Hello stranger!

Long time no see! It's been quite a while since my last post, why?, I'm not sure really.
I lost my mojo, wasn't really inspired to cook at all, let alone think of blogging, and as always, life has a way of creeping up on you and taking over. I still haven't got that spark back but as I felt a little inspiration to stir up some treats in the kitchen I thought I'd share them with you.




Lunchbox treats

50g milk chocolate
150g rice malt syrup (I used a less healthier golden syrup)
55g butter
60g rice crispies
30g cornflakes (I crushed them a little)
40g quick cook oats
75g sesame seeds

Melt the chocolate, syrup and butter gently in a heavy-based saucepan.

Add all the other ingredients, turning to coat everything well.

Using your hands (encased in CSI gloves), shape the mixture into walnut-sized balls. You should get about 25; you could also make this using a 12-bun muffin tin lined with muffin papers to get 12 larger cupcakes.

Let them set in the fridge for an hour or so, and they will keep quite happily in there for a week of treats.



I spent the day pottering about and decided I wanted to bake but without the mess, some light weighing and stirring, these lunchbox treats from Nigella Express sounded perfect. Nigella says these are a ideal wholesome snack, including rice malt syrup, seeds and cereal. I can see how that is a healthy snack option, I had no rice malt syrup, so I substituted for good old unhealthy golden syrup. I imagine this substitution made quite a difference to the flavour of these treats and dare I say, for the better. These moreish bites were a cross between a Toffee crisp bar and a Lion bar (remember them?) delicious. Nigella does say that they will last up to a week in the fridge, this batch lasted a few hours, they disappeared in a blink of a eye.

Chocolate chestnut muffins

Chocolate chestnut muffins.

I was in the mood for something sweet after dinner tonight, but not sickly sweet, definitely chocolate but dark and sophisticated. I came up with these 'grown-up' muffins, grown up as in more for adults than regular muffins that easily please masses of children. I am the first to admit that I love everyday chocolate muffins but for a little luxury this recipe really hits the spot.

I combined two cake making method to make these muffins, the usual muffins method of wet ingrediants into dry, and the chocolate brownie 'melting' method. I melted very dark, good quality chocolate into butter and stirred in sweet chestnut puree, after cooling slightly I stirred in beaten eggs and a little sugar, then folded in flour and very good quality cocoa, to give the muffins a little depth of colour. As a extra special treat I poured in a glug of Tia Maria, I recently fell in love with Tia Maria and am now finding uses for it all over the shop.



Chocolate chestnut muffins:

100g best quality dark chocolate

100g butter

250g tin of vanilla sweetened chestnut puree

2 eggs, beaten

75g caster sugar

125g self raising flour

25g good quality cocoa

a glug of Tia Maria

Preheat the oven to 180c.

In a large heavy bottomed pan melt together the chocolate and butter, remove from the heat and stir in chestnut puree.

Cool slightly and stir in eggs and caster sugar.

Sift together the flour and cocoa and fold into the chocolate chestnut mixture, spoon into muffin cases and bake for 20 minutes.

Now, I did say that this recipe was intended for grown-ups, however my two children loved these and polished off two each before I hid the remaining muffins. They are very light, but a little goes a long way, they are very intensively chocolatey. I do think they would be very good as 'pudding' with coffee, or Tia Maria, after dinner with friends. The first thing that hits you is the chocolate, they are extremely chocolatey, and you can really taste it, I can't stand chocolate muffins that are just brown cakes with no hint of chocolate to the flavour.

Then the chestnut hits you, chocolate and chestnut, a great combination.

The liquor really gives a adult kick, it doesn't alter the flavour of the cakes, just adds a little depth to it.

Do give this recipe a try, and don't be put off by using chestnuts before Christmas, this is how I came to use the chestnut puree tonight, it had been sitting around in my cupboard since last Christmas as it didn't feel 'right' to use it any other time.

I recently heard of baby born born in the height if summer, who had been named Holly.

