Weekend Cooking: What I Baked (In My Kitchen) in September

The first Saturday of the month is when I share all the things that I baked in the previous month. This month, I am not sure I really need to use the word all, because I actually only baked two items, and they were both exactly the same recipe. There will be even less this month because we are away for most of the month.

I have been making my go-to chocolate cake for years. Every now and again I try a new one but I hadn't found one that replace it....until now.

This month I thought I would try making the chocolate cake from Nagi Maehashi's cookbook RecipeTinEats: Dinner. Like most of the recipes I have tried from this cookbook it was another really successful bake. I then topped it with her recipe for chocolate buttercream frosting.

First, I made the cake just for fun, and then I made it for my son's birthday and everyone who was at dinner loved it. I like to think that I had ALMOST convinced my 16 year old nephew that it was so simple that even he could make it. I say almost because I don't think he ended up trying, but he definitely could. So here are the two versions that I made:

I did offer people sprinkles which they could add themselves if they wanted!

I thought I would share the video from the Recipetineats website for this cake.  The recipe in the book is ever so slightly different in that you add some coffee but other than that it is fundamentally the same:

Each month I link up with In My Kitchen hosted at Sherry's Pickings. It is an opportunity to share anything new in your kitchen.

The only major new thing for us is that we bought a barbecue this month!! It is un-Australian not to have some sort of barbecue in the backyard but when we were moving house over a year ago we had to throw ours out as it had definitely seen better days! Now, we have a nice shiny new one which we have used a couple of times already! It's just a middle of the range barbie, not really fancy but it does have a sideburner which I have never had before. No idea what we will use it for but we will figure it out I am sure!

One of the reasons why we didn't make much is that I went to Perth to see my dad who isn't well, and then we went to Adelaide for my mum's 75th birthday dinner. Every time I go to Perth I make sure that I get some Spearmint Milk which is something we can't get here! This month I'll be baking even less as we are about to go on holidays for 3 weeks.

We did visit the fabulous LaManna supermarket this morning and I was finally able to track down an ingredient I have been looking for for months. It took four staff members to help me find it but I finally got hold of some Nduja paste which is a Sicilian ingredient. Now I have to remember which recipes I needed it for. One of them was a recipe for Broken Eggs from Rice Table, but at this particular moment in time I can't remember what the other one was.

I also bought one new cook book. This was the Jamie Oliver cookbook of the month for September and I wasn't going to buy it but succumbed at the last minute as there were some delicious sounding recipes being cooked!

Weekly meals

Saturday -  Out for dinner

Sunday -  Roast pork rolls

Monday - Steak and salad

Tuesday - Pork chops, mash and gravy

Wednesday - Zucchini Risotto

Thursday - Cheese on toast

Friday - Takeaway