Real Living

I look forward to all my magazine subscriptions turning up each month.  I have subscriptions to Real Living, Home Beautiful, Australian Good Food, Australian House and Garden and Delicious.  My real living magazine turned up in the mailbox today and the cover instantly caught my eye.  I just love the colours they have used this month, and love the material on the couch. 

 What I really like about this magazine is that they actually include items that anyone can afford.  I sometimes get annoyed when reading other magazines to find out that the cushion that I loved and thought I had to get cost $195.00.  I'm sorry, but I am

never going to pay $195.00 for 1 cushion no matter how nice it is.

Well I have now read this cover to cover while laying on the couch and sort of watching State of Origin at the same time.  Well not so much watching of TV, maybe only lifting my head to look at the TV when there was a try scored and a bit of biffo (I'm partial to a bit of the old biffo) It's just not state of origin without it.  Well done Queensland!!

Chocolate Fudge Cake

I have had a bit of an issue with my computer over the last few weeks. Freezing, extremely slow, errors with the antivirus software etc. My thoughts were that I had picked up a virus of some sort. Luckily for me my brother is a techno geek and fixes computers for a living.

So I packed it up and took it over to his house for some TLC. For the payment he was willing to accept cake.

When reading the May 2010 issue of Real Living Magazine I noticed a rather delicious looking cake so decided to give that a go.





Choc Fudge Cake
Serves 8 to 12

Cake
100g butter, chopped roughly
150g good-quality dark chocolate chopped into small pieces (no more than 72% cocoa)
3/4 cup sour cream
1/3 cup almond meal
3 eggs
1/2 cup good quality dark cocoa powder, sieved
1 1/2 cups firmly packed brown sugar
1 cup plain flour
2 tsp vanilla extract
Ganache
250g good quality dark chocolate chopped into small pieces
300ml cream

Make cake Preheat oven to 170C (150C for fan forced). Line tin with baking paper. In microwave, melt butter and 150g chocolate for 2 mins on medium, stirring after every minute.
Put cake ingredients and melted chocolate into processor. Blitz until well combined.
Pour cake mix into tin and back for 90 mins until just cooked. Remove cake from oven and leave in tin to cool at room temperature.
Make ganache While cake is baking, place remaining chocolate, cream and vanilla extract in saucepan over medium heat. Heat until chocolate has melted and mixture is smooth, stirring continuously to prevent chocolate burning on bottom of pan and becoming grainy. Transfer mix to bowl and let cool. Place in fridge until thick enough to ice cake.
Serve with raspberries and cream or ice-cream or both!! (I didn't have any reaspberries)

The cake was pretty good if I do say so myself. Rich, moist and quite dense. Really needed the cream with it. It went very well with a nice cup of merlo coffee.