recipe: flourless chocolate cake

It didn't really occur to me to actually post the recipe for this, but a few people asked for it so here it is :D

250g dark cooking chocolate (I recommend Lindt dark chocolate)
100g caster sugar
100g unsalted butter, cubed
1 tbs coffee-flavoured liqueur (optional - I used vanilla syrup)
125g hazelnut meal
5 eggs, separated

1. Preheat oven to 180C. Grease 23cm round springform tin and line the base with baking paper.

2. Place the cooking chocolate, sugar, butter and liqueur in a heatproof bowl. Melt over a double boiler. Stir occasionally to ensure even melting and mixing. When fully melted remove from heat and mix thoroughly.

3. Transfer chocolate mixture to a large bowl. Stir in hazelnut meal, then beat the egg yolks in one at a time, mixing well after each addition. In a dry bowl, whisk egg whites until they form stiff peaks. Gently fold in the rest using a rubber spatula (or large metal spoon).

4. Pour mixture into tin and bake for 50-60 minutes or until a skewer comes out clean when inserted. Leave to cool completely in the tin before turning out and dusting with icing sugar.

Courtesy of "THE ESSENTIAL BAKING COOKBOOK"

baked polenta

I haven't experimented much with polenta actually, and the first time I tried making it myself it sort of turned out like mush.

Corn seems to have a great relationship with cheese and I approve wholeheartedly, which is probably why I am such a fan of this dish. Polenta, stock, mozzarella (lots), parmesan (also lots), tomato and prosciutto - a winning combination. Such a simple dish. Cook the polenta in the stock. Add cheese and stir. Add tomatoes and prosciutto and stir. Bake. Add more cheese on top. Bake. Eat! Love it.

Probably the trickiest thing about this dish for me was finding a prosciutto with no preservatives or anything that I couldn't eat. I finally found one that was just pork and salt, it wasn't cheap, but it was worth it.

Today confirmed my theory that you can pretty much throw whatever you like into polenta and bake it. This is really exciting for me because it opens up a lot other "take away" (and by that I mean make at home and take to work) options for lunch for me because lately I have been really scraping the bottom of the barrel for easy to heat up at work options. I'm just not sure I'll move away from the cheese combination ;)

back to baking

I am the first to admit that I am quite terrible at keeping this thing up to date. However today comes with such greatness!!! I was finally motivated to make interesting tasty food again, which I just haven't felt like doing for a long long time. And I have reaped the benefits.

This flourless chocolate cake is just the right texture, moist, a little burnt on one side, but I blame my oven for that mostly and yet just so delicious!! It's very rich and quite crumbly, great with ice cream. The last time I tried this cake it collapsed in the middle, but this time, I am not sure what I did different, but it was perfect all the way around.

I did learn that chocolate really does expire though. It surprised me. I found some nice caramel chocolate that had an expiry of about a year ago, and I thought I'd give it a go anyway. No good. It didn't melt very well, and it sort of had a coagulated consistency by the end of it. So I tossed it out and started again.

If you are trying to do any baking with chocolate, I definitely advice using good quality (non expired) chocolate. For this cake I have used bittersweet dark lindt chocolate. Very smooth, but no barely or malt, just good chocolate things. I do tend to use it in quite a lot of my chocolate cooking.

Hazelnut meal is the base for this cake, and not that much is needed. It seems to be less oily than almond meal. The flavour is different, but I can't pinpoint what the difference is yet. It works quite well with this cake because it binds with the chocolate rather than just co-existing.

All in all I am a happy camper, cake is good for me, especially when I know exactly what's in it. Let me know if you want the receipe!

The Final Challenge

I was at breaking point, ready to throw in the towel and give up on everything when I decided to take on one final challenge. In my mind it was try this and/or accept that nothing else would work at making me feel better and I may as well go back to eating all that food that makes me terrible.

