Going now again trough the cook books, I discover that we just missed a line in the recipe, the one that mention that you can bake two cakes...... seems logic while looking at the very tasty picture. The girls missed this line completely and so did I. As the one cake we baked, was so thin, the result wasn't satisfying, we baked a second one. Still not impressive. Then we asked Zineb, our bonne Marocaine, to bake one of her favourite Moroccan cakes. She is in fact just fabulous in the kitchen. She told me last week, she worked in a bakery in Rabat for years, as a seller. I think she took advance of her position and went as often as she could in the back of the store to learn from the bakers. She has a nose for good recipes and is a real good baker. We are, all the time, discovering new recipes together with Zineb. I'll learn her, my European recipes and keep her from using to much sugar and salt. We, the girls and me, her to join us in the project about our dream bakery. That Saturday two weeks ago wasn't her day neither. Her cake didn't rise as it normally does, had no sponge structure. Zineb told us it was the first time in her life that this happened. You see these days. She gave it a try for a second one like we did. Her recipe is something different than ours and is prepared with fresh pressed lemon. It makes me thinking of crepe Suzette. I ate those in Nevers, Loire, France when I had the age of my girls. Finely we get creative again, and piled up the 4 cakes and the girls covered it up with chocolate frosting, a recipe from their grand-grand dad. Between the layers the girls put the chocolate cream. Coloured decoration was done with Smarties. And Belle? She had her chocolate covered cake decorated 9 pink candles and funny smiley faces, we founded last summer in Rome. The great thing is that the girls, Zineb and myself had a great time in the kitchen. Belle's friends loved the taste.
Chocolate covered cake:
125 g Flour cake tins 18 cm, pastry brush, grease proof paper
2 large eggs
125 soltened butter
125 g caster sugar
Simply beat all the ingredients together. The result is a plain sponge cake. If you make two, you can layer them up and fill them up with jam or fresh cream. You can make it ever more adventures if you add cocoa powder or fresh fruit. Bake the cake for 20 minutes in the oven (170° C/ 325° F)
Chocolate cream:
200 gr black Lindt chocolate (we only take black lindt chocolate (70%), Solange can have this brand. It is true that it costs more than the regular black dessert chocolate. We just love the taste of Lindt, remembers us of our three years living in Lausanne, Swiserland and most of all Solange never had a food intolerance reaction. )
6 tablespoons double cream
Chocolate frosting:
159 gr black Lindt chocolate (70% - 85%)
3 tbl spoons water
20 gr butter
100 gr icing sugar
If there are fresh strawberries available you could put these on top of this cake.
In the meantime Nuria sits on a cousin in the girl's library upstairs in the house. She took the big pile of cooking books we brought up there together a couple of weeks ago. Nuria dreams about having English high teas, scones, cakes and muffins and tea served in a pot with flower design. She sees herself surrounded by her sisiters having tea, inviting frinds to join her and her sisters and tasting all kinds of cakes. She went trough all the small books. Alle these are books are written by Anne Wilson. The pictures look all so very tasty and yet also a little bit old fashioned. The ingredients very basic. Every recipe is marked for more or less difficult. Nuria flipped the corners, of all pages were she found something of her gourmand taste. When I went closely through her marked pages I was smiling by seeing all these recipes while thinking of the good moments she passed sitting her in the library on her own and searching for everything what she likes to east. None of the recipees mentioned pinda's, peanuts or nuts. She found easily, many good ones that Solange can have all.
