The counter-diet Chocolate cake with Bay Leaf Syrup

I woke up this morning and everything outside was candid white. We passed from an almost spring day of yesterday to total white snowy winter again! Now it is raining...
After the snow I’ve received the first refusal for a job application which would have changed my poor-as-Greece situation, with no apparent reasons . . . Shit happens.....even when you are gasping in it....it continues to happen!
No more room for sadness in this blog! I promise!
So, what can transform a shitty day in a “still brown but from a different material” day? A chocolate cake! I’ve decided to look up for a new recipe in a cooking book I’ve bought in October which is a collection of really interesting recipes taken from the New York TImes! It is as far as it could be from a diet-range nutrition, but It is in the oven right now...and it smells fantastic!

It is not very difficult to make, even if it has a number of passages....

What do you need:
1 Kitchen
1 Electric Mixer
2 Bowls
2 Small Saucepans
1 Baking pan
Spoons - Knives

Ingredients:
For the Syrup:

1 Cup sugar (approx. 240g)
12 Bay leaves (in the recipe they are fresh....I’m in Berlin, and it is February, I think that’s a good excuse for using dry ones)
1 Cup of water
1 Vanilla bean

For the Chocolate Cake

180g Butter (...that’s the counter-diet element . . .)
400g Chocolate (see below)
6 Eggs, separated
200g Sugar
150g Almond flour [which I’ve found in the small-mini-I have barely nothing-supermarket close to my home....so...I assume it i not something impossible to be found]

1. In a small saucepan combine sugar and water
2. Split the vanilla bean, scrape out the seeds and add both to the syrup
3. Add the bay leaves, bring to boil and simmer until the liquid is reduced and it becomes sticky
4. Cool, strain and set aside
5. Heat the oven to 200°C, grease the baking pan with some butter.
6. Melt butter and chocolate or with the help of a double boiler [or being extremely careful not to burn everything over the heat.
7. Beat the egg yolks with half of the sugar until they become light yellow and foamy, add the melted chocolate, mix well.
8. Fold the almond flour to the eggs yolk + chocolate mixture.
9. Beat the white yolks with the remaining sugar until firm and fold into the egg yolk + chocolate + almond mixture [critical point: when folding be careful not to stir the batch, but mixing vertically: from the bottom to the top]
10. Pour the batch into the baking pan and bake for 25 - 30 minutes [or until it feel firm to the touch]

At this point the recipe has also some whipped cream [with a spoon of the syrup in the whipping process] . . .

Pour some Bay leaf syrup on the plate before serving the cake. [Add whipped cream, if you feel pig enough to do so]

Have fun

Bis bald

M.

Oldies, Venice, Summer

I have been busy....the snow....the Opera....still cooking, but still experimenting some Indian recipes....a cake to bake for Monday....three papers to write...an enormous amount of books to read....but....in the meantime some old-Venetian-pics!

Bis bald....