I gave myself 12 weeks – because I know things don’t happen overnight. 12 weeks to at least have the trend of feeling better be more than the trend of feeling crap. But this was going to take fairly drastic measures. So here they are.

The De-tox
What I really wanted was to take all of my digestive organs and either replace them or wash them so thoroughly to get rid of all the toxins building up in my system from the last 12 months. So it seemed logical to me to do a de-tox. I started a 15 day de-tox by Quick Cleanse.

The main components of this de-tox are: take their pills as scheduled, no processed foods and sugars, no alcohol and no animal products. Lots of raw fruits and vegetables, and lots of water.

The Personal Trainer
My last post mentioned that I had started to feel the squeeze in a big way, and that was compounded by the fact that I had lost the motivation and energy to exercise. Not that I did anything athletic before, but I certainly did a lot more yoga, pilates and walking. So obviously going from low to no level of activity wasn’t helping. Now anyone who knows me knows that I hate the gym, a lot, a real big lot. But something had to be done and clearly I wasn’t doing very well on my own. So I decided to join a gym and get a personal trainer for the 12 weeks.

I was very specific about the type of personal trainer I wanted and their qualifications. I needed someone who would be able to take all my dietary constraints and symptoms, and get me to a point where my physical state was starting to improve. I explained some of my symptoms and was clear that I wasn’t expecting to lose the 7 kilos I had gained in 12 weeks, but I was expecting a downward trend. I was even ok with the fact that the scales may not change at all, as long as my body composition had something to show for it – that I fit my old clothes again. My theory was that if I had less body fat to bloat, then bloating wouldn’t be so bad, right?

The Nazi
While my diet is already quite restrictive, my eating patterns are not. In fact I am quite lazy. When I find something I like, then I will just eat the same time over and over and over again. But part of my condition is that I have to rotate food to avoid a build up for particular chemicals in my system.

So not only am I looking at what I can and can’t eat, I’m also looking at when or how often I can eat it. This also means being more prudent at meal planning. So instead of cooking one big bucket of something and eating it all week, I now have to plan each meal of each day for the week.


So there you have it – the final challenge to myself. I am currently 10 weeks into the 12 weeks, and it is working for me. It’s not perfect obviously, but I can say with certainty that I do feel better, I am starting to fit my clothes again, and I have had much less craziness. The trend on the feeling better is definitely on the up.

o brother, where art thou?

Well it’s been quite a while since I last posted anything. I hope this post will explain why that is and what the future holds.

So what happened you ask? Well to be perfectly frank, I just got really fed up… with everything. I didn’t walk to do any more testing, I was tired of doing all this psychoanalysis on myself, and I really did not want to talk about it. I just wanted it all to go away and pretend like I had never gone through this experience.

Gee that’s a bit extreme isn’t it? It may seem that way, but when people ask me how all the food testing is going my response is “it has been the worst 12 months of my life and I wish I’d been better prepared to make the decision to go ahead, because I don’t think I would have.”

Exhaustion, motivation, and will
The biggest contributor I think to this feeling was the symptoms I suffered from much of the food. Sometimes I felt like I had chronic fatigue. The food and everything related to managing the symptoms were draining. First I’d have to get up to go to work, that was tiring. Then I would have to convince myself to get up off the edge of the bed or bath to actually have a shower. That was harder than you think, and yes it was tiring. Then I would have to talk myself into getting dressed. Well you get the idea. Some days were harder than others. Some days, I should have stayed home.

Once I left the house and got to work I would have to really “turn it on”, you know, be social, talk to people, and actually do some work. This was an unbelievable strain on my body physically and emotionally.

By the time I’d get home, I was so exhausted all I could muster up was making dinner and sitting on the couch. Bedtime was my favourite time of the day because as soon as my head hit the pillow I would literally pass out. The world was gone. Shut out for another little while.

