Sometimes things can be quite confusing and get mixed up. Because of that, at times I end up writing the second word even before I have started finishing the first word. Therefore baking bread can easily turn into breaking bad. Not that I want to write about any analogies between the crime drama series and the production of baked goods. I wouldn't have any ideas regarding that ... right now.
Anyway, why the confusion? Is it because of limited rain capacity, stress, information overload or any kind of subconscious dealings with hidden problems from the past. No, I don't want to take a psychological approach to bread baking either, although ... as far as I see it,breaking your own bread can be quite relaxing and you have a wonderful smell in the house and ... if you do not mess it up totally... you get a lovely tasting bread and ... for example ... you could do a delicious sandwich with your own bread, like this Open BAT sandwich ...
No, that wasn't a reference to Batman, just Bacon Avocado Tomato Sandwich.
What is your favourite approach ... no, I'm not referring to the psychological thing again ... method and way of baking your own bread?
Have you ever heard someone say: "I only have to look at food and I put on weight."? That totally applies to me. If I see food, I put on weight. Maybe that's due to the diet I am on ... kind of. It's a seaefood diet. Of course, if I see food, I am going to eat it. I'm not having it as decoration. Along that line, the following will do a devastating job. This wasn't a reference to it not being decorative. Let someone else judge. We are talking of putting on weight and my Ultimate Caramel Chocolate Delight.
It has it all ... lots of sugar, cream, butter and of course chocolate. They will do their part. No doubt about it.
In a previous post, I had a Hazelnut Chocolate Custard Caramel Cake. I warned you beforehand the quest isn't over yet and we have to tread further upon that path. You might notice that the recipe is quite similar, but then also different.
Let us speak no further about ... eh ... things. So, without any further ado I bring you my Ultimate Caramel Chocolate Delight.
Ingredients (he he he ... you see what I mean):
200 g flour
100 g brown sugar
200 g melted butter
100 g rolled oats
300 g sugar
50 ml water
100 ml cream
100 g hazelnuts
200 g dark chocolate
50 g butter
Method (not listening to any kind of warnings):
Have you compared it to the previous recipe and noticed the changes already? No? I show you now ... kind of.
First we go for the base with the flour, brown sugar, melted butter and the rolled oats (which are new here). Do a thorough job in putting these together for the dough. Press the base into a cake tin that is prepared with baking parchment. I used a round cake tin, but will use a rectangular one next time.
Bake the base for 20 minutes at 180 °C. After that you might think about allowing some time for it to cool down. A good thing, we are not going to use the oven anymore in the course of this recipe. We did so last time, though.
While that cooling business is going on, we devote our time to what has to be done: the caramel. Put the 300 g of sugar together with the water on the heat. Hopefully it will just go brownish without burning. Allow time for some patience. In the rare case you don't have it, learn it. That's a useful quality you will need again and again in life.
Don't burn the caramel. Before that happens, add the hazelnuts and the cream. You will love that noise, when the cream hits the burning hot caramel.
Make sure it all mixes well and looks thick. In case it doesn't so right away, I guess you can not avoid, but have to let it on heat and stir it a bit. At one point, though, it should be enough. Things only need a certain amount of stirring. It's like in real life.
Now you should pour the caramel onto the cake base ... if we want to call it a cake. Oh ... it was the original plan, but ... just read on ...
Should I say now: "Allow time for cooling."? Eh ... no ... I don't like to say it. We have work to do. After all we want the Ultimate Caramel Chocolate Delight. Nobody is going to help me finish the job after all.
At this very point our attention is drawn to some beautiful and yet inconspicuous dark chocolate. We need some heat again. I have my special way to melt chocolate and you for sure have your own. So don't let us talk further about it. Fine, I only need to mention that you melt the chocolate together with 50 g of butter.
Once you get this shiny liquid chocolate ready, let it cover the caramel. I would say now: "Allow ...", but ... just make sure the chocolate gets solid again. A fridge might do the trick.
Now have a closer look at this. From what you see, it might be some kind of cake. Let us get our weapon ready and attack it by cutting out a slice.
Well, it tastes great. For me this is my Ultimate Caramel Chocolate Delight. I will try no further in that direction. I'm going to use my time for other food endeavours. What about cheese and chocolate now? Or maybe some other kind of food that will not be so quick in aiding you in putting on more weight. Whatsoever, I will see ... you will see ... we will see.
Back to the original topic.
However, I would not so much eat this as a cake, but rather as a kind of Caramel Chocolate bar. Or just have it as small rectangular slices like shown in the first photo. That way maybe we are not completely lost when we see it ... and consequently eat it - seefood diet! I don't know what you expected when you read the title. Another option would have been: Seafood diet: eat everything, but seafood.
