Category Archives: Chocolate

Chocolate, ginger and nut pavé

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This is another old timer, heavy lifter of a recipe that I’ve had for ages and never committed to ether. Why? I’m not sure. But it’s such a useful thing to have/make/give at this time of year. I’ve never given it to anyone that hasn’t been anything less than delighted, asked for the recipe and asked me to make it again for them. As long as, of course, that they like all the ingredients.

There’s a possibility that you have all the ingredients at this (Christmas) time of year so you could rustle it up if you need an extra nice thing.

What you need

200g dark chocolate, broken into pieces. I recommend 70%
50g unsalted butter
60g double cream
50g of either crystallised ginger or stem ginger drained of its syrup
100g of nuts of choice: pistachio work well here cos of the colour, as do pine nuts* (pine nuts is what the original recipe called for) or almonds/hazelnuts. If you use the latter I would toast them gently first and let them cool before adding.
*if you use pine nuts use 50g, and 50g of other nuts because what are you, loaded?
25g icing sugar
Cocoa for dusting


What you need to do

You’ll need a tin of approximately 26cm x 8cm. I use the base of a 2lb loaf tin as I like my pave to be a rectangle but you use whatever shape you like just bear in mind the above dimensions. Line it with v. lightly greased baking parchment.

Atop a simmering pan of water put the chocolate, butter and cream making sure that the bowl doesn’t touch the water (or it might seize). Take off heat let cool for a minute or so and then stir in all the other ingredients.

Easy isn’t it?

Then put it in the fridge to set. When ready to eat/serve/give you just turn it out, trim the edges to make it really neat if you want (you can also nibble here to test!) and dust with cocoa powder.

I give mine wrapped in string and parchment.

Wish I had a picture but don’t currently you’ll have to trust me this is lovely.


Chocolate Chestnut Rum Roulade

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I’ve made this every Christmas for over twenty years. Last year, I went to look up the recipe on line (it was a Waitrose recipe from Iceland) and it had gone. It was a ‘404’. I panicked. Despite an extensive internet search nothing came up for it.

More panic. This is my pièce de resistance every Christmas, and my children love it so much they have, on occasion, requested it for birthdays.

But luckily – amazingly – I had made a note of it in my Travelling Cookbook which I started up years and years ago to commit my favourite recipes to paper. But if that goes…so finally I’m going to commit it to technology for me, and all, to enjoy.

I won’t say this is difficult. It’s not. But it’s not always perfect and it is a roulade and involves rolling, like a Swiss roll. It’s not super easy but just go with it and don’t worry. It’s delicious and look, no flour.

Ingredients

For the roulade

170g 70% chocolate, broken into pieces
170g caster sugar
Five eggs separated
1 teaspoon of vanilla extract
Three tablespoons of hot water (see note later)
Icing sugar for dusting

For the filling

Three tablespoons of icing sugar
115g unsweetened chestnut purée
Four tablespoons of sour cream
100g cooked, peeled chestnuts chopped
Two tablespoons of rum (or liqueur of choice but then it’s not rum roulade!)
285ml of double cream

Method

Now, those are the ingredients above. I admit what I now do is buy some vacuum packed chestnuts, whizz some up and use the rest chopped. Because otherwise I tended to get left with lots of left over chestnut purée. But you do what works.

Preheat oven to 180C. Lightly oil a shallow baking tray of approx 34cm by 24cm and then line with baking paper and very lightly, again, oil. TBH you’re probably fine with just the baking parchment/paper but this recipe is from like 25 years ago so just reproducing what they said at the time..

Now melt the chocolate in a bowl, on top of some simmering water and as ever, do not let the bowl touch the surface of the water.

In a separate, large bowl, beat the caster sugar with the egg yolks until thick and pale and creamy. Add the vanilla extract to that.

Once the chocolate has melted and cooled a little, stir in the hot water until smooth then gradually add into the egg/caster sugar mix. Now again, I’m not sure what the hot water does. I’m quite skilled and fearless with adding hot water to chocolate but chocolate can and will seize if the water you’re adding is too hot or cold, so you might want to leave it out. Gently stir the chocolate until smooth and then gradually stir this into the egg and sugar mix.

Now again separately, whisk the egg whites until they hold soft peaks. Quickly and gently fold them into the chocolate mixture and pour the whole lot onto the lined tray, spread evening and put in the oven for fifteen minutes.

