Chocolate Fudge Cake

For my dad's birthday, he asked for an extremely dense, chocolatey cake. So be warned, this recipe is definitely not suited for you if you are on a diet. ;) Since I used dark chocolate with 80% cocoa, the cake turned out rather bitter than sweet (which went great with vanilla ice cream, I might add), however chocolate with 60% or less cocoa should work just fine if you are more into sweeter cakes. 

Ingredients:

Dough:

• 1 1/4 cup milk
• 1/2 cup sunflower oil
• 250g dark chocolate
• 1/2 cup hot coffee
• 1 3/4 cups flour
• 1 1/4 cup sugar 
• 1/2 cup cocoa
• 2 eggs
• 2 tsps baking powder
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 1 pack vanilla sugar

Ganache:

•  250g dark chocolate
• 1 cup cream
• 1 pack vanilla sugar

 Preheat the oven to 160 °C (fan oven) or 180 °C (upper and lower heat).

Slowly melt the dark chocolate in a sauce pan together with the oil, coffee and sugar. Mix the remaining dry ingredients (flour, cocoa, baking powder, cinnamon and vanilla sugar) in a bowl. Add chocolate mixture, eggs and milk and mix.

Line the baking form with oil or butter to avoid sticking. Pour the cake batter into the form and let it bake for approximately 50 minutes (you can use a toothpick to check whether the cake is done).

Do not worry about cracks in the surface of your cake, as these will get covered by the ganache, anyways. Add the vanilla sugar, cream and dark chocolate to a saucepan and slowly melt the chocolate for the ganache. Let the ganache cool down in the refrigerate for about 45 minutes so that the texture becomes less liquid. If you want an extremely thick layer of ganache on your cake, just keep it in the refrigerator for a longer period of time.

As you can see, I was a little impatient, since the ganache was still pretty fluid. ;)

 I hope your cakes turn out well and please come back for more recipes! :)

Spitzbuben - "Redcurrant christmas cookies"

Another German christmas-classic to finish off this year's holiday season. While these are absolutely delicious, I am usually a bit hesitant to bake these, since you basically only end up with half as many cookies as you bake. This is due to the fact that the cookies consist of two cookie layers separated by redcurrant jam. The dough is fairly easy to prepare and aside from the redcurrant jam, the ingredients are pretty basic and should therefore be easy to find in your local supermarket.

Ingredients:

Dough:

•  300g flour
• 100g sugar
• 200g butter
• 1 egg

Other:

• Redcurrant jam
• Confectioner's sugar 

Preheat the oven to 180 °C (fan oven) or 200-210 °C (upper and lower heat). Chop the butter into very small portions and add all ingredients to a mixing bowl in the order mentioned above. Knead the dough until the mixture is even. If you use your hands to knead, cool them before you get started (for example through cold water) to keep the dough as cold as possible, as it will get sticky otherwise. Refrigerate the dough for 1-2 hours. Spread flour on a surface and use a rolling pin to get a dough thickness of approximately 0.2 cm.

 Feel free to use whichever kind of cookie cutter you have at home, however Spitzbuben are traditionally flower-shaped.

Use a small circular cookie cutter to remove the center of every second cookie. 

Bake the cookies for approximately 10 minutes. Cover all cookies without holes with redcurrant jam and put one of the cookies with a hole on top. Squeeze lightly and remove all excess jam pressed out on the sides. 

Lightly dust all cookies with sifted confectioner's sugar.

I hope everyone enjoyed christmas day with their loved ones and please check back for more recipes to keep you busy during the upcoming winter months!