Mississippi Mud Pie

Posted on May 23, 2013 by hungryhinny

Mississippi mud pie has been on my to-bake list for absolutely ages, although I really don’t know why considering it falls within the Pony’s number one most requested category of baking – ‘a big chocolate pie’.

I actually first made this about 4 years ago, and although it was super chocolatey and went down well with everyone who tried it, I wasn’t entirely happy as it seemed a bit hard in texture, so I vowed to one day make it again.

There are loads of recipes out there for Mississippi mud pie, which vary hugely with coffee ice cream even added to some, but I used one from Simon Rimmer on the BBC Food site, as I think he is probably second only to James Martin when it comes to celebrity chefs who make incredible looking and sounding desserts.

The only change I made to the original recipe (and as far as I can remember to what I did first time around) was to swap double cream for half fat sour cream, just to try and keep the calories down a little.

I can’t really imagine that made a huge difference to the texture of the pie, so I think I must have just overbaked the first time around as this one has the perfect contrast of crunchy biscuit crust and soft, smooth filling, with a deliciously gooey, fudgy icing on top.

It’s very rich so a small slice is plenty. It’s supposed to be served cold, but warmed up worked well too, and if it were me eating it I’d definitely go for a scoop of ice cream on the side – if you’re going to indulge in something like this you might as well go the whole hog!

Mississippi mud pie (adapted from BBC Food)

For the crust:

300g bourbon biscuits
65g butter

For the filling:

85g dark chocolate
85g butter
2 medium eggs
85g light brown sugar
100ml sour cream

For the topping:

150g dark chocolate
150ml sour cream
175g icing sugar
60g (3tbsp) golden syrup
grated dark chocolate to finish

Crush the biscuits with a rolling pin or blitz in a food processor. Melt the butter in the microwave, then stir into the biscuits. Press the mixture into the base and about an inch up the sides of a 9″ round springform tin, then chill in the fridge for half an hour.

For the filling, melt the chocolate and butter over a pan of simmering water then set aside. Whisk the eggs and sugar for about 3 minutes with an electric whisk, or until thickened and more than tripled in volume. Fold in the sour cream and melted chocolate and butter, then pour over the biscuit base. Bake at 180 degrees for 40-50 minutes, or until just set in the middle, and leave to cool.

For the topping, melt all the ingredients together in a saucepan, stirring until the chocolate has melted and sugar has dissolved. Pour over the top of the pie and leave for 10 minutes, then sprinkle the grated chocolate on top to decorate. Chill in the fridge until completely cold, then cut into slices to serve.

Dark mocha chocolate fudge cake

Posted on May 13, 2013 by hungryhinny

As I’m sure any regular readers will have gathered by now, if the pony got his way all I would ever bake is chocolate, chocolate and more chocolate.

I want to make things that he will like, but I don’t want to make the same things over and over again, so I’m always looking for sneaky ways to make something super chocolatey but with a bit of a twist.

This cake came about after I received a lovely delivery from the Handpicked Foodstore, which included a bar of Caffe Latte Artisan No.1 chocolate which I knew could be used in some sort of chocolate-coffee concoction.

I adapted my go to chocolate fudge cake recipe, from Joanne Farrow’s Chocolate, switching half the milk for strong coffee, and adding a teaspoon of dissolved coffee granules to the icing to sandwich the cake.

I used half the quantities stated for an 8″ cake and baked it in my 6″ tin, which produced a nice tall cake that could be easily sliced into three layers.

The Caffe Latte bar was used to make the ganache on top – I wanted the flavour to stay pure and as it’s a milk chocolate I decided rather than using cream for the ganache to use water, and was very happy with how it turned out.

At the pony’s suggestion, I added a sprinkling of chopped dark chocolate on top, and I have to say looks-wise it gave it the final touch it needed – often chocolate cake is just brown and more brown but I think this one actually looks rather pretty!

