chocolate

The 113th Bake: Black Forest Chocolate Fondants

There’s nothing like the smell of fresh herbs and freshly blended tea. I recently bought some tea from the market. One brand appealed to me from Grow Eat Heal. It was called heart & soul, and was full of rosebuds and camomile. Sounded yum and smells delicious. hhttps://www.groweatheal.co.nz/ The other I bought for my husband, called Anxietea. Who doesn’t need a bit of de-stressing in their lives? https://www.bettertea.co/

These teas are the perfect accompaniment to my very rich chocolate fondants which I am very excited to say is my second to last bake. Woohoo.

It’s not that I haven’t loved doing this challenge, but challenge it has been, don’t get me wrong. It has been a huge commitment and a lot of work, fun as it was learning and baking my way through a text book of recipes. But all good things must come to an end and I am looking forward to being free and moving on to the next thing/challenge, whatever that may be. I will still bake and post when I get the chance, or see/make a great recipe that I want to share.

For this bake, Richard’s Signature Bake, I knew I was in for more than one process, they are always a bit more complicated these signature bakes. First I made the coulis. Cherries being out of season, I had to use preserved cherries, never mind. So I boiled together cherries, sugar and lemon juice, and then blended this in a food processor.

  • coulis
  • macerate cherries in brandy

I then added brandy to a dozen or so cherries and left these to soak it up! If you’ve never made fondant, you should. It’s not hard or complicated, it’s just the timing of the cooking that’s the important thing to get right. Here’s the recipe in case you are keen! 🙂 https://thehappyfoodie.co.uk/recipes/richards-black-forest-chocolate-fondants There’s also a link to buy the cookbook in case you are really keen!! So to make the fondants, I

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By Denise, ago

The 106th Bake: Chocolate Fudge Tart

This chocolate fudge tart took a while but was extremely worth it. It’s already half gone and I’ve barely had a slice. Daughter was going to have dessert with friends so took a full quarter, then son came in and wammo another quarter was gone. I’m thinking about putting the last half away for a rainy day in the freezer. It is made with walnut pastry, and has a decadent fudge centre full of walnuts ( I added Brazil nuts too, my favourite nut as I didn’t have enough walnuts.) It’s so good, I’m giving you the recipe right here so you can try it. Here’s the link to the book btw, FYIhttps://shop.bbc.com/the-great-british-bake-off-big-book-of-baking-20861.html

Believe it or not, there is no actual chocolate in this tart, just cocoa, but it comes out super chocolaty. To make the pastry I added walnut pieces to the flour, salt and caster sugar and whizzed. Then added butter to make a fine breadcrumb. After adding cold water the fine crumb turned into

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By Denise, ago

The 104th Bake: Miniature Chocolate & Cherry Cakes

One miniature and one large chocolate cherry cake!

My miniature chocolate & cherry cakes were not so miniature. I decided to make a birthday cake for my son, born on Valentines Day, – cherries and chocolate, perfect!!

Given that I didn’t have the 16 miniature ramekins, it seemed like too good an opportunity to waste, so big birthday cake it was. I have to say, if you’ve ever thought about pimping up a cake, this has got to fall into that category. What didn’t it have in it? It had from melted chocolate, to cocoa, to liqueur to cherry syrup, cherries and buttermilk, this was a rich wholesome cake. It made me realize there’s no holding back when baking. You can pimp your cake anytime!!!! Add cherries, melted chocolate, whatever you like. Such a great idea, even inject liqueur if it’s a special occasion, Why not I say?

  • muscovado sugar gave it an extra depth of flavour
  • chopped cherries
  • melt that chocolate

So to make the cake I melted dark chocolate over a bain marie, and set this aside to cool. I beat together butter, caster sugar, and muscovado sugar till light and creamy, and gradually beat in the eggs. Then

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By Denise, ago

Chocolate Brownie

Last night I made Chocolate Brownie. I tend to do that sometimes, just decide at 9.30pm to bake! Put something in the cupboard. This is a great recipe for that, or for any occasion. It’s so easy and quick. And fortuitously I have been invited to a BBQ this evening and now have something to take. Yay. The recipe is:

  • 200g butter
  • 50g cocoa powder
  • 400g castor sugar (or brown sugar)
  • 1 tsp vanilla essence
  • 5 eggs
  • 100g flour
  • 1 tsp baking powder
  • 200 g dark chocolate chopped

