Coffee and chocolate cake

This sort of chocolate and coffee cake (mokkapalat) was often served in Finland in my youth. I'm fearing that it's less popular these days, as I haven't seen it around for a long time. This is a very easy cake to make, as you may know how bad I am at baking, so this is a perfect one that even I can manage. I really love coffee, so its flavour on a chocolate cake is a really nice combination. For this one I followed a recipe by Valio, but have translated it to you below. You can find the original recipe here. Most ingredient amounts are in desilitres, which makes the baking even easier, if you happen to own a desilitre measuring cup as is usual in Finnish households.

Ingredients

Cake dough

4 eggs

2 ½ dl sugar

200 g butter

2 dl milk

5 dl wheat flour

½ dl cocoa powder

1 tbsp baking powder

1 tbsp vanilla sugar

Topping

75 g butter

¾ dl strong coffee

4 dl icing sugar

½ dl cocoa powder

2 tsp vanilla sugar

Decoration

Fruity confetti

Method

Make the cake dough first. Whisk the eggs and sugar into foamy texture. Melt the butter and add the cold milk to it. Combine the dry ingredients. Add the butter and milk mix into the egg and sugar mix and also add the dry ingredients through a sieve. Mix carefully. Pour the dough onto baking paper on a baking sheet and bake at 200 C for about 15 minutes.

Make the topping by melting the butter and adding the coffee to it. Add the other ingredients through a sieve and mix on the hot hob. Pour the topping onto the cake while it's still hot (the cake can be either cooled down or also hot). Put some confetti on the top as decoration and let cool.

Enjoy!

Your VegHog

Cheese and onion bagels

Good morning! It's always morning somewhere, isn't it. Here's what I had for breakfast today: a cheese, onion, tomato and rocket bagel. The tomatoes came fresh from my garden and many other components were just basically leftovers that I had bought for other dishes, and I had to get rid of them. This was a very good breakfast indeed, I don't have to have lunch for a while.

These are the ingredients I used:

Plain bagels

Tomatoes

Red onion

Salad onion

Emmental

Sussex Charmer cheese

Fresh rocket

Salt

Pepper

I halved the bagels and baked them at 180C for about 10 minutes with the red onion rings, tomato slices, salt, pepper and cheeses on them. Then I just added some fresh salad onion rings and rocket and put the halves back together.

I always need my morning coffee, and today I had it from a lovely Moomin mug.

Have a good day everyone!

Your VegHog

Coffee and brandy dessert

Weekend is here and the sun is shining! I couldn't be happier about that. I hope you all have a brilliant weekend, and maybe you would even like to make this dessert for your loved ones during it?

I remember cutting this recipe out from a Finnish magazine years ago, and I still have it in one of my collected recipe books. I was delighted to find the recipe now online, and decided to give it an update. This is an extremely filling dessert, but so tasty! Have a little break after dinner before eating it, or simply make smaller cups. The original recipe is in Finnish only, but here is my version of it. 

These amounts are enough for four generous dessert glasses.

160g oat biscuits

70g melted butter

300ml whipping cream

5tbsp sugar

4tbsp brandy

100ml dark coffee

100g plain soft cheese

Coffee bean sweets

Crush the oat biscuits finely and add the melted butter to it. Mix them to a buttery oat crumble.

Whip the cream with the sugar, and then carefully fold in the brandy, coffee and soft cheese.

Assemble the glasses by layering the oat biscuit mix with the coffee cream.

Put some coffee bean sweets on the top as decoration.

Let the dessert glasses set in the fridge for at least one hour and serve cool.

Enjoy!

Your VegHog