Chocolate Cashew Cookies

Chocolate Cashew Cookies

I was recently contacted and asked if I would like to take part in the Aero Perfect Pairing challenge. With the offer of Niki Segnet's book 'The Flavour Thesaurus - Pairings, recipes and ideas for the creative cook' I was definitely in. The book arrived along with a big bag of Aero's Chocolate Orange bubbles (which I didn't manage to get a picture of) and a bar of Aero mint chocolate. 

I made some chocolate orange cupcakes using Nigella's Storecupboard Chocolate Orange cake recipe (one of my standby recipes) and topped them with some chocolate frosting and the chocolate  orange balls. Unfortunately, making cakes in the morning before work isn't really conducive to having enough time to allow them to cool, so they were still warm when I put the chocolate frosting (which was itself still warm and runny) on them and the chocolate orange bubbles kind of melted. Sorry, no pictures!

I have to confess that I wasn't quite sure which flavour combination to go for - I wanted something I thought would work, but which isn't too widespread and well known. The brief stated that the recipe didn't have to include either Aero or chocolate but being a bit of a chocoholic, I decided that I would include dark chocolate in my recipe. 

A cookie recipe that I'd bookmarked ages and ages ago from the Hungry Hinny sprang to mind as being an interesting one in which to incorporate different flavours. The recipe is for cream cheese cookies and doesn't use egg at all. I increased the amount of flour slightly and hope that the Hungry Hinny doesn't mind me reproducing my attempt at these cookies. Very unusually for me, I made these by hand - only a bowl and spoon required - no need to make washing up and use the stand mixer!

Creamed butter and cream cheese

Chocolate Cashew Cookies
Ingredients
85g cream cheese (I used full fat Philadelphia)
85g butter, melted and cooled slightly
1 tsp vanilla extract
105g light muscovado sugar
150g plain flour
1/2tsp bicarbonate of soda
1/2tsp salt
30g cashews, roughly broken/chopped
50g dark chocolate, in small chunks

Method

- Preheat the oven to 160C. Line two baking trays with parchment paper.

- Beat the cream cheese until softened, then add the melted butter and vanilla. Keep beating - it will turn from curdled looking lumpy mess into a beautifully smooth batter (I had serious doubts when I saw the initial mixture but it all turned out fine). 

- Beat in the sugar and then the flour, bicarbonate and salt until a dough forms.

- Fold in the cashews and dark chocolate. 

- At this point I ignored the instructions to leave for 30 minutes to chill and just dolloped small blobs onto the lined baking tray, spread well apart. (For my mixture putting it in the fridge didn't really seem to make much difference - I put the rest of it in the fridge while the first batch of cookies were baking, but actually preferred that first batch slightly - the second batch appeared 'grainy' - no idea why)

- Bake for 15 minutes until very light brown. Allow to sit for around 10 minutes once removed from the oven to make it possible to transfer them to a wire rack (they'll be very soft once they come out of the oven).

I made 22 cookies from the mixture.

Soft cookie dough

Verdict? Actually, personally I wasn't all that keen on this cashew chocolate combo - I couldn't really taste the cashews and think I should have toasted them before adding them which would have enhanced their flavour and made them crunchier - cashews are quite a soft nut really. Otherwise successful and colleagues liked them more than me. The actual cookie dough part was very soft and far more cakey than I was expecting. I'd like to try the recipe again though. I'm wondering about using some golden syrup sugar from Tate and Lyle I bought recently and using dried fruit like cranberries along with the chocolate. An interesting recipe to play with.

And my colleagues finished up all of the Aero chocolate orange balls quite happily!

Cakey cookies

Disclaimer: I received a copy of 'The Flavour Thesaurus' and some Aero products. All views expressed are my own. Thank you Sophie.

Traditional Christmas Cake

Yes, it's the 'C' word - Christmas. I haven't even started to think about anything else related to Christmas other than the cake. This is simply because this cake needs to be made in advance to mature for Christmas and be at it's best. It does seem early, but just trust me on this!

This recipe is our family recipe for Christmas cakes, used by my mum since before I was born I think. It originally came from one of the booklets that my mum collected in the 1970's as part of the Cordon Bleu cookery course. There were quite a few of these booklets hanging around the house when I was younger, but my mum being the tidy person she is (and not a hoarder like me, I got that from my dad) chucked most of them out. However, the booklet with the Christmas Cake recipe was always earmarked to stay safe. The cake is made every year for varying numbers of family members - grandparents, aunties and uncles, cousins, nephews and nieces and is also make in mini tins (200g baked bean size, in case you were wondering...) for cake sales at church. Not a cheap cake sale cake, but my mum has requests for these every year from many members of the congregation and they are always massively popular. I think perhaps I'd better start saving my baked bean tins for her again...

