Baking on a snowy evening!

It's been snowing here today - just as we thought it was changing to warmer weather, and we can't believe how white it has been again!

Time for some baking!
I had been meaning to try these delicious-looking torcetti piemontesi that Annalisa shared a few days ago on her lovely cooking blog. We have a bread-maker so I'm afraid I cheated (sorry!) by putting the ingredients in there on the dough cycle - not the proper way I know, but I didn't have the time to mix by hand. I used strong plain flour and added 150 ml of warm water, which was ever so slightly too much, so I had to add a few shakes of flour to the pan of the machine after it had started mixing just to make it not too sticky - I turned round after doing this to find a very surprised looking kitten sitting up with floury sprinkles all over the top of his little head - the bag of flour had a hole in the side and as I carried it through the room he'd got a dusting while he was napping on the chair! My OH said he'll have to get used to it as I'm a very messy cook!

I shaped the dough (though not as carefully as I should as I was so busy) and rolled in sugar as Annalisa said, and baked! It was quite a long time after our dinner when they were ready and we ate loads - lovely while still warm. In fact as I type this I think son no.1 has just come downstairs to get the last couple!

Annalisa has also very kindly given me these blog awards:


Even though she is far away she has become, like so many of you, a good friend, so thank you again!

I'm not going to pass these on to anyone particularly, but will again say how much I value your friendships, all of you!

Chocolate Mousse Cake

One of the best thing about the holidays has been having more time to cook more interesting things. Yesterday we'd been invited to friends for another winter walk and dinner, and as there were going to be 14 of us in total I took along this very rich cake, in case we all hadn't had enough chocolate already over the Christmas period. A little goes a long way!

It's from Nigella's 'How to be a Domestic Goddess' book - there is a link to almost the recipe here although the original is slightly different. Because it's cooked in a water bath I wrapped foil over the outside of my tin so no water could leak in. I also used a baking parchment liner in the tin rather than just greasing it or using foil inside, the cake still sticks to it a bit, but not as much as it does to foil.
The original recipe also calls for 300g plain chocolate and 50g milk chocolate, rather than all plain. As I'd forgotten to ask my husband to buy any of the milk I had to sacrifice half of my Lindt Reindeer that came in my stocking! I also melted the chocolate and butter in a microwave, but other than that followed what you see in the link - it bakes at Gas mark 4, which I think is about 180 degrees Celsius.

It's a good recipe for me, I'm not much good at folding in egg whites without the whole mousse collapsing, and because this is baked it doesn't seem to matter so much. As you see I'm a very, very messy cook: