Tag Archives: cake

Coffee & Halva Ice Cream Cake with Hot Chocolate Sauce

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This cake makes a great dessert or birthday cake to serve a crowd.  It can be made a few days ahead and is always popular.  The coffee and halva flavours might be a bit sophisticated for small children, although our two and a half year old granddaughter Natalia loves olives, artichokes, radicchio and rocket, so you can never tell.  The recipe is adaptable – instead of coffee you could add chocolate chips and instead of halva you could add crumbled honeycomb or violet crumble bars.  Use your imagination.

Halva is a dense, crumbly Middle Eastern sweet containing nuts – a bit like a cross between fudge and nougat.

The chocolate sauce uses ingredients everyone has in the pantry (so you don’t need to rush out and buy a bar of chocolate) and keeps for at least a week in the fridge.  If preferred you can make a sauce by heating a cup of cream to boiling point, then removing from the heat and adding about 200g chocolate (milk or dark), broken into squares.  Stir till dissolved.

Coffee and Halva Ice Cream Cake with Hot Chocolate Sauce

Meringues:
4 large egg whites at room temperature
pinch salt
250g caster sugar
½ cup slivered almonds (optional)
Coffee Ice Cream:
2 litres good quality vanilla icecream (bought or home-made)
2 Tbs instant coffee powder dissolved in 1 Tbs hot water
Halva Ice Cream:
2 x 300ml sour cream
1 tsp vanilla essence
¼ cup icing sugar
250g (approx) halva (from delis and specialty shops)
Chocolate Sauce:
½ cup sugar
¾ cup water
4 Tbs cocoa powder
2 Tbs golden syrup
1 Tbs butter
1 tsp vanilla essence
½ cup cream
To serve:
Cocoa powder

Meringues: Line two baking sheets with baking paper and turn oven to 150°C.  Draw a 20 cm diameter circle on each sheet of paper.  With an electric mixer whip egg whites with salt until they hold their shape, then gradually add the sugar, beating constantly, until you have a thick glossy meringue.  Spread meringue evenly onto the circles you have drawn, leaving a little space all around as they will expand in the oven and you want them to fit into a 20 cm tin.  If liked, sprinkle almonds over one then bake the meringues for about an hour until firm but pale in colour.  Turn off the oven and leave them to cool in there.

Coffee Ice Cream: Remove ice cream from the freezer and let it soften for about 10 minutes then tip into a large bowl and stir until smooth.  Thoroughly mix in coffee mixture, then put back into container and refreeze.  Halva Ice Cream: Mix sour cream with icing sugar, vanilla essence and roughly crumbled halva.  Tip into a plastic container with a lid and freeze.

Remove the two ice creams from the freezer about 10 minutes before assembling the cake.  Place the meringue layer without the nuts in the bottom of a 20 cm springform cake pan, bottom-lined with baking paper.  If too big, carefully trim off the edges with a sharp knife and keep testing, till it goes in.  Spread a layer of coffee ice cream over the meringue.  There will be more of this ice cream than the halva one, so you may decide not to use it all.  Sprinkle the meringue trimmings over the ice cream – unless you’ve already eaten them – then spread evenly with the halva ice cream.  Top with the other meringue, nut side up and trimmed to fit.  Press down gently.  Cover with plastic wrap and place in the freezer for up to 3-4 days.  Remove from freezer about 15 minutes before serving so it’s not rock hard.  Run a knife dipped in boiling water around the outside of the cake to enable you to remove sides from cake tin.  Dust top of cake with cocoa powder through a sieve.  Slice cake with a knife dipped in boiling water and serve with the sauce.

Sauce: Choose a large pan because this recipe will boil over if the pan is too small.  Place all ingredients except butter, vanilla essence and cream in pan.  Mix then simmer for 5 mins without stirring.  Cool for 10 mins then stir in butter and vanilla.  When almost cold mix in the cream.  Serve warm with ice cream.  Keeps for at least a week in the fridge – reheat in the microwave and allow to cool a bit.  If piping  hot it will be too runny.

Serves at least 12

Variation: if preferred divide meringue into three to make three thinner layers.  This allows you to put one between the two flavours of ice cream.

Raspberry Cake with Raspberry Coulis: leave the first layer of ice cream plain vanilla, leaving out the coffee.  For the second layer place the two packets of sour cream in food processor with 2 cups frozen raspberries, 300ml cream and icing sugar to taste.  Blitz enough to combine but leaving the raspberries a bit chunky.  Serve cake with Raspberry Coulis instead of Chocolate Sauce.

Salted Caramel Ice Cream Cake with Hot Chocolate Sauce: Instead of slivered almonds on one meringue layer, use skinned and lightly toasted hazelnuts, roughly chopped.  Instead of the coffee and halva ice cream layers, use three 470ml tubs of Connoisseur Murray River Salted Caramel Ice Cream with Chocolate Coated Hazelnuts.  Remove from the freezer to soften slightly then mix them in a bowl then spread over the first meringue layer.

Date and Walnut Loaf

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We’ve been on a bit of a weight loss campaign and have managed to lose a few kilos.  A good enough reason, don’t you think, to celebrate and make a yummy cake? Date and Walnut Loaf is an old family recipe from the days when a slice of cake with afternoon tea was mandatory.  I have lots of cake recipes but this is one of about ten favourites that I’ve made many times.  If allowed to do so it will keep for at least a week in a tin.

Date and Walnut Loaf

375g stoned dates, cut into chunky pieces
100g butter, cut into small pieces
1 cup boiling water
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1 egg, beaten
¼ cup honey
2 cups plain flour, sifted
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp vanilla essence
pinch salt
1 cup coarsely chopped walnuts

Heat oven to 170°C.  Place dates in a bowl and add boiling water, butter and bicarb.  Stir until butter has dissolved then add egg, honey, flour, baking powder, vanilla essence, salt and walnuts and mix well.  Tip into a large greased loaf tin or a 15cm square tin, bottom lined with baking paper.  Bake for 35-45 minutes or until well-risen and evenly browned and a skewer inserted in the middle comes out clean.  All ovens are different and if over-cooked the cake will be dry.  When cool store in an airtight tin and keep for a day before using – if you can resist!  If you want to be really decadent, serve buttered.

Chocolate and Orange Gateau

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Friends hosted a New Year’s Eve party where everyone brought a plate.  I’ve heard lots of funny stories about new Australians not understanding this concept and turning up with just a plate.  Indeed my Greek teacher Michael Kazan told me that when he first arrived in Canberra from Athens and someone asked him to bring a plate, he thought to himself that if his hosts didn’t have enough plates, they probably didn’t have enough cutlery or glasses either.  So he took those as well.

As my contribution to the New Year’s party I took an Orange, Almond and Chocolate Dessert Cake – another recipe from the December edition of Delicious magazine.  I’ve renamed it Chocolate and Orange Gateau and made my own chocolate-covered orange slices rather than buying them.  My fan-forced oven is too hot at 180C for some cakes, especially ones which require longer cooking, so I set it at just under 170C which worked perfectly.

Chocolate and Orange Gateau

Chocolate-covered orange slices:
2 oranges
2 cups water
3/4 cup sugar
150g dark chocolate
Cake:
2 oranges
150g dark chocolate
5 eggs
400g caster sugar
350ml sunflower or canola oil (just under 1 1/2 cups)
1 cup almond meal
1/4 cup cocoa powder
2 1/2 cups plain flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 cup orange liqueur
Ganache:
1 cup thickened cream
350g dark chocolate broken into squares
To serve:
Whipped cream (optional)

For the chocolate-covered orange slices, cut oranges into 1/4 inch slices, discarding the ends which have no flesh in them.  Heat sugar and water in a large frying pan, stirring until sugar dissolves.  Add orange slices, then simmer for 30-40 minutes, turning them from time to time, until the syrup thickens and disappears.  You will need to pay attention towards the end so they don’t stick or burn.  Remove orange slices with tongs to a cake cooling rack.  You can either leave them as whole slices or cut them in half.  They are best made the day before or several hours before serving so they have time to dry out a bit.  When they are dry enough, melt chocolate and dip half the orange slices into the chocolate, then leave to set on baking paper.

For the cake, place oranges in a large saucepan, cover with water, bring to the boil then simmer for about 30 minutes or until tender when pierced with a knife.  Drain and process to a smooth puree in a food processor, then cool.  Preheat oven to 170C.  Grease and line a 24cm spring form cake pan with baking paper.  Place chocolate in a bowl over simmering water (don’t let bowl touch water) to melt, then cool a bit.

In a large mixing bowl whisk eggs, sugar and oil then gradually mix in the orange puree, almond meal and melted chocolate.  Add flour, baking powder and cocoa through a sieve and fold in thoroughly by hand. Pour into cake pan and bake for an hour and 15 minutes or until a skewer inserted in the centre comes out clean.  Cover top loosely with foil if it’s browning too quickly.  Cool for 10 minutes in pan, then invert onto a wire rack.  Drizzle with liqueur then cool completely.

For ganache heat cream to boiling point in a saucepan, then add chocolate, turn off the heat and stir until smooth.  Allow to stand at room temperature until thick enough to spread over the cake, stirring from time to time.  Spread ganache over top and sides of cooled cake with a palette knife and decorate with chocolate-covered orange slices.  If liked serve with whipped cream.

Serves 16

Note: if you don’t have any almond meal you can make your own by blitzing some blanched almonds in the food processor.  If you don’t have any almonds you can substitute walnuts or even pine nuts.  You could substitute self-raising flour for the plain flour and baking powder.