Sunday, January 22, 2012

Chocolate, ricotta and blueberry cake with chocolate-yoghurt icing


I was in Brisbane last week when my boss arrived home from his overseas trip and emailed my office to say there were fancy chocolates in the kitchen for whoever wanted them.  I wanted them! But I was in stupid Brisbane.  So I email-bribed my workmates with the promise of baking, and lo, they saved me some chocolates.  So today I am making good and baking a cake for Monday afternoon. 


Because it is my cake and my decision, the cake had to involve chocolate.  But I didn't want it to be too sweet, nor too dense.  So I looked up cakes with fruit.  I was hoping to find something involving peaches, but then I stumbled upon a recipe involving blueberries and ricotta and my decision was made.  However, the original said to dust with icing sugar, and I knew I could do better than that. So I added a ganache-like icing made with yoghurt for some extra tang.

Ingredients:
  • 2 cups SR flour
  • 1 cup castor sugar
  • 1/4 cup cocoa
  • 250g ricotta
  • 100g butter
  • 1 cup hot water
  • 2 punnets blueberries
Chocolate yoghurt icing
  • 1 cup dark cooking chocolate pieces
  • 1/4 cup greek yoghurt

Grease a 22cm cake tin and heat the oven to 160.  Sift your flour, sugar and cocoa into a large bowl.  Melt the butter (I do this in the microwave, being careful not to have it explode) and add with the water and ricotta to the dry ingredients. Stir thoroughly until all ingredients are mixed through, especially the ricotta.  Then fold in one cup of the blueberries, reserving the rest for decorating the finished cake.






Place in the oven for an hour, or until a skewer inserted comes out clean (if your oven isn't fan forced you may want to cook it for an extra 15 to 20 minutes). Once cooked, cool in the pan for 5 minutes then on a rack.



Prepare the icing by melting the chocolate and stirring through the yoghurt.  Smooth over the cake while pliable and glossy, then place in the fridge to set. 





Top with the remaining blueberries to serve.


Very impressive for such an easy cake.



1 comment:

lexi said...

Yogurt chocolate icing sounds ace. MAking asap.