Double Chocolate Cookies

A couple of issues ago there was a recipe in Dish magazine for double chocolate cookies. My sister who also subscribes to the magazine made them and didn’t rate the recipe that highly. I made them in the weekend and actually thought that they were really great. I did modify the recipe just a little to include 2 egg yolks rather than a full egg and 1 egg yolk. I made this recipe using white chocolate and dark chocolate buttons. They, of course, would be much nicer using real chocolate.

The butter in this recipe is melted rather than softened. I think this is what gives the cookies the great texture which is crisp but chewy at the same time. I think I might try these again with equal amounts of white and brown sugar which would hopefully still give the chewy texture but perhaps give a lighter colour to the finished product.

Double Chocolate Cookies (adapted from Dish magazine)

190g butter
½ c sugar
1 c brown sugar
1 tsp vanilla
2 egg yolks
2 c flour
½ tsp baking soda
¾ c each dark and white chocolate chips or buttons

• Melt butter and whisk in sugars
• Whisk in vanilla and egg yolks and then stir in the balance of the ingredients
• Roll mixture into balls and flatten slightly with the palm of your hand
• Bake at 170c for 15 minutes or until golden

TWD - Allspice Crumb Muffins

This week’s TWD recipe is Allspice crumb Muffins and was chosen by Kayte of http://www.grandmaskitchentable.typepad.com/. At first glance I didn’t think these muffins had a lot going for them – they had nothing of interest to note other than a crumb topping – no fruit, chocolate etc to make them interesting. However, I completely underestimated how delicious they were in their plainness.

The muffins are subtly flavoured with allspice, one of those spices that you only use every now and again. I was tempted to put more spice in the muffins as half a teaspoon didn’t seem to be enough, but it was just right. I actually pretty much stuck to the ingredients as listed. Usually when I made muffins I try to make them a little more healthy by using rice bran oil, and always no more than ¼ c, and only even use one egg. I decided to stick with the butter with these muffins, and while I would normally cut the amount of butter in half, this time I scaled it back to 90g which was about ¾ of that stated in the recipe. I figured that the butter was an important taste factor in the muffins.



One thing I did do was use half wholemeal flour and half plain. This gave the muffins a bit more of a healthy bent (more fibre) and I think was a welcome addition. The crumb topping was delicious, but you could as easily halve the crumb mixture and still have enough to top all your muffins – I ended up throwing about half of mine away.

The verdict on these muffins was that they were delicious. I think they were particularly good warm from the oven and I actually buttered mine (a rare treat in this day and age!). I would definitely make these again using my wholemeal variation. See what the other TWDers thought here.

Simple and Cute

Quick Sunday afternoon post. It is a gorgeous day here - seems like the first fine weather weekend day in ages. I'm about to go and do some things outside, but thought I would post this photos of these cookies I made for my sister last week. they are simply shortbread cookies cut into rounds, then decorated with pink and white icing. I actually really like the one with the pink sprinkles on it.

Every weekend I think to myself that I am going to practice my cookie and cake decorating, but each weekend gets so caught up in household chores and other things that I run out of time. We've got a long weekend coming up in a couple of weeks, so fingers crossed for then!

Tan Square

I wrote a couple of weeks ago that the sequel to “Ladies, A Plate” had been published. My youngest sister, who as I have mentioned before loves caramel slice, was up a couple of weeks ago, so it was the perfect opportunity to try the tan square from Ladies, A Plate, a second helping. Tan Square is a caramel slice which has a shortcake style base, a caramel filling and then a topping which is some of the base mixture reserved and crumbled over the top.

Traditional tan square has a rather mean layer of caramel in it, and as with the way most slices were back in the 1950s and 1960s (judging by the quantities in recipe books of that era) the slice was a thinner more delicate version of the huge hunks of slice we see cafes today. I must admit though when it comes to caramel slice, be it tan square or any other version, my preference is for thick caramel and a decent wedge of biscuit base on the bottom. So, I did play around with this recipe quite a bit, doubling the caramel mixture and also making more base than suggested. The original recipe had chopped walnuts added to the crumble topping – I left those out and just added more chocolate chips. My other trick to making a delicious caramel slice is to slightly under cook it, giving a deliciously gooey slice. If you don’t have access to golden syrup, you could add some brown sugar, but you wont get quite the same syrupy flavour to the caramel. I guess you could also try maple syrup but that will also give you a slightly different taste.

Tan Square (adapted from so as to not really even resemble the recipe in A Second helping)

250g butter
125g sugar
1 tsp vanilla
420g flour
½ c chocolate chips

• Cream butter, sugar and vanilla
• Mix in flour
• Spread 2/3 of the mixture into a lined 23cm square tin. Pop the rest of the mixture into the fridge while you make the caramel

60g butter
2 generous tbsp golden syrup
1 400g can condensed milk

• Stir ingredients together in a small pot over a gentle heat until butter is melted and the caramel is thick
• Pour over the base, then stir the chocolate chips into the reserved base mixture and crumble over the caramel
• Bake at 175c for 20-25 minutes until golden

TWD - Split Level Pudding

This week’s TWD recipe was chosen by Garett of Flavour of Vanilla and is Split Level Pudding. This is a recipe I have been looking forward to making for a long time – Dorie explains it as being a recipe that appeals to vanilla lovers and chocolate lovers alike.