Thanks to the guys at Handpicked for sending me the chocolate and inspiring this cake, which I wouldn’t even need any encouragement from the pony to make again…

Dark mocha fudge cake (adapted from Joanne Farrow’s Chocolate)

60g dark chocolate
60g butter
125g caster sugar
1 egg
150g self raising flour
1tsp bicarbonate of soda
1tbsp cocoa powder
60ml milk
60ml strong brewed coffee, cooled

For the icing and ganache:

125g dark chocolate
60g butter
100g icing sugar
1 tsp coffee dissolved in 1 tsp water
2 tbsp milk
50g coffee flavoured chocolate
10g finely chopped dark chocolate to decorate

For the cake, melt the chocolate over a pan of simmering water and set aside. Beat the butter and sugar until light and fluffy, then add the egg and beat again. Sieve together the flour, bicarb and cocoa and fold into the cake batter. Beat in half of the milk and half the coffee, then add the melted chocolate and then the remaining milk and coffee. Pour the mix into a greased and lined 6″ round cake tin and bake at 170 degrees (160 fan) for about 50 minutes, or until risen and a skewer comes out clean.

For the icing, melt the chocolate and butter over a pan of simmering water, without stirring, then quickly beat in the icing sugar, coffee and milk. Leave to cool until thick enough to spread. To make the ganache, melt the coffee flavoured chocolate and then add hot water 1 tsp at a time, until it reaches a fairly runny consistency – it will thicken as it cools.

To assemble the cake, slice the cake horizontally into three layers, and spread the fudge icing on top of the bottom and middle layers. Reassemble the cake, then pour the ganache on top, gently spreading it out towards the sides. Sprinkle the chopped chocolate on top, then leave until the ganache has set to slice.

Raspberry and dark chocolate blondies

Posted on May 5, 2013 by hungryhinny

I’ve never really been that much of a fan of pairing raspberries and dark chocolate – I’ve always felt the tartness of raspberries is much better complemented by the sweetness of white chocolate.

With that in mind, I’m not entirely sure why a couple of weeks ago I became fixated with making dark chocolate and raspberry blondies, but I’m glad I did as this recipe has totally converted me.

I did a quick search on Google and Pinterest for recipes but nothing that came up was really what I wanted, so I ended up using this recipe as the basic blondie mix, swapping the white chocolate for dark and adding a small punnet of raspberries.

The bars were just dense and fudgy enough to be blondie-ish rather than cakey; the raspberries added bursts of fruity tartness, and the chunks of dark chocolate were a great contrast both in flavour and texture.

The blondies were sweet enough to balance the dark chocolate and raspberries, and I think that’s why I liked these so much – I still think I wouldn’t be a huge fan of raspberries in a brownie, but maybe I should give it a go and maybe be pleasantly surprised…

Raspberry and dark chocolate blondies (blondie recipe adapted from Baking Bites)

115g butter
200g caster sugar
1 egg
1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
120g plain flour
100g dark chocolate, chopped
100g fresh raspberries

Beat the butter and sugar together until well mixed, then add the egg and vanilla and beat again. Fold in the flour and white chocolate chips, then gently fold in the raspberries – don’t over-mix or they will stain the batter pink. Spread the mixture into a greased and lined 8×8″ square baking tin and bake at 180 degrees for about 25 minutes, or until golden and set. Leave to cool completely before cutting into squares otherwise they’ll be far too gooey to cut neatly!

L’Artisan du Chocolat – review

Posted on April 26, 2013 by hungryhinny

Earlier in the month, I was contacted by a website I’d never heard of before, the Handpicked Foodstore, to ask if I would like to try any of their products for a review.

When the first words I saw on the site were ‘smoked salmon’ my heart sank a little – a shop full of fish is kind of my worst nightmare – but I was relieved to see that there were also pages for artisan cheeses, condiments and spices, and best of all luxury chocolates.

I left it in the hands of their marketing team to decide which products to send me, as I was really spoiled for choice with chocolate from Rococo, Montezuma’s and L’Artiscan du Chocolat, all handpicked as the website name suggests by a panel of foodie experts looking for the finest British produce.

I was delighted when a box arrived containing a little round tub of L’Artisan du Chocolat No.1 Sea Salted Caramels and a selection of their ‘fusion’ range of chocolate bars, and immediately set about formally taste testing with the pony and our next door neighbour Jo.

Whether or not the caramels really are the original salted caramel I don’t know, but I do know that they are pretty special – the chocolate is dark and crisp and the dusting of cocoa slightly bitter; the caramel a complete texture and taste contrast with both the caramel and salt coming through strongly.

All three of us enjoyed them, but I’d say they’re probably not for your average Dairy Milk chocolate eater – the pony thought the salt was bordering on too strong and Jo thought the caramel tasted almost burnt – but as an after dinner treat with a cup of coffee I thought they were perfect.

