Is it rocky road without marshmallows?

Is this rocky road?

I still have leftover chocolate from an Easter egg and for some unfathomable reason to anyone else, I don’t really eat them.

I wrote that sentence last May and one year on, I find myself in the same position. I looked for this draft blog post in the hope that past self had written down the rocky road recipe that was made last year with that leftover Easter egg chocolate, as current self would like to make the same. But alas, it was not to be! Current self has searched her notes, Evernote, Instagram posts and draft blog posts to no avail. She is annoyed with past self, “why, oh why did she not write it down?” 

So, déjà vu and I’m back searching the internet for rocky road recipes. This year, I can report back that rocky road recipes are, on the whole, all pretty similar. Generally, they all contain about 200-250g of biscuit*, 100-150g butter (not margarine!), 3-6 tablespoons of golden syrup, 200-300g milk and dark chocolate and 80-200g of a mixture of marshmallow/dried fruits/nuts/other goodness. My main sticking point with a traditional rocky road is the marshmallows. I’m not a marshmallow fan and I think they can make it overly sweet. So, dear reader, the question I pose to you is – is it rocky road without the marshmallow?

*I just prefer using malted milk biscuits to the digestive biscuits that are traditionally used. They just make it taste better, in my opinion. I can’t explain it more than that.

there are ingredients for making rocky road on a table: a bottle of golden syrup, a packet of malted milk biscuits, pretzels, butter, dried fruit and nuts and chocolate
Ingredients for my rocky road but remember it is flexible

Ingredients

  • 150g butter
  • 150g milk chocolate
  • 150g dark chocolate
  • 2 tbsp date molasses
  • 2 tbsp golden syrup
  • 200g malted milk biscuits
  • 50g pretzels or cereal or other type of biscuit (I used a choco hoops)
  • 150g mix of sultanas, dried cranberries, dried apricots, pecans or walnuts.

Method

  1. Line a baking tin with baking paper or a reusable silicone baking liner. The tin should be deep(ish) and about 20x20cm or 27×20cm or 28×18cm.
  2. In a medium to large saucepan, measure out the butter, milk chocolate and dark chocolate, date molasses and golden syrup. Melt them over a medium heat and stir to combine it all together. Take it off the heat.
  3. As the chocolate slowly melts, roughly crush the biscuits, pretzels/cereal and nuts (if using) in a medium sized bowl. I use the back of a rolling pin for this. Then add in the dried fruit. Next, carefully pour the dry ingredients into the melted chocolatey, buttery goodness and mix so that the chocolate covers everything!
  4. Put in the fridge for at least 2 hours to set. Cut it into 16-20 portions and enjoy. 

The verdict?

I think that it is still rocky road without marshmallows. Naturally, I prefer them like this. However, I’d actually go one step further than saying ‘I prefer it’, because obviously a non-lover of marshmallows would say that, and declare that they are more-ish because they aren’t overwhelmingly sweet due to the absence of marshmallows.

a few squares of rocky road with one stacked on top
Cut up the rocky road and enjoy.

Smashing mini egg cookies with brown butter and a mini tutorial on brown butter

Mini egg cookies

As I write this post, there is another Easter egg cookie recipe that is currently trending on the socials. The Domino’s (yup famous for their pizzas) cookie stuffed with a Creme egg. Although I normally find Creme eggs too sweet, the cookies looked like they might be fun to bake. However, before I jumped on the bandwagon, a friend, who had made them recently for her kids, reported back that they were overwhelmingly sweet. So instead, I’ve decided to make these mini egg cookies. I’ve been thinking about making them for the past three years at Easter, but was side tracked by baking hot cross buns. As a quick aside, I’ve now baked five batches this year trying to perfect Ravneet Gill’s recipe.

I wanted to make a recipe that’s simple, not overwhelmingly sweet and delicious. One that would please children and that you could make with them. Therefore I played around with my trusted cookie recipes on the blog to create this one. And as I realised how expensive a small bag of mini eggs can be, I decided this recipe had to one that could be made with one small 80-90g bag. You can, of course, use Cadbury’s mini eggs, or, like me, choose a cheaper supermarket alternative. Additionally, I wanted each of the cookies to have a whole mini egg in them. In the five times that I’ve tested this recipe, I’ve counted out between 15-17 mini eggs and set them aside, thinking that I’d get that many cookies out of the dough mixture. What a surprise then, when the medium cookie scoop kept going and presented me with more (normally 16-18)! So, what is one to do? My compromise was to leave some without, but of course you could lightly smash the eggs in half.

This is where the boob cookie nickname came in. I took them into work one day in a container which had them stacked in two columns. As I looked at them, each cookie containing one mini egg, I realised that they just looked like boobs. If ever, you’re doing some baking to raise awareness of breast cancer, then please bake these! If there are no mini eggs around, then perhaps you could substitute them with Smarties or M&M’s?

Bake and share these please for a breast cancer awareness

Anyway, back to creating this recipe and feel free to skip this paragraph if you don’t want to know the details. For example, in the process of making this recipe, while I was choosing between my basic chocolate cookie recipe and my brown butter one, I consulted Ravneet Gill’s The Pastry Chef. As I calculated the ratio of flour to butter, I found that the basic chocolate cookie and Ravneet Gill’s recipes have an identical flour to butter ratio of 1.78… That must be significant, right? But could someone explain to me why? So I chose to begin with the basic chocolate cookie recipe as my base. Then, as it’s been a bit cold for butter to soften in our kitchen, I decided to melt half of the butter and why not make it into brown butter while I was at it? So, of course I did because brown butter makes everything better, in my mind.

Brown butter with the delicious brown bits

I’ve included two videos on browning butter below as I know that if this is a new thing, it can be off-putting. And I don’t want you to be put off because, remember, I set out for this recipe to be simple. I’ve always done this on a stove top, never in the microwave, so I don’t know if you can. All you are doing is evaporating the water off the butter and as the milk solids brown, it magically releases a nutty flavour. Its French name alludes to this. Beurre noisette, literally translates as hazelnut butter. You will find that I repeat a summary of this in step 1 of the method. First, you melt the butter in a saucepan on a medium heat. The butter will begin to cackle and froth as it melts (listen to Video 1). As the water continues to evaporate, it will make a gentler frothing sound (listen to Video 2). Use a spatula to stir and scrape the bottom so that it doesn’t burn. It is ready, when it is “silent as a ninja” (I quote Stella Parks) (also in Video 2). Then take it off the heat and let it cool. There are two ways really to do this. Option one is to carefully place the pan in some cold water taking care not to splash any water into the pan. This is what I do to save on washing up. Option two is the more orthodox method of pouring the butter into a heat proof bowl, taking care to scrape all the brown bits into the bowl and letting it cool.

Video 1. At the beginning, the butter will cackle and froth as the water begins to evaporate
Video 2. It then makes a gentler frothing sound. It is done when it is “silent as a ninja”.

A quick word on equipment. My happy discovery whilst making this recipe is that I can use a pestle and mortar to smash the chocolate and mini eggs. It’s much easier and less messy. The mini eggs don’t roll away as you’re trying to cut them. If you don’t have a pestle and mortar, you could place them in a bowl (that won’t break) and smash them gently with the end of a wooden rolling pin. I’m going to keep on using this. I’m also using my latest kitchen equipment purchase – Vollrath’s #30 cookie scoop, as I’ve chosen to make them medium sized. Each one weighs between 40g-43g. I share this with you because I searched the internet to find something good to replace my previous OXO #40 cookie scoop after it died. It appears that OXO UK don’t offer the #40 cookie scoop anymore, but the larger one instead. Finally, I’ve made them in a stand mixer but you could easily make them using a hand mixer or by beating the mixture by hand.

Smashing mini eggs with the pestle and mortar
Cookie dough scooped, side by side and ready to go in for their rest

Recipe for Smashing mini egg cookies with brown butter

  • 140g butter, 70g cubed and 70g to melt into brown butter
  • 110g white sugar – granulated or caster
  • 120g soft dark brown sugar
  • 1/4 tsp bicarbonate of soda
  • 1 egg
  • 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
  • 230g plain flour
  • 1/4 tsp salt
  • 160g total of chocolate
    • I used a 80g bag of mini eggs – pick out 15-17 whole and lightly crush the rest – and 80g of 70% dark chocolate roughly chopped. Alternatively, you could use 80g of dark chocolate chips.

