doughnuts with chocolate fudge sauce

These were amazing and so fun to make. I love dropping things into hot oil and watching them deep fry!

I was feeling pretty rotten the day I made these and the fact that they actually turned out ok is a testament to the ease of this recipe. I also made it at a ridiculous time of day, right before dinner, so of course our appetites were spoiled because they have to be eaten straight away! But I was thinking that it is so great to be able to just do things like make doughnuts just before dinner and not have to worry about kids and such. Our little tacker is only 8mnths so no worries there. I guess we won’t be able to do this kind of thing for much longer though.

Anyway down to business. This recipe can be found on page 107 of DH mag, issue 50, in the location section. What you will need for this delicious indulgence is; butter, once again I had this key ingredient still left over from my chocolate cake attempt the other week, so yay for me, water and vanilla extract. You place all these into a saucepan and then boil them together until the butter is melted, then as fast as you can pop in plain flour, watch out for the bubbling effect when placing flour into boiling water! It took me completely by surprise and I almost had an accident, baking powder and sugar. Mix these up and then plop the now quite sold mixture into a food processor and whizz in a couple eggs. These are all very basic ingredients, which I happened to have (phew).

Whilst this is all happening, put enough oil for deep frying, into a large saucepan and heat it up slowly. Spoon the dough into a piping bag, or if you are like me and don’t have one put it into a zip lock back, squish the dough down into one of the corners and snip the corner off with scissors. Now, into the hot oil you want to pipe lengths of the mix, not to long. Now you have the satisfaction of watching as they turn a golden brown colour. Drain them on some paper towel and serve with the chocolate fudge sauce.

No I have to confess that mine didn’t actually turn out perfect on the first go. I didn’t cook them long enough and they were still squidgy in the middle. So when it says golden brown, what it actually means is that they have to go quite dark, a very burnished gold. I actually popped mine back into the hot oil to cook some more once I discovered my mistake and they were better the second time around.

For the chocolate fudge sauce all you need is dark chocolate, try and use something a bit better then Black & Gold cooking chocolate. As it was all I had it was a must for me and it didn’t taste half bad, but better chocolate would have made it so much more enjoyable and lets face it a lot more yummy! Next ingredient you’ll need is cream and vanilla extract. Place these altogether in a saucepan and stir over low heat until chocolate is melted.

I have stacks of the fudge sauce left over so I guess that means another round of doughnuts to perfect my deep frying technique. I will not be complaining and neither will my husband. Scrumptious, can’t you just tell from the picture!!

chocolate buttermilk layer cake

Ok, so the first thing that I wanted to do when I saw the cover of the 50^th issue of DH Mag was to eat the cake on the front cover, the whole thing. Which may have been more of an indication of my emotional state at the time. But boy did it look delicious. So, it has been my goal, since I first saw it to one day take a crack at making it. Well I did it!! I actually made this gorgeous cake. And, I tell you what, it is absolutely delicious. Way to go Donna!! The cake is really, really, really rich, so you only need a small bit but even when cutting it up in small bits, the cake is four layers for crying out loud, so you can’t really ever get a small bit.

The taste was sensational, but trying to assemble the thing was a complete nightmare and disaster. I am blaming the heat and humidity of course, nothing to do with my lack of skill in this area.

Next time I make it, if I am still living in this incredibly hot/humid place, I am going to refrigerate the individual cake layers and the frosting. Then to assemble it, I will make a cardboard cylinder to construct the cake within, pop it back into the fridge after building it and then, when it is firm, take it out, remove the cylinder, quickly take a picture of it, cut it and pop it back into the fridge.

So here is what you need for this amazing creation, which is on page 156 of DH mag, issue 50; water, hmmm yep got plenty of that. As we get about 8 meters of rain a year here, there is no short supply. Butter is next on the list and I bought butter last time we were in the big smoke just for this cake, cause I know that there really is a difference when making cakes with butter as opposed to settling for marg. So I splashed out and bought the butter, yum. Cocoa is an easy one, I am never without cocoa, it is a must in my pantry. You pop these ingredients in a small saucepan and heat them up till the butter melts.

Next comes the dry ingredients; flour, baking soda and sugar, no worries on all of those, though of course I didn’t have castor sugar, but using raw sugar instead didn’t seem to make a difference. You whisk the choc mixture into the dry ingredients and then add eggs and buttermilk. Now, I have to pause here, cause even though I know it is called chocolate buttermilk layer cake and obviously buttermilk is a key ingredient there is a serious shortage of buttermilk in this country, as in, “I have never ever seen it in the shops!” But I got a tip from another cookbook called, “The Perfect Cookbook”, that if you mix half milk and half yogurt you can call that buttermilk, so that is what I did and it still tasted great. And last ingredient for the cake mix was vanilla extract. You whisk all the ingredients together. Now, make sure you use the right cup measurements, cause about the time I thought I was finished and thinking that, “boy this cake is incredibly moist.” I realised that I had used 1/3 cup measurements instead of ½ cup measurements (doh!). And I am so thankful that I discovered this or else it just would have been a complete flop.

