Pen, paper and cake!: Foodie Week

It has been a real foodie week. First, we had our department Christmas dinner out, then there was a fabulous Christmas lunch in-house, with champagne, foie gras, dover sole, a cheese platter and a famous Parisian patissier sur place to produce mouth watering desserts. A far cry from the dry turkey and old-looking sprouts I would have been given back home!

Yummy cheese platter:

By now rather empty dessert array, but you can imagine:

After that there were two goodbye drinks cocktails for two members of the team, and then there was all the cooking that I did on Thursday night.

My favourite colleague, Mathilde, left on Friday. Her internship has come to an end and she will be joining my firm in Paris. She is such a special person. She is so kind, so humble, so intelligent (doing law school, internships and her PhD thesis simultaneously) and I have had so much fun getting to know her. She was my food buddie in the office (were are both always hungry!). Normally, when interns leave the company, there is a lavish champagne and hors d'oeuves reception to say goodbye, but it was decided that this would not be done for Mathilde because we have been so deliciously stuffed and had had enough events for one week.

I thought differently though, and arranged something 'on the sly'. I had my secretary order up some champagne and I said I would deal with the food. I literally got about 3 hours sleep the night before because I was still making all those petits fours - 80 of them though I only had a 15 piece pan! I made gruyere and mushroom and spinach, smoken salmon and goat's cheese petits fours. I also made ginger cake with cranberries and a white chocolate and raspberry cake.

I do not often say this but I think that the last cake is one of the most delicious ones that I have eaten. It is so moist and the actual cake, not just the icing, is flavourful. I made the original recipe twice, stacked it and decided to put lots of raspberries in the middle to cut through the sweetness. I was very happy with the cake, so I thought I'd pass along the recipe below (written out for two cakes stacked, but you can halve it and make one cake).

White chocolate and raspberry cake

Cake

600g flour
4 tablespoons of baking powder
pinch of salt
400g brown sugar
500 ml milk
360g butter
180g honey
300g white chocolate
4 lightly beaten eggs
500g frozen raspberries, thawed
fresh raspberries to decorate

1. preheat oven to 160 degrees c. and butter your cake pans.
2. in a bowl, mix flour, baking powder and salt
3. in a saucepan mix the chocolate, brown sugar, honey and heat on a genle flame. Mix until you have an even consistency
4. leave this to cool and then add the eggs and the flour mixture and mix
5. divide mixture into two pans and put in oven for about an hour or until a knife comes out clean.

Icing

100ml creme fraiche
300g milk chocolate

1. Put creme fraiche into saucepan and heat to a simmer. Add the chocolate and mix until mixture is smooth.

2. Place in fridge for 30 minutes and decorate cake.