I should have used cashews. That would have made the whole thing a CCCCC - a Cashew Chocolate Custard Caramel Cake. However, now we deal with it as things are. Hazelnut Chocolate Custard Caramel Cake is just fine. Anyway, the hazelnuts are doing a fab job. I simply had to do it. There was this experimenting mood again. That good spirit, which brings me into a good mood and sometimes something lovely to eat. Let's see whether it worked out this time again.
Ingredients:
200 g whole wheat flour
100 g brown sugar
200 g melted butter
100 g chopped hazelnuts
500 ml chocolate custard
300 g sugar
50 ml water
50 g butter
200 ml cream
A splash brown rum
Method:
I'm trying to combine a few things I read or saw elsewhere. You have to get some ideas somehow.
We start with the base of the cake. Mix the flour with the brown sugar, melted butter and the chopped hazelnuts. You still might try to use cashews, if you like. I won't try. That's not because I don't like cashews, but ... I ... eh ... did something else.
Get yourself the usual round cake tin, lightly oil it and then put in some baking parchment. If you want to make even more sure, oil the baking parchment as well. You never know.
Press the base of the cake onto the baking parchment in the cake tin. It's best not to be fussy and use your hands and just go for it. Level it out all evenly and chuck the tin into the pre-heated oven and bake it for 20 minutes at 180 °C. By the end of that you should have some chocolate custard ready.
Cover the base of the cake with the chocolate custard ad return to the oven for another 10 minutes.
Now it's time for a break. Let the cake cool down completely. That may take a while ...
Just before you think you are ready, we go for the caramel. Somehow I use to make caramel quite often these days. The idea for the following I got during my Christine & Christian adventures and some caramelised bananas. Don't worry, if you wonder what has become of Christine & Christian. It will continue.
However, back to our cake business. We start with the sugar and the water in a pot with high heat. Patiently watch the bubbling and sizzling until the sugar caramelises and starts to turn brown. At this point pour in the cream and the rum. Then throw in the butter and start stirring. Do that for a while until things have calmed down a bit. Reduce the heat to medium for that.
Continue to cook until the caramel something slightly thickens. Are you ready? Pour he caramel sauce kind of thing over the chocolate custard on the cake and spread it out.
It went slightly a bit different as I had imagined. The caramel went solid quite quickly. So working with a spatula wasn't really satisfying.
Cutting the cake into pieces wasn't that easy either. The cover cracks quite easily. You can imagine that a piece of cake has quite some energy in it, for which you really need some time to burn it or use it up. Gladly I hadn't to eat the cake all by myself. I could spread the love and share.
What were the reactions? Delicious, lovely, disgusting. Well, the disgusting part was only because the slices were cut so large and you really can not manage to eat a whole giant piece of that cake. Well, I can, but not everyone is that strong.
In other words the cake is quite sweet. If you like that, then you need a Hazelnut Chocolate Custard Cake. Whatsoever! Although I liked the cake, I wasn't finished yet with achieving my ultimate caramel delight.
The quest still goes on. Therefore watch out for more cake experimenting from the cake lab. In fact I have been doing quite some baking lately. So I guess you have to manage with a few more cakes.
If you have any caramel suggestions for me, I'm happy for it! See thee!
What do you make of this?
Any clue? What about this?
Is that already better? Do you know any movies, in which Robert Redford, Dan Aykroyd, River Phoenix and Ben Kingsley played a role?
If so, that might take you to one of my favourite films. It was released in 1992. Got it? Yes, the film is called "Sneakers". It has a bit to do with hacking into computer systems. There are not too many effects and bloodshed, but rather cleverly made.
What, though, does it have to do with us and cooking and this blog?
No, I'm not a hacker, although ...
Well, simply move on with another picture ...
Lovely Manu from Cooking Manu came up with a brilliant idea for this month: "L'ingrediente Segreto/The Secret Ingredient". That's were we get to the 'secret'. Two participants were kind of randomly assigned to each other to send over a secret ingredient to prepare something with.
Therefore ... 'no more secrets' ... the ingredient I received was: Latte intero concentrato zuccherato ... that is: sweetened condensed milk.
What to do with it?
I had only one answer: Dulce de Leche. How to do this without blowing up your kitchen or making a real mess, you get some instructions here.
Whatsoever, simply doing this wouldn't suffice ...
... so I combined it with some Cappuccino Muffins.
Let's have a look on how to do that.
Cappucino Muffins with Dulce de Leche
Ingredients:
50 g chopped hazelnuts
100 g sugar
200 g flour (I used wholegrain wheat flour)
2 tsp baking powder
2 tbs instant cappuccino powder
Pinch of salt
2 tsp vanilla extract (or one vanilla pod)
200 ml milk
50 ml oil
1 egg
180 ml dulce de leche
Some chocolate sprinkles, if you care
Method:
We assume that you have your dulce de leche ready. I had just prepared mine in 90 minutes.
