Well hello there!

Well hello out there! Welcome to Maude and Betty. We're sisters from Brisbane, Australia. We love cooking, food, life and all sorts of things in between. We'll take it in turn to post different things - B loves eating food and M loves cooking food! Having said that, I'm Betty and my first post is about a cake I made from Belinda Jeffrey's Mix and Bake - a baking bible in both my and M's kitchens. Talk about baking porn - this book is amazing. It is a mixture of simple country style baking (think scones, soda bread), to sophisticated cakes like a delicious mocha cake decorated with shards of coffee bean brittle.

The cake I made is the chocolate and coffee crumble cake. Belinda says this cake was a kind of experiment - if only my kitchen experiements all turned out this way. It was delicious and moist - not too coffee-ish for those not liking strong coffee flavour. The only problem was we ate it too warm and it crumbled everywhere (that's our own greedy fault!).

Enjoy!

B xx

Chocolate and coffee crumble cake
(from Belinda Jeffrey's Mix and Bake, p26)

1 1/2 cups water

1 cup raisins

250g unsalted butter, roughly chopped

1 cup castor sugar

1 tsp group cinnamon

3 heaped tsp Dutch-processed cocoa

1/4 tsp salt

1 tsp bicarb soda

1/4 cup boiling water

1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract

2 cups plain flour, sifted

140g good-quality dark chocolate, chopped into small chunks

Coffee Crumble

1/4 cup firmly packed brown sugar (I used dark as always - love that dark caramel flavour)

1/2 cup roasted pecans or walnuts (I used pecans - again, as usual - am addicted to pecans)

2 tsp Dutch processed cocoa

1 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon

1 tsp instant coffee powder

40g dark chocolate roughly chopped

1. Put the water, raisins, butter, sugar, cinnamon, cocoa and salt into a large saucepan. Sit over high heat and bring mixture to boil, stirring the whole time. When the mixture boils, reduce heat to low and simmer for 5 mins, then remove from heat and leave to cool. Meanwhile, dissolve bicarb of soda in the boiling water and let cool.

2. Preheat oven to 180 degress celsius. Butter and flour a medium sized kugelhopf tin and set aside.

3. While both mixtures are cooling, make the coffee crumble. Combine all the crumble ingredients in the food processor and pulse until the nuts and chocolate are quite finely chopped, then set aside.

4. When the raisin and cocoa mix is cool, stir the vanilla extract and bicarb and water mix into the saucepan. Mix in all flour, except for a couple of teaspoons. Toss the chunks of chocolate in the reserved flour, then stir them into the batter (the coating of flour will help the choco from sinking to the bottom). Spoon under one third of the batter into the tin and smooth out. Sprinkle one-third of the crumble evenly over the top and gently press it down into the batter. Spread another third of the batter over the 1st crumble layer. Sprinkle with remaining crumble mix and press down. Dot the remaining cake mix on top and spreak evenly.

5. Bake for 50-55mins. Cool the cake in the tin or on a rack for 15 mins. Carefully loosen cake and invert onto a rack and leave to cool.

6. Make a ganache or runny chocolate icing of your choice - when the cake is cook, spoon over the cake.

Thanks Belinda Jeffery! x