Chocolate, but not for the faint-hearted

The recipe choices were seemingly endless for One Chef to Rule Them All competitors in this round of The Land's cookery competition.

Senior reporter Mike Foley has been spotted skulking near the voting table in previous rounds with fellow competitors insinuating Mike has been "information gathering" and trying to suss out the voting strategies.

Some have also suggested that Mike took two weeks of holidays before his round to prepare. Mike denied the allegations.

Chief sub editor Mitch Vleeskens, on the other hand, conceded from the get-go that he had not cooking ability.

"Chocolate is one of the marquee dessert ingredients, so everybody was no doubt looking forward to a morning packed full of rich, creamy, chocolatey goodness. Unfortunately, it happened to coincide with my week cooking for the competition," he said.

"I have no cooking aptitude whatsoever.

"Sure, spicing up my meat and three veg with a couple of different seasonings is within my range, but getting truly creative in the kitchen is not something I'm inclined to do. And when I do, it usually fails miserably.

"So rather than over-extend, I thought I'd play it safe, and use it as an opportunity to make a statement about an important issue that has been reported in The Land quite extensively.

"That's right - these aren't your usual frogs in ponds, they're mutated (or dead) frogs in CSG mining-affected ponds."

Unfortunately, as appealing as eating dead frogs in CSG mining-affected ponds sounded, Mike's offerings of flourless chocolate cake and chocolate Florentines somehow won the day.

Flourless chocolate cake ingredients

200g of the best dark chocolate you can afford (if you want to use anything less than 70 per cent cocoa, don’t bother). The cake should resemble a second generation billionaire: thick and rich.

125g unsalted butter

1 cup firmly packed brown sugar

100g almond meal

5 eggs, separated

Flourless chocolate cake method

Preheat oven to 180C and grease and line a 20cm spring form cake tin.

Chop butter and chocolate, place in a heatproof bowl, above a saucepan of simmering water and stir until melted.

Once melted, remove from heat and let mixture cool slightly.

In a separate bowl, combine almond meal and brown sugar and pour on melted chocolate mixture. Stir to combine, adding egg yolks one at a time until well mixed.

Beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form, and fold gently into the cake batter.

If you get lazy here and just mash the egg whites in, your cake will be as flat as a tack.

Pour into cake tin and bake for 45 mins, or until cake is just firm.

Chocolate Florentines ingredients

There’s no mystery to good Florentines. The flavour comes from large doses of fat and sugar, combining chocolate, nuts with a crispy biscuity bite, spiked with a citrus zing from candied ginger.

100g slivered almonds

A handful of pecans

A handlful of chopped candied ginger

½ cup of caster sugar

100g unsalted butter

150g of dark chocolate

Chocolate Florentines method

Preheat oven to 180C

Melt the butter and sugar in a saucepan together, and let it bubble away until it takes on a light brown colour (about 2 minutes)

Pour melted mix over dry ingredients (reserving chocolate) and stir well.

Dollop a large teaspoon full of the mixture onto a baking tray, lined with baking paper, allowing a lot of room between each for the mixture to spread out during baking.

Bake for 10 mins and remove. Allow them to cool for 10 mins. The Florentines will firm-up once cool.

Melt chocolate and spread across the underside of biscuits.

Once dry, transfer to an air tight container. Keeps for three to four days.

Ingredients

Chocolate frogs

Jelly

Method

Make jelly, allow to cool somewhat, insert frogs, return to fridge to set.

The Land's cookery competition continues next week.