"you can't call a summer baby Holly" I declared, and so had a number of other people, as babies Grandad was very determined when he said, "It's not just a Christmas name!" So on that reasoning I decided if Holly wasn't just for Christmas then neither are chestnuts. Although these would be very good to leave out for Santa.....

Chocolate orange cake

I rarely bake for myself, meaning for my own benefit. I bake for my loved ones, what they like to eat. I bake for other people, most people that come to my house end up eating cake and I like that, it is homely, welcoming and comforting.

It was a bit of treat to bake something just for me, to be truthful the reason I decided to do this was, after a disagreement with my OH I decided to annoy him and please myself by baking a favourite of mine, that he just happens to hate, chocolate orange cake. Revenge is sweet, even more so when it's sugar sweet.

I find it so strange that anyone can not like the combination of chocolate and orange, the flavours merge together brilliantly but my OH can't stand the two together.

Baking is my ME time, I love nothing more than pottering around the kitchen rustling up delicious goodies, but it was more pleasurable when the sole purpose of this was for my own pleasure.

Looking through my books I found only a couple recipes for chocolate orange cake, both from Nigella but neither did it for me, one was a store cupboard cake using a jar of marmalade and the other was based on Nigella's famous clementine cake, I didn't like the clementine cake last time and to be honest the idea of boiling oranges for hours on end didn't interest me. So I went it alone, I decided on a plain loaf cake, the best, darkest cocoa I could find and for the orange I used freshly squeezed orange juice and orange zest.

Chocolate orange cake

250g self raising flour

225g butter

175g caster sugar

50g good quality cocoa

3 large eggs, beaten

juice and zest of 3 large oranges

juice of 1 lime

Preheat the oven to 180c

Line a 2lb loaf tin.

In a mixer combine the flour, butter, sugar, cocoa and eggs.

Stir in the freshly grated orange zest.

Pour in the orange and lime juice. Mix well.

Pour into the prepared tin, bake for 1, 1/4 - 1, 1/2 hours.

A very simple recipe, and a very simple but delicious cake. Super moist, this cake was perfect with a cup of tea.

The orange flavour however wasn't as strong as I would have liked, it was very subtle, I thought adding the lime juice would have helped bring out the orange flavour, next time I think I would add a splash of cointreau or maybe a drop of orange oil...but still a wonderful treat for myself.

Daring bakers

Chocolate eclairs

Daring bakers time again, my first challenge last month, was extremely challenging and although delicious the finished cake was not as attractive as I would have liked. I was so looking forward to this months challenge but slightly apprehensive at the same time, however when I discovered what this months challenge was any apprehension I had melted away.






This months challenge was hosted by Tony Tahhan and MeetaK from 'whats for lunch honey?' - they choose Pierre Herme's Chocolate eclairs from 'Chocolate desserts' (Pierre Herme & Dorie Greenspan) I was so excited by this recipe choice, I love Pierre Herme's recipes and I adore chocolate eclairs.

The challenge consisted of three elements, pate a choux (choux pastry), chocolate pastry cream
and a chocolate glaze.

Modifications: The hosts stipulated that the choux pastry dough used must be the Pierre Herme recipe, however we could veer away from the filling and glaze recipes as long as one of the original chocolate elements remained. I chose to keep the original chocolate glaze but substituted the pastry cream filling for regular whipped cream - while I like pastry cream, for me a eclair needs whipped cream.

The choux pastry was relatively straight forward, bring milk, water, butter sugar and salt to a boil, add flour and stir vigorously until the dough comes together, stir a little longer so the dough can dry out a little.

In a mixer, add the eggs to the dough, the dough is ready when it is thick and shiny. While the dough is still warm it needs to be shaped, this is the fun part, using a 2cm plain tip nozzle pipe the dough onto baking sheets in 4 inch long eclair shapes.

I found the cooking instructions a little odd, Pierre's recipe instructed to bake the eclairs for 7 minutes, then slip the handle of a wooden spoon into the oven door to keep it ajar. After the eclairs have cooked for a total of 12 minutes the baking sheets need to be rotated from front to back then cooked for a further 8 minutes. They should emerge from the oven golden and firm.

