The Elusive Metro Chocolate Chip Cookie

Many years ago I tried a chocolate chip cookie in a café called Metro in Christchurch. It was the best chocolate chip cookie I had tasted – large chunks of chocolate, a texture that I guess is not crisp or chewy but is almost cakey, and large, oversized cookies. I remember at the time trying to re-create the metro cookie and I got pretty close – I even rang them at one stage to see if they would part with the recipe, but no luck!

Well, for her birthday I gave my sister a subscription to the foodtown magazine and she rang me a couple of weeks ago to say that a reader had written in requesting metro’s chocolate chip cookie recipe and they had printed it!! Hayley sent me through the recipe and it seems that the secret ingredient is not ground almonds as I had thought, but caramelised condensed milk. Now, I would never have guessed this, as whenever I have used caramelised condensed milk in cookies, I have ended up with quite soft cookies. Also, the cookies have a much higher ratio of flour than my usual recipe and less baking powder. The mixture is quite dry, but persevere with mixing that flour in. Nevertheless I faithfully used the recipe and I had them – the elusive metro chocolate chip cookie! This is one of the best. I also think that milk chocolate goes well in these cookies – usually I prefer dark chunks, but try milk chocolate in these.

Metro Chocolate Chip Cookies

250g butter
½ c sugar
2 tbsp caramelised condensed milk
3 c flour
2 tsp baking powder
1 ½ c milk chocolate buttons

• Cream butter, sugar and caramelised condensed milk
• Stir in flour, baking powder and lastly the chocolate
• Form large balls of dough and press down lightly with a fork
• Bake at 170c for 15-18 minutes or until golden and firm

Variation on a theme

I love my Nana’s chocolate chip cookies – I think it is the condensed milk in them which gives them a delicious crisp but kind of soft texture. Using the chocolate chip cookie recipe as a base, there are lots of variations you can make. While I was on maternity leave I made a delicious variation using chopped dried apricots and cornflakes instead of chocolate chips (even as someone who doesn’t like dried apricots I loved these). Today’s recipe is a chocolate and coconut version.

These are the perfect biscuit for the tins – they freeze really well and while they are delicious, they are plain enough to be good for school lunchboxes (I imagine) and to have on hand as a good stand by. They are quick and easy to make, but their taste belies their easiness.

Speaking of quick and easy, our week day meals have become very quick and easy. I used to spend hours pouring over recipe books deciding what to make for dinner – often making two or three new recipes every meal time. Now that we have Harry, a lot less time is utilised doing this. While I still try and make tasty and interesting meals, they really have to be quick, as mealtimes are a busy time – I get home from work, breast feed Harry, feed him his solids, read him some stories, play with him and make dinner all at once. My husband does do a lot of the prep work which does help of course. An example was last night’s dinner – chicken cooked in a sauce made of ½ c sweet chilli sauce, 3 tbsp soy sauce and 3 tbsp fish sauce, served with hokkein noodles, steamed broccoli and chopped roasted peanuts – definitely delicious but less than thirty minutes to prepare.

Chocolate Coconut Cookies

120g butter
2 tbsp sugar
2 tbsp condensed milk
2 tbsp cocoa powder
3/4 c flour
1 tsp baking powder
¼ c coconut

• Cream butter and sugar, then beat in condensed milk
• Stir in dry ingredients
• Roll into balls and flatten with a fork
• Bake at 170c for 15 minutes or until firmish and golden

The Best Chocolate Brownie

If you have been reading my blog for a while, you will know that I like to try all sorts of new recipes. But, I do have a brownie recipe that I usually use when I am making a bulk amount of brownie that I want to turn out in a particular way. It is a variation of a recipe found the in the first Zarbo cook book. I think I have found an even better brownie recipe now and it comes from the second Ladies, A Plate book.

A good friend’s younger sister died last week - an incredibly sad time for my friend and her family. I wanted to bake something for my friend that was a yummy treat, but one that she could put in the freezer and bring out at a later stage when she wanted to. Brownie definitely fits the bill for this kind of thing – it is quick and easy to prepare, makes a very tasty treat and can be easily frozen as it has no icing to worry about and wont go soft or change texture upon being defrosted. The recipe uses only chocolate – my previous “go to” recipe used cocoa as well and I used to think that is what made it so delicious. I used 70% chocolate for the recipe. It does have a lot of chocolate in it, but the result is a deliciously fudgey brownie and that is the way I like my brownie.

