And this is the second birthday, verjaardag, that I celebrated in the land of tulips. In May it is gonna be two years since I moved here. Time flies.
Despite the fact that my birthday came to happen on a Monday, I had a lovely day where, again, I felt very lucky of having such great people around me. Not only here physically with me, but also from far away.
Of course, I couldn’t spend the whole day my self, so I decided to invite a bunch of good friends for dinner. And what a lot of work! I had the crazy idea to make fresh pasta, maccheroni, since I am finally reunited with my lovely Kenwood kitchen machine. Luckily, my colleague and good friend C. helped me out with it on Sunday. And I must say we had quite some fun with making it work.
And of course, I couldn’t miss to prepare a nice cake to celebrate my 25th birthday (yes, again).
When I looked back at what I baked in the previous years, I can’t miss to notice that I’ve been always in favor of something with chocolate: chocolate and pears cake in Sweden, chocolate and pears in pie version in Holland. Quite simple.
This year, again, it is chocolate cake with raspberries and slagroom (the typical Dutch whipped cream).
Obviously, it is not as fancy as the cake I baked for my first 25th birthday. I was very busy with quite some extra baking to please the colleagues of two departments, so I couldn’t do much more than this.
Many new recipes coming soon. So, stay tuned.
Oh, I was almost forgetting. As a birthday present from my lovely colleagues I got a new accessorize to make Italian bigoli with my Kenwood pasta machine. I addition to that, a personalized cookbook to experiment new recipes with the slow-cooker that my supervisor kindly gave to me.
Do I look so stressed that I need to cook and bake more often?
It seems so…
Chocolate-raspberry cake
Ingredients
For the chocolate sponge cake
140 gr dark chocolate
75 gr butter
6 eggs
180 gr sugar
50 gr cornflour
100 gr white flour for baking
16 gr baking powder
For the filling
250 ml slagroom (whipped cream)
250 gr raspberry jam
20 gr vanilla sugar
some red-fruit juice
Decoration
250 gr of chocolate to dip
250 gr raspberries
250 ml slagroom (whipped cream)
Preparation
Prepare the sponge chocolate cake as I did here and let it cool down after baking in the oven
Meanwhil, whip the slagroom with the vanilla sugar using a mixer. Put the package of chocolate to dip in hot water so the chocolate inside can melt.
Cut horizontally the sponge cake in two parts. Put one disk of sponge cake on a grill, so then it will be easy to let drop the hot chocolate from the cake.
Spread some red fruit juice on the cake using a silicon brush for cooking. Then, spread the whipped cream on the cake, distribute the jam on the top and cover with the second disk of sponge cake.
Spread the chocolate dip on the top of the cake and let the chocolate drop from it. Let it cool down and put it in the fridge (better if you prepare the cake the night before).
A little before eating, take the cake our of the fridge and prepare the final decorations: whip some cream and make some little roses using a sac-à-poche where you will then put the fresh raspberries.
Pronta!
Enjoy with some good Italian Prosecco!
Aroma di cannella 