There have been a number of minor amendments over the years and so I thought I would record my version of this cake here. As you will see, this is destined to be a Christmas gift (for my dad - I don't think he reads this blog, but if he does... Hi Dad!... then he'll be rather relieved that the cake is made and it's the right one this time) so there are no inside shots.

Last year I completely ran out of time and didn't make this cake, reasoning that I would be better to make a cake that was intended to be eaten soon after making. I found Delia's Last-Minute Sherry Mincemeat Cake and made that instead. It was a disaster. In fact, I was so ashamed of it that I wouldn't even let myself take a photograph of it. I used fruit and nuts for the topping as shown, but they all sank into the middle of the cake, the edges ballooned up and I was embarrassed that I would have to give such a monstrosity as a gift. But having run out of time, I gave it anyway. Hence the need to get ahead on this year's effort.

The year before last I used this same recipe but for some reason (and what with being nearly two years ago I really can't remember what times/temperatures etc I used) the fruit and nuts darkened far too much. I guess I must have misread my recipe. I'm happy to report a better outcome this year.

NB When baking the cake I noted that quite a bit of fat came out of the cake. I was using a lined loose-based tin and having spoken to my mum since making it, she says that this happens to her too, so she doesn't use a loose-based tin. It's up to you, but I'd recommend something under the cake tin to catch the escaping butter if necessary. Hopefully the cake won't be dry....

Traditional Christmas Cake
Ingredients
115g plain flour
pinch salt
1/4 nutmeg, grated
1/2 tsp mixed spice
225g sultanas
175g raisins
115g glace cherries, halved
85g slivered almonds (or blanched almonds, chopped lengthways)
85g butter
grated rind 1/2 lemon (or orange)
85g dark brown soft sugar
2 eggs
2 tbsp brandy/rum/sherry or 1 tbsp orange juice

To decorate

Your choice of nuts and fruits - I used brazil nuts, almonds and glace cherries, but my mum always includes walnuts. You could also use hazelnuts, or whatever takes your fancy.

Method

- Preheat the oven to 180C/Gas 4. Grease and line a 6"/15cm round, deep (it needs to be deep) tin with a double layer of parchment paper round the sides and on the base - this helps to protect the cake as it bakes.

Preparation stage (can be done the night before):

Put butter, sugar and zest into a large bowl. This needs to be large enough to hold all of the mixture towards the end of mixing.

Put flour, salt, spices into a small bowl.

Put all dried fruit into a medium bowl with the nuts and toss with a tbsp or so of flour.

- Cream the butter, sugar and grated zest until soft and light.

- Add the eggs one at a time, with a spoonful of flour after each to help prevent the mixture curdling.

- Fold in half of the flour.

- Fold in the fruit and nuts until well mixed and then add the remaining flour mixture and alcohol/fruit juice and continue to mix until all amalgamated.

- Smooth the top of the cake (if baking without nut decoration, smooth with wet fingers to protect the surface of the cake) and arrange the fruit and nuts as you wish. Our family have always gone for concentric circles.

- Bake for 45 minutes and then reduce the temperature to 160C/Gas 3 (or just under, Gas 3 is apparently 170C), cover the cake with a double thickness of parchment weighed down with an old wooden spoon (or a silicon one like I used) - this is just to protect the surface from over-browning. Continue to bake for a further 45 minutes - 1 hour. Test with a skewer/cake tester. If it comes out clean the cake is done. I ended up leaving mine in for two hours in total.

A note on decoration: The cake is perfectly suitable for making as a plain cake to be covered in marzipan and royal (more traditional) or fondant (newfangled) icing. However, in our family it is always, always covered with a fruit and nut topping. This dates back to the 1970's when there was a shortage of icing sugar and so royal icing couldn't be made. (Yes, I know this sounds odd, but it was 1974, the year of the 3 day week, and many things were in shortage, sugar included! There's an article here.)

To store: When completely cold, wrap the cake in greaseproof paper and over-wrap it with foil. Keep in a cool(ish) place (i.e. not next to a radiator...) until needed.

I don't actually know how long this cake keeps, but a good while if properly wrapped. One year, my mum (making the cakes in September...) was either super-organised and thought to make two for the household, or miscalculated how many relatives needed one and there ended up being two cakes. One was consumed over Christmas and into January and then the other one stayed on top of a tall cupboard, hidden with kitchen rolls or some such kitchen related item. It was eventually rescued in about July, cut into, pronounced 'mature' and 'rather delicious'. So I reckon it'll keep for a while.

Orange and Cranberry Stollen Bars

I don't often bake things that I cannot eat (for obvious reasons of greed!) but J loves marzipan, Stollen is a very festive and seasonal bake and I was intrigued by this recipe (it's the second one down), recently published by Dan Lepard on the Guardian website. I had previously thought that Stollen was always a yeasted treat, but this was a non-yeasted version of Stollen. I have made a more traditional version (also to a Dan Lepard recipe) in the past, and you can see it here. I was interested to see how this one turned out and how it was received, given that rich, fruited, spiced, buttery eggy doughs take an age to rise, especially in my chilly kitchen.