I added chopped walnuts as recommended and also more chopped chocolate as recommended, but I did use 55% cocoa chocolate for the chocolate add ins. This is my new go to recipe and while I share the recipe here, I do encourage you to buy the book, as it is fabulous.

Chocolate Brownie (from Ladies, A Plate, a second helping)

225g dark chocolate
85g butter
180g sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
55g flour
55-115g walnuts, chopped
55g dark chocolate chopped (extra)

• Melt together the chocolate and butter
• Whisk in the sugar (the mixture will go grainy) and the eggs, one at a time, then lastly the vanilla
• Stir in the flour, then nuts and extra chocolate
• Bake in a lined 20cm square tin at 170c for 30-35 minutes

Chocolate Muffins

I wanted to bake something for our neighbour last week and decided on these chocolate muffins. I would usually have baked cupcakes, but as a full time working mother, cupcakes are a bit tricky these days - I would get to back the cupcakes, but then I wouldn’t be able to stay up late enough to ice them and then the mornings are a rush by the time I get up at 5.30, do some exercise, feed Harry and get myself ready for work – no time for icing! So, muffins it was!

These muffins are double chocolate. They are essentially plain chocolate muffins with a dollop of chocolate ganache in the centre. Quick and easy to make, as muffins are, but just slightly fancier with the filling. This recipe came from Alyson Gofton’s book, Bake. If I was going to bake them again I would add more cocoa to the mixture, or use dutched cocoa – they just weren’t dark enough for me. The ganache centres were a nice surprise though.



Double Chocolate Muffins (Alyson Gofton)

125g dark chocolate
¼ c cream

• Heat cream and add chocolate. Stir to combine and set aside to firm up

1 3/4c flour
½ c sugar
¼ c cocoa
1 ½ tsp baking powder
½ tsp baking soda
½ c plain yoghurt
½ c milk
1 egg
75g melted butter

• Combine dry ingredients
• Whisk together yoghurt, milk, egg and melted butter and pour into dry ingredients. Mix just to combine
• Spoon half mixture into muffin cases, top with a spoonful of the set aside ganache and then top with the remaining muffin mixture.
• Bake at 200c for 15-18 minutes

Almost dairy free

I was looking through some recipes for something easy to bake a few weeks ago and came across this recipe for making chocolate chip cookies with oil rather than butter. I thought I would try them as an almost dairy free option (they would be dairy free if you left out the chocolate!). They were in a book by Sue Lawrence who won Masterchef UK a while back. When I bought the book some time ago, the masterched phenomenon had not reached NZ, so I didn’t really realise what a big deal it was. Now I would like to find out a bit more about Sue Lawrence.

These cookies are definitely not the best cookies I have ever made. They made me realise that the thing I like most about a good cookie is the buttery flavour. But these cookies would be a good thing to make for a dairy free friend (leave out the chocolate) or if you wanted to bake something but had run out of butter (as does happen sometimes). I used rice bran oil, but canola oil would be a good substitute. Don’t leave out the salt – you need that to bring out the flavour of the cookies

Chocolate Cookies (adapted from Sue Lawrence recipe)

1 1/4 c flour
¼ c cocoa
½ tsp baking soda
¼ tsp salt
1/3 c brown sugar
¼ c castor sugar
1/2c oil
1 egg
½ tsp vanilla
2/3 c chocolate chips

• Whisk together oil, egg and sugars, then stir in remaining ingredients
• Place small mounds onto baking tray and bake at 175c for 15 minutes. Leave to cool on trays for 5 minutes before transferring to a wire rack

Milk Chocolate and Hazelnut Cookies

At the end of last year I bough a beautiful book called Manna from Heaven by Rachel Grisewood. She writes beautifully and the book is a collection of recipes and stories. The recipes are eclectically gathered together, so you will find cakes and desserts in amongst recipes for savoury dishes. If I was going to write a recipe book, I think I would adopt this style and have the chapters assembled by way of occasion.

