Month: November 2025

A Fussy Chocolate Cake

~ nancyruth ~ 6 Comments

I was reading Paul Hollywood’s new cookbook, Celebrate: Joyful Baking All Year Round, and his famous chocolate cake recipe is in there. I like chocolate cake. I have several go-to recipes but thought I would try this one. After all, it is famous!

For this cake one needs to have a full container of cocoa powder and three 4-ounce bars of bittersweet chocolate, plus sour cream and heavy cream, and three-plus sticks of butter. It calls for a frosting and a ganache and raspberries, fresh and frozen. My substitutions were as follows:

  1. Unsweetened chocolate for bittersweet as I forgot to look up the difference.
  2. Frozen cherries as raspberries are not in season and are rather expensive.
  3. A completely different ganache using dark chocolate chips and not needing 7 more ounces of bittersweet chocolate and heavy cream which I forgot to buy.

For the cake:

  • 1 ½ sticks butter, softened
  • 1 cup light brown sugar
  • 1 cup granulated sugar
  • 3 large eggs, at room temperature
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
  • 1 ½ cups sour cream (plus one tablespoon, which I forgot)
  • 2 cups all-purpose flour
  • 1 ¼ cups unsweetened cocoa powder (this is a huge amount!)
  • 1 ½ teaspoons baking powder
  • ½ teaspoon salt
  • 1 ½ cups frozen cherries

Grease three 8-inch cake pans and line with parchment paper. Heat oven to 350 degrees F.

Beat butter and sugars until light and fluffy. He calls for using the whisk attachment but I used the paddle which I use for all cakes. Scrape down the batter and whisk again. Add the beaten eggs, vanilla, and sour cream with the mixer on low speed.

Stir the dry ingredients together and add large spoonfuls by spoonfuls to the batter while mixer is still on low speed until fully incorporated. Use a spatula to fold in the fruit.

Spread the batter in the prepared pans. This was a thick batter and a bit difficult to spread in the lined pans. Bake for 25 minutes until the cakes have risen slightly and start to pull away from the sides. My cakes took 30 minutes and did not appear to rise significantly but tested as done. Leave the cakes in the pans for 5 minutes and then remove to wire racks to cool.

For the frosting:

  • 4 ounces bittersweet chocolate, broken into pieces
  • ¾ cup cocoa powder (it’s a lot of chocolate here)
  • 5 Tablespoons boiling water
  • 1 ½ sticks of butter
  • scant ¾ cup powdered sugar

Melt the chocolate and set aside to cool slightly. Mix the cocoa and boiling water to form a paste. I had to add an extra Tablespoon of water. In the mixer bowl, beat the butter until very soft and then add the powdered sugar and beat until pale and fluffy. Add the melted chocolate and the cocoa paste and beat until smooth. When the cake is cool, spread one-third of the frosting between each layer and on top. Spread around the sides of the cake and let sit for one hour.

When frosting is set, make a ganache and pour over the whole cake. Decorate with the fresh fruit.

  • For my ganache I melted one cup dark chocolate chips with 1/3 cup evaporated milk, boiled for one minute, removed from heat, and then whisked in 2 Tablespoons butter. This needs to be mixed until it thickens. I poured it over the cake a bit too soon and had a bit of runoff. But that cleaned up tastily!

Thoughts:

  • I had expected the cake to rise a bit more than it did. This may be because it is on the mixer for a long time and I may have beat the air out of the eggs or the baking powder was old. I have since tested the baking powder and it is active so that is not the culprit.
  • So this is a dense cake in texture and in chocolate flavor. It is like a fudgy brownie and not cake-like. After three days I felt like I had overdosed on chocolate. And I like chocolate!
  • The cherries were a nice touch.
  • Definitely serve with vanilla ice cream.

Lemon Tea Bread

~ nancyruth ~ 5 Comments

For Church brunch I got it in my head to make a lemon something since I had lemons languishing in my refrigerator. I put them in a Ziploc bag which seems to keep them longer than loose in the crisper drawer. I had to look through several of my many cookbooks to find the recipe. I knew I had one somewhere other than the internet! I like cookbooks. I hope they do no become obsolete!

I found the recipe in a Better Homes and Gardens collection book America’s Best-Loved Community Cookbook Recipes: Brunches and Lunches (copyright 1996). I am not sure where I got this from but I do know I got it in the past several years and probably spent no more than $5 for it at some tag sale. It only calls for one lemon.

  • ½ cup butter
  • 1 cup sugar
  • 2 eggs
  • 1 teaspoon finely shredded lemon peel
  • 1 ½ cups all-purpose flour
  • 1 teaspoon baking powder
  • ½ cup milk
  • ½ cup chopped pecans

First grate the zest from the lemon and then squeeze the juice. Save the juice for making the glaze. This is best when the lemon is at room temperature. Or first, grease the bottom and halfway up the sides of an 8x4x2-inch loaf pan and preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.

In a medium bowl stir the dry ingredients together. In a large mixing bowl cream the butter and sugar until fluffy. Add the eggs and 1 teaspoon of the lemon peel mixing well. Add the flour mixture and the milk alternately (I really have to look up the reason for this) and then stir in the nuts. Spread the batter in the loaf pan and bake for 55-60 minutes.

For the lemon glaze, take the lemon juice (about 3 Tablespoons) and the rest of the lemon peel (if you remembered to divide the zest!) and ¼ cup sugar and stir in a small bowl. Pour this over the hot bread and then let the bread cool in the pan for 10 minutes before removing to a wire rack to cool.

This is a nice moist bread. The cookbook adds a recipe for orange cream cheese which I did not make. A smear of cream cheese on a slice might be nice but it is very pleasant as is.

Banana Oat Muffins

~ nancyruth ~ 2 Comments

I finally got around to tackling the clearing out of my baking cabinet. This corner cabinet holds the flour, sugar, flavorings, and all the other items needed for baking, including pans. In removing everything before rearranging I found that I have a variety of flours that I should start using. One of these was oat flour and on the back of the bag was this recipe. It used only oat flour and rolled oats, no all-purpose flour needed. And I had some overripe bananas languishing in the freezer.

The problem with baking and wanting to bake is that Hubby and I are the only ones to eat the baked goods and we do not need to be eating all these baked goods, tasty though they may be. So Church was having a brunch which gave me opportunity to have a baking weekend. Yay! I made two things for the brunch and one for Hubby and me, mostly Hubby. This also gave me material for three blogs. Stay tuned for the others.

This recipe is on the back of a bag of Bob’s Red Mill oat flour. I could not figure out if this recipe is also on their website. They do have a number of recipes on there.

  • 2 cups oat flour
  • ½ cup rolled oats
  • 2 teaspoons baking powder
  • 1 teaspoon baking soda
  • ½ teaspoon salt
  • 1 cup mashed bananas, about 3 small
  • ¼ cup granulated sugar
  • ¼ cup brown sugar
  • ½ cup milk
  • 1/3 cup oil
  • 2 eggs
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

For this recipe I used nondairy oat milk and avocado oil. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F and put paper liners in a 12 cup muffin pan. Mix the dry ingredients in a medium bowl. Mix everything else in the bowl of your mixer to combine thoroughly. Stir these together and then divide into the muffin cups. Bake 18-20 minutes. Allow to cool in pan a few minutes before removing to wire rack to cool.

These are light and airy which surprised me. A touch of butter and jam would go well with these muffins. They had some banana flavor but it was mild.