As I've been browsing all the Christmas goodies popping up on people's blogs recently, I noticed that Jules over at Butcher, Baker had made a Stollen and she notes that both yeasted and non-yeasted versions are widely made in Germany, with a yeasted version probably being more traditional.

I followed the recipe fairly closely, but made one fairly major change. I didn't have pistachios and when I went to buy them found that they are horrendously expensive. I'm sure this will not come as a surprise to the nut-eaters of you out there, but as someone who never looks at nuts I was horrified at the price I was going to have to pay, and (rather selfishly) more so because I'd never get to enjoy these bars or note the difference that the pistachios made to it. So apologies Dan, I substitued dried cranberries for the pistachios - totally different texture and flavour, but cost an awful lot less! I did however, splash out on some better quality marzipan. If you read the packets of supermarket marzipan most of them only contain around 25% almonds, but the Anthon Berg brand (bright pink/purple packet in the UK) contains 60% almonds - big difference!

I needed to cook these for much longer than 30 minutes. I think it was nearer to 50 minutes, and may even have been a little longer. I used a fairly shallow 8" square tin, so I'm not sure what, if anything I did wrong, but they definitely weren't done at 30 mins.

I made these for a staff lunch at work where we all brought something in, and these were really popular, with people commenting on how nice they were, which is very gratifying. I also sent a piece to my chief taste tester, J, and thanks to Royal Mail it arrived in one piece. She absolutely loved it, and so all of my taste notes are thanks to J.

The stollen is really moist and almondy - no doubt due to the ground almonds in the dough and the chunks of marzipan spread throughout. J thought this better than having one long chunk of marzipan down the centre, but I think that perhaps the marzipan had become a little lost from her description. However, she said that the orange flavour was subtle, and it was moister than a traditional stollen, which is what I had expected. The texture is like a very enriched bread dough, but without the problems those doughs tend to have of not rising very well in my cold kitchen - probably a more forgiving stollen to bake. I think, all in all, that she loved it, and was possibly disappointed that only one piece found its way to her in the post!

In my (festive) kitchen - December 2011



Using the same format as Celia, of the fabulous Fig Jam and Lime Cordial, I'm going to show you just a little of what is happening in my kitchen this December. I'm probably more festive than you'd guess from my recent posts, it's just that I'm running out of time to blog all the things I've made!

Anyway, to start I'd like to introduce you to Rudolph. As a child I was so obsessed with fluffy animal toys - I saved all of my pocket money until I could buy a new one, and I loved to play with them. Christmas weakens my adult resolve to not buy these toys anymore, and suddenly I found that Rudolph had jumped into my shopping basket and I didn't have the heart to tell him that he belonged with his friends on the shop shelf rather than at home with me, so home he came.

In my kitchen is a big box of clementines - obviously these are only some of them. Christmas for me always means satsumas, tangerines and clementines. As a child I wasn't allowed oranges, but had a special one in my stocking each year. I loved feeling down to the bottom of my stocking and getting that rough skinned fruit out, along with a shiny pound coin, and of course, all the other bounty contained in the stocking!

The card is one made by my gorgeous mum, and I think she's very clever. I love the simplicity, and how it says Christmas, but in an understated way. Thank you J! The tealight holder is a recent acquisition - I think it'll make a lovely festive table decoration for this season, and a great place to put a Christmas scented tealight. 

This year's batch of mincemeat. Made to Delia Smith's classic recipe, but with a few little tweaks of my own. I ought to post this separately, but probably won't get round to it!

Well, this is my most festive baking tin. I can't decide whether it's a snowflake or some sort of exotic flower, or what, but I really like it. There should be an upcoming post making best use of this festive beauty soon.

I recently bought these rather lovely star shaped cutters, perfect for creating festive decorations. I used them to make the peppermint creams below, and have used them for another bake, to be posted soon. I particularly love the little storage tin they come in, which has the shapes cleverley and prettily printed on the base of the tin so that you can fit them back in again without crushing them or resorting to naughty words!

Peppermint creams. The first time I've tried these and they were delicious - well, how can icing sugar combined with condensed milk and peppermint extract not be delicious? But no recipe because I think I got the icing sugar/condensed milk proportions wrong - they crushed rather easily. It's such a shame that I'm going to have to keep making them until they're right....

Chocolate mendiants - so easy to make (although mine aren't with tempered chocolate - a skill I have yet to even attempt, let alone aquire!) and disproportionately well received. They look very impressive when packaged in a cellophane bag with a pretty ribbon. Easy to adapt - just pick your favourite chocolate and your favourite dried fruit and nuts!

Check out what is other people's kitchens at this festive time of the year by visiting Celia's lovely blog, Fig Jam and Lime Cordial, and looking to the panel on the right where there are links to other people's kitchens.