Analysis paralysis
Angry, upset paranoid and depressed were the most frequent visitors of the psychological symptoms. Was it something I ate? What could it have been? I’ve eaten that before without any serious problems so maybe it’s not that. How careful was I yesterday? Maybe it wasn’t yesterday, maybe it was the day before? Is it a new boundary? Does this really make me that angry, upset or depressed? Would I normally be so charged from it? Why am I crying about this?

Every day, for every emotion, for every interaction and feeling, this is what I went through. You really have to ask the question, why don’t any of the symptoms come out with total exhilaration or euphoria?

Feeling the squeeze
Rapid prolonged weight gain and bloating were those acquaintances that just never left, or just popped out but always came back.

So add all of the same questions as above and add on questions about what to wear. I was just so uncomfortable in my own skin I could not comprehend how putting anything on was going to change that at all. And it didn’t. It’s no wonder why it took me so long to get up and ready in the morning.

I wasn’t exercising much either. A little bit of swimming here and there, and yoga once a week, but these were (obviously) not enough to actually reduce the weight or mitigate any symptoms. The bigger I got, the more depressed I got the less I did any form of physical activity.

Breathing is a luxury
Just to keep things interesting, I developed a respiratory problem that continued for 3 months where I was constantly coughing. It was unclear whether or not it was related to the testing I was doing with the food, or if I was allergic to my client site at the time, the colleagues I was sitting next to or my house, so I went to see a respiratory and allergy specialist.

There were a lot of blood tests, breathing tests, x-rays and scans and the threat of doing another round of food baseline and elimination. I moved to a different floor from my project team and at one stage I even had to move out of my house for a period of time. After 3 months, I got a very serious bout of gastro that lasted about a week, and that seemed to eradicate whatever respiratory issues.


So needless to say, it’s been a tough year for me, but we are getting there and I’ll go into more detail in my next post.

Finally, I need to share with you that I would not have been able to do this on my own. My husband has just been phenomenal. He has been patient, kind, supporting, he has done things for me, waited for me, got frustrated with me and at me, but he has never left my side. To be honest, that amazes me. I feel like I have been the most awful person to him but he still loves me. I love you babe, and thankyou.

persian flavours

This is a cute little family run restaurant in suburbs of Melbourne. It was right near the hotel we were staying at for work. I ordered food at random for everyone and then asked if it would be possible to have totally plain, un-marinated chicken. The look on the woman’s face was total disbelief and she responded with “No I can’t do that. It wouldn’t taste like anything. And that would be horrible.”

I guess you can’t win them all. Everyone else said they were really nice though.

cookie: melbourne

I highly recommend visiting this place if you are every in Melbourne and you are stuck for ideas for dinner and/or drinks. It’s a great cocktail bar and the food is excellent.

I was in Melbourne recently for work and was able to catch up with some colleagues for dinner and a drink or two. There was already a large group of people there, and I arrived with three other people. We sat down and got some menus. When the waiter returned I asked if it was possible to have anything plain that was on the menu, plain chicken, plain steak, plain fish. He said he’d go check with the kitchen.

On he’s return he said that the steak could be done plain, and that the prawns could also be done plain if need be. Perfect I said, totally plain steak it is. Then my friend jumped in and mentioned that he was gluten intolerant but was interested in the pork belly and another entrée. The waiter said sure, one sec I’ll go check with the kitchen, he took one step, and then came back and asked our other two companions “anything else I should check while I’m there?”. Hehe.

When he came back this time, he said the pork belly could be done gluten free. So our tabled ordered two serves of pork belly, one gluten free, and two steaks, one totally plain.

My friend also ordered a “Vesper” cocktail and asked for the Chopin vodka instead of the regular vodka. Chopin is one of two potato-based vodka’s we have found in Australia so far. When the cocktail came out, the waiter (a different guy) put it down and said “one gluten free vesper”.

Firstly I had to share this story because I still find it funny. But secondly this only emphasis's my recommendation for eating and drinking here. The staff were very accommodating and took it all in their stride, the food was delicious and the drinks are fantastic.

http://www.cookie.net.au/