Red Wine Chocolate Cake?!

So there hasn't been any recipes for a while, but there literally hasn't been the time! And for the last few weeks, there's been a lot of quick says food - like a piece of meat and rice and ready meals too, simply because of all the work and cleaning up that's needed taking up most of the time.

Anyway, today I've made a lasagne which is due to go into the oven at any moment and I also made a cake. This is a recipe from my good friend Mario in New York, and it is apparently an authentic New York cake recipe which they love over there. It's also "the original" "Red Velvet" cake but slightly different to what you might expect...

It's.....

Red Wine Chocolate Cake




It was the first time I made this cake today, but I love it already! It's really easy as it's all in one bowl - even easier if you have a food mixer/processor that you can use.

It's funny as usually after dinner, with a bit of red wine still, I crave for just a small piece of chocolate to go with the last of my wine. So this is perfect for me, and the wine simply gives the chocolate a further "depth" that I can't really put my finger on.

A really dark, chocolate-red colour also makes it intriguing on the eye as well as on the nose when you first smell it.

A mascarpone cream topping goes really well with this one too.
Try it yourself, I think you'll be surprised!


Ingredients:

For the cake:

*** You will need a 9" springform cake pan - greased.***

* 85g butter at room temperature
* 179g of dark brown sugar
* 50g caster sugar
* 1 large egg and 1 egg yolk
* 180ml red wine - nothing fancy!
* 140g of white flour
* 45g of cocoa powder
* A tiny pinch of bicarbonate of soda
* 1/2 tsp of baking powder
* 1/4 tsp of salt

For the Mascarpone Cream:

* 100g of mascarpone cheese
* 120g of double cream
* 1 1/2 - 2 tbsp of icing sugar
( to taste and you can use caster if no icing sugar)

Method:

1. Preheat your oven to Gas Mark 5 and take out all your ingredients in preparation. Eggs and butter should be room temperature just to make it easier




2. In a bowl, beat the butter until smooth.




3. Add the sugars and beat until fluffy and well combined. Add the egg and yolk and beat well, then the red wine. It will look a little 'curdled' at this stage, but it will be fine! ( Don't drink it!)

4. Sift the flour, cocoa, bicarb, baking powder and salt together into the bowl with the wet ingredients. Mix until nearly combined and then continue to "fold" in the mixture.

5. That's pretty much it! Spoon into your cake tin and cook for 25-30 minutes until a skewer inserted into it.... Yeah you get the picture!

Cool in the tin for around 5-10 minutes and then take the cake out onto a wire rack to finish cooling.







To make the topping:

1. Simply whip the mascarpone, cream and sugar until soft peaks hold their shape. Don't whip it until its completely stiff, just soft.

Add a good serving to each slice of your cake along with a dusting of icing sugar - perfect accompaniment!








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I've spent the rest of the day doing odd jobs getting ready for an array of visitors over the next few days - my friend Alan tomorrow and my mum and dad on Easter Monday.

Oh and I've also changed where photos on the blog are stored by creating a Flickr account. Whenever I previously opened up the blog pictures from the blog webpage they were really bed quality. At first I thought it was our camera, but the saved images looked really sharp on the iPad and seemed to reduce in quality once uploaded.

I think I've solved the issue - so you'll have to let me know if the pics look better when you click on them!

Comments

  1. Hi guys, can I pick your brains please. I am using my iPad to blog and I can't find a way of getting my pictures within the text like yours. I can only choose the pics then when I publish they appear at the bottom of my post. Any help appreciate. Thanks so much

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hi lois

      I use something called blogpress - you can get the app from the App Store on your ipad. Really straightforward and allows you to add photos into the text too, change the size of the photos etc - definately worth it!

      Delete

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