Method

  1. First make the brown butter. Melt 70g butter in a small saucepan on a medium heat. It will froth and cackle as the water evaporates. This is normal. Scrape round the sides and the bottom of the pan so that it doesn’t burn. When it is silent, then it is ready. Take the saucepan off the heat and leave to cool slightly.
  2. Meanwhile in a medium sized bowl, measure out both the sugars, the remainder of the butter and bicarbonate of soda and then pour in the brown butter. Remember to scrape all the brown bits into it too. Then mix it together until they’ve all combined.
  3. Next, add the egg and vanilla extract and mix to combine.
  4. In a small bowl, combine the flour, salt, crushed mini egg bits and the dark chocolate chunks. Add this to the butter/sugar/egg mixture and mix on slow so that the flour doesn’t all fly up.
  5. Next the cookie dough needs a rest for at least 12 hours in the fridge/freezer. Get a medium sized baking tray and line it with baking paper/silicone baking mat. I like to use a medium sized cookie/ice cream scoop for this next bit to measure out and shape the cookies. If you don’t have a cookie scoop then measure out a golf ball sized ball of cookie dough and roll it into a ball. Place the balls side by side on the baking tray. Once you’ve done that, take the whole mini eggs that you’d reserved and firmly push one into each ball.
  6. I like to cover them with an empty, used cereal packet that is large enough for the baking tray to go into, and then carefully place the tray in the fridge or freezer so that the cookie dough balls rest overnight. This is important for creating chewy cookies so don’t hurry this step! The magic happens here the sugar in the dough hydrates and allows it to caramelise when baked. If I freeze them, the next day I empty the frozen balls into the cereal packet to store.
  7. When you come to bake them, preheat the oven to 160°C/320°F/Gas mark 3. Line a baking tray with baking paper and place the cookie balls on the tray, spacing them out by 2-3 cm as the cookie will spread out. Sprinkle the balls lightly with salt and then bake in the middle of the oven for 14 minutes if they’ve been in the fridge, 16 minutes if they’ve been in the freezer until they are puffed up and golden. I turn the baking tray round halfway because of hot spots in my oven. Allow them to cool for 5-10 minutes, in which time they will deflate and be crispy on the outside and still gooey inside. The 5-10 minutes cooling wait time before eating is also so that you don’t burn the roof of your mouth. I speak from experience. Enjoy.

The verdict? They are smashing! The sprinkling of salt and addition of dark rather than milk chocolate keeps them from being overly sweet. I have tested and tweaked this recipe 5 times before I hit publish. I’ve given them away at work, aerial, and to whoever walks in the door, young and old. The general consensus is that they are delicious, which is good as I’ve still got a stash in the freezer.

My scooped cookie dough going on a baking tray in a cereal liner about to go in for an overnight rest

The brown butter chocolate chunk cookies aka Crack Cookies

Tonight as I was wondering which recipe to share with you (it was between apple crumble and poached eggs), I remembered that I’d been baking a lot of cookies recently and posting photos of them on Instagram. It’s time, isn’t it. The time has finally come to share my crack cookie recipe that I’ve been promising for a while.

Top tip: Keeping cookie dough balls in the freezer are an investment in your future self’s happiness.

There are variations of that sentence around the internet and social media. That’s my paraphrase above. It is one of the reasons why I love making these cookies. This recipe will make enough so that you can store some away (like squirrels do with their nuts in preparation for winter) for a moment when you really want to eat a cookie, or bake something but have no energy for it. That was me two nights ago. I arrived home from work physically and emotionally exhausted, wanting to be fed and then to sit down with a home baked biscuit to watch episode 2 of the Great British Bake Off – Biscuit week. Fortunately I live with a family who will let me do all those things and I had frozen cookie dough balls stashed away in the freezer.

a sauce pan with butter browning and foam
As the butter melts, it foams as the water evaporates.

I went through a phase when I was obsessively recipe testing chocolate chip cookies in Phnom Penh to perfect that American style cookie of soft and gooey on the inside, with crispy edges. This was a pretty happy time for those around me. Being around so many more internationals opened up a whole other world of baked goods, their expectations of them and their tastebuds. I enjoyed the challenge of trying to recreate those baked goods that they were nostalgically craving that I had never tasted before. And then of course selling them.

Photo credit to @pipcree who took this photo at one of my final pop-ups in PP.

I learned stuff as I researched which I’ll share with you because that’s what this blog is about:

  • THE MOST IMPORTANT part is to REST the dough so that the baking magic can happen. Firstly, it allows the flour to absorb the fats and the liquids and thus create that puffy, crispy texture. Secondly, the sugars get a chance to chill out and mellow out resulting in richer flavour. In some baking chemistry magic by resting them, they will taste sweet but not overly sugary. It’s a minimum 2 hour wait if you’re impatient, but preferably overnight.
  • I often use a stand mixer to make this but the joy of this recipe is that as all the butter is melted, it is easy to do in a large bowl and a spatula/large mixing spoon.
  • Allow the brown butter to cool down. Sometimes I don’t and it results in a more delicate, tender cookie.
  • Remember with a cookie recipe, you don’t want to cream the butter and sugar together. We just want to mix them sufficiently, not beat air into them.
  • Mix up different types of chocolate to create a more complex chocolate profile, that’s why I use dark and milk chocolate. I read somewhere (I’m sure it was on Serious Eats but I can’t find the link) that if you use one type of chocolate then your taste buds get used to and stop tasting it. However, if you vary different makes or types of chocolate, your tastebuds will continue to taste them.
  • My recipe testing pales in comparison to Serious Eats. I am still learning.
  • Brown butter creates a rich, nutty flavour which I really enjoy.

Why do I call them crack cookies? That’s the nickname that my friend Grace gave them and it caught on. These cookies are really more-ish, sweetly addictive, soft but slightly crispy and satisfyingly not overly sweet. The brown butter gives a slightly nutty flavour, without any nuts, and the two types of chocolate means that each mouthful is a flavour party. I made two batches of these cookies for the soft opening of her store, Ginger and Grace. For some reason, they didn’t make it onto the tables but her friends discovered them later that evening and ate through an entire batch of them. I guess that cemented their reputation as crack cookies.

Now I tell people that these brown butter, chocolate chunk cookies are my best work.

The cookie recipe comes from Ambitious Kitchen. I haven’t made any major changes to it, except I like to weigh everything so obviously here I’ve converted it into grams. There’s a very similar recipe on Joy the Baker. The differences are that Monique browns ALL the butter, uses dark brown sugar, uses two different types of chocolate, adds in a tablespoon of greek yoghurt and doesn’t use nuts. Joy uses light brown sugar but adds in 1 tsp molasses, adds pecans and uses dark chocolate only. I prefer the Ambitious Kitchen version.

Making a double batch of cookies

Ingredients for Brown Butter Chocolate Chunk Cookies very slightly adapted from Ambitious Kitchen

  • 227g butter
  • 100g white granulated sugar
  • 200g dark brown sugar
  • 1 large egg and 1 egg yolk
  • 1 tbsp natural yoghurt or greek yoghurt
  • 2 tsp vanilla extract
  • 280g plain flour
  • 1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
  • 1/2 tsp table salt
  • 140g dark chocolate cut into small chunks, or the chocolate chips, or round discs*
  • 140g milk chocolate cut into small chunks, or the chocolate chips, or round discs

*for prettier looking cookies: if using round discs of chocolate, keep around 21 discs aside to firmly place on the cookies after they have baked. The chocolate will temper as they melt and thus have a nice shine making them prettier to eat.

