Tag: baking

Absolutely nothing chocolate cake (with a cookie variation)

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A square chocolate cake drizzled in melted chocolate

Given these vile economic times that we find ourselves unwilling pawns in, I’ve resurrected this absolutely nothing chocolate cake recipe which uses no eggs, no butter, and no substitutions after a long time between bites. And it really does come together out of various dusts and a bit of tap water to form a cake that isn’t just surprisingly good, it’s just a good — and functional — chocolate cake. Now, the last thing I want to do is bring you a recipe that I’m obliged to damn through faint praise, and I was somewhat uncertain as this baked away in the oven. Yes, it’s based on the recipe that fed my childhood, but given that I also used to make myself tomato ketchup and cheese sandwiches, microwaved until either the cheese or the plastic plate was volcanically bubbling, and pretend it was pizza, I’m not sure my tastebuds’ memories can be trusted in that regard. I then repurposed this recipe for my 2013 cult hit eponymous cookbook, published through Penguin — but that was a long decade ago, and then some.

After a further, and for now, final tutu with this recipe, I am happy to report that it tastes genuinely, beguilingly fantastic. Whether a birthday is looming ominously or a vexing (or celebratory) day requires dessert, you deserve cake, regardless of possessing the means to make one. This can be that cake.

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Peanut butter chocolate chunk squares

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Sliced peanut butter chocolate chunk squares

As this food blog approaches its eighteenth turn around the sun, it occurred to me to conduct some market research (instagram story polls) to learn more about what on earth people want; especially since I am, if I may be blunt, not in a period of engagement that history books will recall as significant. Whether this blog is flourishing or flopping, I’ll still keep writing it because I genuinely love it — which means it can never truly flop — but there’s no harm in asking questions and selectively heeding their responses. Today’s recipe for peanut butter chocolate chunk squares doesn’t, alas, meet any of the data’s findings, but it is what I had prepared for this week, and even if not data-informed, it is — of course! — delicious.

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Salty pecan oat sables

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A stack of biscuits with a few sprigs of lavendar next to them

As much as I enjoy a culinary pun, I also enjoy a culinary trompe-l’œil, like my feta with chilli oil pine nuts which is doing its best to resemble both soft tofu with chili oil, and cream cheese with sweet chilli sauce — a delicious double bluff. In the case of these salty pecan oat sables, they’re endeavouring to appear as banausic and unremarkable as a biscuit can be, and yet below their drab surfaces lurk layers and layers of cunning flavour.

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Pistachio coffee salted caramel slice

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Three pieces of caramel slice arranged on a blue plate
It’s important to record how and what we eat, as a criterion of social history, reflecting us back at ourselves mouthful by mouthful. For example, when I first wrote about this salted caramel slice thirteen years ago in 2011, I said:

“There are many things in life to be afraid of. But, being a person who tends rapidly towards non-endearingly sweaty anxiety I can say this with confidence: adding salt to your caramel slice — or your caramel anything — should not be on that list of things you fear.”

Which is, in the fullness of hindsight, kind of hilarious. Salted caramel is so utterly normal now to the point of prosaic that it’s easily the default and I’m surprised when the word ‘caramel’ appears without its salted qualifier. It’s like walking in on someone in a state of half-dress — where’s its pants?

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