I actually haven’t made a lot of the recipes in the book yet, but one of the recipes that caught my eye early on was that for Milk chocolate and hazelnut cookies. The occasion rose to make the cookies last week when I bought a cake of milk chocolate for a school fundraiser. If I didn’t use the chocolate in baking, I was going to be in danger of eating the whole cake myself (and even though I try and convince myself that I need the calories for breastfeeding I really don’t!), so I took the opportunity to make these cookies.

I love these kind of cookies – I think it is the fact that they don’t have any kind of raising agent in them – that seems to make them more dense and crumbly, not too crisp and yet not too soft. The chunks of milk chocolate went perfectly with the hazelnuts and the vanilla hit was noticeable. I would definitely make these again.

Milk chocolate and Hazelnut Cookies (from Manna from Heaven by Rachel Grisewood)

80g hazelnuts, toasted and chopped
125g butter
100g sugar
1 tsp vanilla paste
1 egg yolk
210g flour
140g milk chocolate, chopped

• Cream the butter and sugar, beat in the vanilla paste and egg yolk.
• Stir in the flour and then the chopped hazelnuts and chocolate.
• Roll the dough into a log, refrigerate for an hour, then slice into rounds (relatively thickly) and bake at 160c for 10-15 minutes

An old favourite

Last Sunday I was looking for something to bake simply as a tin filler. I have sworn off chocolate for two weeks (since having had Harry I have been eating crazy amounts of chocolate – I think it must be good breastfeeding fuel!!), but of course that is just actual chocolate, not chocolate flavoured things, so I was looking for something chocolatey to fill the tins. I had a look through some of my old recipe books and then remembered one of my favourite recipes from when I was growing up – coconut rough slice! The recipe came from a friend of my Mum’s and Mum used to make it regularly when we were kids.

The slice has a basic chocolate coconut base – very easy, you just melt the butter and add it to the dry ingredients. The topping is what makes this slice special – it is a beautifully smooth chocolate/coconut topping that is reminiscent of chocolate flavoured coconut ice. The trick with this slice is to put the topping on the base while the base is still hot – otherwise, the topping may not adhere to the base and you end up with a yummy base and a yummy topping, but not in the same mouthful! If you can wait, I would wait and cut this slice the day after making it – it cuts better when it’s not really fresh (it can be a bit crumbly when really fresh). This slice also lasts really well, if you don’t eat it all quickly!

Coconut Rough Slice

1/2c sugar
3 tbsp cocoa
2 tsp baking powder
½ c coconut
2 c flour
250g butter, melted

• Combine dry ingredients, pour in melted butter and combine. Press into a lined 23cm square tin and bake at 180c for 20 minutes
• When still warm out of the oven, top with the following topping:

50g butter
3 tbsp cocoa
6 tbsp condensed milk
2 c coconut
2 tsp vanilla
1 ½ c icing sugar

• Combine all ingredients over a low heat until smooth

Catching up With Dorie - ALmost Fudge Gateau

In the last four months while I havent been blogging, I have still been doing most of the TWD challenges each week. However, I haven’t been completely on to it and have about 12 recipes I need to try as a catch up. There are also about 5 recipes that were baked before I became a TWD member that I have to catch up on. This recipe, Almost Fudge Gateau, is one of those.

My sister was staying with us in the weekend and I made the almost fudge gateau for our pudding on Saturday night. I halved the recipe, and made two 10cm gateaux and there was enough mixture left to fill 6 cupcake cases. The gateau is very light and simple to make. It is almost like a soufflé cake, as you fold in beaten egg whites to lighten the mixture, and the cakes puffed up then deflated upon cooling. There was an optional ganache to go on top of the cakes. I didn’t make that on Saturday night, instead serving our gateaux with whipped cream, but yesterday I made a little ganache for this week’s TWD challenge and put some of it on top of one of the cupcake size gateaux – delicious!!