Chilli Chocolate Fudge Cake

It seems only right that my celebration of Chocolate Week should contain my submission to We Should Cocoa, the challenge designed to celebrate chocolate in all ways throughout the year. This time, Choclette from Chocolate Log Blog is hosting and she has chosen chilli as the ingredient to pair with chocolate for this month's challenge.

A tricky one, I'm sure you'll agree, but instead of remembering things I'd like it to, my brain is littered with the sparks associated with recipes I've seen and been meaning to make for ages. So when the chilli challenge  was announced, this recipe from Dan Lepard immediately popped it's head up and demanded attention. Apparently my memory is pretty long for cake related issues, as this recipe was first posted in September 2008.

I made only minor changes to the recipe - I substituted crunchy peanut butter for the tahini, as I don't have tahini and I do have peanut butter and wanted to use it up. I used the smaller amount of chilli flakes (1/4tsp). I also used the stipulated 8" square tin rather than the pictured round one!!!

The recipe was a little involved to make, with a few different steps, but none of them were difficult. I think the cake was probably done at 1 hour, but I left mine a further 10 minutes, which may have been a mistake...

The chilli heat was a slow build, you couldn't really tell it was there at first, but there was a chilli aftertaste. The predominant taste was of peanuts, and the contrasting lime icing was really delicious and refreshing, I wish there had been more icing to cake - perhaps baking in a shallower tin would help here. The cake was very crumbly in texture, and I don't know whether this is how it was meant to be, or whether I'd overbaked it, but it was tricky to pick up and eat! It was really well received at work, and I had a recipe request (with the requestee being directed to the Guardian website!) too!

All in all, not my favourite chocolate cake, but definitely an interesting and different kind of chocolate cake for the more adventurous baker/eater of chocolate cakes!

We Should Cocoa - Chocolate Peanut Butter Mega Flapjack

We should cocoa is one! Happy Birthday! To celebrate the first birthday of the best chocolate blogging event out there, Chele at Chocolate Teapot has invited us all to create a tasty chocolate treat that we would like to see at the virtual first birthday party. I can't believe it's been a year since the first we should cocoa was announced - how time flies. I do remember being very excited about the challenge though, and very pleased that the first ingredient was raspberries - I love raspberries and made them into this delicious cake.

It took me a while, but I eventually decided on these flapjacks. I think they'd be great to take to a party - lots of other people have made cake for the party so I fancied something a little different. This recipe is based on Dan Lepard's Halva flapjack, a recipe I have seen lots and lots of bloggers making. You can find the original recipe here. I'm still not sure about using tahini so I decided to adapt the recipe to suit what I had available (hello ginormous jar of peanut butter) and what I fancied eating (mmm, cranberries and chocolate). Dan says that the use of tahini in this recipe allows less butter to be used and that when heated tahini goes fudgy. Now, clearly tahini is made from sesame seeds and peanut butter from peanuts, but both seeds and nuts are high in fats and have the same sort of paste consistency so I was hoping that using PB wouldn't lead me far wrong with the recipe.

Foodycat noted that the recipe needed to be cooked for longer than Dan stated and that hers was still very gooey in the middle after the stated time. She also recommended using the full amount of oats. So with these recommendations in mind, here is my adapted version of Dan's original recipe.

Chocolate Peanut Butter and Cranberry Flapjack
Ingredients
100g butter
75g light muscovado sugar
200g condensed milk
75g peanut butter (mine was a crunchy 100% peanut version)
50g honey
100g dried cranberries
100g chocolate, chopped
225g oats

Method

- Grease and line an 8"/20cm square tin with baking parchment. Preheat the oven to gas 4/180C.

- Melt the butter, sugar and condensed milk in a saucepan until hot and the sugar has dissolved.

- Remove from the heat and add the PB and honey and then the dried cranberries. Mix well.

- Add in the oats and mix fairly well, then add the chopped chocolate and mix until everything is evenly distributed.

- Spoon into the prepared tin, smoothing the surface and bake until pale golden. Dan states 15-20 minutes, I found mine needed at least 30.

- Remove from tin and allow to cool, but cut whilst still slightly warm if possible.

Notes

- I added the chocolate along with the oats rather than earlier to stop it all melting into one chocolate blob. This way I reckon the oats have taken the heat out of the mixture. But don't hang around while you're mixing it.

- I cut mine when cold and it was still soft enough to do this.

- My house smelled deliciously of hot peanut butter and chocolate while these were cooking. A particularly delicious combination...

Wow, these were fab! They were lovely and fudgy in the middle and the combination of chocolate, peanut butter and dried cranberries was like eating a particularly decadent version of one of my favoured sandwiches, peanut butter and jam. Mmmm! The cranberries were great at providing just a little tartness and the chocolate was, well, chocolate - i.e. delicious! I will make these again and wish I had made them earlier! I think that they would be particularly good at a party (especially if you want to pretend that the oats are good for the little children attending!) so although they're not flashy or over the top, they are my submission.