Method

  1. First brown the butter. Add all the butter to a medium-sized saucepan and place over medium heat. It will start to froth and cackle. That is the water evaporating. Continue and stir the sides and scrape the bottom a few times so that it doesn’t burn. When it is ‘as quiet as a ninja’ (quote from Stella Parks) it is ready. Take it off the heat and either pour the butter in a bowl to cool down, not forgetting to scrape the browned bits from the sides and bottom. Or as I often do, fill up the sink with cold water and carefully place the hot pan in there to cool down.
  2. Add both the sugars into a large mixing bowl and the cooled brown butter and mix for a minute or two until they are combined. I use the paddle beater (K-beater on the Kenwood). Don’t discard the egg white. Store it in the freezer for a cocktail or macaron/meringue baking on a later date.
  3. Now add in the vanilla extract, yoghurt and the large egg and egg yolk and mix again for a minute. It will look and smell like toffee.
  4. In a separate bowl, measure out the flour, bicarbonate of soda and salt and whisk to mix. Then add this to the butter/sugar/egg mixture and mix slowly so that the flour doesn’t fly up.
  5. When it looks like the flour has just about combined then add in the chocolate chunks and mix again.
  6. At this stage, I prefer to measure out into 2 tablespoons of cookie dough (I like to use a medium ice cream scoop) and roll them into balls and place them on a lined baking tray so that the cookie dough can chill out in the fridge for at least 2 hours before baking them. Sometimes, I will cover them and leave them overnight in the fridge to bake the following morning. More often, I will cover them and put them in the freezer overnight and then store the frozen cookie dough balls in a bag.
  7. When you’re ready to bake them, pre-heat the oven to 170°C/350°F/Gas mark 4 and line a baking sheet/tray with baking paper. Space them out so that there are 5 cms between each dough ball as they will spread. Sprinkle the cookies with a bit of table salt. If baking from chilled, bake for 11-13 minutes. If baking from frozen, bake for 14-16 minutes. The dough will spread out and go a golden brown colour. The middle will be gooey so when you take it out, it is important to leave them to cool and harden for 15 minutes on the baking sheet. Otherwise it will split into many pieces and chocolate goo will cover your fingers. That doesn’t sound too bad, does it. Haha.

You’re welcome and enjoy.

My favourite way of portioning out the cookie dough is with a medium sized icecream scoop.
In the absence of a scoop, weighing scales works. Preparing them for their overnight stay in the fridge hotel.

You can vary the flavour and texture. I added 140g dark chocolate and 140g chopped pecans to the cookies at the top of the post. You could substitute the pecans for walnuts or hazelnuts if you like. Play around with it and let me know how you get on.

Cheesecake Brownies

Two baking trays with brownie mixture. The one on the left hand side has salted caramel, the one on the right hand side is cheesecake
Salted caramel and cheesecake brownies side by side

You may have picked up already that I really enjoy playing around with the different flavour combinations in a brownie. When I ran a home baking business, as my side hustle, in Phnom Penh, I’d sometimes put a poll out on social media. What brownie flavour would you like next? Cheesecake was a popular request. Cambodians generally really like cheesecake but I made very few to sell because the ingredients were pricey. Thus when this hybrid worked out, it turned out to be a happy compromise. As I am me, I found ways to play around with more flavours and ingredients. I’ve listed them at the end of the cheesecake ingredients.

cake box with cheesecake brownies inside, a green business card with love, Han-Na
Cheesecake Brownies were a popular order

Last month, I wrote about how I’d picked up a painful thumb injury which I was trying to let heal. It is mostly better now so I made cheesecake brownies and a giant cookie this weekend.

When I posted a picture of this cheesecake version on the post about the infinitely variable fudgy brownies, I said that I’d give you the recipe later as it involves a few more steps. Since then, my brownie recipe and story have featured on TheBrightApp (which is a new social networking site that someone I know is involved in – go check it out). There was a comment that the variations could feature as a different recipe post each time, which is kind. I’m not sure if that will be possible, but here’s the cheesecake brownie version in the meantime.

Ingredients all lined up
Cheesecake Brownie ingredients all lined up ready
All the swirls

I adapted this from Smitten Kitchen’s Cheesecake-Marbled Brownie recipe. I wanted to use my more recent whisking to ribbon stage brownie method, so I took note of the cheesecake ingredients and the marbling instructions but combined it with my chosen brownie method. However, you could use my simpler, no frills or ribbons, brownie recipe too. There are more detailed instructions in the previous posts on how to make brownies in general. I’ve added photos below the recipe to expand on the addition of cheesecake.

Ingredients for Cheesecake Brownies, adapted from Smitten Kitchen

Brownie ingredients

  • 150g unsalted butter, cut into small cubes
  • 150g dark chocolate (at least 60%), broken up, roughly chopped
  • 2 large eggs plus 1 egg white*
  • 200g caster sugar
  • 100g plain flour
  • 20g cocoa powder
  • 1/2 tsp of salt
  • 1 tsp of vanilla extract

Cheesecake ingredients

  • 150g full-fat cream cheese
  • 1 egg yolk from the egg in the brownie ingredients*
  • 50g caster sugar
  • 1tsp vanilla extract, or replace with
  • Optional flavour ideas – zest of an orange, 1 tbsp of dark rum or plum wine.
  1. Preheat the oven to 180°C/355°F/Gas Mark 4. Line a deep tin. For this quantity a 20cm square tin or a rectangular 27×20 or 28×18 will work.
  2. Start preparing the brownie mixture. Melt the chocolate and butter together and just after it has melted, add in the salt, vanilla extract and leave it on the side to cool down. Ways of doing this are on a previous post.
  3. As you keep an eye on the chocolate and butter melting, prepare the cheesecake mixture. Put all the cheesecake ingredients into a small bowl. Save the egg white for the brownie mixture. Mix to combine until smooth. I often use a hand mixer, but you could beat with a spatula. See photos below.
  4. Turn your attention to readying the rest of the brownie mixture. In a stand mixer bowl (if using) otherwise a medium bowl, crack the two eggs and add the saved egg white into the bowl and add the sugar. Use a stand mixer or an electric hand mixer on high speed to start whisking the eggs and sugar until they are at a ribbon stage. Ribbon stage is when the egg and sugar mixture are a pale yellow colour, doubled or even tripled in volume and when you lift the whisk over the mixture, the batter will fall slowly and leave a trail like a ribbon that will hold its shape for a few seconds. It will take about 10 minutes. I still use a timer to make sure I beat them for long enough. Don’t start beating the eggs/sugar until the chocolate/butter has melted because the chocolate/butter mixture needs this time to cool down.
  5. As the eggs and sugar are whisking, measure out the flour and cocoa powder into another bowl. Sieve it if there are lots of lumps in the flour and cocoa. Otherwise, use a whisk to loosen and mix them together.
  6. When the eggs and sugar have reached a ribbon stage, reduce the speed to low and add the melted chocolate and butter mixture to the eggs and sugar. Whisk until it all appears to have mixed together. If you are using an electric hand mixer, you may need to turn off the mixer, add the chocolate/butter and then switch it back on again to avoid a mess. I speak from experience.
  7. Now fold in the flour and cocoa powder using a spatula, or a spoon until it is well combined.
  8. Pour all the mixture into the baking tin. Debs says that if you want to create an even more marbled effect, then reserve some brownie batter to dollop on top of the cheesecake before swirling them together. I’ll let you experiment.
  9. Use a tablespoon to dollop the cheesecake mixture evenly into the brownie mixture. Use the back of the spoon to swirl the brownie and cheesecake together. I like to go up and down vertically and then again horizontally. See photo below.
  10. If you want to add in any texture (such as crushed biscuits) or fruit (such as raspberries or blackberries), do it now and push them into the marbled mixture.
  11. Bake in the oven for 20-25 minutes. They should be firm to touch at the top but still wobble when you shake it. Leave to cool completely in the tin and if you can bear it, cover them and leave them overnight in the fridge. They will be easier to cut and the flavours will have deepened.
ingredients for the cheesecake element
The ingredients for the cheesecake mixture – see step 3
Cheesecake mixture beaten until smooth
Beat the cheesecake mixture until smooth – see step 3
a table spoon dolloping cheesecake mixture into the brownie mix
Cheesecake mixture being dolloped – Step 9
the end of the spoon going up and down to create a swirling effect between the brownies and the cheesecake mixtures
Begin to swirl – step 9
frozen raspberries added to half of the cheesecake brownie before baking
I added some frozen raspberries to half of the tin because I fancied some raspberry cheesecake brownies. I didn’t measure it out, but I’m guessing 45g for half a tin?
4 cut up brownies.  The two nearest are raspberry cheesecake brownies and the two further away are vanilla cheesecake brownies
Tada – two variations from one tin. At the forefront there is raspberry cheesecake brownies and at the back, vanilla cheesecake brownies

Fudgy Chocolate Brownies: infinitely adaptable

Experimenting with peanut butter and salted caramel brownies.
Experimenting with peanut butter and salted caramel brownies.

