bakes - Travels for Taste

Put all your eggs into one basket for this exciting linky bloggers!

The new year seems to be hurtling us ahead in time at a lightning speed. January came and went in the blink of an eye! And before we know it we are already in Feb and the annual frenzy surrounding Valentine’s day seems to be in the air.

Every evening while I return from my evening stroll I happen to pass by a beautiful flower shop. The florist has gone a bit overboard this year with a massive heart-shaped display of red roses, red balloons and cute cuddly teddy bears! I think looking at that window display every day has subconsciously influenced me into purchasing a heart-shaped baking tray – believe me, I have resisted for many years now but this year, I just succumbed to the temptation.

So a heart-shaped cake or two will soon feature on the blog! That got my co-hosts, Jo and Karen thinking about the theme for this month’s #TeaTimeTreats linky and we all unanimously agreed on EGGS!

The vital ingredient to most sweet and savoury #TeaTimeTreats, eggs are not just for breakfast! Think muffins, cakes, cupcakes, sandwiches, quiches, french toast, pakodas, sweet and savoury delights! The possibilities are endless 🙂 Afternoon tea never felt so egg-citing 😉

Just a few reasons we at the #TeaTimeTreats team love EGGS!

Eggs are so versatile to cook with and they are easy on the pocket.
Eggs are DELICIOUS , great for kids and adults alike.
ONE egg has 13 essential vitamins and minerals.
ONE egg contains 6 gms of protein – wow!
Eggs are an egg-cellent source of vitamin D, vitamin B12, phosphorus and riboflavin
Eggs are great for those looking to loose weight as they can easily be incorporated into a healthy meal plan to support a regular exercise regime.

Chocolate Coconut Cake with Coconut flavoured Icing

Ragi and Blueberry Pancakes , Finger Millet Blueberry Pancakes, Nachni chya god polya

So please do join in and link up with us for this month’s #TeaTimeTreats linky, can’t wait to see your cakes, pancakes, bakes, muffins, rolls, wraps, stuffed delights, crispy delights, fried temptations, based goodies, sweet treats, savoury treats and other creative recipes with egg as one of the ingredients- bring it on!

Meanwhile, if you are looking for some recipe inspiration for leftover ingredients from Christmas that are still lurking around in your freezers, then have a look at these 7 creative ideas to have some fun cooking for tea.

7 tea time treat recipe ideas – January 2017 #TeaTimeTreats recipe round-up by Jo of Jo’s Kitchen Blog.

Just a gentle reminder of some simple rules to follow while linking up to #TeaTimeTreats

Rules:

Post your recipe on your blog with a link to Lavender and Lovage, Travels for Taste and Jo’s Kitchen and mention the relevant month’s host and attach the Tea Time Treats logo as shown on the event page.
Add Tea Time Treats in your blog post as a label/tag.
The recipe can be one of your own or one you’ve seen elsewhere. You are welcome to republish old recipes/posts but please add the information about this challenge.
Please be as creative with the theme as you like.
If you put your post on Twitter please mention @KarenBurnsBooth, @travelsfortaste, @Jos_Kitchen and #teatimetreats in your message and we will re-tweet all those we see.
You do not need to enter every month to join in with the challenge.
Your post can be submitted for other blogging challenges, just make sure this complies with the rules of the other challenge.
VIP: Add your recipe link to the live linky posted at the bottom of every challenge post.
If using a recipe from another person, book, website, chef or blog, you must link back to the original recipe and not reproduce the recipe in full in your post. You must also use your OWN images for the recipe and not the original images, unless you have permission to do so, with appropriate links and any other information requested by the photo’s owner added to the image.

Get your creative hats on bloggers and make some magic happen with those eggs! Am so egg-cited to see what you come up with! (Don’t blame for being so egg-static!)

(Copy and paste the code below into your Text editor to embed the logo into your blog post)

<div align="center"><a href="http://www.lavenderandlovage.com/tea-time-treats" title="Tea Time

Please add you Afternoon Tea and Tea Time Treats recipe links below!
THANK YOU and have a dreamy, happy and lovely February 2017, may every tea time be filled with inspirational recipes and eggy treats!
Manjiri, Karen and Jo xxx

Decadent Chocolate cake with a delicious coconut flavoured icing

Dreaming of a chocolate cake, baking it, and devouring it, is a common obsession of mine. Also, I had many excuses to bake chocolatey treats, what with Valentine’s just around the corner. Not to mention many other reasons to eat cake following in quick succession after Valentines – my dad and husband’s birthday and our wedding anniversary, woohoo!

With so many occasions all lined up one after the other, a mega celebration was in order. And as we all know any celebration, big or small is incomplete without, yes you guessed right a proper cake.

So my plan was to bake an indulgent and rich chocolate cake and how better than Nigella to look to for a good recipe! Unable to pick a recipe on my own, I asked my neighbour’s adorable 5-year daughter to flip through Nigella Lawson’s book ”Feast” – Food That Celebrates Life. Lucky for me she stopped flipping pages at Nigella’s Old Fashioned Chocolate cake recipe. Better still it is made using only the food processor – so very perfect.