If you want to see my other submissions to We should Cocoa here they are:

September - Chocolate raspberry cake (raspberries)

October - Triple chocolate and hazelnut crunchies (hazelnuts)

November - Chocolate caramel cupcakes with caramel buttercream (caramel)

December - Chocolate date crumble bar (dates)

January - Chocolate box cake (leftovers)

February - (tea)

March - Chocolate cupcakes with chocolate lime buttercream (lime)

April - (marzipan)

May - Chocolate roulade with black forest buttercream (roulades)

June - White chocolate and strawberry muffins (strawberries)

July - (apricot)

August - Chocolate rose rice pudding (rose)

Hmm, must try harder this year to complete all the challenges! Can't wait to see what's in store for us all!

I Should Cocoa - Triple Chocolate and Hazelnut Crunchies

With nuts

It's I should Cocoa time again! Last month was raspberries and chocolate hosted by Chele of Chocolate Teapot. You can see my contribution here and the round up here. This month Choclette is hosting and announced at the beginning of October that the ingredient of choice this time to pair with the chocolate of the challenge was to be hazelnuts or cobnuts.

Nut free zone

Regular readers will know that I am allergic to nuts. It was, however, inevitable that nuts will crop up in the challenge because they're often paired with chocolate, and cobnuts are very seasonal at the moment. There are a few nutty posts on the blog, when I've made cakes exclusively for others so how to combine the nuts into a bake that I could also taste in some form was my challenge. I decided not to go for something where the nuts were absolutely essential to the structure of the bake. And to make up for the fact that I couldn't go too strongly on the nuts I went over the top with the chocolate!

Mmmm, nutty

So, having had all month to think about this, I've only just managed to contribute in time (again!) with these Triple Chocolate and Hazelnut Crunchies. The recipe is closely based on this one by Delia Smith and I fancied making biscuits rather than cakes (partly because I wanted to eat biscuits at the moment) but also because it's easier to split the batch. I made up the base ingredients as given in the recipe, and then added the chocolate. I was more generous than the recipe here, using 20g each of milk, white and dark chocolate. I then used half of the mixture straightaway, pushing spoonfuls of it off to form rough biscuit rounds. I then baked these and while they were baking added 30g bashed hazelnuts (I had bought whole blanched hazelnuts) to the rest of the mixture. I then repeated the process for forming and baking the biscuits. This recipe also had the advantage of me not having to handle the nuts much - I'm such a wimp!

My biscuits took about 21 minutes to become just slightly golden. I'll have to wait until tomorrow before I can add tasting comments for the hazelnut version, but the biscuits without the nuts were chewy and chocolatey and oaty (funny that, what with containing oats and all!) and really nice. I'm guessing that the nuts will be a welcome addition, adding some crunch and a good nutty flavour to the biscuits, but I'll try and elicit comments from some of my colleagues (wish me luck!).

No nuts here....

Quick and easy and yummy, perfect to enjoy with a lovely mug of hot chocolate - well, I may as well continue the theme properly!

Edited to add: Colleagues thought these were really good - lots of positive comments. The nut ones are apparently slightly less sweet which my dedicated tester (who naturally had to have one of each batch to make a true comparison) thought was probably due to the nuts balancing the sweet chocolate (especially as I used the same base for them both!). She also liked the flapjack-like taste of the golden syrup in them. Good feedback!

A party, a mess, some chocolates and a Chocolate Pear Crumble Tart

Well, it's really all about the tart... But let's talk about the party, the mess and the chocolates first. I went to my Gran and Grandfather's house for my Gran's birthday party and even though there is practically zero chance of her finding this (they aren't on the internet!) I'm not going to be the one to divulge her age (and to be honest I'm not 100% certain what that age is). It was a lovely chance to meet up with family and catch up on the gossip, although in reality this means listening to my family's (often rather forthright!) opinions on various subjects. It's good fun though, and to celebrate we had a lovely meal together.

But you can't visit the birthday girl and not take presents, so along with some wine and flowers I thought it would be nice to take chocolates. My Gran likes dark chocolate and inspired by Celia's post here about making chocolates I thought it would be nice to make an effort rather than just buying a box. I have to confess that I didn't temper my chocolate though (it seems an intimidating thing to do) as I was short of time so my chocolate was slightly dull when it set, but I don't think that it really matters too much. All I did was melt some dark chocolate carefully in the microwave and then spoon little puddles of it onto baking parchment. I added a variety of dried fruit and nuts to each little puddle, allowed it to set then drizzled with a little white chocolate to decorate. I was really pleased with how they turned out and they were easy and fun to do - I can see me doing this again, but more importantly, my Gran was really pleased with them too!

The mess was Eton mess - chopped strawberries, whipped double cream and broken meringue. Super easy and quick to make and I cheated with bought meringue because I have meringue fear and cannot make them..... I think I went a bit light on the strawberries though, but everyone else loved it, even adding extra cream to theirs!