Recently, I was asked in an interview, “what do you contribute to a team?” The first thought that popped into my head was brownies. However, perhaps that wouldn’t be such a professional way to answer the question? So, instead I answered something about how I am a really good team player and the many different skills I’d bring to the team, rather than saying that my contribution is a baked sugar high laden with chocolate. I meant to mention my excellent brownies at the end as an aside, but I forgot.

Immediately once the interview was over and as I reflected on how it went, I wished that I had led with the brownies though because it would have revealed more of my true self. My flatmate and colleague concurred (now assigned to the status of previous flatmate and colleague: that teaching job contract having just ended and we’ve moved out). Though, we then agreed in the next breath that my crack cookies are my best work. So, another time, I’ll be that little bit braver, relax and say, “brownies and cookies.”

The first time that I made these during lockdown was at the beginning of marking many, many student essays whilst living at my sister’s. I’d broken a personal record and spent 5 hours on a paper, checking for plagiarism and looking up citations, and still hadn’t finished it when thoroughly fed up and discouraged, I decided to put it down until the next day. A WOD (workout of the day) with 100 burpees and an evening spent singing, baking these brownies put me in a better mood. I left it out on the side to cool down and develop even more flavour overnight. My sister said that her contribution to my happiness was not diving into them that night. I shared a photo of them on a work group chat and subsequently made friends with a colleague who wanted the recipe.

Pretty Raspberry Brownies
The raspberry burst brownies which fuelled the essay marking

Awkwardly, I didn’t have the recipe at hand to share. It lived in the form of an excel spreadsheet, a hangover from my baking business days. Instead, I sent her a link to my raspberry burst brownies and made a mental note that it was time to publish this recipe.

I created this recipe in Cambodia whilst supplying brownies for a cafe because I wanted to create a brownie with more height and volume that I could adapt with a variety of fillings, such as cheesecake and salted caramel. In addition, my usual go to, very easy brownie recipe which the raspberry burst brownies are adapted from suddenly stopped working for me after I upgraded my oven. They were coming out cakier. Some people prefer their brownie consistency like that but I much prefer them to be fudgier with that delightful cracked top. The timing of it might have been purely a coincidence and have nothing to do with me switching from one of these electric toaster ovens to a standing oven cooker. I’ve shared the only decent photo that I appear to have of my toaster oven for you. If you’ve always lived in the UK, then you may have no concept of what I’m talking about. In most parts of S.E Asia, ovens do not come standard in a furnished kitchen. This is the oven in which I began my baking business and I used it for the first 2 years. It only allowed me to do one tray of cookies, a cake or brownies at a time and by the end it wouldn’t heat above 150°C. When I moved and invested in a new oven, it was a game changer.

My toaster oven that lived on the floor
My toaster oven lived on the floor. I’m piping coconut churros.
my new oven
I moved apartment and my new oven fitted into this space perfectly. This was taken the day the oven was delivered and fitted. If you look carefully you can see I had to buy extra long wiring because the power socket was on the other side of the room.

Anyway, it gave me an excuse to try out a new brownie making method for me that I’d seen Ed Kimber use in this video in which you mix the eggs and sugar for about 10 minutes until they form into a ribbon stage (I’ve explained what ribbon stage is in step 4 of the method) and then add the melted chocolate and butter. Mixing the eggs and sugar for that long, creates volume and structure and I deduced, would help me create that dense fudgy consistency and crinkly top each time. It did. At the bottom of the post, I’ve also included for you, a few photos of the different flavours that I’ve played with and how I’ve adapted them.

I played around with the sugar quantity. Most brownie recipes ask for larger quantities of sugar, but I’ve always liked the challenge of seeing how little sugar I can add to baking and it still taste good. From experience, 150g is too little but anything between 200-230g is perfect. I’ll adapt it depending on the additional flavours I want to add. For example, with salted caramel, I use less because of the added sweetness from the caramel. With raspberry I use more to counteract the tartness of the raspberries.

Brownies components ready to mix together
All the components ready to mix together

I prefer to make these in a stand mixer using the whisk attachment because it is easier to leave the stand mixer running during the egg and sugar whisking part whilst getting on with other tasks, rather than holding an electric hand mixer for 10 minutes.

Top tip 1: if using an electric hand mixer, place a tea towel underneath the bowl to keep it stable and stop it moving around.

Top tip 2: once baked, leave these to cool down completely, cover and place in the fridge overnight. Not only will they taste better as the flavours mature and deepen, but they will also be cold. Cut them with a sharp knife and you’ll get those beautiful clean lines.

So here’s the recipe for the Infinitely Adaptable Fudgy Chocolate Brownies. They’ll make between 12-16 brownies or 20 mini brownie bites.

Ingredients

  • 150g unsalted butter, cut into small cubes
  • 150g dark chocolate (at least 60%), broken up, roughly chopped
  • 3 large eggs
  • 200-230g caster sugar (depending on how sweet you’d like them and the additional flavours you want to add)
  • 100g plain flour
  • 20g cocoa powder
  • 1/2 tsp of salt
  • 1 tsp of vanilla extract
  • 1 tsp of instant coffee granules (optional) – I use it because it helps bring out the chocolate flavour
  • And then whatever flavours* you’d like to add, or not.

Method:

  1. Preheat the oven to 180°C/355°F/Gas Mark 4. Line a deep tin. For this quantity a 20cm square tin or a rectangular 27×20 or 28×18 will work.
  2. Melt the chocolate and butter together and just after it has melted, add in the salt, vanilla extract and the optional instant coffee granules and leave it on the side to cool down. There are various ways you can melt chocolate and butter.
    • The more cautious, ahem proper, approach is to use a bain marie, that is put the butter and dark chocolate in a heatproof bowl that can sit on top of a saucepan with simmering water. Make sure that the bottom of the bowl doesn’t touch the hot water in the saucepan. Slowly melt the chocolate and stir regularly. This way you won’t burn the chocolate.
    • Another easier way is to use the microwave. Put chocolate and butter in a heatproof bowl, place a paper kitchen towel on top of the bowl so that butter won’t pop out as it melts. Melt it in 20 second bursts, stirring each time.
    • My way, is to use a heavy bottomed saucepan. I put the chocolate and butter in it and melt it at a low heat, stirring regularly. I take it off, just as the last few chocolate/butter bits aren’t quite melted because they will melt in the residual heat of the saucepan.
  3. In the meantime, measure out the flour and cocoa powder into a small bowl. Sieve it if there are lots of lumps in the flour and cocoa. Otherwise, use a whisk to loosen and mix them together.
  4. As soon as the chocolate/butter mixture is off the heat, crack the eggs into a medium sized bowl and add the sugar. Use a stand mixer or an electric hand mixer on high speed to start whisking the eggs and sugar until they are at a ribbon stage. Ribbon stage is when the egg and sugar mixture are a pale yellow colour, doubled or even tripled in volume and when you lift the whisk over the mixture, the batter will fall slowly and leave a trail like a ribbon that will hold its shape for a few seconds. It will take about 10 minutes. I still use a timer to make sure I beat them for long enough. Don’t start beating the eggs/sugar until the chocolate/butter has melted because the chocolate/butter mixture needs this time to cool down.
  5. When the eggs and sugar have reached a ribbon stage, reduce the speed to low and add the melted chocolate and butter mixture to the eggs and sugar. Whisk until it all appears to have mixed together. If you are using an electric hand mixer, you may need to turn off the mixer, add the chocolate/butter and then switch it back on again to avoid a mess. I speak from experience, haha.
  6. Now fold in the flour and cocoa powder using a spatula, or a spoon until it is well combined.
  7. Pour into the baking tin.
  8. Bake in the oven for 18-20 minutes. They should be firm to touch at the top but still wobble when you shake it. Leave to cool completely in the tin and if you can bear it, cover them and leave them overnight in the fridge. They will be easier to cut and the flavours will have deepened.

