Cookbook challenge week 2: - Nigella's How to be a Domestic Goddess

This was a bit of a frightening one for me.  I like cooking.  I like baking bread.  I am not really a sweet baker.  I've made cupcakes, I've made biscuits but cakes are not something I really do.  

Thanks to this challenge, at nine o'clock on a Friday evening I found myself making Nigella's chocolate mousse cake from How to Be a Domestic Goddess.

The jury is out a little on whether or not that was a good idea.  The cake is rather tasty - it's light and (I'm sorry in advance for those of you that have an aversion to this word) moist.  It's gooey.  If you feel the need to add cream it really needs a very light touch.

It's huge. Apparently it serves between 6-8 people.  I think it's more like ten - we managed to get twelve servings out of it which included two smaller servings for D.  As you'd expect from a Nigella recipe it is calories a go go.

300g dark chocolate

50g milk chocolate

175g unsalted butter

100g muscovado sugar

100g caster sugar

one tablespoon of vanilla essence

8 eggs separated

Preheat the oven to gas mark 4.  Line a 23cm springform cake pan with kitchen foil. 

Break the chocolate into squares and cut the butter into cubes.  Melt in the microwave - forty-five seconds at a time until the chocolate and butter can be mixed together.  Set to one side for five minutes. 

Meanwhile, mix the sugar and the egg yolks.  This needs a good long whisk - it took me around ten minutes to get to the consistency required within the book - slightly paler and mayonnaise-like with the mixture falling in ribbons from the whisk.  

Combine with the chocolate mixture.

Whisk your egg whites until they make soft peaks - until they loose their translucency and become less liquid.  This took me about ten minutes with the electric whisk.  

Mix a couple of spoonfuls of the egg whites through the chocolate mix to lighten it and then the rest of it - with a light touch.  There is quite a lot to incorporate but it will eventually get there.  

Place your lined cake tin into a roasting tin filled with about 500ml of boiling water.  Fill the cake tin with the mixture and place in the oven for 50 minutes to an hour.  When you start to smell the cake, it's close to being cooked.  

Take out of the oven and place on a cooling rack.  Leave for twenty minutes to allow the cake to cool.  If you undo the clasp on the springform any sooner, the cake may travel.  

Release the sides and carefully peel away the foil.  

 

Last week's cookbook challenge is here.  This week's challenge has already been decided but next week's is wide open.