I am not sure why the spoon is inserted in the door, maybe to moderate the heat, maybe to let out steam (although I was always told eclairs need steam) and I am not sure if it was completely necessary but I did as I was told. I did veer from the recipe at one point by slitting the eclairs with a sharp knife as they came out of the oven - Pierre's recipe did not stipulate this but if hot air is trapped inside a eclair it will go soggy and no one wants a soggy bun.

When the eclairs were cool I sliced them in half and lay the top half on a wire rack to be glazed. Pierre Herme's chocolate glaze is absolutely wonderful, I will use this again for other cakes, totally delicious and very simple too.

In a saucepan bring heavy cream to a boil, remove from the heat and add chopped chocolate. Stir in butter and Pierre's chocolate sauce (dark chocolate,water, double cream and sugar,boiled together in a small saucepan,then cooked gently until thickened). This makes the most delicious chocolate glaze.

I piped the chocolate glaze over the 'tops' of the eclairs, I found piping it gave me more control over where the glaze went and allowed a thick covering. Once the glaze had set I filled the bottoms with very softly whipped double cream and placed the lids on top.

This recipe was delicious and I really enjoyed this one, especially compared to the stress my first challenge caused last month. I will definitely makes these eclairs again.

Thank you to this months hosts, Tony Tahhan and MeetaK the recipe for these eclairs can be found on their blogs, don't forget to check out other Daring baker's challenges on the Daring bakers blogroll.

The cake you want to eat when you've been chucked

Any Nigella fan will know exactly which cake I am talking about just by the title of this post. If you're not so clued up on Nigella this is the chocolate fudge cake from Nigella Bites, this is what Nigella says about it 'This is the sort of cake you'd want to eat the whole of when you'd been chucked. But even the sight of it, proud and tall and thickly iced on it's stand, comforts.' Nigella has never said a truer word.
We had a family birthday this week and a when a chocolate fudge cake (with extra chocolate flakes) was requested I couldn't wait to make this cake.
Why have I waited so long to make it.

Chocolate fudge cake
for the cake:
400g plain flour
250g golden caster sugar
100g light muscovado sugar
50g best quality cocoa powder
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
1/2 tsp salt
3 eggs
142ml sour cream
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
175g unsalted butter, melted and cooled
125ml corn oil
300ml chilled water

for the fudge icing:
175g dark chocolate
250g unsalted butter, softened
275g icing sugar, sifted
1 tablespoon vanilla extract

Preheat the oven to 180c/ gas mark 4.
Butter and line the bottom of two 20cm sandwich tins.
In a large bowl, mix together the flour, sugars, cocoa, baking powder, bicarb and salt. In another bowl or wide necked measuring jug whisk together the eggs, sour cream and vanilla until blended. Using a freestanding mixer, beat together the melted butter and corn oil until just blended, then beat in the water.
Add the dry ingredients all at once and mix together on a slow speed. Add the egg mixture and mix again until everything is blended and then pour into the prepared tins.
Bake the cakes for 50 - 55 minutes, or until cake tester comes out clean.
Cool the cakes in their tins on a wire rack for 15 minutes, and then turn the cakes out onto the rack to cool completely.

To make the icing, melt the chocolate in the microwave- 2-3 minutes on medium should do it - and let cool slightly.
In another bowl beat the butter until it's soft and creamy and then add the sieved icing sugar and beat again until everything's light and fluffy. Then gently add the vanilla and chocolate and mix together until everything is glossy and smooth.
Sandwich the middle of the cake with about a quarter of the icing, and then ice the top and sides too, spreading and smoothing with a rubber spatula.
Serves 10. Or 1 with a broken heart.




This cake is to die for, it is so delicious. The sour cream in the cake really cuts through the sweetness, it is light and fluffy, so moreish.
I covered mine in, as requested, chocolate flakes, they made a tasty addition and covered my not-so-perfect cake decorating skills. Although I must say that the icing was a dream to work with and I had more than plenty left for a bowl licking treat afterwards.
Everyone who had a slice of this cake raved about it, it is a must bake, even if you don't have a broken heart. Well, why would you want to wait around for that to happen.