*You can add various flavours to this, or not if you want them plain. I’ve given you a few of suggestions and photos below. Do let me know how else you adapt them.

For raspberry burst brownies 2.0, I add 90g of raspberries. I mix in half before I pour it into the baking tin and then scatter the remaining half where there are spaces.
For raspberry and white chocolate, do the above and add 100g of chopped white chocolate. Mix half the chocolate into the batter with the raspberry and then fill the spaces with the remaining 50g.
Walnut Brownies
For nutty ones, I use 100g of nuts. For this one, I’ve used walnuts. I pick out 12-16 walnut halves to place on top for evenly then roughly chop and mix in the rest to the mixture before I pour into the baking tin and then place the remaining walnut halves on the top.
Salted Caramel and Hazelnut Brownies
For hazelnut and salted caramel. I made these to use up leftover ingredients as I was packing to return to the UK. Use 100g of roughly chopped hazelnuts and 100g of salted caramel. I mixed in half the hazelnuts into the mixture, then after I poured it into the tin, I blobbed salted caramel with a teaspoon evenly and scattered the rest of the hazelnuts over the top.
Swirls of cheesecake in brownies
Swirled cheesecake brownies, but I’ve realised that the salted caramel and the cheesecake ones are a little more complicated, so I’ll post those recipes another day.

What happened next with that interview? How many points have I accumulated? In this current job hunting cycle, I racked up 103 points. Incidentally, I got offered that job, even without the promise of these brownies. So, I’m currently in the throes of transition once again and relocating down to the Midlands.

Oh so yummy, festive, orange, cranberry and chocolate bread

oh so yummy, festive orange, cranberry and chocolate bread

Merry (belated) Christmas everyone!

It’s funny the foods that you crave.  I keep surprising myself with what my tastebuds hanker after.  My latest three cravings are mature cheddar cheese and milk chocolate digestives.  Those two cravings kicked in a year after I moved and as I didn’t buy or eat a lot of cheese in the UK, can you see why I surprised myself?!

My friend Hannah came to spend Christmas in Cambodia this year.  I asked whether she’d like to bring out a selection of cheeses out with her so that we could have a cheese and wine evening.  And she did!  She had an unexpected 24 hour delay in Doha, and amazingly the cheese survived!  I don’t think that I’ve ever relished the flavours of each of those cheeses, as much as I did that evening!  Thank you, Hannah.

A selection of beautiful english cheeses, trying to disguise themselves as pac men. Thank you Hannah!
A selection of beautiful english cheeses, trying to disguise themselves as pac men.  The camembert is baking in the oven. Thank you Hannah!

Hannah and Esther waiting patiently for me to take this photo and finding it very funny!
Hannah and Esther waiting patiently for me to take this photo and finding it very funny!

I said three, right.  Well, there’s this bread…

I’m pretty sure that Sainsburys does an AMAZING chocolate, cranberry and orange bread at Christmas time.  I’ve eaten it pretty much every year since discovering it.  Except last year.  Last year, was my first Christmas in Cambodia and I couldn’t find any cranberries, frozen, fresh or dried in the whole of Phnom Penh.  Not that I could search very far and wide because of my poorly left knee.

orange, cranberry, chocolate bread

I’ve been thinking about this eating this bread for a couple of months now.  So in November, I bought a bag of dried cranberries whilst I was in Australia to bake it as my festive loaf.

dark chocolate chunks dried cranberries

I couldn’t find a recipe for this bread online.  So, I modified Richard Bertinet’s cranberry and pecan bread recipe from Dough to recreate one of Sainsbury’s festive bread creations.  I loved it.  Hannah loved it.  (She’d never heard of or eaten it before – WHAT?!?!? and she lives in the UK!)  It smells intoxicating and the flavours balance and complement each other perfectly.  We were happy to eat it, just as it was.  No spread, it doesn’t need one.  If you want to, you could try eating it with cheese, like we did.   Surprisingly it works.

Three things:

  1. Make sure that you use chocolate chunks and not chocolate chips.  Chocolate chunks are bigger and taste more satisfying than chocolate chips.
  2. Make it a white loaf.  It’s meant to be a festive treat.  Don’t spoil it by adding more fiber to it.
  3. The chocolate makes it a messy bread to cut and eat.   That could be because it’s just a wee bit warmer in Cambodia than the UK at this time of year… But I dare you to resist eating it when it’s fresh out of the oven!

Finally, finally (and this isn’t late!).  Hope that you have a wonderful New Year’s Day celebration and wishing you all the best for 2015.

orange zest

orange, cranberry and chocolate dough

Ingredients for my oh so yummy, festive Orange, Cranberry and Chocolate Bread.

  • 500g strong white flour
  • 7g fast action yeast
  • 10g salt
  • 350g water – you can do 350ml but weighing it is always more accurate I think.
  • zest of 1 orange
  • 100g dark chocolate cut roughly into chunks
  • 100g dried cranberries

Method

1. Put the dark chocolate, cranberries and orange zest in a small bowl and give it a good mix.  I discovered that the orange zest actually starts plumping up the cranberries while you’re making the dough – cool!

2. In another medium sized bowl, weigh out the flour, add in the yeast and give it a quick stir to mix it into the flour.  By mixing the yeast with flour first, I don’t worry about the salt touching the yeast and thus deactivating the yeast.

3. Now add in the salt, give it a stir.  Then add in the water.   Use a dough scraper, or your hands to combine the water and flour together as much as possible before turning the mixture out onto your work surface.  It is quite a wet dough to begin with, so don’t worry.

4.  Knead until the dough is springy and smooth.  This probably takes about 10 minutes but it depends on what method you use and how wet the dough was to begin with.  I use Richard Bertinet’s slap and fold method.

5.  Now transfer the orange zest, cranberries and chocolate into the medium sized bowl you used for the dough mixture.  Then, lay the dough on top and spread it out so that it envelops the entire surface.  What you’re going to attempt to do next is wrap the dough around the chocolate and the cranberries and mix it so that you can combine them with the dough.  Doing it this way in the bowl makes it a much neater, efficient process, than if you were to do it on a work surface.

6. Once the chocolate and cranberries are combined with the dough, turn it out from the bowl briefly.  Add a little bit (about a tablespoon) of vegetable oil to the bowl to prevent the dough from stick to it as the dough rises.  Cover with cling film or a wet tea towel and leave it rise.  I leave mine to rise in the fridge for a couple of hours so that the flavours have longer to mature.  You could leave it at this stage, in the fridge, for a couple of hours to 2 days.

7.  Prepare a baking tray by lining it with baking paper, or covering it with a layer of semolina so that it doesn’t stick to the tray.  Once the dough has doubled in size, turn it out onto your work surface.  Push your fingers firmly into the dough to leave dents.  This is a much gentler way of knocking the air out.  While you’re doing that try to shape it roughly into a rectangle.

8. Next, strengthen the dough.  Mentally divide the dough into three sections.  Take a third of the dough to the centre and push it down firmly in the middle with the heel of your hand.  Then take the other third of the dough to the centre and push it down firmly with the heel of your hand.  Finally fold the mixture in half and again push it down firmly with the heel of your hand.

9.  This next bit is up to you.  I cut my dough into two halves and shaped one into a circle and the other into a square-ish loaf.  You can shape it into one or as many loaves as you wish.    Cover with damp tea towel or oiled cling film.  Let them rest until they have doubled in size again.  In the meantime, preheat the oven to 250°C/480°F/Gas Mark 9.

10.  When the dough is ready, cut deep, clean incisions in it to help create shape and release gas.  I made a hash (#) sign on one loaf and cut three slices on the other.  I then sprayed the tops of them with water to create a bit of steam as they bake.  (My new electric oven doesn’t like it when you spray the inside of the oven with water.)

