Two chocolate cakes

Some people might have already noticed that there are considerably small amounts of chocolate things on my blog... It's because neither of us eat it (unfortunately it gives us a great headache..;(...)

However, that doesn't stop me from using it for cakes and breads. In fact, I quite like working with it! I think chocolate gives cakes and breads just a touch of special indulgent feeling to them. :)

So so so..., at the weekend I made two different chocolate cakes.

One was an ultimate chocolate birthday cake for Brian, who as far as I know loves chocolate. The cake had cocoa powder and melted dark chocolate in it and drizzle of white chocolate, bits of milk chocolate and chocolate cake, and 'Happy Birthday' written with raspberry flavoured white chocolate (which kind of got pressed when I wrapped it...). Hope the cake filled the birthday boy's chocolate hole. ;)

The other one was white chocolate bundt cakelets for Andy to take to the office. Oh see, these mini bundt cake tins are so cute! When I saw it, I had to get it. ;D I added bits of chocolate cake from the cut of Brian's cake in the batter and filled the middle with chocolate sauce.

That was fun doing chocolate cakes, and these are the times that I wish I ate chocolate...

Green tea brownie (抹茶ブラウニー)

So..., yesterday I rediscovered the fun of making brownies, which made me want to bake them more. In fact, I was thinking about making them whole day today. Well, that's what people call addiction, no?

Anyway, followed by yesterday's orange-coloured carrot brownie, today I went for green! Yes! My favourite frog, Kermit said "It's not easy being green." However, when you use a good quality green tea powder, you really get a bright green. Not only that, it has a lovely bitter green tea taste, which goes well with sweet white chocolate...

The intense taste and heavy texture will satisfy you after a small portion. With a hot cup of green tea (not sweetened please...), this brownie goes down nicely... Aghaaa, having a taste of home..., that's one of the moments when I appreciate being Japanese...

Ingredients;

White chocolate 50g

Butter 30g

Egg 1

Sugar 50g

Flour 40g

Green tea powder 15g

1.Preheat the oven to 180ºc.  Melt white chocolate and butter together.

2. Beat egg and sugar until it's fluffy.

3. Pour 1 into 2. Mix well.

4. Sift flour and green tea powder into 3. Fold in.

5. Pour the mixture into a cake tin. Bake in the preheated oven (180ºc) for 20 minutes.

Carrot brownie

I love it when a recipe I imagined in my head actually worked. And today was one of those successful times;)

My new recipe... Carrot Brownie! It sounds unusual but try it when you have lots of carrots and don't know what to do with them. I've used white chocolate just because I don't eat normal cacao chocolate, but I believe it would work just as good.

What is nice about this brownie is that you get a good nutrition from carrots while enjoying a soft and sweet piece of treat or two...

I'd forgotten about how versatile a brownie can be until now, but the success with this brownie made me want to experiment with more unique brownies... Well, wait and see how it goes...

Ingredients;

White chocolate 100g

Butter 25g

Egg 1

Brown  sugar 50g

Flour 65g

Cinnamon 1/2 tsp

Carrot (cooked and mashed) 170g

Vanilla extract 1 tsp

1.Preheat the oven to 180ºc.  Melt white chocolate and butter together.

2. Beat egg and brown sugar until it's fluffy. Mix Vanilla extract in.

3. Pour 1 into 2. Mix well.

4. Sift flour and cinnamon into 3. Fold in.

5. Mix mashed carrot into 4.

6. Pour the mixture into a cake tin. Bake in the preheated oven (180ºc) for 30 minutes.