Italian Chocolate, Nut & Orange Christmas Cake

rich, moist, nutty, cinnamony , orangy ……..  this is one of my all time favourite cakes

I have been making this cake for a few years now and have tinkered around with the original Anna Del Conte recipe and I hope the grand dame wont mind as I think my method adds a touch more body and is very easy, provided you do have an electric whisk or failing that bionic arms as it involves making a meringue. If you do not the cake will not fail, it will just be more dense and “fudgy”. The method is fun and involves blitzing up dark chocolate into chocolate “crumbs” which then melt into the cake as it bakes. Here I’ve served it with white chocolate ice cream.

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Beetroot, Walnut & Prune Brownie

Too good to be good for you!

A chocolate cake made with beetroot? No flour? no fat? no sugar? How can it taste good? and yet it does.  The beetroot gives body and sweetness too, the walnuts depth of flavour and moistness, the prunes give another hit of chewiness and good quality chocolate gives a strong chocolatey flavour.  Added to that the beetroot is full of antioxidants, as is the chocolate,the nuts pack a powerful Vitamin E punch and prunes…well we all know that prunes work miracles.  I’ve done the maths and yes they come in at less than half the calories of a regular brownie. This is a brownie recipe but I often serve them as little cubes.

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Cozonac with dark chocolate & dates

a traditional Romanian sweet yeast bread eaten at holidays especially Easter

This is Romania’s national celebratory cake and it is not dissimilar to Pannetone and for sure has some common lineage with Jewish “krantz” cakes.  Classic fillings or rather veins of nice bits that run through the cake are poppy seeds (which I like a lot), walnuts and turkish delight (which I am not so keen on but it does look pretty).  I decided to make a chocolate sauce and add some dates as i like the “pain au chocolat” type taste and I like dunking it in coffee. Its absolutely delicious eaten warm and fresh but due to the oil it does keep well.  Toasted its heavenly.

People love to recount how labour intensive and difficult cozonac is to make and I am sure it was in the days before food processors and kitchen mixers.  This recipe is easy and relies on the elbow grease of a mixer. If you have a breadmaker use that. Cozonac puffs up quite easily I find – mainly because the dough is quite sweet and the yeast can go crazy feasting on the sweet stuff. I do bother to use nice fine “00” flour conveniently labelled as “cozonac” flour in Romania.

Gadgets & Gizmos

A mixer or a breadmaker does help.  Otherwise a big plastic bowl and some elbow grease works a treat. A proper cozonac tin is good but otherwise any bread tin or even a ceramic plant pot will work well.

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