23 September 2013

Metal - cheesy metal brilliance

It's fair to say I have a soft spot for folk metal. It's cheesy. And great.
Alestorm have made a few appearances on this page, but there's an Alestorm offshoot - Gloryhammer.
here's the single:


and now a hero who ride a mammoth.


and to end, some more Gloryhammer:


Ahhh bliss.

Cooking with Bruce : Chocolate and Cherry torte

Welcome, again, to the occasional cooking with Bruce series. This time, overloading on chocolate and cherries.
I'd been ordered to make a chocolate cake, however telling me what I'm going to do and me doing it ... herding cats ... etc etc. Which is how I ended up with a chocolate torte, reasoning a) I wanted one b) it had chocolate and c) it's cherry season and I like them.
Not sure where I found this recipe, there's bits I've adapted...

Probably don't need to say it, but:
* chocolate : high quality and 75-80% cocoa
* cherry jam : again the better you can afford, the better the taste - cheaper ones don't have as much fruit and generally more sugar which can lead to bitterness when it's heated

Heat oven to 180C

Base
100g unsalted butter
300g flour
pinch of salt
1t bp
100g sugar
2 eggs

Butter and line a tin with baking paper - I think mine's about 20cm, and that got pretty high and took awhile to cook, so 24cm maybe better.
Place all (except eggs) into blender, pulse to breadcrumbs, add egg and pulse until it comes together. Press pastry over the base and up the sides of the tin. Refrigerate.

Chocolate
150g caster sugar
4 eggs
3T flour
500ml full cream milk
1t vanilla extract
200g 82% dark chocolate [minimum 70%] broken up roughly
200g fresh cherries, and stoned (man)
2-3T good quality cherry jam

  1. Whisk sugar and eggs together until thick, stir in flour. 
  2. Bring milk to boil, then pour into the eggs mixture while whisking
  3. Add vanilla, and place over low heat
  4. Add chocolate+jam and stir until mixture thickens and coats the spoon
  5. Pour mixture into the tart, sprinkle cherries over the top
Cook for at least 45 mins (my 20cm tin = 70mins), allow to cool before removing and chopping up.

Even I will admit this doesn't need any cream. I know. I'm as shocked as you.
Tomorrow, you may get some indian food as I quite liked the ones I made last night...

Smoochies on your cherry [torte], me