TWD - Chocolate Ganache Ice Cream

This week’s TWD recipe is Chocolate Ganache Ice –Cream and was chosen by Katrina of Baking and Boys. This ice cream was very easy to make – basically you made chocolate ganache, then made custard, combined the two, chilled and then churned in the ice cream maker. I used energy chocolate (which is about 50% cocoa butter I think) which resulted in a rather mild chocolate flavour. But the ice-cream was lovely and creamy. My in laws are staying at the moment and we had the ice-cream for pudding last night with some little banana puddings I quickly whipped up. The combination of banana and chocolate was delicious. The puddings were very easy to make and the recipe is below.

Check out the other TWDers chocolate ganache ice-cream here.

Banana Puddings (adapted from Donna Hay)

5 tbsp sugar
5 tbsp maple syrup
1 c self raising flour
2 eggs
2 mashed bananas
100g butter, melted

• Combine all ingredients in a bowl
• Spoon into four greased ramekins and bake at 170c for 25-30 minutes or until cooked through

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

TWD - Gingered Carrot Cookies

This week’s TWD recipe is gingered carrot cookies and was chosen by Natalia of Gatti Fili e Farina. These are very interesting cookies – Dorie describes them as being almost scone like, but I am not so sure and wonder whether that description gets lost in translation between American and English definitions of scones, biscuits and cookies!

I halved the cookie mixture, but still used one full egg. The cookies turn out to be knobbly little things – they don’t really taste carroty (but then neither does carrot cake). I also didn’t find the ginger flavour that pronounced. I also left out the raisins as I don’t like raisins. The thing I likes best about them was the pecan nuts. I love pecan nuts and find they make a great addition to lots of things (in fact I added the leftover pecans with cumin seeds, currants and diced preserved limes to cous cous we had for dinner with roasted salmon – they made a delicious addition). I wouldn’t make these cookies again. Even though they tasted ok, they don’t look great and I am not sure that they will keep so well. See what the other TWDers thought here.

Decorated Shortbread

I have to confess that these are cookies I made some time ago (actually before Harry was born!) and never blogged about. They are some very simple biscuits made to look quite lovely (I think!) with a bit of easy decorating. These are the perfect cookie to give as a gift and they can be adapted to any situation.

The cookies are quite simply shortbread biscuits, cut into rounds, dipped in white chocolate and a royal icing flower popped on top. If I remember rightly, these particular shortbread had chopped pistachios through them (just add chopped pistachios to your favourite shortbread recipe). I used white chocolate to ice them (in fact white chocolate melts) as they leave a nice clean finish plus chocolate melts set really quickly and don’t even often dent like icing does, if you are packaging them up to send them. I did make the icing flowers which not everyone can do, but you can buy icing flowers from the supermarket now, or you can use other things to decorate – pebbles or smarties, other cake decorating embellishments, jaffas or other lollies, even just sprinkled with hundreds and thousands, these cookies would look great.

You could also colour the white chocolate. You have to be careful using other liquid with chocolate as it can seize, but I have had success with adding a little gel colour to white chocolate. Dipping the cookies is easy too – just dip them! You can use a palette knife to spread the chocolate on, but dipping works really well. I would love to know what other ideas you come up with.

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

TWD - Chewy Chunky Blondie

This week’s TWD recipe is chewy chunky blondies and was chosen by Nicole of Cookies on Fridays. I think of blondies being brownies made with white chocolate, but these blondies were rich, fudgey bars with delicious add ins in the form of chocolate, walnuts and toffee pieces – no white chocolate in sight.

I loved this recipe as it was easy to make and had great taste results. I halved the recipe and made it in a 20cm square tin. Next time I would make the whole recipe though as the blondies are so delicious. They were almost like a soft chocolate chunk cookie made in a tin. The add ins of dark chocolate, walnuts and toffee bits were delicious. You cant get Heath’s toffee pieces in NZ, so I smashed up some werther original toffees which have the same effect. The recipe also called for coconut – I actually left that out, as even though I like coconut, I think it would have detracted from the other flavours.

The blondies were delicious – I would definitely make these again. Check out the other TWD links here.