Remove and immediately cover with a sheet of baking parchment and a clean tea towel and leave until cold. Don’t leave it too long though or it will crack when rolling it.

Whilst that’s happening, mix the icing sugar into the chestnut purée, followed by the sour cream and chopped chestnuts. Pour the rum/liqueur and double cream and whisk until peaks, then partially fold the rum/cream into the chestnut cream so you have a marbled mixture. You could technically do this in advance and keep it in the fridge but it’s a perfectly good thing to do whilst the roulade is cooling.

Now the originally recipe asks for you to spread out a large sheet of baking parchment on a clean work surface, liberally dust with icing sugar and then gently turn out the roulade onto it, peeling off the baking parchment.

I don’t do this. To me this is adding too much faff and precariousness. So what I do is I take the sponge off the baking sheet – already on baking parchment – and I use that as the base. If you want, trim the roulade of any rough edges but I don’t – it’s all good. Spread the marbled cream on the roulade and then carefully roll up the roulade from the long end. It may crack – do not panic. What I do is I then sort of mould it/hold it together with cling film (just on top using your hands to do this you don’t take the roulade off the plate to do it it just helps keep it together if that’s what it needs) and put it in the fridge until it’s time to serve it. Then I peel off the cling film and then I sprinkle with icing sugar and decorate it. I’ve made this so many times and sometimes it cracks, sometimes it doesn’t and there seems to be little rhyme or reason. It’s always delicious and it reminds us that, even cracked, things are still beautiful.



Chocolate chestnut cake (a perfect alternative to Christmas cake)

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I discovered this recipe in Delicious magazine (the original is here), a couple of years ago. I’m a total sucker for chocolates and chestnuts which is why I paired with Lumi to make Chocolate Chestnut Truffles. (Please note I don’t make any money from these truffles and never have.)

Anyway I made this and it has become a bit of a classic in our house and I like to make it in the run up to Christmas, when you want to give yourself over to festivities but aren’t ready for the full Christmas pudding/Christmas cake yet. Not that I ever make either – I do like them but in small doses. At Christmas in our house I make Chocolate Chestnut Rum Roulade (which I really need to add to this blog before the recipe slips away).

The original recipe calls for a very small cake tin – 16cm. I toy every time I make this with buying a special tin but feel so reckless doing this as I have so many cake tins already. However, the smallest diameter one I have is 20cm so that’s what I make it in and it’s absolutely fine. But if you want a taller, more towering cake then you may want to invest. The cooking time doesn’t seem to change, for me, in the wider tin.

You need:

60g sultanas, put them to soak in 60ml of port, sweet vermouth or whatever nice liqueur you have. I think Cointreau is nice but this year I soaked mine in Plum Liqueur forgetting, foolishly, that I had some Panettone flavoured spirit which is divine (from Selfridges). Give them a really long soak.
100g butter cut into little pieces, it can be from the fridge
300g vacuum packed chestnuts
130g crème fraîche (original recipe calls for 130ml but I just put in 130g as I measure everything into a bowl, atop the scales)
30g plain flour
half a teaspoon of cinnamon
half a teaspoon of ginger
200g of 70% chocolate, chopped into small pieces
3 eggs, separated yolk and white into separate bowls
60g caster sugar

Later, for the ganache

100g 70% chocolate, again chopped
160ml double cream

A tin of 16-20cm (see intro) lined with baking parchment, at the very least on its base, and oven preheated to 160C.

What to do:

First things first: put the sultanas to soak in the liqueur of your choice. I tend to do this in the morning of the day I want to cook, but you can also do it the night before. When you do use the sultanas you’ll need to drain them of the liqueur and if I time it right, I use the liqueur in the cranberry sauce I make (I just stir it in once the cranberries are done, but you could also do it before they cook). If this doesn’t work for you you could whip some cream up with the left over liqueur, to serve with this cake.

In a food processor, blitz together the crème fraîche and the chestnuts.

In a separate bowl mix together the flour, spices and a pinch of salt.

Now you want to melt the chocolate and butter together over a saucepan of simmering water. Make sure the bowl doesn’t touch the water, and you want to take it off before all the chocolate is melted – just carry on stirring – or the chocolate may seize up. I do this part – the chocolate and butter melting – on a fairly large bain marie and I end up using the top part of the bain marie to mix everything together when the time comes. But otherwise, don’t worry: just get a big bowl and decant your chestnut and crème fraîche from the blender into that and this will be your bowl where everything, eventually, meets.