The four chocolate bars I received were sugar free milk, caffe latte, gianduja and gingerbread cookie. By far my favourite was the gingerbread cookie ,a creamy white chocolate with gingerbread cookie crumbs that not only combines two of my favourite flavours but is also a combination I haven’t come across before.

The caffe latte at first was a bit of a shock, I think as I’ve only ever tried coffee flavoured dark chocolate so in a milk chocolate it wasn’t what I was expecting, but I certainly don’t mean that in a bad way. The gianduja was like taking everything that’s good about Nutella but somehow transforming into something classy and refined, and the sugar free milk was really good too (I ate some after eating regular milk chocolate and much preferred the sugar free).

The bars all have tasting notes on the wrappers which is a nice touch, and I was especially pleased to have been sent them in addition to the caramels as it meant I could do some baking as well as just scoffing chocolate. I made a cake last night involving the caffe latte bar, and it is seriously good – stay tuned for the recipe!

Big thanks to the Handpicked Foodstore for sending me the chocolate to try – obviously they were sent to me for free, but my opinions aren’t swayed by that in the slightest!

Aubergine chocolate cake (GF, DF)

Posted on April 20, 2013 by hungryhinny

I really hope seeing the words ‘aubergine’, ‘chocolate’ and ‘cake’ in the title don’t put people off reading this – it sounds odd, but it works, I promise!

I first learnt about this cake from the pony’s sister – she told me she’d heard about a flourless chocolate cake that used aubergines but didn’t know where the recipe was from. I was intrigued, and did I find a couple of bloggers who had made aubergine cakes, but I didn’t manage to track down the original recipe and then sort of forgot about making it.

Several months on, I was given the Green & Black’s Ultimate Chocolate Recipes, and while flicking through the cake section I landed upon a recipe for a ‘Heartache Cake’ by Harry Eastwood – top of the list of ingredients was aubergines and I realised I’d found the actual recipe!

I first made this when the pony was going to stay with his family, and although the feedback from them was great, I didn’t get to try any myself and I knew I would have to try it again at some point to satisfy my curiosity.

The cake is wheat and gluten free, dairy free, and also uses no refined sugars. The sweetness in the cake comes from honey, and so when I saw that was Choclette‘s pick for this month’s We Should Cocoa challenge, it gave me the perfect reason to revisit the Heartache Cake.

I’ve renamed it a slightly less emotive ‘aubergine chocolate cake’, partly because I’m not really a fan of the flowery language used by Harry Eastwood, but also because there is nothing sad about this cake whatsoever – it’s delicious!

EDIT – the fact that I’ve renames this cake means it’s also eligible for this month’s AlphaBakes challenge, hosted alternately by Ros at The More Than Occasional Baker and Caroline at Caroline Makes – A for Aubergine!

I understand the chemistry of how these ingredients can come together and actually make a cake, but they do, and it is so worth trying, and I am especially glad to have a recipe I know I can turn to if I need to cater for multiple dietary requirements that no one would ever guess is a ‘free-from’ cake’.

I am now keen to expand my vegetable baking repertoire – I’ve done courgette, carrot and squash, and I’ve seen a few recipes for beetroot and parsnip, but is there anything even more unusual out there? If you have any weird and wonderful recipes, let me know!

Aubergine chocolate cake (adapted from Harry Eastwood’s recipe in the Green & Black’s cookbook)

2 medium aubergines (400g raw weight)
300g dark chocolate
3 medium eggs
200g clear honey
50g cocoa powder
60g ground almonds
2 tbsp baking powder
cocoa powder to dust

Start by piercing the aubergines with a sharp knife, placing in a bowl covered with clingfilm, and microwaving on full power for about 8 minutes, or until completely soft. If you don’t have a microwave I think baking the aubergines whole would work too, it would just take a lot longer.

When the aubergines are cool enough to handle, peel off the skins and blitz the flesh in a food processor with the dark chocolate, until the chocolate has completely melted and there are no lumps of aubergine left. In a separate bowl, whisk the eggs, honey, cocoa, almonds and baking powder until bubbly and doubled in volume, then fold in the chocolate aubergine mixture.

Pour the cake mix into a greased and lined 9″ round tin, and bake on the bottom shelf of your oven at 170 degrees for 30-35 minutes, or until risen at the edges and starting to crack. Leave to cool in the tin, then turn out onto a serving place and dust liberally with cocoa powder.