11. Whack them in the oven.  After 10 minutes turn the oven down to 220°C/425°F/Gas Mark 7 and bake for 40-50 minutes.  Check that the bread is ready – it should sound hollow when you tap it’s bottom.  If not, set the timer for another 5 minutes and check again.  Let them rest for at least 5 minutes before you enjoy and devour it.

orange, cranberry, chocolate bread

 

Claire’s cookie: Raspberry, White Chocolate and Oat Cookies

Raspberry, White Chocolate, Oat Cookies

Over Christmas and New Year, I visited my friend Claire in New Zealand.  It was my first trip to a first-world country, since I’d moved to Cambodia.  And boy, could you tell!  If you know the story of country mouse (moi) visiting town mouse (Claire).  Well, that says it all really…  The first night that I got there and I was snuggling into my bed under my duvet after a hot shower, I was beaming.

I also enjoyed:

1. Larking about with Jen and Claire.

Fish and Chips at the famous Mangonui Fish Shop with Claire and Jen
Fish and Chips at the famous Mangonui Fish Shop with Claire and Jen

2. Drinking in the greenery, mountains and sheep!!!

Reminds me of Scotland. Mount Maunganui - 10 minute cycle from Claire's house.
Reminding me of Scotland. Mount Maunganui – 10 minute cycle from Claire’s house.

3. Claire’s hospitality.

Claire baking the cookies in NZ
Claire baking the cookies

One evening we were having quite a frank discussion together with her housemates about what can hold us back from doing things or giving it a go.  I’m not referring to procrastinating doing the ironing or filing away the bank statements.  You know what I mean: shying away from ‘that’ conversation, not putting your hand up to ask the conference speaker a question, refusing to speak a foreign language.  So, what is it for you?  Is it the fear of losing, the dislike of being in the limelight, the discomfort of your brain cells having to work so hard, the embarrassment of looking like a fool?   We all owned up to at least one of those things.

Ingredients for raspberry, white chocolate and oat cookies

Then Claire very matter-of-factly put out there, that one of the things that helps her to just give things a go, is that she gets a kick from doing something but not doing it well.  She gave her own example that she’ll never be a pro-surfer but nevertheless, she keeps surfing and enjoys it a lot.   Is she slightly kooky for owning such an attitude?  Or is that one of the secrets of relishing life and taking hold of opportunities when they present themselves?  I leave that to you to mull over.

Frozen raspberries

Undoubtedly, her philosophy contributes partly to her willingly trying new ingredients, techniques and recipes.  But let me just say – there is nothing not good about her food.  In fact, her chocolate cookie recipe got me published in a magazine.  She inspired me with how she’s embraced the Kiwi food culture whilst she’s been there.  The Paleo diet, the almond milk…

And Jo Seagar.  I’d never heard about Jo before but she’s a big star in the Kiwi culinary world.  Claire and her housemates love her recipes, and I’ve taken note of her name now.  Claire adapted this cookie recipe from one of Jo’s recipes and now it’s known as ‘Claire’s cookies’ by her friends.  Perhaps because she makes them a lot, and they are incredibly deliciously and more-ish.

white chocolate shards

I know because she made them when we got back from our camping trip in Russell. Her housemates and I pretty much gobbled up the whole batch in one sitting. (I hasten to add that she did halve the recipe.)  Even so, she was amazed that they went so quickly.  Seriously?  They go down so well with a cup of tea.

Claire’s genius was replacing the glacé cherries in the original recipe with raspberries.  White chocolate can be sickly-sweet sometimes.  The sharp, sweetness of the raspberry cuts through this and complements the white chocolate beautifully.  The oats provide texture and bite.

Stir in the dry ingredients

When I made these cookies back home, I made the mistake of stirring in the raspberries too vigorously, breaking up the raspberries so that the mixture turned pink.  Pretty, but not tasty.  The flavour of the raspberries dissipated and they weren’t nearly as nice as I’d remembered them to be.  The two photos below illustrate the difference.  The photo on the left was my first batch of cookies and I broke up the raspberries too much.  The second batch (photo on the right) was much better.  Take note, gently mixing in the raspberries is the secret to the having bursts of raspberry in your mouth.

Raspberry, White Chocolate and Oat cookies attempt 1Raspberry, White Chocolate, Oat Cookies attempt no. 2

I also found out that in Phnom Penh a) frozen raspberries are difficult to source and b) cost $22 per kilo from Thai Huot!  So, when you make these in a temperate climate where raspberries grow naturally, remember $22 and just how lucky you are.

Raspberry, White Chocolate and Oat Cookies adapted from It’s easier than you Think by Jo Seagar

Makes 30 large cookies or 40 slightly smaller-medium sized cookies

Ingredients

  • 250g butter
  • 175g sugar – Claire uses ordinary white granulated sugar and they turn out amazing. I used a combination of white and light brown sugar and they were also good. Moral of the story – use whatever sugar combination that tickles your tastebuds.
  • 3 tbsp sweetened condensed milk
  • 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
  • 140g oats (jumbo oats are even better, but I only had normal rolled oats)
  • 225g plain flour
  • 1 tsp baking powder
  • 250g white chocolate chopped
  • 150g raspberries, fresh or frozen

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 170°c/325°F/Gas Mark 3. Line baking trays.

2. Beat the butter, sugar and condensed milk together until the mixture is pale and smooth.

3. Stir in the vanilla, rolled oats, flour and baking powder until the dry mixture has just combined with the wet mixture above.

4. Gently mix in the white chocolate and the raspberries.  Be careful not to break up the raspberries too much.

5. Place a tablespoonful of mixture on the baking trays and press flat with a wet fork.  They will spread out slightly so leave a couple of fingers width between each tablespoonful of mixture.

6. Bake in the oven for 20-25 mins until golden brown. Allow to cool for 2-3 mins on the trays and then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.  Apparently they will keep in an airtight container for 10 days to 2 weeks.  They lasted less than 5 days in mine.

 Mmmm... bringing back memories of kiwiland

Spiced Banana and Dark Chocolate Chunk Cake: the first foray into baking in Cambodia

Banana and chocolate chunk cake

I hadn’t meant to create an entirely different cake when I decided to bake the chocolate, whiskey, currant banana cake (or Dumb Rum Banana Cake, as it’s known in Emma’s house) as my hello gift to Liberty Family Church.  The cake just morphed into something different as Becci and I trawled along the aisles in Lucky Supermarket, looking for ingredients, on my first Saturday in Cambodia.

  • Firstly, I discovered that butter is expensive.  The cheapest block of 227g of butter was $3.50
  • Chocolate is expensive as I expected.  There isn’t a tesco value or sainsbury basic equivalent block of dark chocolate that I can use either.  Hmm…
  • Sultanas and currants are ridiculously expensive.  The 180g of sultanas was going to cost me $1.90.
  • I couldn’t see a bag of walnuts or pecans that I can use in baking.
  • Rum or whiskey – well, alcohol is pretty cheap in Cambodia.  I wasn’t sure whether Cambodians would like the flavour of either one of them in a cake.

I’m standing looking at the dried food shelves and wondering if there’s any cheap dried fruit in Cambodia.   I’m scratching my head, ‘what am I going to do about flavour and texture?’  All my normal options were out and obviously I needed to economise on some ingredients.  And thus the cake transforms from a chocolate, nutty, whiskey, currant, banana cake into a spiced, banana cake with chocolate chunks.  ‘Out with the dried fruit and nuts’, I decide.  ‘I’m going to add flavour with a mix of spices and create texture by adding a greater quantity of chocolate chunks to it.’

Plenty of chocolate surely covers over a multitude of improvisations.