Almost-Fudge Gateau
Ingredients:
For the cake:
5 large eggs
9 oz. bittersweet chocolate, coarsely chopped
1 cup sugar
5 tbsp. unsalted butter, cut into chunks
2 tbsp. coffee or water
1/3 cup all-purpose flour
pinch of salt
For the glaze:
4 oz. bittersweet chocolate, coarsely chopped
1/2 cup heavy cream
2 tsp. light corn syrup
Directions:
Center a rack in the oven and preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Butter a 9-inch springform pan, line the bottom with parchment paper, butter the paper, dust the inside of the pan with flour and tap out the excess. Place the pan on a baking sheet.
Separate the eggs, putting the whites in a mixer bowl or other large bowl and the yolks in a small bowl.
Set a heatproof bowl over a saucepan of simmering water and add the chocolate, sugar, butter and coffee. Stir occasionally until the chocolate and butter are melted; the sugar may still be grainy – that is fine. Transfer the bowl to the counter and let the mixture sit for 3 minutes. Using a rubber spatula, stir in the yolks one by one, then fold in the flour. Working with the whisk attachment of the mixer, beat the egg whites with the pinch of salt until they hold firm but glossy peaks. Using the spatula, stir about one quarter of the beaten whites in to the batter, then gently fold in the rest. Scrape the batter into the pan and jiggle the pan from side to side a couple of times to even the batter.
Bake for 35-45 minutes, or until the cake has risen evenly (it might rise around the edges and you’ll think it’s done, but give it a few minutes more, and the center will puff too) and the top has firmed (it will probably be cracked) and doesn’t shimmy when tapped; a thin knife inserted into the center should come out just slightly streaked with chocolate. Transfer the pan to a cooling rack and let the cake rest for 5 to 10 minutes.
Run a blunt knife gently around the edges of the cake and remove the sides of the pan. Carefully turn the cake over onto a rack and remove the pan bottom and the parchment paper. Invert the cake onto another rack and cool to room temperature right side up. As the cake cools, it may sink.
To make the glaze, turn the cooled cake onto another rack so you’ll be glazing the flat bottom, and place the rack over a baking sheet lined with parchment or wax paper to catch any drips.
Put the chocolate in a small heatproof bowl. Melt the chocolate over a pan of simmering water or in a microwave oven – the chocolate should be just melted and only warm, not hot. Meanwhile, bring the cream to a boil in a small saucepan. Pour the hot cream over the chocolate and stir very gently with a rubber spatula until the mixture is smooth and shiny. Stir in the corn syrup.
Pour the glaze over the cake and smooth the top with a long metal icing spatula. Don’t worry if the glaze drips unevenly down the sides of the cake, it will add to its charm. Allow the glaze to set at room temperature, or slip the cake into the refrigerator for about 20 minutes.

Chocolate Cherry Cupcakes

In the weekend we had friends over for lunch. I made these little chocolate cherry cupcakes for our dessert. Lunch was pot luck – a good way of doing things when you have a baby and limited time. I bought some bread, made a big green salad and a chicken filo pie and our friends bought lasagne and a paella, both of which were delicious. The recipe for the cakes is one I adapted from a Julie Le Clerc recipe for a chocolate cherry bundt cake. I didn’t have morello cherries like the recipe called for and also didn’t have all the ground almonds that the recipe required, so I reduced the ground almond in take and upped the four, and used the cherries I had in the pantry.

You could make these cakes with frozen raspberries rather than the cherries and you could add chunks of chocolate, white or dark. The cherries actually mashed up a bit when I folded them through, which kind of gives my cakes more of a cherry swirl look – you could swirl good quality cherry jam through to get a similar effect. I decorated the tops of the cakes with simply whipped cream with a little vanilla bean paste added and sprinkled pink sprinkles on top and added an icing flower. So simple, but so effective!



Chocolate and Cherry Cupcakes (adapted from Julie Le Clerc)

125g butter
¾ c sugar
1 tsp vanilla
2 eggs
3/4c ground almonds
½ c sour cream
1c self raising flour
1/2c flour
¼ c cocoa
1 can cherries, drained

• Cream butter and sugar and then add in vanilla. Beat in eggs, one at a time
• Stir in almonds and sour cream, then remaining dry ingredients, lastly folding through the cherries
• Spoon into cupcake cases and bake at 180c for 20-25 minutes
• Once cold top with whipped cream and decorate

I am back blogging....

