Just Dessert Blog Event

A group of Secret Cravings Publishings authors have got together again, this time to offer you some scintalating recipes for you to enjoy today and tomorrow.

Many of the authors will also be offerings gifts to lucky visitors who leave comments. The more sites you visit the more chance you have of receiving a gift.

Each author will explain their rules of participation.

As I am offering one lucky commenter a free pdf copy of my Regency romantic suspense, No Job For a Woman, I thought I'd share a couple fo regency recipes with you. The first is...

Prince Regent chocolate cake recipe

(from UK TV Channel4 programme Come Dine With Me Mike Brett gave his guests a royal send off with this luscious dessert in Come Dine With Me, Wolverhampton)

Ingredients

• 1-2 tbsp sunflower oil, for greasing
• 250g butter, softened
• 250g caster sugar
• 1 tsp vanilla extract or a few drops of vanilla essence
• 4 free-range medium eggs
• 200g plain flour
• 50g cornflour
• 1 tsp baking powder

For the filling

• 4 tbsp cocoa powder
• 350-450g icing sugar
• 250g unsalted butter, softened
• 1-2 tbsp almond or coffee cream liqueur or freshly made strong coffee For the glaze
• 150g plain dark chocolate (at least 70% cocoa solids), broken into squares
• 50g coconut oil or unsalted butter
• 50ml coffee cream liqueur
• Chocolate shavings, to decorate

METHOD

1. Preheat the oven to 200°C/Gas 6. Base-line a 25cm loose-based cake tin with baking parchment and brush the base and sides with a little sunflower oil to grease. Cream the butter with the sugar and vanilla until light and fluffy. Slowly beat in the eggs then sift over the flour, cornflour and baking powder. Fold in lightly. (Use an electric mixer to make the cake batter if you like.)

2. Spread roughly a seventh of the mixture over the prepared cake tin and bake in the centre of the oven for 10 minutes. Remove, cool for a few minutes then turn out onto a wire rack and peel off the baking parchment. Wash the tin, base-line and grease once more. Spread a sixth of the cake batter over the tin and bake as before. Repeat the method until you have seven even-sized sponges. Leave the sponges to cool, separated by sheets of baking parchment.

3. To make the filling, sift the cocoa powder and 350g of the icing sugar into a bowl with the butter and cream together until smooth and fairly thick, adding more icing sugar if necessary. Stir in the liqueur or coffee and beat until soft. Put one of the sponges on a serving plate and spread with a little of the filling. Top with a second cake and repeat the method until all the cakes are stacked one on top of the other with the chocolate filling between the layers.

4. To make the glaze, melt the chocolate with the coconut oil or butter and coffee liqueur in a heat-proof basin over gently simmering water until smooth, stirring occasionally. Remove from the heat and leave to cool for a few minutes then spread with a large rubber spatula over the assembled cake. Decorate with chocolate shavings and chill until ready to serve.

Please note this recipe is the contestant's own and has not been tested professionally. Like the Come Dine With Me contestants, you could be creating a culinary delight or dining disaster, so switch on your ovens and be bold.

As a bonus I thought I'd include a recipe for Ratafia.

What is ratafia?

It is defined as "1- a sweet cordial flavored with fruit kernels or almonds. 2 - a biscuit flavored with ratafia."The following recipe for Ratafia can be found in Robert's Guide for Butlers & Other Household Staff, published in 1828.
Into one quart of brandy pour half a pint of cherry juice, as much currant juice, as much of raspberry juice, add a few cloves, and some white pepper in grains, two grains of green coriander, and a stick or two of cinnamon, then pound the stones of cherries, and put them in wood and all. Add about twenty five or thirty kernels of apricots. Stop your demijohn close and let it infuse for one month in the shade, shaking it five or six times in that time at the end of which strain it through a flannel bag, then through a filtering paper, and then bottle it and cork close for use; you can make any quantity you chose, only by adding or increasing more brandy or other ingredients.

Now for my giveaway~

All you have to do to enter my giveaway is to share your favourite recipe and I will use random.org to pick a lucky recipient.

Blurb:Deborah Stavely is determined to overcome the increasing harassment from her neighbour without calling on her brother for help. So she is not pleased when Freddie intervenes and involves his friend, Julian Fanshaw. Circumstances demand Julian and Deborah learn to work together and Julian dares to dream that he might gain the love of the only person he’s ever given his heart to.

But will Deborah live long enough to discover that by releasing everything she values, she will gain everything her heart desires?

Julian Fanshaw answers a call for help from his life-long friend Lord Worth to help keep his friend’s widowed sister, Deborah, safe from her increasingly vindictive neighbours. It doesn’t take long to realise him or Freddie long to realise the Grangers aren’t using her as a long-promised act of revenge against them; but are playing a deeper and far more sinister game of their own.

To see more wonderful Secret Cravings Publishings Desert offerings, please go to Secret Cravings Publishings to find the other participants.