Triple chocolate cookies

Posted on April 11, 2013 by hungryhinny

When it comes to eating shop-bought snacks and baked goods, I can be very particular – if I’m going to splurge on calories and sugar it has to be worth it, and more often than not anything that comes in a packet isn’t.

At my work we have a fairly well stocked biscuit tin, but it’s very rare that I’ll have anything from it as I just don’t see biscuits as a worthwhile indulgence. I also think there’s something slightly disturbing about a biscuit that has a shelf life of months, if not years – I dread to think what’s in it that keeps it fresh!

The one type of biscuits I do like, although still buy very rarely, is cookies. As in the big, chewy, American-style ones, that come from the bakery section rather than the biscuit aisle , or, my absolute favourite, from Millies Cookies.

Even with those I’m still pretty fussy though – I like standard chocolate chip cookies, milk, white or dark, but definitely not anything fancy like toffee or rolos or smarties, and definitely not double or triple chocolate. Nope, plain flavour dough all the way, get those sinister looking dark cookies out of here right now, they’re not for me. No way.

Until now.

I made these on the request of the pony, who complained that I’d never made chocolate cookies with chocolate dough. As most of what I bake is eaten by him anyway, I thought it was a reasonable enough request, and after the success of the thick and chewy cookies I made a few weeks ago decided to use a recipe from Edd Kimber’s ‘The Boy Who Bakes’, adapting chocolate and cherry cookies to be chocolate and more chocolate cookies.

I was fully expecting to be pretty indifferent about these, but I was so wrong. I think, maybe, they are the best cookies I have made to date, beating every one of the plain flavour dough recipes I’ve tried.

These cookies are addictive – I initially halved the recipe to make 12 cookies, but had to mix up another batch just two days later when they’d all been eaten (I ate two, the pony ten…)

I honestly can’t recommend this recipe strongly enough – even if you think you wont like them, you will! Promise!

Triple chocolate cookies (adapted from The Boy Who Bakes)

Makes 12, but you’ll probably want to double, or triple, or quadruple it…

100g dark chocolate, melted
50g unsalted butter, at room temp
50g caster sugar
75g light brown sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1 medium egg
65g plain flour
25g cocoa powder
1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp salt
75g dark chocolate, chopped
50g white chocolate, chopped

Beat the butter and both sugars together until light and fluffy – because it’s quite a high ratio of sugar to butter this will take a few minutes, but stick with it. Add the egg and vanilla and beat again. Sift together the flour, cocoa powder, bicarb, cinnamon and salt and fold into the mixture. Stir in the melted chocolate, then finally add in the chopped dark and white chocolate, folding until the chocolate is evenly distributed. Wrap the ball of dough in cling film and chill for at least an hour, to make the cookies easier to shape.

Divide the dough into 12 equal pieces (mine were about 40g each) and roll into balls. Place six of the balls spaced a couple inches apart on a lined baking sheet, then bake at 180 degrees for around 13 minutes, or until the dough has spread and cracked and is just starting to crisp around the edges. Leave to cool on the baking sheet for as long as you can, then dive in and enjoy.

Tibits chocolate and coconut macaroons (GF)

Posted on April 8, 2013 by hungryhinny

Before anyone says ‘they’re the worst looking macarons I’ve ever seen’ I should make it clear that these are definitely meant to be macaroons – the simple, coconutty treat; NOT macarons, the perfectly round, brightly coloured, dainty French delicacies.

I have to admit though, even going up against other macaroons these aren’t going to be winning any beauty prizes. What were supposed to be lovely little pointed mounds completely spread as soon as they went into the oven, and left me with the flat, cracked, sort-of-macaroons you see here.

The recipe for these comes from tibits at home, a new cookbook from the chefs at tibits, a vegetarian (and largely vegan) restaurant in London.

The lovely people at Tibits very kindly offered me the chance to visit the restaurant for a review, but as it’s in London and I’m in Cornwall it seemed a little far to venture for dinner, so I settled for a copy of the cookbook so I could try and knock up some restaurant-quality vegetarian delights at home (in theory…)

The book is split into seasons, which I think is a great approach and definitely helpful in choosing recipes that suit the time of year. Each season has a wide variety of recipes, from soups and salads to main meals and desserts, with some interesting hot and cold drinks thrown in as well.

