C'est moi qui l'ai fait !

Chocolate muffins for Noé : not fancy (well, just a little bit).

Chocolate muffins for Noé : not fancy (well, just a little bit)

Noé, although he’s only 9 years old, knows exactly how to tease me (just like his dad). A couple of days ago at Ikea, he asked for a chocolate muffin. I think he already knows that I find it hard to buy stuff I can make myself at home, and that I don’t like explaining it, especially when people are around. Buying a macaroon at a very good pastry shop : YES. Buying a muffin: NO!

I told Noé “if you want, I can bake some this afternoon at home” Noé replied with a little smile on his face “yes but not fancy ones, just some with vanilla and chocolate”.

It made me smile.

I was still smiling in my kitchen, when I adapted the recipe from my book “Cookies Muffins et Cie” by replacing the melted butter with some almond puree and vegetable oil, following Clea’s advice in this article.

I thought “not fancy muffins” but just a little bit.

Chocolate muffins

Ingredients for 10 muffins

1 muffin tin with muffin cases

300g self raising flour or
300g flour and 1 packet of baking powder (11g)
125g brown sugar
2 pinch of salt
2 level tbsp of powdered cacao not sweetened.
200g of milk chocolate cut into chunks
25cl milk
2 eggs
75g of melted butter or 40g of almond puree and 35 g of vegetable oil
1tsp of vanilla extract

Optional: small white chocolate drops for the topping

Preheat your oven to 200°C.
Put the muffins cases in your muffin tin.
In a large bowl, mix the self raising flour (or the flour and the baking powder), the sugar, the salt, the powdered cacao and the milk chocolate.
In a jug, break the eggs and beat them slightly. Add the milk, the melted butter or the mixture of almond puree and vegetable oil and the vanilla extract.
Pour this liquid on the dry mixture and mix just enough until the flour is not visible: the batter must be lumpy.
Pour into the muffin cases using a large spoon.
If you wish, you can add some white chocolate drops on the muffins.
Bake for about 20 minutes, until the muffins are rise.
A skewer inserted into the muffin should come out dry.

Remove the muffins cases from the muffin tin and allow to cool on a wired rack.

Noé was happy but he was not the only one.

Chocolate cake : Ruy-Blas.

Chocolate cake: Ruy-Blas

A couple of weeks ago, as I was cleaning our basement, I found a baking tin and more precisely a Savarin baking tin. It reminded me of when I was a child and my mother used to bake us a chocolate cake called the "Ruy-Blas", according to Ginette Mathiot’s book “La patisserie pour tous”. She baked it in a similar baking tin and I was fond of this crown shaped cake as I was able to cut it into tiny slices. I actually spent my time helping myself with these tiny slices hoping that no one would notice, just like Sophie with her box of pickled fruits in “Les malheurs de Sophie” by the Countess of Ségur. In fact I was luckier than Sophie: being a gourmand has never been a problem in my family.

Strangely, even though I remember having prepared the Ruy-Blas while I was still living at my parent’s place, I never baked it again once I left home.
I must say that when I started to cook, at the beginning of the 80’s, I was more attracted by rich chocolate cakes like brownies, fondants, charlottes, or marquises, but nowadays I've changed my mind and I appreciate more and more a simple chocolate cake, not too rich,  which I eat with David and the children for the afternoon snack. Basically : pleasure without guilt.

The Ruy-Blas chocolate cake does not contain much butter and is gluten free. While reading the recipe again, I wondered if it was a mistake but, having baked it several times while I was a teenager, I  was pretty sure of the recipe.

Chocolate cake : Ruy-Blas

Adapted from Ginette Mathiot’s recipe

Compared to the original recipe, I divided the quantities by two as my baking tin was much smaller than my mother’s. If you are using a standard baking tin, you should double the recipe and increase the baking time.

Ingredients for a Savarin baking tin (22 cm diameter)

125g dark chocolate
125g sugar
30g slightly salted butter
62,5g powdered almonds
45g corn starch
3 eggs, yolks and whites separated
1 pinched of salt

Butter the baking tin.
Preheat your oven to 180°C.
Break the chocolate into small pieces, put them in a bowl and melt over a bain-marie with the butter.
When most of the chocolate has melted, remove the bowl from the bain-marie and mix with a plastic spatula until the mixture is smooth.
Add the egg yolks and mix.
Add the sugar and mix.
Add the corn starch, the powdered almonds and mix again.
Beat the egg whites with the pinch of salt until they are stiff.
Fold in a third of the egg whites into the previous mixture with a spatula.
Fold in the remaining egg whites gently.
Pour it into the buttered baking tin and bake in the oven for about 25 minutes.
A skewer inserted into the cake should come out dry.
Allow to cool down then carefully removed from the tin.
Allow to cool on a wired rack.

This cake is exactly as I remember it: slightly crispy on the outside and moist on the inside and I like its lightness. I don’t know whether the result will be the same if it's baked in a traditional round baking tin. 

To be tried…..