Besides, no better way to bring in Valentine’s week than by baking a decadent chocolate cake with hints of coconut flavour and adding some coconut flavoured icing on the top. I love Nigella’s original recipe which I have (dared to!) modify as I had been thinking of ways to use the lovely samples sent to me by Sugar and Crumbs.

I have modified the original recipe by using three medium-sized regular eggs, thick yogurt instead of sour cream, and have reduced the quantity of ingredients for the icing because I am not a big fan of slathering a very thick layer of sugary icing in between the layers nor am I very fond of a huge layer of icing on the top but I guess even after reducing the quantities of ingredients for the icing I still managed to get lots to smother the cake with. I have used Sugar and Crumbs flavoured cocoa powder in Chocolate Coconut and Sugar and Crumbs flavored natural icing sugar in coconut flavour, result – a perfectly balanced taste of coconut without being overpowering. So am calling my cake – ”Chocolate Coconut Cake with Coconut flavoured Icing”.For the remaining part, the original recipe is perfect, basic, simple, and therefore beautiful as it is foolproof and even a novice can get an excellent delicious, fluffy, and intensely chocolatey cake – very satisfying indeed! Thank You, Nigella!

Chocolate Coconut Cake

Easy and delicious Chocolate cake recipe

Print Recipe

Prep Time 25 mins

Cook Time 25 mins

Course Dessert

Servings 8 portions

Equipment

Two 8 inch Round cake tins
Food Processor or stand-mixer
Spatula
Measuring spoons
Cake tester or thin skewer

Ingredients

200 grams plain flour
200 grams caster sugar
1 teaspoon baking powder
40 grams Sugar and Crumbs flavoured cocoa powder in Chocolate Coconut
½ teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
175 grams soft unsalted butter
3 medium-sized eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
150 ml thick-set yogurt

Instructions

Sift the plain flour through a sieve into a large mixing bowl
Add the caster sugar, cocoa powder, baking soda, and bicarbonate of soda
Mix well with a spatula and transfer it into the food processor
Crack the eggs into the mixture, add the vanilla essence and the yogurt and mix roughly with a spatula before running the food processor to ensure that the loose flour doesn’t fly all over the place. For the first 30 seconds, I lightly covered the chute of the processor with my palm to prevent the flour from flying out in a mist. Now, this is the reason I want a Kitchen Aid 😉
After an initial spin, use the blunt edge of the knife to scoop out what stuck to the walls of the processor and mix well with the cake batter.
Don’t worry if you think the batter is very thick, another spin for about a minute should give you the required consistency to ”pour” into the cake tins
Grease two removable base 8-inch tins with butter and equally divide the cake batter into each tin
Preheat the oven to gas mark 4/180°C/350ºF
Bake for 25 minutes and then test the center of the cake with a cake tester or thin skewer
My cakes were done in 25 minutes but you may need up to 30 minutes depending on the type of oven. The cakes rose beautifully but the top had cracks. The icing was there to save the day and make the cake look pretty
Remove cakes from the baking tray and leave to cool down on a wire rack

Coconut flavoured Icing

Print Recipe

Ingredients

50 grams unsalted butter
125 grams best quality dark chocolate broken into small pieces
225 grams icing sugar
100 ml sour cream
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Instructions

While the cakes are in the oven prepare the icing by mixing together all the ingredients of the icing
The original recipe calls for adding golden syrup but I totally gave that a miss
Why? Because I had already borrowed some butter, some yogurt, baking powder, and bicarbonate of soda from my very patient neighbour H 😉 – yes, yes she did get a large portion of this cake 🙂
Now to ice the cakes place the slightly domed part of one cake face down and slather icing on the flat part and place the other cake flat side down on the icing and then slather icing all over the cake
I had some pretty pink and white sugar stars which I used to decorate my cake.

I have also been sent Sugar and Crumbs Coffee Flavoured icing sugar and a pack of salted caramel powder, maybe cupcakes need to be baked next ?:)

Need more recipe inspiration to get baking?

Why not check out my other recipes here:

Linking this post to the We should Cocoa event hosted by Choclette who blogs at Choc Log Blog where the challenge is to use an ingredient and that ingredient is chocolate – how apt for Valentines, and with all that gorgeous dark chocolate this cake certainly qualifies!

My blog post is being linked to Dom’s Random Recipes event hosted by Dom who blogs at Belleau Kitchen, where for February the challenge is to select any chocolate-themed recipe book and to make a randomly selected recipe from that book. The idea of this recipe challenge is to make us home chefs step outside our comfort zones and make something that we would otherwise hesitate to and totally avoid. Humm okay, I got off easy this time 🙂

Also for the first time. I’m joining in with Jibber Jabber’s Love Cake first ever event where the theme for the month of love BAKING WITH PASSION and is a cake-baking challenge.

Disclaimer: With many thanks to Sugar and Crumbs for the generous amount of samples to test and review.I was not required to write a positive review and was not compensated monetarily for this post. Like all my previous posts about events and reviews, ALL opinions expressed here are entirely my own.