Well, it has certainly been some time since I last blogged. Life is certainly a lot busier being a Mum and now I am a full time working Mum as well, going to back to my role as partner in my law firm six weeks ago. We are lucky in that my husband is staying home to look after Harry. Harry is an absolutely adorable baby – he is such a good boy and is just gorgeous! We are very spoiled parents!!

I have been baking over the last few months and keeping up with most of the Dorie challenges, but finding time to blog has been hard. So, I cant promise that I will be a consistent blogger like I was, but I will try to blog a few times a week. One of the things I have been baking the most is my Nana’s chocolate chip cookies. These are the biscuits that were photographed in the article about bloggers which my blog featured in in the Sunday Star Times back in December. I love chocolate chip cookies and these are the perfect thing to be able to make very quickly and they also freeze really well, actually tasting pretty delicious from frozen.

My parents are coming to visit in the weekend and so I did a little baking last night, making the ever delicious chocolate chip cookies. I didn’t have any chocolate chips, so I used a 220g cake of energy chocolate, chopped which made the cookies delicious. If you havent tried this recipe, you must – I look forward to receiving your comments!

Nana’s chocolate chip cookies

240g butter
4 tbsp sugar
4 tbsp condensed milk (I use an everyday tbsp to measure the sugar and condensed milk rather than a proper measuring one)
2 c flour
2 tsp baking powder
¾ c chocolate chips or 220g dark chocolate, chopped

• Cream butter and sugar, adding in condensed milk
• Stir in dry ingredients and then chocolate
• Roll into balls and flatten with a fork
• Bake at 165c for 15-18 minutes
• Cool on racks

LBD of puddings

This white chocolate and hazelnut blondie is actually something I made prior to Christmas for a team lunch. Brownie/blondie is always a good thing to make when you want to make a dessert in advance and also something that you can dress up or dress down – kind of like the little black dress of puddings.

I actually prefer brownie to blondie. I do love white chocolate but it can be a bit cloying when baked into something. This blondie was a little different in that it had chopped hazelnuts in it. I served it with a berry sauce (a bought one – my sister is a school teacher and last year the seniors made and sold berry sauce as part of a young enterprise scheme. The sauce is delicious, although quite tart) which was a nice contrast to the sweetness of the white chocolate blondie. But, I must say, I would have preferred a true brownie with chunks of white chocolate in it. Still, it’s always good to try new things.

So, the dolled up version of the blondie is with the berry sauce. The everyday version is cut into wedges and put into my husband’s lunch box.

The blondie recipe was in Dish magazine and you can find it here.

Finally some Christmas treats!!

While I wont be making many wee treats for Christmas gifts this year, I did make these wee truffles on Monday night. They were incredibly easy and actually really tasty. I usually make truffles with chocolate, cream etc, but these little biscuit truffles are so much easier to make.

All you do is blitz 500g of oreo biscuits (I used 3 x 150g packets and it still worked ok) together in the food processor until they form little crumbs and then mix in a 250g pottle of cream cheese. I used lite cream cheese and that worked fine too. Roll the mixture into balls (wet hands worked best for this), chill (I actually put mine in the freezer), then dip in melted chocolate. I used milk chocolate for the dipping and sprinkled them with red, white and green hundreds to give them a Christmassy look. The recipe made 50-60 truffles depending on the size.

Holiday Slice

I mentioned yesterday that my friend and her children were up last weekend, so I wouldn’t to fill the tins with something “child friendly”. I had a look through my books and ended up picking a slice from a book which was one of my very first recipe books. The book is a community cookbook from Orepuki, a small community in rural Southland where my mother’s cousins lived. I think I got the book when I was about 9 and even then I have ticked recipes and written “good” beside them in the same way my Nana had in her cook books.

There is a great baking section in this book, lots of great tin fillers. I picked a recipe called holiday slice which sounds pretty boring but is actually delicious. The recipe has cornflakes in it and I chose if because even though we don’t eat cornflakes for breakfast, I bought some a while ago to make afghans and I ended up buying a huge box as it looked nicer on my pantry shelf than a bag of cornflakes! So I wanted to use some more up.

