Portugal’s salame de chocolate is a little bit of kitchen fun.
A rich chocolately mixture studded with biscuits and nuts, shaped into a sausage and rolled in powdered sugar to resemble one of those dry-cured salamis. Continue reading
Tag Archives: chocolate
Lamingtons
21 Jun
Australia looks a strong contender in this year’s World Cup cook-off with their offer of lamingtons.
A delicate chocolate-coconut exterior conceals a substantial cake centre. Kind of like Giggs and Beckham on either side of Roy Keane, back in the day…:-)
The first time I made lamingtons was for an Australia Day celebration. I didn’t notice the advice about baking the cake a day in advance, and had a torrid time of the dipping and rolling.
There was much language and attrition, but the lamingtons I managed to produce met with our Aussie friends’ approval. Continue reading
Chocolate sugar cookies
21 May
Chocolate sugar cookies aren’t on the decadent, gooey, indulgent end of the chocolate spectrum. They’re simple, satisfying, and slightly old-fashioned.
Chocolate sugar cookies are firm with just a bit of give – the addition of baking powder giving them a subtle cakiness. Adam describes them as “chocolate pudding in a biscuit.”
Because they keep their shape so well, chocolate sugar cookies make excellent filled biscuits – or little ice cream sandwiches. Continue reading
Chocolate babka
25 Sep
The moment I saw those Great British Bake-off contestants tackling chocolate bread, I knew I’d be making chocolate babka.
I first heard of chocolate babka in that episode of Seinfeld where Jerry and Elaine fail to buy one for a dinner party, but have never made – or eaten – any type of babka until now.
It turns out that making babka is a time-consuming, fiddly labour of love. Part way through the bread-braiding process, I thought “this is the first and last chocolate babka I’m going to make.”
And then I tasted that pillowy sweet dough laced with swirls and knots of chocolate and nuggets of toasted pecan. If I hadn’t been stupified by deliciousness, I could have happily started making another one immediately…;-)
Kladdkaka (sticky chocolate cake)
22 Jun
I’ve been meaning to make a kladdkaka for a while. I live with a houseful of pudding lovers, and I expected this would go down a treat. Apparently, it’s very popular in Sweden, and it’s easy to see why. Dense, gooey, chocolatey – what’s not to like? Continue reading
Nanaimo bars
26 May
Nanaimo bars are a national institution in Canada. I’d always assumed these delicious bars of nutty, creamy, chocolatey goodness were first in Nanaimo (a town on Vancouver Island) – and research bears this out.
Loved across the country, there was even a knockout round in the first season of MasterChef Canada where competitors had to make desserts inspired by Nanaimo bars. Continue reading
Margarita brownies
6 Mar
A few weeks ago, I made a batch of chilli chocolate brownies to serve after a Mexican meal. While they were tasty (it’s hard to find a brownie I don’t like), the chilli flavour didn’t feel quite right at that point in the evening.
That sparked the idea of making margarita brownies (it’s also hard to find a margarita I don’t like…) Continue reading
Passion fruit chocolate truffles
11 Feb
One of the things I’ve always enjoyed about chocolates is the element of surprise. Shapes can be a giveaway – square toffees, dome-shaped cherries and so on – as is the printed guide when it exists. But until you commit and sink your teeth into a chocolate, you don’t really know what’s inside.
The acute disappointment of biting into a strawberry cream with its cloying taste of cosmetics. The outrage of a square chocolate unpardonably filled with fibrous coconut. The double delight of getting whatever chocolate you and your brother both favour after he went first and chose wrong…;-) Continue reading
Chocolate tart
27 Nov
There’s been a hiatus in the Great British Bake-off project, but the girls were never going to let me get away without making the double chocolate tart.
