Gâteau au chocolat et crème de marrons (Chocolate and chestnut spread cake)

This simply yet utterly amazing recipe came from a lovely French friend Aurelia. She is very giving with her recipes, and we are often found discussing food and recipes at length. Now living in NZ, having been born in France, she has a wealth of recipes I've never heard of. This is one of them.

What I still marvel at, with this recipe, is the sum of the ingredients are exponentially more exciting than what you'd expect

 

100g dark chocolate (I used Whittaker's Dark Ghana)

100g butter

3 eggs

Approx. 370g chestnut paste (you can buy this at specialty food stores and online) I buy at La Cave or Maison Vauron

2 handfuls of walnut pieces (optional)

Melt butter and chocolate and let cool 2 minutes.

Mix eggs and chestnut paste.

Add chocolate mixture.

Mix well.

Add walnuts and pour into buttered dish and cook between 20-30 minutes @200°

Bon appetit x

My son who has never liked "cake" is a great fan of this dessert, I made it last month for his 15th Birthday (this blog has featured many of his "not cake" birthday desserts over the years)

It didn't look overly celebratory with just candles so I crushed some chocolate coated honeycomb and sprinkled over the top.

We always serve with vanilla bean ice cream

Dome shape desserts using millionaires caramel from Kiwicakes

These delicious desserts were made by my 13 year old at Christmas time, using an idea given to her by the lovely Laurel Watson (dessert lady extraordinaire). With three simply ingredients, these are actually created from ready made ingredients, which made it easier for my 13 year old to cope with.

Using an size sphere shaped mould fill 2/3 full with either white or dark Bakel's truffle (a type of ready made ganache avilable from Kiwicakes) cut circles of trifle sponge slightly smaller than the dome using a round cutter and press down in to the truffle mix. They have a tendency to want to float upwards, we found poking a hole in them with a skewer helped the trapped air escape making them less likely to do this. Freeze.

Remove from freezer. taking a sharp knife gently remove some of the sponge. Taking some warmed millionaires caramel, to which we added some sea salt (30 seconds in microwave), fill a piping bag and pipe a small amount in to each cavity. Replace sponge discs on top of caramel and freeze again.

After 30 mins (or longer) remove from freezer and spread more truffle sealing the base. Freeze again.

Once frozen to this stage, the desserts are ready in their basic form, as we were ready to serve we took a strawberry and dipped it in the opposite colour truffle, placing the strawberry on the frozen dessert provided the chill factor needed to set the strawberry coating

I prefered the look of the drip above, however if you prefer the neater look below, this was how they naturally ocurred, I had to encourage the drip above by giving it a slight shake.

Banana Cloud Cakes - from Kiwicakes test kitchen

These dessert cakes are topped with a yummy vanilla cream, whipped up in minutes. There's no last minute dash to the supermarket to buy cream when Easy Frost is on standby in your pantry! I love the pure white billowy texture and my family loved the taste.

  

I simply made a vanilla cake recipe with a couple of drops of banana creme oil flavouring added. I cooked it as individual shapes in my greased and floured dessert shell pans. Remember not to fill batter too high as they will rise. You could make a favourite cake like coffee, carrot or red velvet and take these desserts in any direction. Turn them out to cool on a wire rack.

Many of us bakers have a stack of various pans stashed in the cupboard. Get them out, dust them off and enjoy the novelty shapes! Nowadays you can also buy 6-12 cavity pans of funky shapes like snowflakes, baskets, fluted bowl and square to jazz up your food presentation.

I trimmed the bases of my mini cakes slightly so would stand up straight. Then I simply followed the packet instructions for Easy Frost vanilla mock creme and piled it in.

Some fresh banana slices and some banana candy topped this desert off nicely and it was a hit with all ages.