The combination of home-baking and chocolate has to be a winner for Valentine’s Day, and I offer you my heart-shaped chocolate cake. The decoration is only a suggestion. You may prefer to cover the cake completely with melted chocolate which will set to a shiny glaze.
On to this you can pipe a name, a message, what you will. My decoration was simply a heart-shaped doily placed on the cake, over which I then dusted icing sugar. The ‘blank’ heart-shaped space in the middle I filled with melted chocolate, on which I scattered Modica chocolate chips.
In the past I gave anything labelled cooking chocolate a wide berth – it was generally not chocolate and certainly not suitable for cooking. As with wine, only use chocolate you would consume. The Lindt range works well in most dishes, and I also like to look out for Italian chocolate.
The commercial Novi range is very good in the kitchen – even the bars labelled cooking chocolate.
Even without Valentine’s Day, I would be thinking about chocolate. February is a month that needs treats, and afternoon chocolate is the perfect winter alternative to afternoon tea, often served in grand hotels, and absolutely irresistible. As well as the traditional scones and sandwiches, a selection of chocolate pastries is served: chocolate tart, intense chocolate cake, chocolate eclairs, chocolate choux buns, chocolate brownies, chocolate and almond biscuits etc.
February is a month that needs treats, and afternoon chocolate is the perfect winter alternative to tea
As well as tea, a traditional Spanish-style hot chocolate, thick and rich, is served. I do not recommend the commercial chocolate powder as it is very sweet with little chocolate content.
The French are now choosing to snack as they used to do as children, rather than opting for an elegant five o’ clock à l’anglaise. So hot chocolate, pain au chocolat, brownies (a favourite adopted pastry) madeleines, gaufrettes, sablés Breton, warm brioche and chocolate eclairs are being served in salons de thé all over Paris.
Even chocolate croissants made their appearance in Yannick Alléno’s kitchen when he was at Le Meurice, using cocoa powder in the dough. And naturally the makers of fine tableware are already on the case, with their bowls, jugs and ‘new’ old-fashioned chocolate pots. Chocolate-scented candles, anyone?
What to drink with chocolate cake? The wine served with chocolate, as with any dessert, should be sweeter than the chocolate, so avoid thin wines, and certainly avoid champagne, even the demi-sec and riche are not up to the job, although the French think they are. Choose instead a luscious fortified wine, such as a Madeira, a Marsala, a Pedro Ximenez sherry or a reserve port. With these you will have a match of rich deep flavours and textures, and certainly with the latter, rich fruit and lively tannins, as well as plum, cherry and ripe berry sweetness.
With the Pedro Ximenez, you will think you are be drinking liquid raisins, and similarly with the Marsala. Madeira, especially the sweeter Bual and even sweeter Malmsey, will give an added note of caramel.
Chocolate brownie hearts
(Makes 24 squares or 18 hearts)
150g unsalted butter
50g chocolate bar at least 70% cocoa solids
6 eggs
500g light muscovado sugar
1 tsp pure vanilla essence or 1 tbsp pure chocolate essence
120g cocoa
200g plain flour
½ coffee spoon Gozo salt
175g chopped walnuts or pecans
Melt the butter and chocolate in a bowl set over hot water then allow the mixture to cool. Beat the eggs and sugar until pale and creamy. Stir in the cooled butter and chocolate mixture and the essence. Sift the cocoa and flour together, and fold into the batter until well mixed. Stir in the salt and nuts. Butter and flour 18 heart-shaped tins or line a 25-30cm square tin, about five centimetres deep, with foil, and grease it well. Spoon in the batter and bake in a preheated oven at 170˚C/Gas Mark 3 for about 25 to 30 minutes for the hearts and 40 to 45 minutes for the single tin, depending on the depth of the tin. When cooked, a skewer inserted in the middle of the cake will still emerge slightly sticky; insert it about five to seven centimetres from the edge, and if the cake is properly cooked, the skewer will be clean. Remove the heart-shaped tins from the oven and cool the brownies in their tins.
Remove the large cake from the tin and cool, still in foil, on a wire rack. When cold, wrap carefully in foil, and leave for at least eight hours, for the moisture in the cake to be evenly distributed. Cut the large cake into squares. The individual hearts can be served as a dessert with cream or custard.
For double-chocolate brownies, leave out the nuts and replace with chopped chocolate. Triple-chocolate brownies include chopped white chocolate.
Spanish chocolate
(Serves 6)
1 flat tablespoon cornflour
600ml full-cream milk
3 tbsps cream
1 vanilla pod, or cinnamon stick, or 2 blades of mace
Pinch of Gozo salt
Pinch of freshly ground black pepper or chilli
200g chocolate bar, 70% cocoa solids
Heat the cups by filling them with boiling water.
Mix the cornflour with two tablespoons milk until smooth.
Put the rest of the milk and cream with the spice, salt and pepper in a saucepan, and scald it; that is, bring to the point where tiny bubbles appear around the edge of the pan. Stir in the cornflour mix and cook for a minute or two more until the milk thickens almost imperceptibly. Break up the chocolate and put it in a bowl, standing in very hot water. Pour the milk over the chocolate and stir until the chocolate has melted. Let it stand for a few minutes for the flavours to infuse. Strain it into a heated jug, whisk to a froth, if you like, and serve very hot.
Rich chocolate Valentine’s cake
100g chocolate bar of at least 70% cocoa solids
125ml chocolate or coffee liqueur, or espresso or other strong black coffee; or use a mixture of these liquids
100g unsalted butter, softened
150g light muscovado or caster sugar
Half a teaspoon pure vanilla essence
3 eggs, separated
200g self-raising flour sifted with 25g cocoa and 1 tsp ground mixed spice
125ml plain yoghurt, sour cream or soured milk
For the filling:
100g chocolate – at least 70% cocoa solids
200ml double cream
Icing sugar – see recipe
Grease and flour a heart-shaped sponge tin.
Put the broken up chocolate in a bowl over hot water, and add the liquid. Leave until the chocolate has melted, and stir.
Put the rest of the ingredients, except the egg whites, in the food processor and process for 25 seconds, stopping and scraping down the sides with a spatula halfway through. Add the chocolate mixture, and process for a couple of seconds more.
Whisk the egg whites until firm and snowy, and fold lightly into the cake mixture with a metal spoon, having first removed the bowl from the processor and taken out the blade.
Spoon the mixture into the prepared tin, smoothen the surface and bake in the middle of a preheated oven at 180˚C/Gas Mark 4 for about 40 minutes, or until a skewer inserted into the middle emerges clean. Allow the cake to cool for a few minutes then carefully ease out of the tin and turn it on to a wire rack.
When completely cool, split the cake in two. The underneath of the cake becomes the smooth flat top surface for you to decorate. The original top surface may have cracked in the baking, or risen to a point, in which case, take off a thin slice to enable the cake to balance evenly. Make a ganache by melting the chocolate in the double cream, which you then beat as it cools to thicken it. Sandwich the two halves of the cake with this filling and decorate the top as you wish. For example, another idea is to glaze the cake with sieved, warmed apricot jam and sift over it fine flakes of chocolate, using a grater and a very cold bar of chocolate.