Pretty much every recipe has a picture of the finished dish, which is a big plus for me – I like to at least have an idea of what I’m aiming for! The instructions are clear and simple to follow, and considering these are all restaurant dishes for the most part they don’t use any tricky techniques or fancy equipment, so they are definitely achievable for the home cook.

Tibits lasagne – mine wasn’t quite so pretty….

The two negatives I found were that some of the recipes don’t state how many portions it will make – in some cases common sense will give you an idea, but in others I could end up making a meal for two or a meal for 10 and I wouldn’t know which until it came out of the oven.

*EDIT – Tibits have kindly pointed out that it states in the intro that recipes serve 4 so this was my mistake!*

The other slight downside is that some of the recipes call for ingredients that aren’t too readily available if you live out in the sticks like I do. I can’t say I’ve seen sambal oelek, dried string beans or blanc battu in my local Tesco recently…

When it came to deciding which dishes to try, I know I should have gone to the Spring section, but it’s been so hideously cold recently that instead I chose two from Winter.

Firstly I made a spinach and feta lasagne (pic of their version above), which I was very impressed with – looking at the ingredients list it sounds like it could be a bit plain, but the flavours are all fresh and complement each other perfectly.

Obviously the second recipe had to be a cake or bake, and that leads me back to the chocolate and coconut macaroons.

Taste and texture wise they turned out exactly as I had hoped – sweet and chewy with bite from the coconut and a richness from the chocolate. I think it’s more likely to be baker error that lead to the slightly dodgy appearance than any fault with the recipe so I may have to try again and pipe them into shape to see if that helps.

Thanks again to Tibits for sending me the book to review – there are lots more recipes I’m looking forward to trying so it’s a very gratefully received gift, and I hope I get to visit the restaurant at some point in the future, to see how the recipes are done professionally.

Chocolate and coconut macaroons (slightly adapted from tibits at home)

1 medium egg white
80g caster sugar
50g dark chocolate
80g desiccated coconut
optional – 25g dark chocolate to drizzle

Melt the dark chocolate in a small bowl and set aside to cool. Whisk the egg white with an electric mixer, gradually adding the sugar as you go until the mixture is stiff and glossy. Fold in the coconut and melted chocolate, then either pipe onto a baking tray or spoon the mixture on into 12-15 small rounds. Bake at 150 degrees for 15-20 minutes, then leave to cool on the baking tray. Melt the remaining chocolate and spoon into a small piping bag, then drizzle over the top of the macaroons and leave to set.

Chocolate hot cross buns

Posted on April 3, 2013 by hungryhinny

Yes, I know it’s really way too late to be posting this recipe, but these buns were too good to either not blog about or wait another 11 months to blog about!

Last year I made my first ever hot cross buns, having never really liked them previously. I was pretty happy with how they turned out, considering baking with yeast isn’t my strong point, and so I fancied trying them again this year, but with a bit of a twist.

With a hungry pony to feed, the twist obviously had to be chocolate, so I used a recipe from Delicious Magazine and tweaked it slightly to suit his tastes and what we had in the kitchen cupboards – less spice, no candied peel, dark chocolate instead of milk and sultanas instead of raisins.

Although I’ve only tried a little bite of one, I thought they turned out better than expected, and the pony has been enjoying them warmed up for breakfast for the past couple of days. The orange and spice flavours are both quite subtle but enough to make it more than just a chocolate bun and the chunks of chocolate and sultanas make a nice texture contrast as well as giving bursts of sweetness.

It’s so difficult to find breakfast foods the pony likes that I think I may have to follow Caroline at Cake, Crumbs and Cooking‘s lead and ditch the cross on top to turn them into ‘not hot cross buns’, therefore making it acceptable to bake and eat them all year round!

Chocolate hot cross buns (adapted from Delicious Magazine)

400g plain flour
25g cocoa powder
1tsp pumpkin pie spice
1tsp salt
85g butter
100g caster sugar
14g dried fast action yeast
1 medium egg
190ml lukewarm milk
75g chopped dark chocolate
75g sultanas
zest of an orange

For the crosses and for glazing:

50g plain flour
40g caster sugar
juice of half an orange

Sift the flour, cocoa powder, spice and salt into a large bowl, then rub in the butter until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs. Stir in the sugar and yeast, then add the egg and milk, starting by mixing in with a fork or spoon, then continuing with your hands until it comes into a rough dough. Turn out onto your worktop and knead for about 10 minutes, or until the dough is pliable and elastic. Leave in a lightly oiled bowl to rise for an hour and half to two hours, or until doubled in size.