And finally, the chocolate pear crumble tart. I've wanted to make this for ages (well, since it was published here, last September) and I can't remember what reminded me about its existence in the dark recesses of my mind, but when I volunteered to make desserts for the party, this just popped into my head! I followed the recipe fairly well but forgot to chill the pastry (or, more honestly, ran out of time to chill the pastry....) which may well, in combination with my poor pastry making skills, account for the huge shrinkage of my crust. I'm glad I used baking beans to weigh it down though, otherwise I don't think there would have been any space to put the pears in. I must conquer pastry.... Anyway, the pears smelt delicious while they were cooking, and I was seriously tempted to just eat them all on their own, yum, pears in buttery alcoholic caramel sauce..... and even though I probably only used about 600g pears, it was enough to cover the base of my 20cm cake tin. I used the cake tin as my tart tins are all shallow and I didn't want to lose the crumble mixture when I added it on top. I chose a smaller tin after reading Suelle's comments about the tart when she made it, here, and I was pleased because there was quite a lot of shrinkage. I also added a few tbsps water to the crumble mix to make it less crumbly.

Overall, I was pleased with how the tart turned out. The pastry bottom wasn't crisp (but I'm sure that's down to my lack of pastry prowess combined with pear juices) but the combination of pear and chocolate was good. Glad that I made it, very pleased that my Grandfather went back for seconds, but probably not one to repeat!

Peanut and cashew nut chilli bread

When this recipe was published last weekend in the Guardian I thought it looked really interesting, but (said in a small voice) I didn't dare make it. Why? Because I'm a complete chilli wuss. I don't ever eat them and I can't do with food that bites back. But I know that most people quite like chillies and the recipe looked good so when I found that I was due to see T (doesn't happen as often as I'd like) and that I could also see J the same weekend, I decided to give this a go, so that I could share the results. T likes chilli much more than I do!!!

Because I didn't have chance to get to the shops I used what I had on hand, resulting in some minor changes to the recipe as published here. I used 100g peanut butter (50g smooth, 50g crunchy) and 50g of cashew nuts instead of the roasted peanuts. I also only used one chilli and scraped out the seeds. Next time I might be braver and use two! I also missed out the cumin seeds firstly because I don't have any, which is probably due to two, I dislike them intensely!

I followed the method as written, which is great because it requires very little work on my part, only one brief kneading and I managed to make it after getting in from work in the evening at 7pm (I just won't tell you what time I got to bed that night!). I was pleased with the way it turned out and rather relieved to find that the chilli wasn't prominent at all (in fact, I can barely taste it) with the taste being predominantly nutty. So that second chilli would be necessary really. I think I also chose the mildest chillies the supermarket had! J enjoyed it, but I haven't asked T what he thought yet - I'll update when I know.

I was going to suggest cream cheese to soothe the heat of the chilli, but the heat doesn't need soothing! I still think cream cheese would be a good partner, or a creamy goats cheese perhaps if you don't like Dan's recommendation of cured meats to eat with this.

Marzipan and Cherry Easter cupcakes

These are my contribution this year to Julia's Easter Cake Bake. I think that I should be rather proud of the standard of my entry this year, considering the poor job I did last year, but let's not dwell on that shall we.... I decided to make these cherry and almond Easter cupcakes to use some of the marzipan that I bought at Christmas to make a stollen for J. I should apologise to J here, because I never did get round to making that Stollen... some other time maybe. So it happened that I had a block of marzipan to use, and marzipan and Easter seem to be linked, what with Simnel cake (although that's more Mothering Sunday than Easter in my book) and so forth, so marzipan it was. I had recently made some rather poorly received (more to come on this, if I can bear to post about it) cupcakes so felt that it was time to redeem myself with work colleagues and make something that looked and tasted good (the last batch of cupcakes tasted fine, but didn't look very appealing and I'm coming to the conclusion that people eat primarily with their eyes....)

I found this recipe on the BBC Good Food website and decided to adapt it to my requirements. I didn't want 24 cupcakes, so I halved the recipe then tweaked it and got 12.

Ingredients
110g butter, softened
110g caster sugar
2 large eggs
125g self raising flour
100g marzipan, chilled and coarsely grated
100g glace cherries, halved if small, quartered if large (wash them first to get rid of the syrup - it'll help to prevent them from sinking in the cake mixure)

150g icing sugar
mini eggs to decorate

Method
- Preheat the oven to 180C/Gas 4. Line a muffin tin with 12 paper liners.
- Cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy.
- Add the eggs and flour and beat well until combined.
- Add the grated marzipan and cherries and mix well until combined. Divide between the muffin cases.
- Bake for 20-25 minutes until cooked and lightly golden brown (mine took 24 minutes). Leave to cool in the tin for a few minutes, then leave to cool completely on a wire rack.
- Make the icing by mixing the icing sugar with sufficient water to form a thickish icing. I know the Good Food recipe recommends 100g icing sugar for 24 cupcakes, but it wasn't even enough for my 12, let alone 24!!!
- Blob the icing onto the cupcakes and spread around a little. Top with mini eggs as desired.
I have to confess here, I bought two packets (2 x 100g) of mini eggs because as I suspected there weren't enough different colours in one packet alone to provide differently coloured eggs for all the cupcakes. My first packet had a preponderance of pink eggs. If you aren't as fussy, one packet will be plenty!