In a large bowl or pot combine the melted butter with the cocoa. Add

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By Denise, ago

Chocolate Christmas Crunch

I made this last night. It took only 20 minutes and it’s delicious and healthy. If you are looking for a last minute present (homemade is always better you know, makes it look like you put in more effort!!) or just want another GF healthy treat for Christmas day, this is your answer. I got this idea from a video I watched on https://wickedwellbeing.com/ To make it all you do is

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By Denise, ago

The 89th Bake: Paul’s Chocolate Volcanoes

delicious ooze with cream

It’s getting close to Christmas, only 7 days to go.  A bit frightening really with so much to do.  It’s a good time to put your feet up, take some time out for yourself if you can, take a bath, take a deep breath, take a walk, because all this stress isn’t good.  I like to try to do everything well in advance because I know just before the big day I’ll be making the dishes I’ve been assigned which this year are: trifle, cheese loghttps://thebakersdozenbakeoff.com/2018/11/21/cheese-log/ and cevichehttps://thebakersdozenbakeoff.com/2018/09/10/ceviche/ and be caught up in the mad rush.  Being organised hopefully will help but well rested too, hopefully. 
        Anyway this decadent little treat popped out at me from the page and not having any specific reason to make it didn’t stop me.  If you’ve never made a fondant, give it a go.  It’s fun though stressful waiting those 8 minutes for the puddings to cook and then pulling them out at just the right moment to get the gooey centre. Here is Paul’s recipe https://www.bbc.com/food/recipes/chocolate_volcanoes_37330

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By Denise, ago

The 87th Bake: Paul’s Chocolate & Cherry Loaf

It made a huge loaf 

How decadent is this, and so Christmasy.  Speaking of Christmas, I was at my annual Christmas writer’s lunch and returned to my parked car to find a parking ticket flapping on the windscreen.  I figured maybe it’d be for $12, as I had been 5 minutes late, but on closer inspection saw that it was for a whopping $200!! – expensive five minutes!  After driving around the neighbourhood to try and find the parking meter attendant to contest it, I realized the offense was for “no evidence of inspection” which I discovered later meant, No Warrant of Fitness, of which funnily enough I do have, a current one, that is!! Go figure!    

  • Good way to release stress!

Clearly the parking meter attendant was a bit trigger happy with their infringement notices.  I contested it of course.  It’s pending.

 The moral of the story is it’s Christmas time, we are all a bit frazzled, so let’s be nice to each other, please!  This of course has nothing to do with my Cherry and Chocolate Loaf except it is comfort food and a hot slice of this at least cheered me up.

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By Denise, ago

The 83rd Bake: Chocolate Pecan Macarons

New Leaf Kombucha

These look good and easy, she laughs behind her hand.  Well, I have never made macarons so we will see.  I had 4 egg whites left over from my last bake so I needed a recipe to use them up.  It was going to be Mary’s Neopolitan Baked Alaska which looked scary and daunting so luckily I found these instead.  They are made with ground pecans giving them a “wonderful flavour that becomes more intense as the macarons age”  Well we may never find that one out the rate my daughter is eating them!  I went to the opening of a Kombucha bar on Saturday.  “NewLeaf” very chic, selling only kombucha, very original.  And it’s so good for you.  Very interesting tea flavours of macha, gunpowder green tea and Sri Lankan Black tea to name a few, all on tap. Go try it at their taproom http://www.newleafkombucha.nz   That was new and interesting, as was this bake.  I didn’t know how to make macarons, but I had the impression that they are hard to get right.  My daughter made them once or twice, (should I say attempted to make them) and they resulted in hard things stuck to paper. 🙁  I was shocked that macarons are just meringue with added ground nuts, who knew!!!  They were simple and pleasant to whip up.  The most time consuming bit was probably drawing the circles on the baking paper, Haha.  I would recommend to anyone to give it a go.  So I put the pecans and icing sugar in the food processor and ground to a fine sandy powder.  I whipped the egg whites and salt until (more…)

By Denise, ago

Coconut Seed Slice

I got this recipe from the Real Food in New Zealand private Facebook group.  It is gluten free. They got it from Wholefood Simply.  I have altered it by adding the dried fruit and ginger.  And of course by sprucing it up a bit with the melted dark chocolate and crystallized ginger on top! It’s the sort of recipe you could mix and match your ingredients depending on what you have in the cupboard or like to eat.  Next time I’m going to put chopped apricots in it. YUM.  The ingredients for the recipe are: (more…)

By Denise, ago