Bundt-a-Month: Mocha Fudge Cake with coffee icing

They say that one of the good things about blogging is that it's not just a diary, but a record of our current ideas, interests, hobbies and thoughts and that it's interesting to see the evolment of them all. Looking back at my postings I've come to the conclusion that I get obsessed with one thing from time to time and all my postings revolve around it. For example, in summer all my postings had to do with the sea and almost nothing else- not my crafting, not my travels, not my cooking, not my garden. This period of time, I'm into cooking and baking, hence I post only about them. Does this happen to you, or do your postings vary in theme? Have you noticed?

So, within this cooking obsession framework, I made the AWESOME Mocha Fudge Cake with coffee icing (see here for the recipe) for the weekend. It's taken from the best cookbook I own so far: BBC Good Food Magazine Book of Cakes and Bakes. It's a cake I used to make quite often in the past but it's been like forever since I last made it and I thought that it would be a great contribution to the Bundt-a-Month baking event, organized by Baker Street, a paradise-site for people who love baking. Thanks to Greenthumb, I heard about it and decided to take part. So....here it is!

The cake has a strong coffee flavour which is enhanced by the icing. I used a really old- I might even say vintage- bundt passed on to me by my mum. It's the tin my childhood cakes were made in! I haven't stopped using it ever since, and this blog event was the perfect opportunity to make it famous!!!!!!!

The cake is divine with a cup of coffee and I assure you, you will try really hard not to eat it at once when you make it!

Fluffy

In my last posting I shared the vanilla icecream recipe. As you might have noticed, it requires many egg yolks. But what about the leftover egg whites? I thought I'd make some fluffy meringues to accompany my vanilla icecram and make some yummy sweet sandwiches!

Meringues are really easy to make, however a bit time consuming as they need to stay in the oven for 1-2 hours until dry in the middle. 
In this recipe you will need a magical Greek ingredient: Chios mastiha .It's a resin coming out of a tree that grows only in one place in the whole world: the island of Chios!And what's more, only in a specific area on the island!It has a unique taste, that suits the meringeues perfectly! In the case that you can't find mastiha resin in the super market, you can make them using a drop of mastiha ectract, any other exctract you want, or, simply nothing, as this recipe suggests.

 Chios Mastiha Meringues

 Ingredients:

100g caster sugar
100g icing sugar
100g egg whites
optional: 1 piece of mastiha resin (I put it in my multi bender with a bit of the caster sugar until it turned into dust)

 First, I preheated my oven in 100C and lined a baking tin with baking paper.

PROCESS: 
I beat 100 g caster sugar with 100 g of egg whites and the mastiha on the low speed of my electric mixer  (this is really important! Don't get impatient!) for 20' until there were stiff peaks.

Then, I stopped the mixer, and folded 100 g of icing sugar with a spoon really carefully to prevent the meringue from getting unfluffy.

BAKING: 
I spooned the mixture in my piping bag and formed little meringues on my  baking paper. I put them close to one another as they don't change in shape during baking.

I baked them for 1 1/2 hours, until they were dry in the middle. 

I let them dry and saved them in a tin box.

TIPS

tip1: you can add a drop of your favourite extract: vanilla or mastic.
tip2: you can reduce the icing sugar and add some cocoa instead
tip3: if you don't have a piping bag, just spoon them on the baking paper!
tip4: To make sure they're baked I always taste one before I take them out of the oven. If they're not dry, I leave them a while longer and check again. Never fails!
tip5: In the case that you resist eating them at once, you can keep them in a tin box for months! Tried and tested!

Now, how about some ideas on how to eat them?

Eat them alone!

Ctush them and springle them over your icecream.

Make pavlova for one or more in a bowl with some cream and strawberries.

Sandwich whipped cream or icecream between two meringues.

Enjoy!

As far as me, now that I've mastered the art of baking meringues, my next project will be baking macarons!

Breakfast

Due to a happy occasion, a friend's visit, I baked  pasta frolla using my mum's melon jam and some leftover cherry jam. 

Although I avoid baking in summer,as the house is hot enough and doesn't need the extra heat from the oven, I had missed this lovely baking smell coming from the kitchen! And the first piece cut out for breakfast...hmm...delish!

Any baking yourselves these days?

Happy weekend!

The perfect combination

One thing I forgot to write on the liebster random-things-about-me list was that I love making and eating pizza. So, today, after my swim I made a vegetable thin crust pizza for late lunch with mushrooms, fresh and dried tomatoes, pepper, onions and basil on top. I used two greek cheeses: kaseri and feta.

 I don't think it'll make it for dinner although XL...

Swim and pizza...pizza and swim...the perfect combination!

How about you? 
What's your favourite kind of pizza?
 Make it or buy it?