There was never a moment of questioning whether I should bother baking.  Needs must and all that – I wanted to give a hello present to the church and I needed to do some baking.

ingredients for banana and chocolate chunk cake

Ingredients for the Spiced Banana and Dark Chocolate Chunk Cake

  • 175g plain flour
  • 2 tsps of mixed spice or 1 tsp of cinnamon powder, 1/2 tsp of ground ginger, 1/4 tsp of ground nutmeg, 1/4 tsp of ground cloves
  • 2 tsp baking powder
  • ½ tsp bicarbonate of soda
  • ½ tsp salt
  • 125g unsalted butter, melted
  • 90-100g soft brown sugar
  • 2 large eggs
  • 1 tsp vanilla extract
  • 3 large or 4 small very ripe bananas, mashed (about 300g in weight with the skins off)
  • 200g dark chocolate, roughly chopped

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 170°C/325°F/gas mark 3 and line (preferably) springform cake tin, anywhere between 23-25cm. I only had a 25cm round cake tin at hand.  It was the first time I’d used it and it worked beautifully for sharing with so many people.

2. Measure out the plain flour, spices, bicarbonate of soda, baking powder, salt and give them all a good mix with a metal or wooden spoon. This means that you don’t get any lumps of salt or bicarbonate of soda in the eventual cake.

3. Melt the butter either in a pan or in zap it in the microwave in a pyrex bowl.  Now add the sugar to the butter and stir well until the sugar is well blended into the butter. It should look almost toffee-like in colour because of the brown sugar. Follow with the eggs. Beat them in, one at a time, to the sugary buttery mixture.

Top tip: Emma shared a really good tip with me, if you are going to melt the butter in the microwave.  Use a pyrex bowl, add the butter and COVER IT WITH KITCHEN PAPER.  It means that if the butter happens to explode in the microwave, because you zap the butter for a bit too long, it won’t go all over the inside of your microwave.

preparing to bake banana and chocolate chunk cake

4.  Now add the mashed bananas,vanilla extract and the chopped chocolate to the mixture and mix them in well.

5. Add in the flour mix (from step 2) but add a third of it at a time, stirring well after each addition. Once all of the dry mixture is mixed in, add the cake mixture into the cake tin and bake in the middle of the oven for 50-60 minutes. I check after 40 minutes and if the cake looks like it is browning at the top too quickly, then I cover it with some baking paper to protect the cake from burning. The time needed for the cake to bake will vary depending on the size of the cake tin that you use, so don’t worry if the cake needs an extra 15-20 minutes in the oven. You’ll know when the cake is done when you insert a cake tester, or I use a sharp knife, into the cake and the tester comes out clean.

6.  Let the cake cool completely.  Then cut it up into as many pieces as you like and share it around.

Of course, you could serve it whilst it’s still warm with cream or icecream.  I just find that the cake is easier to cut when it is cold and you don’t get so much chocolate goo all over the knife as you are cutting it.  The cake stores well in an airtight container – not that this one had a chance.  It was all gobbled up in under 10 minutes.

The verdict? The cake is really tasty.  The chocolate chunks give it texture and bite that would be missing if you omitted them.  The spices worked really well in transforming the flavour of this cake and it went down really well with the Cambodian palette too.  I still prefer the chocolatey, whiskey and currant version of the cake (who would blame me) but while I’m here, I will quite happily bake this new banana and chocolate cake.

Cake, anyone?

How to… A beginners guide to creating chocolate butterflies


Cupcakes decorated with salted caramel buttercream and chocolate butterflies

Butterflies resting on banana cupcakes with salted caramel buttercream

I wanted to make a chocolate butterfly, the moment that I saw Emma’s beautiful chocolate butterfly resting on top of her Fleur de Sel Caramel Cake.

But I’d never made any form of chocolate decoration before. So, how could I do it?

I found out that Emma had bought some special chocolate that didn’t require tempering, which I didn’t want to splash out on. Otherwise, I needed to temper my chocolate using a thermometor. That put me off for a few weeks because it felt a bit too complicated and pricey, if I’m honest.

And then, a cherry blossom cake started to take shape in my imagination. Dark chocolate forms the silhouette of the tree and branches and I’d use real cherry blossoms for the flowers. However, I’m not sure what the cake mixture will be so this cherry blossom cake is still locked away in my mind. Since then, I’ve looked at some pictures of beautiful cherry blossom cakes but they mostly seem to rely on sugarpaste and fondant decorations. I’d still like to do my chocolate version.

Well, true to character, I read a few more blogs and watched a couple of youtube videos. On the note of youtube videos, I recommend watching Ann’s How to cook thattutorials for the variety of methods and decorations that one can attempt with chocolate.

Then, at 11 o’clock on Saturday night, armed with a bit more confidence and knowledge, I simplified the process of tempering chocolate as much as I dared, filled a piping bag, traced a butterfly template and gave it a go.

There are more complicated ways of tempering chocolate than the one that I’m going to share with you. Strictly speaking you need to use a minimum of 300g of chocolate in order to temper it. I chose to use 100g because it was meant to be a small trial and if it went wrong then it would be less of a waste. I also wanted to experiment with white and dark chocolate to see if they differed at all and 100g of each felt like it would be sufficient.

Next, I realised that I didn’t have enough pyrex bowls. Perhaps it’s a sign that it’s not meant to be – as if! I used my Denby bowls (they’re microwave and oven proof, so I was pretty sure they’d be okay).

Here’s how I did it.

You’ll need:

  • Chocolate for melting. I began with 100g but, as you know, you’re supposed to have a minimum of 300g of chocolate to temper it.
  • Non-stick baking paper
  • Template
  • Pen/Pencil
  • 1 large hardback book. I used 1 hardback and 2 smaller books to lift it up even more.

1. Preparation: I found a template of a butterfly and traced it onto my baking paper. Then I flipped the paper over, so that the chocolate doesn’t pick up the ink, folded the paper down the middle of the butterfly’s body and opened the paper back out so that it was flat on my worksurface. I opened up the hardback book in the middle. That’s where I rested my butterflies so that they’d dry in 3D.

butterfly template

2. I chopped up the chocolate and set aside 20g of the chocolate and put 80g of chocolate in the bowl and zapped it in the microwave at 15 second intervals to begin with, reducing it to 10 seconds. I burnt my first batch, but only in the middle. Rather than waste the chocolate, I scooped out the burnt bits with a teaspoon, gave the remaining chocolate a good stir and learned my first lesson.

When microwaving chocolate to melt, the chocolate in the middle of the bowl melts quickest. Stir the chocolate at each interval, even if they don’t look like they’ve begun to melt.

3. Once the chocolate in the bowl had melted, I stirred in the 20g. By doing this step, you are, in effect, bringing down the temperature of the chocolate. This is my very simple way of tempering the chocolate.

filling a piping bag with melted chocolate

4. I filled a disposable piping bag with the chocolate, pushed the chocolate down and twisted the top end. It’s better to do it now rather than when you snip off the tip, otherwise the chocolate will squirt out the hole. I’m not sure what you’d do if you weren’t to use a disposable one… If anyone’s got any helpful suggestions then please leave them as a comment at the bottom.

5. I snipped a bit off the tip. I began with the tiniest of openings and gradually made it bigger. Mostly because I realised, whilst piping, that I hadn’t fished out all the burnt bits and they were causing a blockage. Ooopsies.

piping bag readysnipped off end of piping bag

6. I barely used any pressure on the bag to pipe the chocolate carefully over the butterfly template. Once I finished, I lifted up the tip and quickly began work on my second, third, fourth.. you get the picture. That night, I went on to make chocolate stars and dragonflies.

chocolate butterfly 1butterfly setting in the books

7. I rested the baking paper in the open book so that the fold in the paper nestled into the fold of the open book.

8. Leave them to dry and then carefully peel the baking paper away from the chocolate.

gently peel off the butterfly

See. Not so difficult afterall and the decorations will certainly impress your friends.

The Han-Na of 6 months ago would have been put off making a chocolate butterfly because of the notion of tempering chocolate; I guess my resolution to push myself in developing new baking skills is slowly paying off. Recently I noticed that my attitude is taking on a bit more of a ‘if it’s difficult, I’ll give it a go’ sheen.

This makes me giggle ruefully. I always describe myself as one who ‘doesn’t like pushing themselves’. Honestly, really, I’m not. I’m part of a triathlon club and I constantly see evidence of everyday athletes pushing their physical limits. I don’t do that: my swimming at the end of lane two just doesn’t mirror their drive.