Chocolate pastry is new to me. My go-to pastry recipes have little or no sugar, and I wasn’t confident that would be enough to balance the bitterness of the cocoa. The pastry recipe I followed starts by creaming the butter and sugar, which resulted in a biscuity-crisp crust. Continue reading
Skunk
26 Sep
I can’t see Paul and Mary being very impressed with this 1970s classic… But as a child, I was wowed by it, particularly the stripes. We called it skunk, but it doesn’t appear anyone else did – my Google search on skunk cake brought up very different results!
Chocolate-raspberry ice cream
18 Jun
Move over lemon ice cream… there’s a new kid in town.
I made this chocolate-raspberry ice cream for the first time other day. It certainly won’t be the last – all four of us were completely wowed by it.
The recipe couldn’t have been easier. Four basic ingredients – cream, chocolate, sugar, raspberries. And being a Philadelphia-style ice cream, there was no messing about with egg yolks and custard. Continue reading
Chocolate chip zucchini bread
25 Mar
This zucchini bread recipe comes from my high school cookbook – which is quite the period piece now, with its marshmallow Waldorf salad, Waikiki meatballs, ham and rice ring and “sex in the pan”.
The original recipe calls for raisins, but after substituting chocolate chips once, I’ve never switched back. It also makes two loaves. Sometimes I’ve halved the recipe by beating the three eggs together and only using half, but usually stick the second loaf in the freezer for later. Continue reading
Chocolate pudding
14 Mar
I remember reading about a study that demonstrated how forbidding foods triggers cravings. A group of schoolchildren with an equal liking for raisins and dried mango had access to one of them restricted.
Within a very short time, the denied snack was in much greater demand, with some children resorting to violence to get their hands on the forbidden fruit. Which may explain my childhood obsession with canned pudding… Continue reading
Easy chocolate brownies
1 Dec
I’ve tried a lot of brownie recipes over the years — cakey brownies, gooey brownies, fudgy brownies, “ultimate” brownies — but the one I make most often is this family standby.
These brownies tick all the right boxes for me. The cocoa powder and flour give them some cakeiness, and adding chopped chocolate to the mixture ups the goo factor. The tops are nicely dry and crackly, and the insides moist and melty.
Also, while I’m all for using good quality ingredients, I’m a bit skeptical about recipes that call for 400g of top quality chocolate and six eggs to produce a pan of brownies… Continue reading
Uncooked cookies
25 Nov
I adored these cookies when I was a child. We didn’t have them often – I imagine my mum considered them too sugary to make them regularly. I even remember her telling me she’d lost the recipe, and making her usual granola cookies instead. Continue reading
Brigadeiros
13 Jul
Brigadeiros are little balls of chocolatey deliciousness rolled in sprinkles or shredded coconut. The girls were very happy indeed when I produced these a second time in just over a month. I followed a recipe I found in the June 2014 Waitrose magazine. Continue reading
Chocolate mousse
8 Jul
This is the first time I’ve ever made chocolate mousse. I looked at a few recipes before deciding on this one by Raymond Blanc. It’s pretty straightforward, though I should have been a quicker about stirring the egg whites into the melted chocolate, and ended up doing more folding than I otherwise would have (and it was still a bit lumpy). Continue reading
Black Forest cake
4 Jul
Nova asked me to make a black forest cake for her 13th birthday – which worked out neatly as Germany were playing France in the World Cup that evening. Baking is not my strong point, and I found this cake a challenge. For the cake layers, I followed a recipe from The Prawn Cocktail Years by Simon Hopkinson, but went off piste when it cake to filling and decorating. As I didn’t have a 20cm cake pan, I used one that was a little bit bigger. This was a mistake – if I make this again, I’ll opt for a smaller pan, which should make slicing the cake into three layers a whole lot easier. Continue reading
Tiramisu
20 Jun
We had this tiramisu for dessert on Italian World Cup night. I don’t follow a recipe for this — I just thin a tub of mascarpone with cream, flavour and sweeten it to taste, then layer in a bowl with coffee-soaked biscuits or cake, and top with grated chocolate. The longer it sits, the better it gets… Continue reading
Ten More Bites 