The slice recipe is the easiest kind to make and would be great to bake with kids. You mix all your dry ingredients in a bowl, stir in melted butter, press into a tin, bake and then ice with chocolate icing. I added more cocoa to mine to give it a more chocolatey flavour and I also added an egg yolk, as my mixture was a little dry and more melted butter would have given a very crisp slice rather than the slightly chewy one I wanted to create. Once I had iced the slice I covered it with these cute sprinkles I found at foodtown – they are a combination of hundreds and thousands, long sprinkles (which I think are called jimmies in the states) and stars. They are so cute and really made my slice appealing to the kids. I cut the slice into little two bite pieces. The kids weren’t the only ones that loved it – the adults thought it was pretty good too.

Holiday Slice

1 c flour
1 c cornflakes
1c sugar
3 tbsp cocoa
1 tsp baking powder
1 c coconut
150g butter, melted
1 tsp vanilla
1 egg yolk

• Combine dry ingredients, then stir in melted butter and vanilla. If the mixture is still a little dry add the egg yolk
• Press into a lined 27 x 18 cm tin and bake at 180c for 20 minutes
• When cold ice with chocolate icing and sprinkle with hundreds and thousands, coconut or chocolate hail

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

Old Fashioned Favourite

A sequel to one of my favourite books, Ladies, A Plate, has just been released. It’s called (quite cutely) A Second Helping. It’s full of more old fashioned favourite recipes, the kind I find in my Nana’s recipe books. I am lucky enough to have two of my Nana’s recipe books. They are the two cook books I treasure most from my vast collection. They are what I would call “community” cook books- recipes collated by women in a local community raising money for a particular cause. I love Nana’s handwritten notes in the margin. Treasures such as “Good!”, “Not as good as my recipe”, “Good for a party” and other such notes.

Having received “A Second Helping” it inspired me to look through Nana’s books again. I came across a recipe called chocolate cream slice. My blogging friend Morven said her mother used to make this and it was called keamish Square. It is a real old fashioned slice, but quite delicious. A chocolate base, layer of raspberry jam, layer of a kind of mock cream which is set with gelatine and then chocolate icing. My husband loved it. I really liked it too but it is quite sweet so you can really only eat a small bit at a time.

I’ve tagged a whole heap of other old fashioned recipes that I am going to try and report on in the coming months.

Chocolate Cream (or Kneamish) Square

120g butter
120g sugar
1 egg
180g flour
1 tbsp cocoa
1 tsp baking powder
Raspberry jam

• Cream butter and sugar; beat in egg
• Stir in dry ingredients.
• Press into lined 18 x 23cm tin and bake at 175c for 25 minutes
• When cold top with a layer of raspberry jam and then the following topping and then once that has set, ice with chocolate icing

120g butter
60g sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla
1/8 tsp cream of tartar
1 tsp gelatine dissolved in 3 tbsp cold water

• Cream butter and sugar
• Beat in remaining in ingredients until thick, pale and creamy

Hazelnut & Cinnamon Truffles

My sister gave me a bar of whittakers milk chocolate with hazelnuts. I love nuts and I love chocolate, but not together, so the chocolate had been waiting in the scullery for the opportune time to be used. (I eat the chocolate off scorched almonds and throw the almond out, even though I love almonds ordinarily by themselves). We were invited to a party on Saturday night which was one of those “no presents” parties – I personally will never have one of those!! I don’t count home made truffles as a present, so I used the milk hazelnut chocolate to make some truffles.



There was a recipe in a Donna Hay magazine a while ago for hazelnut and cinnamon truffles. I used this idea as a base, melting the 250g block of hazelnut chocolate with 100ml cream and 1 tsp cinnamon. Actually, I heated the cream in the microwave and then stirred it into the chocolate and cinnamon. I left the mixture in the fridge over night to set up (if you were doing the whole lot in one day, it would probably take about 3-4 hours to set up), rolled into balls using a melon baller and then rolled the balls in cocoa. So easy and so yummy.