As to what they taste like, I don't know - I can't eat marzipan, but they were admired and then disappeared fairly rapidly with good comments being made, so I'm guessing they were moist and delicious!!! Probably with an almond flavour (well, you would hope so!) and juicy chunks of glace cherry. Your imagination is as good as mine!!!

Cinnamon-Pecan Coffee Cake

I have been admiring the rather delicious looking cakes being baked by the Cake Slice Bakers group over the past twelve months and sort of wishing that I could join in, but at the same time being thankful that I didn't need to buy a third cake tin for the third layer that many of the cakes made by the group required. The book last year was Sky High Irresistible Layer Cakes. (Or indeed, transporting the resulting delicious confection to work - nigh on impossible on a bus!) However, when Katie over at Apple and Spice (you really have to check out her blog - her cakes are amazing and really inspired me to want to join this group!) mentioned that the group was opening up the membership to new members a while ago, I decided that it was now or never and in I jumped!

The book that the group is baking from this year is 'Southern Cakes - sweet and irresistible recipes for everyday celebrations' by Nancie McDermott. This is the South of the USA, not the south coast of the UK! so a note for UK (and other non-US) readers is in order about this month's recipe - coffee cake in the USA doesn't necessarily contain coffee in any way, shape or form, but is merely used to identify a cake which is consumed with coffee. Confusing no? So I haven't left out any ingredients from this recipe......

So my first recipe as a Cake Slice Baker was unfortunately one I can't actually eat unless I sub a fairly key ingredient. I therefore present Cinnamon-Cashew Coffee Cake! I really wanted to give this cake a taste and pecans and me don't mix, but luckily I can still eat cashews, so I could still get the crunchy texture the recipe is asking for. This cake was very easy to put together, which is good news as I'd left making it until the last moment through disorganisation. I decided, along with quite a few other members of the group, to make a half recipe, and baked mine for the same length of time in a 6.5x9.5" baking tin, which worked perfectly well.

I amended some of the quantities slightly - cutting down a little on the cinnamon as I'm not the world's greatest fan of cinnamon and I also converted the recipe from cups to grams. I've therefore given the recipe below so that readers who prefer metric measurements don't have to convert their own. I couldn't find a conversion for a cup of nuts though, so I guesstimated and serendipidously had about 100g nuts left in the packet, which seemed about right. I also replaced the specified all-purpose flour and baking powder with self raising flour because I prefer to use this.

Cinnamon-Raisin filling

150g light muscovado sugar

1 1/2 tbsp plain flour

1 scant tbsp cinnamon (original recipe states 3 tbsp for the full recipe, these quantities are for half)

110g raisins

100g cashews (or pecans if you can have them!), coarsley chopped

85g butter, melted

Coffee cake (without any coffee...... can you tell how much this confuses me!!!)

220g self raising flour

1 tsp vanilla extract

120ml milk (I used semi-skimmed)

110g butter, softened

100g caster sugar

1 egg

I didn't read the instructions properly and combined all of my filling ingredients together, which I wasn't supposed to do, but I can't see that it would have made much difference. Like many others, I found the batter very sticky indeed, and it was difficult to spread around the tin, but as in my recent plum oat slice, using slightly under half of the mixture for the first layer was a good move and made spreading the remaining layer over the top a little easier. Because there were two raisin/nut layers it didn't really matter if the top layer didn't quite reach the edges in some places.

So how did it taste? Well, it disappeared in record time at work, so there must be something right about it! It smelled lovely whilst it was baking, filling the house with a warming cinnamon-y scent, just right for the autumn weather we've been having round here. The cinnamon flavour was quite strong and the texture of the cake was lovely and soft, a great contrast to the crunchy, chewy nutty raisin layer. The nuts weren't as crunchy as I was expecting, but then I've never had a cake with nuts in it before so I'm not sure if it's normal for the nuts to be quite soft rather than crispy. I suppose that might just be a feature of cashews and that pecans might be crunchier - who knows!!! I really enjoyed the cake though - it was lovely to hit a little pocket of sweet sugar - and there were plenty of them dotted throughout the cake.

Thanks for a great first recipe - I've looked through the book and am really looking forward to making more from it over the next year! Don't forget to check out the other Cake Slice Bakers posts here at the blogroll.

