Yesterday, I was looking forward for a quite night. Just when I finished at the gym, my cell has a text : “Remember you promised to meet up today!”

I totally have forgotten about it and I only had sports outfit on. I moved it to an hour later, dashed to Carefour for some wines, flour, milk and bugger Athens is not cheap anymore!!

I met a friend to check a CAKESHOP. I have been told that a small shop in Kolonaki (quite an upscale area in town – other side of my neighbourhood) has opened in 2004 (where was I.. UK that time). For weeks, I have thinking of those angel cakes, choc fudges, brownies, layered cakes with butter cream frosting. I heard good reviews or maybe it the first American cake shop that its still a fad.

So we went, the cakes were so tempting to look at. We ordered choc cake, it had 2 layers and covered with butter cream frosting. The second order was a cupcake with a kind of cherry flavour.
They had quiche, cheesecake, blackforest cake (not the black forest cake I know), assorted of muffins and cupcakes, layered choc cake,banana loaf and fudge brownies.

There are only 4 high chairs, its not a coffee cake shop after all. We sat on a settee and I sat on fish shape stool.
Cake was not too soft nor airy as I had imagined and the frosting ughh was like a slab of a cement. Too dry ( I was expecting too much ain’t I.. expecting a creamy frosting etc). We ate the cake and we laughed how we left the frosting it remained like chunk or slab of rock!
Opps am a mean critic or simply I expected too much, no photos though, my little digicam is at the service.

The place has got the ambiance but service was very Greek (like giving water in glass which was still damp and soaking wet). Cakes were nicely presented and on the shelf were Joy of Cooking and the Cake Bible.

So today I invited my friend and her daughter. I told Angelika since I paid nearly 7€ for the cakes (no coffee nor tea ordered) I might as well teach her how to do cupcakes and muffins.

Tin made some fudge cupcakes last week and the recipe is very simple. Fool proof! I decided its one of best easy recipe I can use to teach a 13 years old.

INGREDIENTS:
3 squares Semi-Sweet baking chocolate
1 tbsp. canola oil
1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
4 egg whites
1/2 cup firmly packed brown sugar
4 tbsp. thawed Cool Whipped topping ( I didn’t use whipping cream)

How to:

Preheat oven to 350 F.
Microwave chocolate and oil in a glass on HIGH 1 to 2 minutes or until completely melted.
(I don’t own a microwave so I used a glass bowl placed over a pot with boiling water)
Stir in cocoa powder; let stand at least 5 minutes.
Reduce speed to medium low;
blend in melted chocolate mixture until well combined.
Spoon batter into 6 paper-lined medium muffin cups.
BAKE 18 minutes or until puffed and center is set.
Remove from oven; let stand in a pan 5 min
Top with whipped cream (I dusted Angelika’s cakes with sugar)

I used Green & BlacksOrganic Cocoa

Angelika just love it and I took a chance to bake another apple cake. This time I added an extra apple and milk. When I do a recipe for the first time I always follow the ingredients ( baking) but when I do it again I tend to experiment a bit. This one came out a little bit moist than the first.

As soon we were done, I lent Angelika my book 1001 Muffins. Told her to choose which one she might want to bake next week as long there will be no cranberries, blueberries, pecan what ever ingredients I can’t find here.