Once risen, add the chocolate, sultanas and orange zest to the dough and knead again, just until the add-ins are well dispersed throughout the dough. Divide into 12 equal pieces, then roll into balls and place on a lightly oiled baking sheet, spaced a couple of centimetres apart. Cover with clingfilm and leave to rise again for an hour or so, until the buns have risen and are just starting to touch each other.

To make the crosses, mix the flour with 4-5tbsp water until it reaches a thick, pasty but pipeable consistency. Score crosses into the tops of the buns, then pipe on the flour paste. Bake at 200 degrees for about 20 minutes, until risen and firm but not browning.

Heat the sugar and orange juice in a small saucepan and boil until it starts to thicken into a syrup. Brush this on top of the buns while they are still warm, and either serve straight away or toast when you want to eat them.

Discovering the dark arts of chocolate making with Nicky Grant

Posted on March 29, 2013 by hungryhinny

Have you ever wanted to find out how to make the perfect truffle, or temper chocolate like a pro?

Making perfectly crafted chocolates is a lot harder than it looks, and the tempering process in particular can be especially tricky – getting the chocolate to the right state so that it will set with a beautiful sheen and a crisp snap is something which all amateur chocolate makers aspire to, but all too often fail to achieve.

I’ve certainly had my fair share of problems when attempting to make chocolates, so when I was offered the chance to have a lesson from Cornwall’s top chocolatier, Nicky Grant, I literally jumped at the chance.

Nicky is a phenomenally talented lady, based near Redruth in Cornwall, who as well as making gorgeous handcrafted truffles and chocolates creates amazingly intricate wedding cakes – who on earth would choose a fruitcake with marzipan and sugarpaste when you could have a pure chocolate delight like this?!

On a cold, wet and windy day earlier in the month, I joined five other lovely chocolate loving ladies - Choclette from Chocolate Log Blog, Rachel from Saffron Bunny, Sadie from Cornwall Food and Crash Bang Dollop, blogger and Cornwall Today writer Jessica and local journalist (and my part time colleague) Ellie – at Nicky and her partner Tom’s house for a morning of chocolate education.

It was a good job I’d scoffed down a banana for breakfast on the way, otherwise I might just have dived head first into the huge vat of melted Venezuelan 44% milk chocolate which was sitting on the kitchen table – so tempting!

Tom started by explaining the three things any good quality chocolate must have – a crisp snap, a smooth feel when rubbed on your upper lip, and a satiny sheen finish.

All five senses are involved when tasting chocolate – the sound, feel and look come first, then the aroma and finally the taste, which is what makes eating it such a pleasurable experience. We also learnt that 11am is the optimum time for tasting chocolate, when your taste buds are most active (which is coincidentally around the time most people start to flag while waiting for lunch – perfect!)

Tom then went on to explain the tempering process starting with the science. Chocolate is, using Tom’s favourite word, polymorphic, meaning it can exist in different states, and by its nature it is always trying to reach the next state. Perfectly tempered chocolate must be in Beta 5 state, which is chocolate’s only stable form.

To get it there, first you have to heat the chocolate to it’s melting temperature, which is around 45 degrees for dark but lower for milk and white. You then have to cool it to it’s working temperature, which for the milk chocolate Tom was demonstrating with was 30 degrees. The easiest way to do this is by seeding it with finely chopped, already tempered chocolate, stirring continually to encourage the chocolate crystals to lock together.

To test the temper of the chocolate, Tom showed us a simple method involving dipping a piece of greaseproof paper into the chocolate and laying it out on the work surface to set. If it’s tempered, it will set quickly, in about 3 minutes, and have a nice shine. Untempered, it will take a long time to set, and you will need to reheat the chocolate and start again.

Tom made the whole process look simple, but I will wait until I’ve had a chance to try it for myself before declaring myself a chocolate tempering expert – I will blog the results of my experiments soon!

After going through the tempering process, we moved into Nicky’s working kitchen to learning about making ganache for truffles. I’ve never had too much of a problem making ganache, but it was interesting to find out more about the technical aspects of it – for example I never realised that ganache also needed to be tempered, or that any add-ins such as spirits or liqueurs must be warmed to the same temperature as the ganache.

