Chocolate strawberry roll

Do you want to know what is my favourite to-go, no-fail chocolate cake recipe? Hang on, your curiosity will be satisfied in

one…

two…

three seconds!

Ta-daaam! Meet the chocolate-anything roll!

As you can see, this time it was a choco-strawberry roll, but it can as well be a raspberry, cherry or apricot, or pretty much any fruit you can think of roll, or – in the ultimate chocolat-y effort – a choco-chocolate roll!

The recipe isn’t too complicated and – my favourite part – it doesn’t require any fancy ingredients. If you are ready to sacrifice half a dozen eggs and a chocolate bar, you’re good to go! The video recipe and its text equivalent can be found here.

And now I’ll tell you a tale of trouble with a happy ending. Yesterday, as I was separating the eggs for this cake, an accident (most dreaded by home bakers) happened: a yolk broke and landed in a bowl of whites… I scooped out as much of it as I could but the whites were contaminated. As I had exactly 6 eggs and couldn’t start over again, I decided to continue and beat the whites… only to obtain a foamy, frothy but still liquid consistency – far from the mounting peaks you’d expect… Houston? Heeeelp?

Now comes the happy end: I added a teaspoon of baking powder to the yolk-sugar-choco mixture, folded in the whites, called heaven for assistance and shoved the thing into the oven… Tick-tock-tick-tock-tick-tock… Miracle! The cooked dough looked exactly as it should have!

Moral: ALWAYS separate your eggs ONE BY ONE over a SMALL BOWL and THEN transfer them to the BIG ONE! And in case of emergency, use baking powder!

Good baking, everyone!

Death by chocolate

So, have you been missing my food pictures? In this case you’re going to get your treat right now! We can talk later ;)

All right, now listen (I doubt if you can talk with your mouth watering like this): these are THE. BEST. CHOCOLATE. COOKIES. EVER. Believe me, I’m an expert chocolate cookie eater.

The good news is, you can bake them too. Here’s the recipe and here’s the video showing Martha Stewart making them. Enjoy!

Mousse au chocolat

Warning: this post may provoke an irrepressible craving for chocolate. Read at your own risk.

Photography and cooking are two fields where you can only learn by doing… So I keep practicing!

Here is my latest recipe test: a rich chocolate mousse from l’Essentiel du chocolat in lovely yoghurt pots from La Fermière. I have used dessert chocolate instead of dark and I’d suggest adding more egg whites to make the mousse lighter, but on the whole, it’s a treat! Oh – what am I saying – it’s such a treat! It’s so good you’d swallow your tongue and never notice!

Now about the pictures: they are taken with my good old point-and-shoot camera (that is, a common “home use” camera you can buy at any hi-fi store), with the natural light coming from above and behind. The props (dishes, spoons etc.) all come from my kitchen. As to the subject, it ended up in my stomach )))

So, who’s reaching for chocolate right now? Or are you already munching? ;)