Dough for chocolate cake or cupcakes. Recipe with pictures.

Today I'll describe one of my favorite recipes. I learned it from the book that my parents gave me over 10 years ago and I still haven't found any better recipe for chocolate cake. Since the name of the book was "Learning to cook" it is clear that recipe is pretty easy. First time I made this chocolate cake for my sister's birthday. She liked it so much that she asked me to make another one so she could share it with her friends at the university. I spent some more hours by the stove, but my cake had a great success the next day. Later I tried lots of other chocolate cake recipes, but none of them were as soft and moist as this one. This time I didn't want to make big cake, so I made little cupcakes, but the recipe is the same.

You'll need

For dough

250g of flour
pinch of salt
2 tea spoons of baking soda
2 tea spoons of baking powder
6 soup spoons of cacao powder
300 g of butter
300 g of sugar
2 tea spoons of vanilla sugar
6 eggs

For chocolate glaze
200 g of dark chocolate
100 g of heavy cream


This amount of ingredients is used for a big chocolate cake. To make 12 cupcakes I took 2/3 of all the ingredients.

Making dough
1. Sift all dry ingredients for a dough: flour, baking soda, baking powder, cacao powder and salt

2. In another bowl mix eggs, sugar and soft butter
3. Add dry ingredients into egg-sugar-butter mixture by portions. After each portion mix everything drawing eights. (8) This way dough will get air and it will rise better during baking.

4. Ready chocolate dough should look like this (have a consistence of sour cream)
5. Then, if you want to make chocolate cake divide the dough into two parts and bake in a baking form about 20-30 minutes at 180C. (try if it is ready with a knife)
I made this dough to make cupcakes, so I put it in a cupcake form and baked them.

Making chocolate glaze

To make glaze you need to put chocolate and heavy cream in a little bowl. Then boil some water in a metal pot and put the bowl with chocolate and cream on top of it. I usually do it like that (there is chocolate and butter on the picture, this picture is for another recipe, I put it here to illustrate how it is done)
While water in a metal pot is boiling, it is heating the bottom of the bowl on top and chocolate melts. Don't forget to mix the glaze. It will be ready when the chocolate melts completely. Then take the bowl from stove and cool it down. If you want to make chocolate cake use 1/3 of glaze between cake layers and 2/3 to cover the top and sides of the cake. This is how the cake looks if you use all the ingredients
In cake below I used 2/3 of ingredients for dough, there were also 2 layers, in the middle I used the same glaze only with white chocolate and decorated cake with lady fingers. I took it to work for my last birthday and everyone liked it.
If you're making cupcakes, use glaze to cover their tops.

Of course you can improvise - you can put some chocolate pieces in a cupcakes, add some nuts in a glaze, moisture cake with juice or liquor. It will make it only better! Don't be afraid to use your imagination, I am sure that it will be worth it.

EASY sponge cake recipe with pictures

Hei!

Sorry for not posting for such a long time, but here I am now! I've been ill for 2 weeks already, so I am sitting home and baking, baking, baking... (somebody stop me=)). Yesterday I tried a new and very easy recipe of sponge cake. The ingredients are ordinary and it takes about 30 min to prepare (10 min of work, 20 min of baking). Although it's so easy and fast to make, it has nice spongy structure and good taste. Make any cream of your choice and you'll get a beautiful cake for a birthday or just to enjoy with tea in the evening. So, here it is!

To make this sponge cake you'll need

4 eggs
150 ml of sugar (2/3 of cup)
100 ml of flour (1/2 of cup)
100 ml of potato starch (1/2 of cup)
1 tea spoon of baking powder
pinch of salt

Mix eggs and sugar together very well, so the mixture was almost white and doubled in size, mix another (dry) components together in another bowl

Carefully add dry components to egg mixture and mix batter with a spoon, put it in the buttered form for a cake
Bake about 20 minutes at 180C.