Right then, combine the dry ingredients, that is the hazelnuts, sugar, flour, baking powder, cappuccino powder, and salt. Shuffle it through.
Then to the liquidish ingredients in another bowl: the vanilla extract, milk, oil, and egg. Combine it as well, give it a good whisk.
Afterwards, join the dry and the liquidish in one of the bowls and make the muffin batter.
Preheat your oven to 180°C.
Divide your batter for the muffins between 12 muffin 'molds' - whatever you favour to use.
Bake it for about 25 minutes - you know when they are ready.
Allow the muffins to cool down a bit after you removed them from the oven and before you spread on them the dulce de leche.
Finish them with some chocolate sprinkles, if you care.
That's it! No more secrets! I don't know what else you expected in this post ..., whatever secrets to be revealed. Well, honestly? It's not going to happen. It's not the time to reveal any further secrets ... not yet, not yet!
What comes to your mind, when you think about Scandinavia? Be quick! Name three things!
Polar lights, elks, vikings (I'm surprised, too, that not this furnish company from Sweden came to my mind).
Well those were the things that came up in my mind without extra thinking. Next I think of Denmark, at least that is a part of Scandinavia I have already been to. Yet, this is already quite some years ago. I remember Copenhagen and visiting the Tivoli with it's wonderful display of lights at evening time. Further I remember buying a large back of popcorn only to notice too late that it was salted and not sweet. Just a little bit of disappointment there.
Alcohol comes next. There is a certain Danish alcoholic beverage that never failed to help in cases of stomach problems - fail safe!
No, I don't want to bake a cake with that alcohol now. But, yes, it just now came to my mind: Would a cake containing this alcoholic beverage make it possible for you to have more pieces of it before your stomach goes funny?
We will not find out now.
Nevertheless we want to start drifting towards the subject of cake.
Back then, when I visited Denmark, I read about the speciality 'Kanelstang'. That is a kind of cinnamon cake with puff pastry, marzipan and, of course, cinnamon. The important part here, however, was marzipan. So I had to try and was not disappointed. Now I have to try to reproduce it in my kitchen one day.
For today, though, no experiments. When it comes to Scandinavian food, there is not as much on offer as to cookbooks as for example with Spanish, Italian, Mexican or Indian cuisine.
I found out about one person that wants that to be changed, somehow, or at least wanted to contribute as regards cookbooks concerning Scandinavia. So I got myself that cookbook: Secrets of Scandinavian Cooking ... Scandilicious from Signe Johansen.
I tried one of her recipes (Cardamom twists) from her website before and was not disappointed. So far I tried also a few things from the book and it was fine as well.
Let us concentrate now on the cake up North (Of course it all depends from were you live. For me 'up North' is up North. For you it maybe down South or over West or whatever ...).
The cake under subject is Drømmekage (Danish coconut dream cake). The final result was very delicious and, lucky me, somehow I still have some left of it so I can continue to enjoy it (without needing this alcohol mentioned above).
The batter for the cake doesn't contain anything spectacular, just the usual suspects such as sugar, butter, buttermilk, flour, baking powder and eggs. Well, fine, there was also some vanilla extract and a tiny amount of salt. Vanilla already sounds good.
Still, to make it really great, there is more to come.
First of all the basic batter goes to the oven for 20 minutes or a bit more - as it is with my oven, it always needs more time.
The really good thing about this cake is the topping that comes over it after baking for the first time. After all, we want it to be a coconut dream and when you go over the list of the suspects, you don't see any coconut mentioned.
Tragically, though, we are not going to see any coconut on the cake anyway. The recipe called for 150 g desiccated coconut. A frantic search through my cupboards started, but no matter how desperate I searched, I couldn't find any traces of coconut.
All is lost!
No! Lovely Signe was so kind to provide topping variations at the end of the recipe.
I would have liked to have a dream with coconut, but we had to change the cake to Toscakake by substituting the finely chopped hazelnuts for the desiccated coconut. That proved to be lovely as well (Right, I don't know whether the coconut variation would have been lovely, but I guess so).
Another option would have been chocolate-coffee caramel Bømlokake for all those chocolate lovers out there. That means there are many more good reasons to come back to this recipe again.
For the time being we like to stay with our ... now Toscakake. Apart from the hazelnuts, butter, sugar, milk and vanilla salt went into the topping. Oh, I don't have vanilla salt. I just put some fleur de sel and some vanilla extract in, although the book states, how to make your own vanilla salt.
Anyway, I will have some more of that cake, because ... I can.
So, what comes to your mind, when you think about Scandinavia? Hopefully also some good food and a dream of a cake ... although it might not be a Drømmekage with coconut.