We had a not entirely planned demonstration of what to do if your ganache splits – either adding more cream or even milk or even just whisking with a balloon whisk can bring it back to a lovely, glossy, chocolatey bowl of heaven. You can see the difference between the smooth milk ganache on the left and the split dark ganache on the right in the photo below, luckily Tom rescued the dark one so it didn’t have to go to waste!

Nicky showed us how to make two different types of truffle – a dark ganache rolled in cocoa powder, and a milk ganache dipped in tempered chocolate and rolled in chocolate flakes. As much as I love dark chocolate, the milk was actually my favourite, and I’m looking forward to recreating it at home.

I thoroughly enjoyed my morning with Nicky and Tom, and left armed with plenty of top tips which I hope will help my chocolate making in the future. We were given recipe sheets for dark truffles and cardamom infused milk truffles, so I can’t wait to give them a go and put everything I learnt into practice.

Huge thanks go to Nicky and Tom for hosting our special bloggers’ lesson – please do take a look at their website, www.nickygrant.com, and if you like fine chocolate I promise you won’t be disappointed with any of their offerings!

Apple, marzipan and chocolate rolls

Posted on March 25, 2013 by hungryhinny

Time has really gotten away with me this month, and of all the baking challenges I had hoped to take part in, Random Recipes, hosted by Dom at Belleau Kitchen, is the only one I’ve actually gotten around to baking for – I’m hoping April will be a bit less hectic, but I have a rather strong suspicion it will be just the same!

The theme for this month’s RR is one of my favourites – cuttings, memories and clippings. I rarely delve into my cuttings so it’s always good to get a bit of a nudge, so I dutifully handed over a stack to the pony and asked him to choose.

I’m never entirely certain how random his selections are, but the spiced apple rolls he picked, from an old Waitrose Seasons magazine, certainly appealed to me to bake and to him to eat.

I did alter the recipe a little, swapping raisins for chocolate and omitting the spice, but I think that’s ok because in the RR rules it does state that you can alter the recipe for dietary requirements, and as far as the pony is concerned keeping his chocolate intake up is a necessity rather than just a desire…

The dough seemed a little on the dry side when I was kneading it, but it rose well, made it easy to roll, and baked up lovely and fluffy, so it may well be a recipe I end up going back to in the future. It also seemed like too much apple when I was trying to roll them, but they held together once baked and all the apple juice that came out in the cooking helped to keep the rolls soft and moist.

The flavour combination worked really well – I’m not the biggest fan of apples and chocolate together but in this, with the marzipan, it all came together, and the pony said they would be perfect for his breakfasts this week, so all in all a success!

Thanks Dom for encouraging me to bake from my cuttings selection, and apologies to all the other challenge hosts who I haven’t been able to bake for this month – I will try harder next month, I promise!

Apple, marzipan and chocolate rolls (adapted from a Waitrose Seasons magazine recipe)

350g strong plain flour
40g caster sugar
7g fast action dried yeast
1 medium egg
100g butter
75ml (ish) warm water
2 apples (I used Golden Delicious)
200g marzipan, chopped
50g dark chocolate, chopped
icing sugar to dust

Mix together the flour, sugar and yeast in a large bowl, then make a well in the centre and add the egg. Melt the butter in a heatproof measuring jug, then add enough water to bring the total volume of liquid up to 175ml. Pour this into the well with the egg, then stir it all together using a metal spoon until the mixture forms a rough dough. Turn it out onto your work surface, and knead for a good 10 minutes, then place back in the bowl, cover, and leave to rise for about an hour and a half, or until doubled in size.

Once risen, knock back the dough and roll out into a rectangle roughly 50cm long, 15cm tall. Peel,core, and dice the apples, then scatter over the dough with the chopped chocolate and marzipan, making sure they’re all spread out evenly, right the way down the length of the dough but leaving a 1cm border along the top and bottom (long edges) of the dough.

Roll up the dough from one of the long edges, into a long sausage shape, then cut into 9 equal pieces. Place the rolls in an 8×8″ square tin (greased if it’s metal, mine was silicon so I didn’t bother) and leave to rise for another 30 minutes – 1 hour, until risen again. Bake at 180 degrees for about 30 minutes, or until golden. Leave to cool for 10 minutes in the tin, then turn out onto a serving plate, dust with icing sugar, and serve warm.

hungryhinny

Tag Archives: Chocolate