N.B. I baked this sponge cake in one piece, because I needed it for crumbs. If you want to make classical layered cake, I suggest you to divide batter into 2-3 parts (depends on how much layers you want) and bake them separately. You should do that because during baking cake rises more in the middle and also it is not very comfortable to cut cake into layers after baking, it's better to bake each layer separately.

I hope this sponge cake recipe will help you and your life will become little bit sweeter=)

Pastry for crispy thin waffles (recipe with pictures)

Thin crispy waffles are very special topic for me. I like them so much, that I wanted to buy waffle maker all my life, but I didn't because I thought that this will bring me at least 5 kilos, as I will eat them from dust till dawn all the time. In reality even when I got my precious waffle maker it didn't happen like that because I am too lazy to make them so often. Another question was to find the right recipe and eventually I did. It took me about a year, but you've got an amazing opportunity to learn this recipe of crispy thin waffles right away! I suggest you to use it.

So, first of all you need a waffle maker (for making thin waffles - I don't know if recipe suits for thick ones).

Now we can talk about recipe of waffles itself

To get about 15-20 waffles you need

125 g of soft butter or margarine
130g of sugar
3 eggs
100 g of potato starch (makes them crispy)
100 g of flour
1/2 cup of milk
1/3 tea spoon of salt

Recipe is very easy, the most difficult thing you need to do is divide egg whites from the yolks and whip egg whites with half of sugar. Other sugar mix with yolks, butter, add salt and milk, when mixture is homogeneous - add potato starch and flour. Now you should add whipped egg whites and mix everything WITH A SPOON!
That's all, now butter the waffle maker while it's cold, warm it up for about 3-5 minutes and make waffles. Don't forget that you should put waffle pastry only on the central part of waffle maker! This thin waffles are amazing with whipped cream, caramel, melted chocolate or condensed milk and of course you can experiment with fillings.

p.s. Remember - if you want to give shape to your waffle, you can do it only right away, after just some seconds it will be an impossible thing to do.

Shortcrust pastry (recipe with pictures)

The moment has come! Now is the turn of shortcrust pastry, which was the last one in my original list. Of course, it won't be the end of my pastry recipes, because those that I have already shown are basic ones and there are many other very interesting pastry recipes out there. Tradition of recipes with pictures will continue, as well as counting calories tradition.

And now a little about Shortcrust pastry. This kind of pastry is perfect for crunchy biscuits, sweet and savory pies, tarts. One of the main ingredients of shortcrust pastry is a butter or margarine,this is why is type of pastry is a not very light. Eggs, on the other hand, that often play an important role, fade into the background.

I made this pastry to make sweet biscuits called "Cigarettes"
Here they are

I made those when I was little with my father and that was very fun! So i think that children would find "making cigarettes" amusing.

To make about 750g of sweet shortcrust pastry (that is about 35 big tasty "cigarettes") you need

Sour cream 20.0% fat (50.0 grams) (there is no sour cream in original recipe, but I put little bit - it makes pastry little more soft and I like it more this way)
1 egg (60.0 grams) Flour (375.0 grams) Sugar (150.0 grams) Margarine, 60% th fat (125.0 grams) + 2 tea spoons of cinnamon + 1 tea spoon of baking powder
How to make

It is made very easily. Just mix all ingredients except flour with a spoon or mixer

Then put the flour by portions and mix the shortcrust pastry with hands. It looks like this when it's ready.

You can make many tasty and beautiful things with this pastry, something like this


If you want to make cigarette biscuits, divide the shortcrust pastry into pieces (number of pieces depends on the number of biscuits you want to get) . I got about 35 pieces.

Roll the cigarettes, put on the oven tray

And bake for about 15-20 minutes in oven. (180C)
If you don't want your shortcrust pastry to be sweet - don't put the sugar.

