OK ! I think I better share with you a tasty recipe based on one of my favourite cakes, the classic French dessert, Gateau Breton, which is like semi-cake and semi-biscuit. In brief, Gateau Breton is like a pound cake, but made only with egg yolks, butter, sugar and plain flour. My recipe is actually based on something I found in Nigella Lawson' s "How to be a domestic goddess" cookbook, but of course with a little tweak of mine as I find it hard to conform to pure instructions especially if I'm going to eat it. One hint on your way to pure bliss with very simple cakes like these is that the ingredients should be of top quality, because with only 4 things to go inside your cake, every one will count. So, for me I always use organic eggs for stuff like this and very good quality butter. To start with and to avoid a nice blend of the ingredients, make sure the eggs, all 5 of them in this case, are at room temperature.
Why ? Because if you mix cold eggs with room temperature butter for instance, there will be some sort of reaction, which may result in bubbles in your cake when baked. As I'm trying to experiment with chocolate chunks, place about 60g dark chocolate with over 65% cocoa solids into a ramekin into a hot oven for about 5 mins and take out once melted. Reduce the oven temperature to 190C.
As the melted chocolate begins to cool down start with the other stuff which won't take long as you only have 4 ingredients. You can use a food mixer. Place the 250g softened butter and 250g caster sugar inside and mix until very well blended – Yes ! this is a sweet cake, but "tasty" too, trust me. After that place about 225g sifted plain flour into the bowl along with 5 egg yolks (take a dessert spoon of egg yolks out for the glaze) and mix until well blended.
If you don't have a food mixer like Kitchen Aid, Kenwood, etc, then make this by hand in the order above. If you want a richer flavour, add a teaspoon of vanilla extract. You will realise that the cake mix is very thick and sticky, almost like dough, but don't be scared, it will work out God willing. Finally, place the chocolate inside the mixing bowl, which will not blend, because the warm chocolate will react with the rather coldish mixture, causing it to clump together, but this is what you want.
Place your mixture into a greased 24" (cm) spring-form baking tin, glaze with your reserved yolk mixture (dessert spoon of egg yolk and one dessert spoon of water). As this is a very thick mixture, use a pastry brush and "paint" it all over the top. Place in a 190C oven for 10 minutes, turn down to 175C for about another 15-20 minutes depending on the strength of heat of your oven. My oven is not expensive but I always have to reduce recommended baking times by about 10 minutes. In any case what you are looking for is a dark brownish layer on top, which should be moist and not dry when you insert a tooth pick or your regular cake tester in it. Let it cool in the tin until relatively cool, so you don't burn your hands, before turning out and eating, hmmm.
If you really want to impress your friends, use a biscuit cutter (about 8-10cm in diameter) to cut out nice rounds. If not just cut it diagonally as recommended by Nigella. You see, it wasn't that difficult was it ? So, go on, experiment.
However, if you are really not a fan of chocolate and just want plain Gateau Breton, which I shouldn't forget to mention, is actually one of my favourite desserts, then just omit the chocolate and it will still look good, as evident from the front of my "tasty calendar" which you can buy on
www.zazzle.com/lameen/calendar.
So in summary, what do you need
250g caster sugar
250g soft unsalted butter
225g plain flour (sifted)
5 egg yolks (or 6 egg yolks if you can afford it but make your plain flour 250g to compensate)
60g melted chocolate, with minimum 65% cocoa solids
24" spring-form baking tin, well greased with butter of course or low-fat vegetable spray
ENJOY !
A Tasty Blog 