Chocolate & Banana Sugar Free Cake

I've been really enjoying the challenge of sugar free cakes (without resorting to buying that slightly disturbing white granular stuff in the supermarket*). This chocolate & banana cake sold out about 4 hours after I put it on the counter. Good, because I am ridiculously proud of it, it's one of the best damn cakes I've ever made. Moist, rich and indulgent (and slightly less terrible for you!). It's sweetened with very ripe bananas & apple syrup, which gives it a richness and really brings out the chocolate flavour without being sickly.
This recipe makes a huge cake! But you can reduce the quantities by a third & use 20cm cake pans for something a little less excessive

Healthy - if you don't count all the butter and cream!

Chocolate & Banana Cake
250g butter (yes, that's a whole packet. But no sugar, so it's fine!)
3 large, very ripe bananas, mashed
175g apple syrup (I like Sweet Freedom. You can use any fruit syrup, but I find apple balances the banana well)
300g plain flour
3 eggs, whisked
50g cocoa powder
2 tsp baking powder
100ml single cream

You'll also need two 23cm springform cake tins, greased & lined, for this.

Preheat the oven to 180C/350F
Soften the butter in a large mixing bowl & combine together with the mashed bananas and apple syrup. Add the cocoa powder & eggs (it will look a little lumpy and weird, but don't fret! It will be good!). Add the baking powder & flour & mix well. It will make a fairly stiff batter, so add the cream a little at a time until it forms a nice soft batter that clings to the spoon, but succumbs to gravity and flops off back into the bowl after a few seconds. If the idea of raw egg doesn't squick you out, have a quick taste and see if it needs a squeeze more of apple syrup (a lot of the sweetness comes from the overripe bananas, so less blackened ones will need a little help) Divide between the two cake tins and bake for 20-25 minutes, or until a skewer, knife or other pointy, prodding instrument jabbed into the cake comes out clean.
Leave a few minutes before turning out of the cake tins and handle with care. Cool on a wire rack, then sandwich together with some whipped cream (a 300ml tub of double cream is plenty for this sized cake) & dust with a little cocoa powder.
Eat with a slightly misplaced sense of virtue

*No offence to those that do, I just find myself staring at the stuff and asking myself "But what is it?!")

Chantico Chocolate Cake

So a while back I persuaded Mike to make a spiced chocolate stout, because as a lover of South American foods, I am heartily sick of chilli chocolate stouts made with raw green chillis or pure capsaicin*.
We based the recipe on Mole Poblano (not mole the burrowing mammal and curse of lawns but mo-ley, a rich paste made from roasted chiles, chocolate, nuts & spices popular in Mexico), crammed it full of roasted Ancho, Pasilla & Mulato chiles, fairtrade cocoa, cinnamon and peppercorns. And its pretty damn good.

 We named it Chantico (pronounced Chan-TEE-co), after the Aztec goddess of home fires & volcanos. Here she is dressed as a red snake with a crown of cactus leaves. She was turned into a dog after eating paprika (so no paprika in our stout!) and had a tendency to go batshit if anyone touched her stuff (and I'm sure we can all appreciate that)
And, aside from drinking it, what better use of a fruity, spicy chocolate stout is there? Making a cake, of course! And not just any old cake, a seriously decadent, damp & slightly bitter cake topped with a foamy head.

Chantico Chocolate Cake

For The Cake
250g butter
200g plain chocolate
300g demerara sugar
250ml chantico (or any well flavoured stout)
300g plain flour
50g cocoa
2 eggs
2tsp baking powder

For The Topping
300g Mascarpone
100ml double cream
150g icing sugar

You'll also need a 23cm springform cake tin

Preheat the oven to 180C/G4. Throw the butter, stout (there will be half a bottle left, better drink it!) & plain chocolate in a large pan & put over a low heat until the butter & chocolate melts. Resist the urge to just drink the mix. Remove from the heat, add the sugar & stir. Leave to cool for a few minutes and whisk in the eggs and cocoa powder. Add the flour & baking powder & mix well. If the mix is a little stiff add a splash of stout (if you've drunk all the stout milk will do). Pour into the cake tin & bake for 45 minutes to 1 hour, until it is firm to the touch and a skewer stabbed into the centre (if you favour the Vlad the Impaler approach to cake making) comes out clean. Leave to cool in the tin & turn out.
For the topping, whip the cream to stiff peaks. In a separate bowl whisk the mascarpone, then add the icing sugar 50g at a time (you might want to sieve the icing sugar if its a bit lumpy). Fold in the whipped cream & spread over the cake to give it a creamy, foamy head.

This works just as well as a filling, if you want a sandwich cake. Divide the mixture between two 23cm springform cake tins & bake for 25-30 minutes.
This recipe also works really well with Belgian fruit beers like Kriek (lambic cherry beer) or with a strong old ale.

*Wow, it must have taken you 8 seconds to come up with that. May Quetzalcoatl fly out of the sun and punch you in the throat. And also eat you.