Rocky Road Brownie

There hasn’t been much action on my blog this week – it has been a busy one. I mentioned that last weekend we went down to Taranaki to see my in-laws. As well as Dorie’s applesauce cake I made chocolate chippy biscuits and also this rocky road brownie. I am not a huge lover of rocky road. For someone who loves chocolate and very rarely finds anything too rich, I do find that rocky road can be a bit sickly. But it looks nice and is fairly easy to make.

The idea of having a brownie base with a rocky road topping was quite appealing. The recipe comes from an old donna Hay magazine. The topping called for 500g of chocolate which seemed a lot even by my standards! So I decided to halve the recipe to make it a bit more economical. And, to be honest I didn’t need to make such a huge quantity. The brownie layer is a bit more solid than the sticky kind of brownie I like, making it robust enough to carry the marshmallow, nut and chocolate topping. The recipe suggested almonds, but I used peanuts. I actually think that almonds would have been nicer. I imagine that this would be a great slice to make for a party as it looks fun with the pink and white marshmallows peeking through the chocolate.



Rocky road Brownie (adapted from Donna Hay recipe)

80g butter
½ c brown sugar
1 egg
½ c flour
1/8 tsp baking powder
¼ c cocoa (I used dutched cocoa)
40ml milk
50g dark chocolate, melted
250g dark chocolate, melted, extra
½ c roasted nuts of your choice
150g marshmallows, halved

• Cream butter and brown sugar, then beat in egg
• Stir in dry ingredients then milk and then first measure of melted chocolate
• Pour into lined 18x23 cm slice tin
• Bake at 160c for 25-30 minutes, then cool
• Once cool, spread with 2 tbsp of the reserved melted chocolate. Sprinkle over nuts and marshmallows and the spread over the rest of the melted chocolate. Leave to set and then cut into pieces.

Chocolate Fudge

I don’t make fudge all that often, but this recipe from an old Julie Le Clerc magazine caught my eye a while ago. It is almost like chocolate Russian fudge. The recipe uses chocolate flavoured condensed milk which I am not even sure you can still get – I havent seen it in the shops for ages. I used ordinary condensed milk and added 1 ½ tbsp of cocoa to half a tin of condensed milk.

The trick to good fudge is to stir over a low heat constantly until all the sugar dissolves. This can take a very long time, but it is so worth it as it pretty much ensures that your fudge wont be grainy. Once the sugar in this fudge dissolved I found it didn’t take long to come to soft ball temperature. I used a candy thermometer to test, but I also did the true test of dropping a bit into cold water to make sure it makes a pliable ball. I found this fudge to be creamy and delicious and definitely worth making.

Last night for dinner we had free range boneless chicken thighs which I stuffed with chopped olives, wrapped in bacon and roasted. We had them with roast kumara and a mesclun salad with avocado and roasted almonds. I made my favourite dressing for the salad – ¾ tsp Dijon mustard, 1 tbsp raspberry vinegar, 2 tbsp good olive oil and a pinch of salt, combined. I find that these quantities make enough to coat a salad for four. If you don’t have raspberry vinegar you could use red wine vinegar, or even lemon juice, but if you use lemon juice I suggest adding either a little sugar or about ½ a tsp of honey as the lemon juice can be quite tart.

Chocolate Fudge (adapted from Julie Le Clerc recipe)

60g butter
1 ¾ c brown sugar
50g dark chocolate, chopped
2 tbsp golden syrup
¼ c milk
200g condensed milk
1 ½ tbsp cocoa
½ tsp vanilla

• Place all ingredients other than the vanilla in a heavy based med- large saucepan
• Warm over a gentle heat, stirring until the sugar has dissolved
• Increase the heat, bring to the boil and then simmer, stirring occasionally until the mixture reaches soft ball stage (either use a candy thermometer or test by dropping a small bit of mixture into cold water – it will form a pliable ball if at the right stage)
• Remove from the heat and stir in vanilla, then beat with electric beaters until thick and creamy
• Pour into a lined loaf tin and leave to set

NB. The above recipe is for a half recipe. If you double all of the above ingredients, use a 20cm square tin

On a Mission

I have mentioned on my blog a number of times that caramel slice is my youngest sister’s favourite. To be completely honest, it is actually my favourite too and I love making it. Tan slice is probably my favourite style of caramel slice – particularly chocolate tan slice. When I was in Christchurch a few weeks ago my Dad and I went to the Cup, a wonderful café in the Cashmere hills. I had the most delicious piece of tan slice there. A vanilla tan slice, but with thick caramel and chocolate chips as well as the crumble on the top. Oh my goodness, it was so good!

