake tin, line it with baking parchment and - just to make sure - lightly oil it.
To the cake batter...
Cream the eggs with the sugar ... time for some whipping. Then sift in the flour and the baking powder. Pour in the oil and rosewater and while you're at it, toss in the chocolate chunks as well.
While your oven is heating up, spoon your batter together completely ... 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 ... "Ten. X marks the spot." The marked spot is first the cake tin where the cake better goes and then secondly the oven where the cake tin goes (together with the cake batter ... obviously). 35 minutes shall be the time for the cake to remain in the oven to prove its worth.
Do you believe? I mean, will it be a nice cake? I mean not 'nice' in the 'sense' of 'okay', but ... will it taste good?
As the cake comes from the oven we are far from being through. Let the cake take its time to cool down.
Meanwhile we whip up some kind of lime, fig and honey syrup. Cast those ingrediens together with the two tbs of water into a saucepan and heat it up until most of the liquids have been evaporated. Spoon this over the cake. Time for some chopped up pistachios. They follow ...

Now you could go on and enjoy your cake. Really? Yes ... although we could have used a little bit less lime juice and a bit more honey ... hm ... eh ... maybe - that is in case you have - you could also use more chocolate. Obviously, 40 g chocolate can't be enough. 100 g would sound better. Whatsoever, I did what I did and next time there would be the chance to change it.
Before we proceed we still want to have a closer look at the cake ...

Is that close enough? Well, you can always go and whip up some cream and throw on a dollop of it. 

Now we go back to the roots ... eh ... to the original reason we started all this ... We Should Cocoa #32 featuring chocolate and honey.

Hm ... I just noticed, I had all the ingredients here I got rid of some figs, limes and pistachios. Good job! You could call this quite a deal of money saving and ... "You can never have too much cake:-)" Therefore, here is another cake for Credit Crunch Munch from Fuss Free Flavours and Fab Food 4 All  ... right, not Fab Foods 4 All :-) 

It isn't over yet. We already know, that I'm not a food wasting kind of guy. Due to that fact and because of figs being fruits this post enters also Elizabeth's Kitchen's No Waste Food Challenge - Fruit.

For a moment you thought now, it would be over, but wrongly concluded so. I made this all from scratch and with a lot of luv. So it would be a shame not to enter this cake to Javelin Warrior's Made with Love Mondays.

We nearly forgot. The other reason - apart from the atmosphere - for calling this cake Arabian-styled. You may call me cheeky now (or crazy or ... make a suggestion), but the AlphaBakes April 2013 has the letter "A" for ... Arabian-styled Chocolate, Fig and Pistachio Cake.

Give me just a moment. I need to think a bit ...
...
Yes, I reckon that's all. Really? I guess so!
Ah, just to make sure that no one starts to panic again. The title of this post isn't suggesting that this is my last cooking adventure here. In fact the post doesn't really have anything to do with any kind of crusade. It's just a title ... just a crazy title.
By the way, should I change the blog title to "CCC - Crazy Chef Chris"? Nah, I don't think so. See thee!

Rocket, Ricotta and Chocolate ... Triple Feature Random Recipe

I have to make a confession. Yes, honestly, I have a problem ... it might even be serious.
It's not life-threatening ... at least not that I know.
To relief the tension a bit I have to say, it has to do with chocolate. I have been busy reading along in blog-world and the posts I read really make me worry. At least they could if I would give in to every urge of immediately running to the kitchen and reproduce the recipe I've just read about.
Well, in one incident I even just did that. It was one evening. I was sitting in front of the computer, feeling quite depressed actually. Therefore following this urge was not a curse at that point, but rather a blessing.
So to whom do I have to be grateful then? It's Choclette and her Chocolate Log Blog. She brought me this.

Apple ricotta cheesecake ... that was it that immediately caught my attention.
Somehow I failed to take some better pictures of it.
I still had some ricotta lingering in my fridge, so I had to go for it. Just lately a neighbour had told me I could take apples from their garden. So it was just perfect.
The recipe you find on the Chocolate Log Blog anyway. Everything went well. I even got a kind of ripple effect as you can glean from the picture. Right, well, there was one thing, I really couldn't cut it into individual pieces, but hey, I could just go for it and spoon it from the tin. After a day in the fridge, though, cutting into pieces was possible ... but I didn't care anymore.
Things are not all that bad. When I say bad, of course, I don't mean bad as in the sense of bad, but just bad. Hm, you know ... hips don't lie.
Why so? There was another lovely recipe from another lovely lady from another lovely blog. This recipe didn't contain any chocolate, but green leaves, fruits and some goats cheese.

On top of it, it was so simple it was put together in no time. What you see is what you get. I wish I could have that at other times in life as well (maybe at work).
Who helped this time?
It was Karen from Lavender and Lovage with her Fresh Fig and Goat's Cheese Salad with Walnuts. As you see on the picture, though, something must have gone wrong. Why I didn't use walnuts, I don't know. I have no problems with them. I even have a large amount of them at home.
That has to remain then another unsolved mystery.
Towards the end, things get dangerous again, but very very dangerous, indeed.
Because of this I like to link to the responsible person twice.
Let me get into detail.
That very person I am talking about is Jacqueline from Tinned Tomatoes. She got me with her Chocolate Tiffin. Why very very dangerous then?
If you have a look at the recipe, you will not fail to notice the usage of 400 g of chocolate.

That's what it looked like. I didn't have all dark chocolate available. This recipe nearly killed half of my choclate supplies (I had to stock up again today).
Just a few days before I tried that recipe. I was talking about cooking to a friend of mine, particularly about a kind of tiramisu I once did. What she was saying about it, didn't fit, but I think it would rather fit to this recipe, because there are certain similarities.
What is he talking about?
Well, there is a German recipe that is called Kalter Hund (cold dog), which is done with butter cookies and choclate. After I finished the chocolate tiffin recipe and had a bite of it later, it just reminded me of that.

Anyway, it tastes very lovely. So I need to be careful as nobody is nearby to help me with that. At least not now.
So far about all that. I still have to try an apple cake, a sea salted caramel cake, some mint cupcakes and some chocolate fondant with balsamic blueberries. Due to this I might be set for the month in the sweet department.
Wish me good luck ... or something like that!
Now we are nearly at the conclusion. This post is an entry for Bookmarked Recipes, the October edition.

It's a very special one, not only because of it being a triple feature, but also because it is kind of reciprocal ... you will figure it out. Or maybe you have to make a confession as well. Do you?