So… is it baking that is going to knead that push and determination into me?

Maybe.

A Hazelnut Brown Butter Cake with Baileys Ganache


hazelnut brown butter cake slice
I had already decided that I was going to like this hazelnut brown butter cake the moment I saw it. And then I read on:

‘This is a cake that has it’s roots in dacquoise and meringue.’ – Shuna Fish Lydon

A whatcha, whatchamacallit? Dacquoise and meringue.

Meringue is a dessert that we’re pretty aware of, but dacquoise? I’ve been blissfully ignorant of its existence until Monday evening. I was trying to find another cake recipe to make for Sarah’s birthday, other than Praline Almond Cake, because I didn’t have enough butter for that recipe and I was much too tired to trawl round Tescos. I can’t even remember how my brain jumped from praline almond cake to hazlenut brown butter cake, but somehow I found myself reading Smitten Kitchen Deb’s enticing blog entry on it. Debs links onto Eggbeater Shuna’s detailed poston how to make this cake. I highly recommend reading Shuna’s step-by-step instructions before baking the cake because if you follow it, it’s pretty fool-proof. And that’s where I first stumbled across dacquoise. A dacquoise, so Wikipedia tells me, is a french dessert made with layers of nut meringue and whipped cream or buttercream. The meringue is normally made with almonds and hazlenuts.

I decided to read up a bit more on the cake. I got as far as Jibuyabu’s metricised description on making this cake(thank-you) and then I stopped. It was 9:30pm and I needed to begin the baking.

My preliminary reading on this cake intrigued me. All three bloggers were in awe of this chef named Suzanne Goin, like we should all know her. “Chef Goin served this as her wedding cake. Need I say more?” – Smitten Kitchen. Well yes. Who is she? and why should that sway my decision on whether or not I should make this cake? As it turns out she is one of America’s most highly-acclaimed chef. That is, at least, according to her book on Amazon. Debs and Shuna are US based food bloggers so that probably explains their awe of her. So, okay maybe that should sway my mind. But it doesn’t really. At least, not yet. I wondered, whether she is the equivalent of say, Tom Ketteridge in the UK. Now, all you non-Brits, might be typing Tom Ketteridge into google search because you’re scratching your head and wondering, ‘who is this Tom Ketteridge dude?’ Just this incredible michelin starred chef! Ah – the nuances of across the pond baking.

I tell you what, though, if we just call the cake what it is – a hazelnut brown butter cake – I think that it makes it sound utterly enticing. Don’t you think so?

hazelnut brown butter cake ready to go
The ‘not your standard cake’ ingredients and the fun of trying out a new technique, validated it as the one to make as Sarah’s birthday cake (the same Sarah of the Cardamon, White Chocolate and Rosewater angst and Chocolate Macarons)

In Suzanne Goin’s original recipe, she serves it up with sauteed pears and icing sugar; Debs from Smitten Kitchen went for a chocolate ganache. It’s a no-brainer which option Sarah would prefer, and I tweaked Deb’s version and replaced the coffee with baileys liquor.

And I’ll tell you what – the cake lives up to expectations and tastes perfectly divine. On Tuesday evening, I served it up and we all commented on how it smelled and tasted like ferrero rocher. It’s not heavy, even with all that butter. Moreover, I believe that it would taste better as it gets older because of all that lovely moist nuttiness. Do you know – I’m pretty sure that we all managed two slices, after a pretty big main meal – so there’s not much a chance of this cake hanging around that long.

Hazelnut Brown Butter Cake with Baileys Ganache, adapted from Smitten Kitchen, Jibuyabu and Sunday Suppers at Lucques

Ingredients for the cake

  • 140g blanched whole hazelnuts plus some extra for garnish
  • 225g butter
  • 1/2 vanilla bean or 1tsp of vanilla extract
  • 170g icing sugar
  • 45g plain flour
  • 180g egg whites, which is about the equivalent of 5 extra large egg whites or 6 large egg whites
  • 45g granulated sugar

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 180°C/350°F/Gas Mark 4 and prepare a 23cm or 25cm springform cake tin, by greasing the sides and lining the bottom with baking paper. I only had a 23cm cake tin and it turned out fine.

toasted hazelnutshazelnuts and icing sugar
2. Toast the hazelnuts under the grill or in the oven, by spreading them out in one layer on a baking tray, until they smell gorgeously nutty and turn a golden brown. It normally takes between 10-15 minutes. Once done, leave them cool. I transferred them onto another baking tray so quicken the cooling process.

3. Put the butter in a medium sized pan. Slice the vanilla bean lengthways down the middle and scrape out all the seeds onto the butter. Add the vanilla bean to the pan. Now, make the brown butter. I was a bit intimidated by this ingredient until I read this tutorial on Poire au Chocolat. Cook the butter on a medium heat until the butter browns, finishes crackling at you and smells nutty. It’ll take a good couple of minutes for this amount of butter. Take the pan off the heat and leave it to one side to cool. Remove the vanilla pod and dump it in the bin.

preparing butter to brown with vanilla
4. Weigh out the icing sugar and place in a food processer. Once the hazelnuts have cooled down, add them to the food processer too and whizz them up until they are finely ground (this takes about 10 minutes, interspersed with moments of me scraping the sides of the food processer with a knife so that everything gets whizzed up). Add the flour and pulse it a few times to ensure that the flour is evenly mixed through. This mixture will smell gorgeously nutty and it tastes good too, if you happen to get some of it on your fingers while you are emptying this out into a large bowl. There are some perks for being a bit clumsy.

5. Whisk the eggs with a stand mixer or a handheld electic beater. I held off adding the sugar until the eggs had formed soft peaks, but in the original recipe she says to add the sugar in from the start. Keep whisking until they form stiff peaks.

6. In a small bowl, take a large dollop of egg white and a generous splash of brown butter and mix it together vigorously before re-adding and folding it to the egg whites. Eggbeater Shuna explains this process as creating an emulsion between two ingredients that would normally repel each other (whisked egg whites and butter) so that after it is introduced to egg whites, it makes it easier to incorporate the remaining large quantities of ingredients.

7. Alternate folding in the dry mixture of the icing sugar, hazelnuts and flour and the liquid brown butter to the egg whites, being careful not to overmix and knock back all the air that you’ve carefully worked into the egg whites.

cake batterhazelnut brown butter cake
8. Pour the batter into the cake tin and bake for 40-50 minutes. It’s done when the cake is coming away from the sides of the tin and a knife comes out clean. Allow the cake to cool in the tin for about 30 minutes, before then inverting it onto a wire rack so that you can peel the baking paper from it’s bottom.

9. Turn the cake back over onto the plate that you’ll be serving on.

** You could serve it just like this with a dusting of icing sugar and sprinkle the reserved hazelnuts. To make it pretty, why not use a stencil?

Ingredients for the ganache

  • 100g dark chocolate
  • 100ml double cream
  • 2 tbsp baileys or irish cream equivalent

Method

chocolate ganache 1chocolate ganache 2
1. Break up the chocolate into small pieces and place in a small pyrex bowl. As you can see, I put mine directly into a pyrex measuring jug to make the pouring bit over the cake easier.

2. Heat up the double cream in a small pan until it just starts bubbling and then pour it over the chocolate. Leave it for a few minutes, then gently stir until all the chocolate has melted and the mixture is smooth. Add in the baileys and stir to incorporate.

preparing to dress the cake with ganachecake with ganache
 

3. Carefully pour the ganache evenly over the cake. It doesn’t matter if some of the ganache spills over the sides of the cake. I think that it adds a certain charm and elegance. Decorate the top of the cake with the remaining hazelnuts. I toasted and crushed them before sprinkling them over the cake. Alternatively, you could make caramel hazelnuts or a hazelnut praline (unfortunately, I had run out of sugar as well, so couldn’t pursue either of those options). Or… just serve it as it is. Plain with the chocolate ganache.

You can make this a day or two in advance and store it in the fridge or in an airtight container in a cold room. So, go on – bake this one up and impress your friends.

Happy Birthday Sarah Cake