3//2013 Quickie desserts

I am always on the look-out for "quick" recipes - something tasty that can be whipped up with minimal time and effort. This tendency makes even more sense when there's a demanding newborn around, and just this week I've found a couple of delicious chocolatey recipes that were (relatively) quick and easy.

The first is Smitten Kitchen's heavenly chocolate cake roll. It has no flour, but, with 8 eggs, it had a really wonderful light texture yet was incredibly rich and filling, especially with the delicious whipped cream. I made this cake during the week to celebrate some good news Simon received - that he is to be a recipient of a Junior Faculty Award - a wonderful recognition of his very hard work. Donnacha and I are super proud!

The second followed an exciting discovery of a lovely Australian blog, eat, little bird. Recipes that include nutella are like shiny things to my magpie brain and I knew I had to make these gooey chocolate cakes with raspberry and nutella as soon as I saw them. The fact that they did not turn out incredible was entirely my own fault - I ran out of flour and included some Bob's Red Mills gluten-free flour mix (only 40g, of 100g), which I had due to a half-hearted gluten-free kick I've been on. Huge mistake - the flavor completely dominated (though my kind visitors said they did not notice). I will definitely make them again, with no substitutions!