Chocolate Fruit and (not Nut) Cases (without red noses)

G doesn't like cake. How can that be? How can someone not like cake? But anyway, he doesn't. He claims to like chocolate cake, but I don't ever remember seeing him eat it. (I think he likes his gran's chocolate cake which no-one could possibly replicate so we've given up trying!) But he does like these. In fact, he can't get enough of them, so they're the thing I make for his birthday, in lieu of a proper birthday cake.

I have to admit though, there is something rather enigmatically delicious about these. You wouldn't think it from the simple list of ingredients, but they are extremely more-ish, to the point of being addictive. Best from the fridge so that the chocolate is nice and set, but if you don't mind sticky fingers they're lovely at whatever temperature.

In 2001 Delia Smith published 12 new chocolate recipes in aid of Comic Relief. The booklet cost £1 and was possibly the best £1 ever spent (I think J probably bought it though, so I'm not claiming it's the best pound I've ever spent!) because I've made four of the twelve recipes, and of the remaining eight, three contain nuts so I'm unlikely to ever make them. That's a pretty good hit rate for someone who owns cookbooks they've barely opened let alone made anything from! These come from that little booklet and have been made over and over and over again in my household, always with a positive response. Be warned, they will dissapear in the blink of an eye. Because they were originally for Comic Relief they were Chocolate Fruit and Nut Cases with Red Noses. I subbed out the stipulated toasted hazelnuts for dried cranberries (as suggested by Delia) and have never bothered with the red noses (half a glace cherry) but if you want to, don't let me stop you! These are the perfect size for an after dinner bite.

So where is this fabulous recipe, I hear you cry. And you would be right to be dashing to the kitchen to make them - but not if you're on a diet as they're so addictive you'll be thrown right off track unless you've got a will of steel. The big night of Comic Relief may be over for this year, but Delia's legacy from 2001 lives on still.....

Chocolate Fruit (and Nut) Cases (without red noses)!
100g dark chocolate (70% cocoa solids), broken into small pieces
50g raisins
50g dried cranberries (or use 50g toasted whole blanched hazelnuts)
2 tbsp golden syrup
50g butter
60-70g cornflakes

Method (this is simplicity itself!)

- Line 2x12 hole mini-muffin tins with paper cases

- Melt the chocolate, golden syrup and butter over a bowl of hot water (barely simmering, although I just use boiled water from the kettle - by the time it has cooled down the mixture is melted!)

- Stir the melted ingredients together until well combined. Add the raisins and cranberries and mix briefly followed by the cornflakes. Stir gently, being careful not to smash the cornflakes if possible. Keep stirring, there is more than enough chocolate to coat it all, but you'll need to get right down to the bottom of the bowl, because the chocolate collects there and tries to hide! If you want to make more, add more cornflakes a few at a time, mixing until they're coated. Eventually the mixture won't take any more cornflakes as there won't be enough chocolate to coat them. If you're doing them to sell, I add more cornflakes, if they're for family I don't bother.

- Divide between the muffin cases and leave to set.

Enjoy - you really won't regret making these as they're so much better than I could possibly tell you!

PS For some reason, it's the dark chocolate and cornflakes that really make these. I can't imagine them working with milk chocolate or rice krispies. Sorry!

2008 - The best bits

I haven't been blogging for a year yet, but have really enjoyed the time I've spent doing it and have read some really inspiring posts this past year. I'm really looking forward to creating more delicious things for the blog this year, perhaps with some forays into savoury cooking too. Anyway, here are my favourite posts of the past year, seven, randomly enough! Some of them are favourites because the outcome was utterly delicious, some because they represent something I learnt and others because I actually managed to get a decent shot of them. I hope you enjoy them. What were your favourite posts this past year?

These Butter Whirls were the first time I've successfully managed to use a piping bag. Great fun to make and delicious to eat, what's not to like.

Marbled chocolate cake - so simple to make, looks impressive and so easy to eat.

Although I have no idea what these coffee walnut cupcakes with coffee buttercream icing taste like personally, I'm guessing they're delicious from the speed they disappeared at work. These represent the first time I successfully piped buttercream icing to look as luscious and inviting as I wanted it to.

A combination of a fantastic recipe and some luck meant that these chocolate custard muffins were some of the best muffins I've ever tasted. Thanks to Dan Lepard for the recipe! I was really impressed that they turned out just like the photo.

The ginger spice cupcakes with lemon icing that I made in November were possibly the most more-ish cake I made this year. The sweet-sour icing perfectly offset the spicy soft cake underneath to perfect effect. Definitely on the to-make-again-ASAP list!

Both of the last choices come from December. It was a good month for baking. J enjoyed the Stollen I made as part of her Christmas present (thanks are again due to Dan Lepard for his fantastic recipe):

And all of us enjoyed this delicious Rosemary and Rock Salt Foccacia with our mushroom risotto on Boxing Day. (I sound like a record that's got stuck, but it just goes to show that Dan Lepard produces consistently good recipes!)

I hope you all had a great year in 2008 and here's to an even better 2009!