You will have to forgive the poor photography – I made the puddings late in the day on Sunday and by the time I went to photograph them all natural light had gone and I just couldn’t get them to look as good as they tasted.

The split level pudding is a layer of chocolate ganache topped with a set vanilla custard. I made a third of the recipe and made the puddings in two high ball glasses. This made enough for a medium sized pudding each for my husband and me. The pudding was made with the aid of a food processor – you blended the egg yolk, sugar and cornflour with hot milk and then thickened it over a medium heat on the stove. You were then meant to blitz the pudding in the food processor and add some vanilla and butter. Me being me, I only skim read the recipe and had dismantled and put away my food processor before my pudding had thickened. So, I just whisked the pudding like mad once it came off the stove. I didn’t add the butter because I didn’t really think that the pudding needed it.

I enjoyed this pudding. I think the chocolate ganache was a wonderful addition (maybe I am a chocolate not a vanilla girl?), as you could dip your spoon in for a small addition of the chocolate to eat with a spoon of vanilla pudding, rather than getting an overt chocolate flavour. I would make this again, but next time I think I would make more ganache so that the ratio of chocolate to vanilla was more like 40:60 rather than about 20:80.

See what the other TWDers thought here.

Jaffa Cupcakes

A couple of weeks ago we met some friends for afternoon tea at Cornwall Park. I made these jaffa cupcakes to take. It’s quite a long story as to how I decided to make jaffa cupcakes, but here goes……

A few weeks ago I decided to make fudge for some gifts. I wanted to use a recipe from a Jo Seagar cook book which involved melting marshmallows, adding melted chocolate and other things. Instead of going to the supermarket, I stopped at the service station on the way home to buy the marshmallows. There I spotted a bag of orange flavoured M & Ms which cutely only have white or orange candy coatings. I thought they would be good add ins to the fudge to make it look a bit more decorative.

Well, the fudge was a disaster! I melted the marshmallows and butter in the microwave for he advised amount of time, but it must have been a bit long and overheated the marshmallow mixture, as when I added the chocolate the whole things seized. Well, I was determined that roughly $10 worth of ingredients wasn’t going into the bin, so I beat the fudge like crazy until it sort of came together. I didn’t want to waste my m & ms by putting them into sub-standard fudge (which actually ended up tasting ok in the end anyway) so I saved them for another day.

So, when I was deciding what cupcakes to make to our picnic afternoon tea, I thought I would use the orange and white m & ms to decorate them with. I had some lovely Kerikeri oranges in the fruit bowl after our trip to the bay of islands and thought Jaffa Cupcakes would be perfect. However, in the end I decided not to decorate them with the orange M & Ms after all – they are still stashed in my pantry. Instead I topped the cakes with whipped cream (I still reckon this is the best cupcake topping as it pipes like a dream and I don’t find it too sweet) and sprinkled them with orange coloured sugar. Simple but delicious.



Jaffa Cupcakes

100g butter
2/3 c sugar
2 large eggs
3 tbsp cocoa dissolved in 3 tbsp hot water
Zest of one orange
3 tsbp freshly squeezed orange juice
2/3 c self raising flour

• Cream butter and sugar, then beat in eggs, one at a time
• Beat in cocoa dissolved in water and orange zest
• Fold in remaining ingredients
• Spoon into cupcake cases ( I got 11 cupcakes) and bake at 180c for 17-20 minutes
• When cold top with chocolate icing made with orange juice instead of water or whipped cream

Decorating Brownie

Last week when my sister was up we went to the Wilton brownie decorating course. This is apparently the latest Wilton thing. I hadn’t really thought about decorating brownie before, but of course, the same techniques can be used on any slab cake cut into shapes or just on cupcakes. I enjoyed it for two reasons – it was something fun to do with my sister and secondly it was actually quite good to do a bit of a refresher course on the basic icing skills I learnt in course 1.



Now that daylight savings has arrived and the days are getting longer and slightly warmer we are starting to have a few more salad type meals – and of course asparagus! This salad is one that we had last week. I pan fried lamb leg steaks, sliced them and then combined with baby spinach leaves, sliced roasted red peppers, roast red onions and roasted chunks of kumara. I drizzled the lot with balsamic drizzle. Tasty and pretty at the same time.

I also want to mention that you may or may not have noticed that I didn’t post a daring bakers challenge this week. Life has become even busier lately and I have made the decision that the only blog challenge I will continue to participate in is TWD – lately I have been making my Daring Baker challenges in a real rush and not giving them the time they deserve, so I have decided to retire my DB apron strings – at least for the next little while!