Hello and yay! I'm very excited to start baking and posting again after an incredibly boring and fatigued couple of weeks with glandular fever. I have such an appreciation for baking, it just enriches my day and lets me put all my focus into something other than being sick and bored. So I hope you enjoy reading this (and hopefully eating this beautiful cake) as much as I did making it!
I tell you what, having glandular fever has been interesting to say the least. The days all kind of blend into one and you spend a lot of time feeling sorry for yourself, so bored, and yet too tired to do anything except watch a heap of Downton Abbey. And I mean A HEAP. And then other than that A LOT of sleeping is done. But then, I found, after a couple of weeks of complete rest you start to feel better and can do things, like leave the house for the first time in 14 days to have coffee or, you know, bake!
Also during my recovery I crocheted a bunny and a heart garland (via here), and started drawing bunnies. Like, a lot of bunnies. So many bunnies. I think I have a bit of a bunny obsession going on. Maybe I'll put up a picture of one of them in the next post.
Here where I am, it has been raining non-stop for the past two days, and has been super heavy today. Like an "I want to take the doona off my bed and roll myself up in it like a crepe" miserable rainy day. And also an "I want to do nothing else but bake yummy things all day" kind of day. And that's what I did. I made another cake (which I will post about another day soon) but the one I want to show you today is this Chocolate Coffee Bread with Raspberries and Blueberries - aka. the perfect cake to eat while wrapped in your doona and drinking tea while looking out at the grey skies.
So this cake is super light and beautifully choco-packed with the use of real chocolate and cocoa. Putting a healthy dose of instant coffee in there gives it a real intensity too. And then, THE BERRIES. Oh the berries! I've used raspberries in chocolate before with my chocolate raspberry brownies, and this cake further gives the combination a good name. Then, a combination I haven't tried before, chocolate and blueberries, has won me over too! The raspberries give the softness of the chocolate a nice zing (and just look at that beautiful colour when you slice into the cake!), while the blueberries impart a dark sweetness which I love.
So go ahead and make this cake on your next rainy day! But then, you don't need an excuse for this beauty :)
Chocolate Coffee Bread with Raspberries and Blueberries
{via Always With Butter}
Makes two loaves
Ingredients:
1/2 cup softened butter
100g milk chocolate
1 cup caster sugar
2 eggs
1 1/2 cups plain flour
1/2 cup cocoa
Pinch of salt
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
2 tbsp instant coffee
1 cup lite sour cream
1 punnet raspberries
1 punnet blueberries
Method:
Preheat the oven to 180 degrees celsius. Grease and line two loaf pans.
Sift flour, cocoa, baking powder, baking soda, and salt into a bowl and set aside.
In a heatproof bowl over a pan of simmering water, melt the chocolate. Dissolve the instant coffee in 2 tbsp of boiled water and add to the melted chocolate. Allow to cool slightly and add the sour cream, stirring until there are no lumps.
In a large bowl, cream together butter and sugar until fluffy. Add the eggs one at a time.
In alternating batches, add the flour mixture and chocolate-coffee mixture. Mix until combined. Fold in raspberries and blueberries. Divide mixture evenly between the two loaf pans and bake for 30-40 min until a skewer when poked in comes out clean. Let cool completely on a wire rack and enjoy!
