Autumn's golden bounty in baked quinces topping Nadine Ingram's chocolate cake

We are coming to the end of our summer fruit and vegetable harvest and the garden is moving into its autumn and winter rest mode with plenty of golden colour in the acers outside our kitchen window.

We have celebrated three family birthdays in the last six weeks. As a result I've been getting back into cake making and enjoying exploring a Nadine Ingram rabbit hole. We gave Isabelle the Flour and Stone baker Nadine's book 'Love Crumbs' for her birthday and each recipe is a beautifully written story about the ingredients, flavours, textures, and processes. It is a next level recipe book that you can enjoy for the writing, photography and of course baking. I had the pleasure of meeting Nadine at Barbara Sweeney's Food and Words Writers' Festival in Sydney years ago.

Exploring Nadine's recipes online I have made Flour and Stone's chocolate, raspberry and buttermilk cake three times, once with baked quince (pictured above) instead of raspberries. Ingram calls it the 'fudgiest of all the chocolate cakes' she knows. Every time it has delivered on dense chocolate fudge indulgence contrasting with the sweetness of the fruit. Our eldest son could only just wait for me to take a photograph before tasting the cake. I'm looking forward to baking more of Nadine's recipes and savouring her beautiful creativity.

Chocolate, raspberry and buttermilk cake

What you need: 220g quality dark chocolate (minimum 60% cocoa solids), roughly chopped, 110g unsalted butter, cut into large cubes, 4 eggs, 90g light brown sugar, 60g almond meal, 60ml buttermilk (I have used natural yoghurt with success), 180g frozen raspberries.

What you do: Preheat the oven to 140C. Line a 22cm springform cake tin with baking paper and dust with flour. 

Place the chocolate and butter in a double boiler saucepan, or heatproof bowl placed over a saucepan of barely simmering water to melt. Ensure the water does not touch the bottom of the bowl and that it's a gentle heat to avoid burning. Stir occasionally with a spatula until combined.

Place eggs and sugar in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with a whisk attachment. Beat on high speed for five minutes until it's a thick and fluffy sabayon.

Once the chocolate is melted, turn the mixer off and pour the chocolate into the bowl with the eggs, then add the almond meal and buttermilk.

Use the lowest speed to gently mix the ingredients together, as if folding by hand. The mixture will be streaky as the sabayon melds with the chocolate. Stop the whisk after a couple of turns around the bowl, just before the last streak disappears, to ensure a light batter that is not overworked.

Remove the bowl from the mixer and use a spatula to scrape to the base of the bowl and combine any remaining chocolate.

Pour the batter into the prepared tin and bake for 45 minutes or until the top of the cake forms a crust. Remove from the oven and cover with raspberries (or baked quince), pressing them gently into the surface of the cake. Return the cake to the oven and bake for 30-40 minutes or until the centre is springy to touch. Cool the cake in the tin for at least two hours before removing it. Heat the blade of a knife with hot water and wipe dry before slicing to achieve a clean cut. Serve with a big dollop of double cream.  

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