Once the chocolate has melted, put it aside to cool for a bit – about ten minutes. Then mix it into the chestnut and crème fraîche mixture; one at a time stir the egg yolks into this mixture, until everything is fully mixed and then add the flour/spice/salt mixture.

Whisk together the egg whites until stiff, then take a little of the beaten egg whites and mix it into your cake mixture to loosen it. Then taking a large-ish metal spoon as it makes it easier, gently fold the egg whites into the cake mixture. Don’t forget the sultanas, if you haven’t drained them do so now and add them into the cake mixture. It will be a fairly thick mixture, level it out and bake it for 30-35 mins. I admit mine took a bit longer, more like 40mins but the numbers have worn out on my oven dial so it’s possible it was too low. It’s done when a few crumbs of mixture are still clinging to a testing skewer.

Leave to cool for ten minutes in the tin, then turn out. The bottom of the cake will become the top of the cake. You can easily do this bit the day before but, day before or not make sure the cake is thoroughly cooled before you ice it.

To ice the cake, put the chocolate and cream in a bowl again on top of a pan of simmering water. Again: do not let the bowl touch the water underneath. Stir until the chocolate is nearly all, but not quite, melted then take off the heat and keep stirring.

Let the ganache cool for about ten minutes then slather on the cake using a spatula. You can then adorn it quite opulently if you like or leave it plain. It is quite a plain looking cake but there’s no shame in that. The original suggests things like sugared almonds, marron glacés, sugar sprinkles…you get the idea. In the photo here I used caramelised white chocolate and praline covered pistachios which are beautifully green on the outside. I got them from Melt and I loved the colour contrast (not to mention the festive green). They are insanely expensive so I’m only giving you this as an idea, not suggesting you spend all that money on buying a cake topping decoration.

Store in the fridge but bring out for about half an hour to chambré before serving. Truly delicious. And rich.












Romana’s cake, aka traditional Italian cake for everyday occasions

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Growing up with a Mamma who was an excellent cook, we had largely home made everything. But the cakes and biscuits we did have were nothing fancy, because they were things my mother learnt in her own mother’s kitchen. Looking back at my own cookery books, from my own adolescence, I was struck by how basic the recipes were.

I had a Katie Stewart cookbook which I thought was the height of sophistication but looking back at it now, the ingredient list was small and simple. Everything has evolved to be so much more sophisticated, and complicated now. That’s not a bad thing.

In February I went to visit my north Italian family in Parma. Romana, my cousin, had made this cake. It was plain and simple but we loved it, especially my youngest who ate it for breakfast and for tea.

It’s very usual to have such a cake as this and it be presented at various times during the day, until there’s nothing left. It’s part of its life journey that it should go slightly stale towards the end, so you can refresh it by giving it a hot dunk in morning caffe latte or tea-time lemon tea. I asked Romana for the recipe and here it is, I’ve put its most basic incarnation here plus a few small additions (in brackets) which make it a bit extra special. But don’t veer too far from the original. This cake is not fancy, doesn’t want to be and therein lies its beauty.

Oven to 180C you need a tin of about 9″/23cm, base lied with baking parchment.

300g of 00 or plain flour (I sometimes use 200g white flour and 100g wholemeal)
180ml of whole milk (semi skimmed will do)
150g caster sugar
2 eggs
100ml of olive oil (you can use extra virgin if you are so inclined, I’ve also used 50ml of lemon infused/50ml of normal olive oil)
3 teaspoons of baking powder
100g chocolate chips. This cake really benefits from those store board tiny chocolate chips but I have so much chocolate that I just chop up that)
(A really fabulous addition is to use Bakery Bits’ Fiori di Sicilia essential oil, this elevates it massively as well as smelling amazing and making the cake taste SO Italian.)

Mix the caster sugar with the oil, add the eggs, then the flour, then the milk and baking powder. Finally mix in the chocolate chips and the Fiori di Sicilia if using. Put in the tin and bake for about 40 mins. Check after 30.

This is great for taking to work/school in lunch boxes as it’s a very well behaved cake when travelling.

Also if anyone is interested in the approx macros for this whole cake they are:
Total weight: 931g
Protein: 60.2g
Fag: 157.7g
Carbs: 430.2g

Fibre: 29.5g
Sugars: 189.6

Update August 2025.

I now make this in my mini loaf cake tin to make..mini loaves and they are so cute and take about 20-25 mins.