Last weekend my second to youngest sister was up, so I made some chocolate tan slice for her to take home with her (my two youngest sister live in the same town). I always like to make new recipes, even though I have a fabulous chocolate tan square recipe that I have devised myself and which I have put on my blog in the past. I had a look through some books and found a recipe for an oaty tan slice in Allyson Gofton’s book Bake. I decided to make it a chocolate oaty tan slice as Hayley prefers chocolate slices, so I took out ¼ c flour and added in ¼ c dutched cocoa. The oats were actually a bit of a token gesture and unless you knew they were there, I don’t think you would notice them. I also found that the mixture was a bit dry and didn’t make enough for the topping – I had to add a few more oats and butter to stretch it to cover the base. So, I don’t actually rate this recipe that much and even though it looks delicious (and was delicious) it was not a recipe I would put in my recipe book if I was writing one (being my life long dream!). If you want a delicious chocolate tan slice recipe go to my recipe here.

Oh, and if you are ever in a café and try a piece of caramel slice that you think is the best, let me know what it is like so I can try and re-create it. I am on a life long mission for the best ever caramel slice

One of the best Caramel Slices

I think I have mentioned here many times before that caramel slice is my youngest sister’s absolute favourite thing. I think her favourite is chocolate base with chocolate topping, but I made this slice for her a couple of week’s ago. The recipe is from one of Bill Granger’s books. The base is a coconut (but not so you would notice) one and the topping is straight chocolate.

Those little white grains you can see on top of the cake are fleur de sel grains. Bill recommends sprinkling the caramel slice with fleur de sel to make it a bit more grown up. I don’t think I would have tried it if I hadn’t made those salted caramels from the daring bakers challenge last year, which absolutely out of this world! The slight saltiness of the fleur de sel works perfectly with the caramel and the chocolate. I wouldn’t try it with normal sea salt (unless you are a huge salt fan) as I think it would be too salty, but the fleur de sel is incredibly mild (and incredibly expensive!) and is just perfect.

On Wednesday night I made a barley, pumpkin and bacon risotto for dinner. Barley sounds like an unusual thing to make risotto from, but it actually works really well. You do have to cook it longer than for a normal risotto as the barley grains take a lot longer to soften. The barley also retains a lot more bite than rice does, but I really like that nuttiness. My husband said it was the best risotto he had tasted – can’t ask for much more than that!

Chocolate caramel slice (from Bill Granger Holiday)

225g unsalted butter
125g (1 cup) plain flour
1 tsp baking powder
90g (1 cup) desiccated coconut
110g (1/2 cup) caster sugar
100g brown sugar
400ml tin condensed milk
2 tbsp golden syrup
1 tsp vanilla extract
150g good-quality dark chocolate
15g unsalted butter, extra
Preheat oven to 180C. Lightly grease and line a 20 x 30cm baking tin with non-stick baking paper.
Melt 125g of the butter. Sift flour and baking powder into a large bowl, add coconut, caster sugar and melted butter and stir until well combined.
Press the mixture firmly into the base of tin, place in oven and bake for 12 minutes or until light golden.
Meanwhile, place the remaining butter, brown sugar, condensed milk, golden syrup and vanilla extract in a medium size saucepan over a low heat. Stir to dissolve the sugar, bring to the boil then continue to cook, stirring over a low heat, for a further 5 minutes or until light golden. Remove from heat and pour evenly over base.
Place in oven and bake for 10 minutes. Set aside to cool completely.
Once caramel is cool, place chocolate and the extra butter in a heatproof bowl over a saucepan of gently simmering water, stirring occasionally until chocolate has melted. Spread chocolate evenly over the caramel.
When chocolate has set, cut into squares.