Chocolate Biscuit Cake a la Prince William's Groom Cake....and it's no bake!!

Here is a picture of the finished cake...if you like fudgey, chocolate, flourless cakes then this is the cake for you but with an added crunch of biscuits/cookies. Prince William choose this as his Groom cake for the recent Royal Wedding and the Queen herself is said to be very fond of it and is quite miffed if any slices are missing so the staff has to keep leftovers under lock and key.

First of all you should either buy the McVities Rich Tea Biscuits the cake calls for although I myself prefer  McVities Digestives  - graham crackers will work also and even better yet shortbread - there's a recipe for Earl Grey shortbread on this blog - you'll have to do a search in the box in the column on your right as I can't do a link to a post within this blog - just leave out the tea in that recipe - I baked the biscuits/cookies myself....here's the recipe for Digestive Biscuits:

Biscuits and a glass of milk anyone?

DIGESTIVE BISCUITS:

6oz/3/4 cup 100% wholemeal flour

1 1/2oz/1/2 cup medium oatmeal (I could only find normal size so I whirled it in the coffee grinder for a little bit...that worked)

1/2 teaspoon salt

3oz/3/4 stick butter

2oz/1/4 cup brown sugar

3 tablespoons of milk

1. Mix all dry ingredients together.

2. Rub in the butter...

3. Stir in the milk until the dough comes together.

4. Roll out fairly thin on a lightly floured surface.

5. Cut into 3" rounds

6. Bake at 350F until nicely browned...allow to cool.

I have a terrible tendency to overbake my biscuits/cookies so do err on the side of them being lighter rather than darker - mine were a little too dark and therefore a little too hard.

And now for the cake...so easy!!

1 egg whisked

4oz/1 stick butter salted

1 tablespoon sugar

6oz plain/semi sweet chocolate

1 tablespoon of Golden Syrup if you have it otherwise use honey which I did

2 tablespoons cocoa powder

2oz/1/2 cup chopped walnuts

8oz digestive biscuits or rich tea if you are using them.

1. Melt 4oz of the chocolate, butter and whisked egg in the top of a double boiler until hot and well blended.

2. Add crushed biscuits, walnuts, sugar, cocoa powder and honey gently until well blended.

3 Line a 7" cake tin with greaseproof paper on the bottom and sides and pour in the choccy mixture...smooth the top and....should look like that below only smoother.

The 'cake' poured into the pan and sitting atop a copy of a new idea I am working on which will be revealed in the next post.

Allow to cool and set in the fridge for at least 3 hours. Remove from the pan and take off the paper, set on a cooling rack.

Melt the remaining 2oz of chocolate and pour over the cake as below...there's little Eleanor in the background observing the goings on! No chocolate for you...it's bad for doggies!!

I think perhaps I over baked my biscuits, which I have a tendency to do with biscuits, and they were little hard for this cake as it was difficult to cut and doesn't look as professional as some of the other versions of this cake I have seen so maybe you should invest the time in procuring yourself some Rich Tea biscuits to make your cake look like this!!

This is a 'cake' that tastes better the longer you wait before eating it  - the longer you wait the softer the biscuits/cookies get which is nice!

I have to be completely honest I have been looking forward to this cake for ever so long but either because I didn't do a good job on the Digestives OR because I am not that big a fan of chocolate (it's true!!) I just wasn't that thrilled with it...glad it didn't take too much effort. The next recipe coming along is FANTASTIC and I was thrilled with the results so do check back or look in the right hand column of this blog and sign up for the posts by e-mail which means each time I post you will get an e-mail that links right to the blog...no checking back anymore....yea!!!

Let them eat PIECAKE on April 29th!

Here is a pencil sketch I recently did for a very good client of mine...we ended up going in a different direction than this and I suddenly realized this would be a good image for this particular post!! FYI I usually do all my lettering by hand but as this was a quickie for this post I did break down and go the clonky Photoshop route...please forgive me!

Just in case you hadn't heard there will be a Royal Wedding in good old Blighty on Friday April 29th 2011...and if you'd like to celebrate then I have found and tweaked the

perfect recipe just for you!

It's PIECAKE...a cake baked in a pastry shell with pecans (or walnuts if you prefer) and toffee sauce, I made mine with maple syrup as a tribute to Maine and it is GOOD!!! Definitely worthy of Royalty and a recipe I have adapted from British Country Living...most apropos don't cha think?

Here she is in all her Piecake glory...YUM!!!!!

 

EASY PEASY SWEET TART CRUST:

Enough for one tart case about 9” diameter…nice and thin,

I am not a chunky crust personage so if you like a thicker pie crust make this for a smaller diameter pan:

Have your oven heated to 350F

1 1/2 cups/6ozs of unbleached white flour

1/2 cup/2ozs confectioners/icing sugar

1 stick + 1 tablespoon/ 4 1/2ozs butter VERY COLD

1 large egg yolk

a tad of milk or cream if your dough doesn't stick together

1. Sift dry ingredients together into a medium sized bowl.

2. Grate the butter into the dry ingreds., and rub in until like breadcrumbs.

3. Add egg yolk and blend carefully until the dough sticks together

4. Mine didn't stick together with just the egg yolk so I added baby drop by baby drop some cream until it did start to come together...be careful once it does start to come together it does so quite quickly...don't let it get sticky!!

5.Tear dough into big chunks…..place strategically in pie pan and start squushing to a create a smooth even covering of the entire pan…pop back into the pridge or freezer for 1/2 hour or so and let it get nice and cold..

The beauty of this crust is that it does NOT shrink…(although I will admit it shrank a little when baked blind as in this case...but not much!!) it stays put…good crust!!...and it tastes like a really good shortbread…yum!!

6. Pre-bake the crust for 10 minutes and then allow to cool.

The crust smushed into the pie dish

Piecake ready to go in the oven...do you see in the background someone in the house is goldleafing

THE FILLING:
4oz pecans or walnuts gently toasted for about 10 minutes at 150-200F

3 large eggs

5oz sugar (I translated this recipe from grams and the amount is odd and doesn't then translate into cups easily...sorry!!)

5oz sifted white flour unbleached

1 stick/4oz salted butter melted

10 whole walnut or pecan halves for the top of the cake.

1/2 cup maple syrup

2oz/ 1/2 stick salted butter

1. Crumble nuts into smaller pieces and sprinkle evenly over the slightly pre-baked pie crust.

2. Melt 2oz of butter with maple syrup and gently boil until the syrup foams up...allow to cool and then evenly pour over the nuts in the piecrust.

3. Beat the eggs until fluffy then add the sugar a spoonful at a time until all is added and mix is thick and pale.

4. Gently fold in the sifted flour.

5. Gently fold in the melted butter.

6. Spread this batter over the nuts and 'toffee' and then place the whole halves on the top - as above.

7. Bake in 350F oven for about 20-25 minutes until evenly browned on the surface.

8. Allow to cool before cutting...this is a great treat with a good steaming cup of tea AND it greatly improves with a couple of days keeping IF you can keep it around for that long...James and I didn't manage it...YUM!!!

Here's to a long and successful marriage for William and Kate....