Do not let the ingredients fool you, mocha cake is very easy to make and turns out well every time. A pleaser for coffee lovers and keeps well for one week at room temperature. The recipe is from an old issue of Burda-Cookery magazine. You will find below the exact recipe though I did not use the icing and covered the cake with melted chocolate instead. The holly leaves are made of marzipan, colored with dots of red and green food colouring. I am really not keen on using even the safest additives; but once a year would not harm anyone ( I hope!?)
- 6 tablespoons ground coffee
- 200 gr butter (room temperature)
- 175 gr sugar
- 1 sachet vanilla sugar
- pinch of salt
- 2 teaspoons cinnamon
- 4 eggs
- 200 gr ground almonds
- 200 gr all purpose flour
- 1 sachet baking powder
- 100 gr grated chocolate
- 3 tablespoons Amaretto liqueur
- 300 gr icing sugar
- 100 gr marzipan (almond paste)
For the start heat the oven to 175C and brew 200 ml very strong coffee and set aside to cool. In a mixing bowl stir together butter, sugar, vanilla sugar, salt and cinnamon. Then add the eggs one by one and keep stirring until the sugar has completely dissolved. Add 125 ml coffee, ground almonds, flour, baking powder and grated chocolate and stir. Fill the dough into a greased start shaped pan and place in the oven for one hour (mine took additional 10 minutes to
be done). Turn the cake out of the tin and allow to cool on a wire rack. Drip the Amaretto on the cake while it is hot.
The original recipe recommends sifting 250 gr icing sugar and kneading it to a smooth paste by adding the remaining coffee, then covering the cake with it. The remaining sugar is added to almond paste, rolled out and cut in star shapes to decorate the cake. I used a mixture of 100 gr melted dark couverture and 50ml cream, poured it over the cake and added the leaves. You can also leave it plain ( even less calories:-) and just sift some powdered sugar on the cake.
I make this cake at new years's eve and my mother in law hides a coin inside. After the change of the year we cut the cake in portions according to the number of the guests and who finds the coin in his/her part would be the luckiest in the coming year.
HAPPY NEW YEAR TO ALL!!!!
Hello,
if you too, are addicted to the smell of homemade bread coming from your oven and reminding you of all the good things; you must be a homebaker. I have my breadmaker for two years now and from the very start, we stopped eating bread from bakeries. Although we got bored pretty soon from the "cubic" loaf which was the only shape the machine could have produced; I started preparing the dough inside the machine and shaping it myself to be cooked in the oven.
It quickly became a habit and now whatever recipe I can adapt; is being prepared in the machine. Especially for pizza, I prepare a big batch of dough and put them in the freezer for future use. It is not the only advantage of the machine that you keep your hands clean; it also makes the first rise of the dough guaranteed!
The recipe below is the basic one which is in the leaflet of the machine. Since every manifacturer recommends different order to place the ingredients in the machine, I am not giving details about mine. The measuring cup and the spoon are standard for every machine though:
- 4 cups all purpose flour
- 1.5 cups water (or a mix of water+milk)
- 1/2 tablespoon vegetable oil
- 1 big measuring spoon sugar (10gr)
- 1 small measuring spoon instant yeast (5gr)
- 1 small measuring spoon salt
I use this recipe also for making pizza dough. According to your liking, you can replace 1 cup of white flour with 1 cup of rye,barley or multigrain flour. Poppy seeds, sun dried tomatoes, chopped black olives or roasted coarsely chopped walnuts will add flavours to your bread which would be your unique signature.
The loaf before the second rise ...and after right after coming out from the oven....
