chocolate cake

Super Speedy Chocolate Snack Cake
Super Speedy Chocolate Snack Cake

Super Speedy Chocolate Snack Cake excerpted from Chocolate Baking: The Ultimate Guide to Cakes, Cookies, Desserts & Pastries by Edd Kimber. Photography © Matthew Hague.

Chocolate Baking: The Ultimate Guide to Cakes, Cookies, Desserts & Pastries by Edd Kimbe

A love letter to chocolate with 100 recipes to bake, taste and adore.

In this definitive collection, acclaimed pastry chef and baking expert Edd Kimber, winner of the first season of The Great British Bake Off, shares his passion for one of the world’s most beloved ingredients. You’ll find classic flavours like Chocolate and Whipped Caramel Cake, elegant layered creations such as Edd’s Hazelnut and Maple Milk Chocolate Tart, and irresistible desserts including Pistachio Tiramisu.

Edd also puts creative spins on familiar favourites with recipes like Miso and White Chocolate Cookies and S’mores Brownies, and guides readers through breads and pastries where chocolate plays a starring role, from Bistro Profiteroles to Sour Cherry Custard Buns with Cocoa Streusel.

Whether you’re baking for a special occasion or simply satisfying a weekday craving, there is something here for every kind of chocolate lover. Sometimes chocolate takes centre stage, sometimes it plays a supporting role, but every recipe is a celebration of its richness, versatility and irresistible appeal. Beautifully photographed and filled with Edd’s approachable expertise, this is a book bakers will return to long after the last crumb has disappeared.

Whether you’re baking for a special occasion or simply satisfying a weekday craving, there is something here for every kind of chocolate lover. Sometimes chocolate takes centre stage, sometimes it works quietly in the background, but every recipe celebrates the richness, versatility and pure pleasure of one of the world’s most beloved ingredients. Beautifully photographed and packed with inspiration, this is a book to return to again and again.

Chocolate Baking: The Ultimate Guide to Cakes, Cookies, Desserts & Pastries by Edd Kimber is available at Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk and Indigo.ca.   

Super Speedy Chocolate Snack Cake

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The Chocolate Cake

Chocolate Cake, Canal Hosue Cook Something, Photography by Christopher Hirsheimer

Canal House’s Melissa Hamilton and Christopher Hirsheimer are home cooks writing about home cooking for other home cooks. From a lifetime of making dinner every single night, they’ve edited their experience down to the essentials: 300 simple recipes that reveal the building blocks of all good cooking guaranteed to make you a better cook. (more…)

Hazelnut Maple Chocolate Cake

Celebrated the world over for their health benefits and dynamic flavours, cultured and fermented foods are becoming everyday meal mainstays. In this extensive collection, fermentation pioneer Holly Davis shares more than 120 recipes for familiar—and lesser-known—cultured foods, including yogurt, pickles, kimchi, umeboshi, scrumpy, and more. This inspiring resource contains more than 100 photographs, plus plenty of helpful how-tos and informational charts offering guidance on incorporating fermented ingredients into the diet. With a luxe textured cover and brimming with engaging projects for cooks of all skill levels, this cookbook will be the cornerstone of every preserving kitchen. (more…)

Cookbook Review: Eggs

Eggs, Michel RouxThe egg is the simplest and most complete food—versatile enough for the quickest of meals to the smartest of dinner parties and the favourite of patissiers and dessert chefs. With more than 30 years experience as a chef at the top of his profession, Michel Roux has garnered a vast wealth of culinary knowledge and expertise. Trained in the classic French style, but a global traveller with a passion for different cuisines, Michel uses all of his skill and experience to take a new look at one of the oldest foods of all.

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FAMILY RECIPES: Etelka’s Cocoa Chiffon Cake

I’ve come to realize that many of us have been bequeathed a cherished family recipe. Be it simple or elaborate to prepare, it’s a dish so fiendishly delicious that it is the unmistakable star of the family meal, whether celebrating triumphs, comforting woes, or keeping family traditions alive. Withholding such heirloom recipes from the world seems almost cruel. Hence, I am championing the family recipe. I will entice the people in my universe to share favourite, nostalgia-infused family recipes, and I will give one of them centre stage in this very space on a monthly basis. In the end, we are all family, and these recipes represent the legacies of our shared passions. This month’s post is written by my good friend Eva. Enjoy!

 

Etelka’s Cocoa Chiffon Cake
By Eva

The grand finale of every family birthday dinner was THE CAKE.  My mother, Etelka, always served her signature Chocolate Chiffon Cake. Festooned with  tiny, lit candles, it was ceremoniously placed before the celebrated one as the room broke into a full-throated, charmingly off-key rendition of “Happy Birthday.” (We are not a family of gifted singers.)  A hasty, silent wish, a quick whoosh to blow out the candles, and then bliss ensued as the cake was sliced, handed around and savoured.

The cake’s appearance underwent a few metamorphoses over the decades.  Sometimes it was rectangular, at other times round, depending on the baking pans my mother had on hand.  The cake’s magic lies in its ratios rather than its aesthetics. It has just enough cocoa and sugar to give chocolate lovers their fix without overpowering its rich texture, a combination of moist, delicate cake and silky icing.

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