So you divide the mix into two cake tins and pop them into the oven.

While they are cooking or while the cakes are cooling or whenever, it is time to make up the chocolate cream cheese frosting! Totally decadent, I know and even more decadent is that this recipe calls for 500g of cream cheese!! Whoa, usually I use 250g but no, this recipe had to take it up a step. Sidebar, you can freeze cream cheese if you are going to use it for something where you whip it up again or else the freezing does tend to make the cream cheese go all crumbly. Besides the enormous amount of cream cheese, the frosting also calls for butter, icing sugar and cocoa. Whisk these all up in a food processor until it is a light and fluffy deliciously chocolaty and cream mix.

Now for the incredibly tricky part that I failed dismally at, but no fear it still tastes gorgeous and friends will love you anyway and will all want to come round for avo tea.

You need to cut each cake in half, so you have four layers. Now, a great way to do this is to use dental floss. Strange, I know but a friend taught me how to do this and it is so way easier than trying to cut it. So you take the dental floss in both hands making sure that it is long enough to cut through the entire cake horizontally. Place the floss very carefully smack in the middle of the cake and slowly run it through the centre until you have halved your cake. Simple.

Now place your layers on top of one another, careful to put about a quarter of the frosting between each layer and of course ending up with frosting on the top. Amazing!!

Don’t do what I did and; one, not cut off the tiny peaks that form on the top of each cake, two use incredibly runny icing with on top of incredibly moist cakes and three attempt to layer them without doing some serious forethought about the construction process, the instructions in the DH mag do not really give much help to amateurs on this one.

Good luck, it is a winner!! I’d definitely make this one again.

PS I just got the new DH mag but I need to make one last thing out of the last issue before I start on the new on. However, this doesn’t mean that I won’t be taking a peak at it. How exciting!!

Butterflied Chicken

I have always wanted to try this, probably ever since I saw some famous chef doing it on a cooking show earlier in my life. So I was very happy to discover that Donna wanted me to do it in this issue of her mag :^)

I realise that I have been a bit remiss lately in my postings but I do have a rather valid excuse. I was away, with no internet. And I am telling the truth, not trying to make up an excuse like Tom Hanks in “You’ve Got Mail.” Having come back a week ago I have only now really settled back into routine enough to do something extra. Being a mum really throws everything completely out of whack.

Oh, complete baking disaster today. I was trying to make cinnamon scrolls and decided to have a go at a new recipe that I was given by a friend. Of course I thought, this should work, she was able to make delicious cinnamon scrolls here with this recipe, I should too, right? Ha. Don’t you love those recipes that call for approximately x amount of flour, warning you in neat little parenthesis that you might possibly need some more. Oh my gosh!! Three added cups later!! I don’t know what I am going to do with all that dough rising so serenely on my stove. I think I’ll be able to make cinnamon scrolls, savoury scrolls, some dinner rolls and maybe a loaf or two of bread. What a joke. I am never using that recipe ever again!! Unless of course they turn out really nicely :^)

So here it is “garlic and thyme roasted chicken,” page 62 of issue 50. You will need; butter, which of course, if you know me by now will know that I substitute with margarine. Crushed garlic is not a problem, thyme leaves, I do not have in abundance but I do have dried thyme so I used that. Looking back I probably would use fresh stuff the next time cause the chicken really wasn’t that tasty, maybe fresh thyme would add just a little bit more pizaz. Sea salt and cracked pepper, well, you know my stance on sea salt so I went with normal salt and ground pepper. A whole chicken butterflied, yep had that one. Now I didn’t actually butterfly it myself, my wonderful husband did. I had a cut on my hand, that is my excuse and I am sticking with it. He did a great job of butterflying it. And Donna Hay describes the whole process so well on page 61. Basically what you do is you cut out the backbone and then squash it down so everything is sticking out the sides and it’s half the thickness it was before.

A lemon and olive oil are the last things you will need. Now I didn’t have any olive oil so I used sunflower oil instead. I am so excited cause I actually have olive oil now and I am going to make a DH recipe tonight from a back issue that is so delicious but I don’t think I’ll write about it cause I am trying to only blog about recipes in current issues. Speaking of which, I am waiting with baited breath for the next one to come!

So what you do with all this ingredients is you take the butter, garlic, thyme, salt and pepper and mix it all together and then shove it under the skin of the chicken breast. There is no dainty way of doing this. This technique, says Maggie Beer is to help keep the breast from getting to dry. A problem that I have time and time again and even doing this technique, I still can’t eat my roast chicken without gravy.

After doing that, put the chicken on the baking try with more thyme, the lemon and olive oil.

Put it all in the oven, brushing with the juices halfway through and whala a lovely roast chicken in about half the time and you don’t have to really worry that it isn’t cooked through.

I did very much like this way of cooking the chook but I really think the flavours weren’t all that strong and that is possibly because of my lack of fresh ingredients. I really wanted to make the butterflied chicken recipe right next to the thyme one but I didn't have any red wine vinegar and that seemed to me to be a key ingredient. Beggars can’t be choosers and we have to use what we’ve got.