Counting calories - part II

Today I will continue counting calories of the pastry and dough recipes I gave. The topic will be puff pastry - how much calories each recipe contains (quick and long versions)

Puff pastry (quick version)

In recipe you take (about)

200g of butter or margarine
2 cups of flour
1/2 tea spoon of salt
1 tea spoon of sugar

And get 510 g of puff pastry, 100 of which contains

calories - 415,6
carbohydrates - 44 g
fats - 24 g
proteins - 6,7 g

Then goes puff pastry (long version)
In recipe you take (about)

1 egg
1 tea spoon of sugar
1 tea spoon of salt
1 big spoon of vinegar (7-9%)
1 big spoon of oil
about 200 ml of water
3.5 cups of flour (about 500g)
200 g of butter or unsweetened margarine

And get 918 g of puff pastry, 100 g of which contains

calories - 339.6
carbohydrates - 39.8 g
fats - 17.2 g
proteins - 7 g
So, if you have some time, there is a point to make a long version of puff pastry, it has more layers, rises better and has less calories and fat.

Choux pastry (recipe with pictures)

Yesterday I decided to make eclairs and for that I had to do choux pastry.

Pluses of choux pastry
1. It's volume increases during baking by 2-3 times, that means that you get PLENTY of eclairs or whatever you are making with this pastry.
2. It doesn't need any time to rest after preparing
3. It is ready within 15 minutes in oven

Minuses
1. Look up at plus number 1, since my recipe of this pastry is for about 50-60 eclairs I used oven 3 times, but result is totally worth it !

To make choux pastry you'll need

250 ml of water
100g of butter
pinch of salt
250 g of flour
4-6 eggs

How to make choux pastry

1. Sift a flour

2.

Pour water in a pan, add butter, salt and boil everything until the butter melts




When the butter has melted and mixture is boiling mix it with flour






Then put the pan with pastry back on the stove and mix everything until you get an even shiny pastry and some white sediment on the bottom of the pan



Then put the pastry in the clean bowl and mix 1 egg into it





When the pastry is mixed well you can add another egg. This way you add all the eggs, I used 4 big eggs, but if you see that it isn't enough, add 1 or 2 more. The pastry should look like this

(you should be able to put the pastry in the cake decorator)
That is all! I used cake decorator to make stripes for eclairs, you can use it too or just a spoon, by the way many people say that choux pastry treats are more crunchy if you use spoon to put them on the baking tray.
And this is how I made eclairs





For eclairs is usually used scalded cream, to make it you need

500 ml of milk
200 g of sugar
1 egg
1 table spoon of flour
1 table spoon of starch
100 g of soft unsweetened butter

How to make scalded cream

Put all ingredients except butter in the pot, mix with a mixer then put on the small heat and mix all the time. After few minutes you will see that consistence of the cream becomes thicker. Then you take it from the stove and let it cool down. When it is cold, mix a soft butter in it and put in the fridge for at least 20 minutes. I recommend to start making eclairs with cream, this way when it will be cooling down - you can make a pastry, so you will use your time wisely.

Counting calories!

Today we' ll be counting calories, fats, carbohydrates, proteins in some of the pastry recipes I gave, because I know that every woman would like to know this.

So, let's start with unleavened dough

In recipe you take (about)
egg - 60g
flour - 400g
salt - 3g
oil - 30g
water - 170g

And get 663 g of dough, 100 of which contains

calories - 256
carbohydrates - 42 g
fats - 6 g
proteins - 8 g

Then goes yeast dough
In recipe you take (about)
2 eggs - 120g
milk - 500g
flour - 1000 g
sugar - 30g (not sweet dough)
butter - 50g
yeast - 50g

And get 1750 g of yeast dough, 100 g of which contains

calories - 254
carbohydrates - 44 g
fats - 5 g
proteins - 9 g

And if you make sweet yeast dough (add 250 g of sugar)
You get 2000 g of sweet yeast dough, 100 g of which contains

calories - 272
carbohydrates - 51 g
fats - 4 g
proteins - 8 g

That's it for today, later I'll count the calories in other dough types too.