Yorkshire Eclairs

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These were a beautiful accident.

We had guests coming, and I had planned to make normal eclairs, stuffed full of white chocolate cream. But as I went to get the mixture out of my Kenwood mixer, I noticed the whisk attachment, which I’d had for about twenty years, had splintered and broken. There were really sharp filaments of metal sticking out, and I couldn’t risk the possibility that some had got into the mixture (and you can’t really sieve eclair mixture). So I had to start all over again.

However, my Magimix food processor whisk wasn’t strong enough to give me that really ribbony eclair texture, so I knew the dough would be too soft to pipe. But I wasn’t about to waste a whole other mixture so I thought sod it, I’m going to pour it into my Yorkshire Pudding tins – which are like shallow four circle shapes per tin – that’ll contain the mixture. And it worked beautifully. You could treat these like a normal eclair, by splitting them and coating the top with chocolate and injecting the insides with cream. But I didn’t want the faff after such a relatively stressful baking morning. So I just placed the cream on top, put some berries on and as an homage to the usual chocolate topping I poured on some Bare Bones Chocolate Syrup (seasonal produce) but you don’t need this latter.

Just to bring everything up to date here are the recipes for the eclairs and the white chocolate cream.

Eclairs (makes eight in my Yorkshire tins)

125ml water
50g butter
75g plain flour
3 medium eggs (at room temperature, this is important)
pinch of salt

Preheat oven to 180C.

Put the water in a sauce pan with the butter and salt and heat until the butter has melted. With the heat still on, beat in with a wooden spoon, the flour. Mix around vigorously until it forms a dough and doesn’t stick to the sides of the pan.

You can let the mixture cool here, you’re meant to, I never do.

Put the dough in a stand alone mixer with the whisk attachment on, then add the first egg. When fully incorporated add the other egg and then the third. Strictly speaking you only add enough egg til it comes together to form a thick, ribbon-y dough, that is to say that when you lift the whisk out of the mixture it leaves trails of visible ribbons behind for a few seconds. But I just add three eggs in and if you’re making Yorkshire eclairs the consistency of the dough should be thick, but it doesn’t matter if it’s not super thick because you’re not piping it.

When the dough has some substance to it, pour it into your Yorkshire tins (you do not need to grease them in anyway). Bake for about 25-35 mins. Longer will give you a dryer, crisper eclair if that’s what you want. For this recipe, ie in this shape, I like them a bit fluffier and softer so I check after 25 mins.

When cool, dollop on the white chocolate cream and top with berries and you are good to go. Once assembled eat immediately.

The eclairs can be kept in a tin for a day or two but they will soften. I rather like them like this but you may not.

White chocolate cream

Ideally make this just before you do the eclairs (even the day before) so it can set in the fridge.

You need 300ml of double cream and about 100-125g of white chocolate.

Heat half the cream in a saucepan, break up the chocolate, as small as you can, and then pour the heated cream over the top of the chocolate and stir until melted. (You can of course just put both together in a bowl and melt over hot water but I find that’s more of a faff.) When it’s all melted, put this chocolate/cream mixture in the fridge until it’s cool. When it is, mix in the other half of the double cream and whisk until stiff. It’s now ready to serve when you are.

Nigella’s chocolate olive oil cake

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This is simple and beautiful. It can be flourless but somehow seems so much better than so many of the flourless chocolate cakes that turn up at gatherings. It’s so easy to throw together. The original recipe is here, but I’ve cut down the sugar and may cut it down further but be careful as sugar plays a role in cake making beyond mere sweetening.

Use a mild olive oil, I have at times used a too fruity one and whilst adding a depth of flavour, it’s distracting.

Once you’ve made this once you’ll realise it’s so easy you can make it in a commercial break, no chocolate to melt or chop. Largely store cupboard ingredients. My children love it.

You need

150ml mild olive oil

50g cocoa powder

125ml boiling water

Two teaspoons of vanilla extract

150g ground almonds (you could also substitute half almond half hazelnut, you can also use flour but unless you are allergic to nuts I implore you not to do this)

Half a teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda

A pinch of salt

175g caster sugar

3 eggs

What you do

Oven to 170C

A 23cm spring form tin, base lined with baking parchment.

Pour the boiling water slowly into the cocoa and stir until no lumps remain, add the vanilla extract.

In a separate bowl, mix together the almonds, bicarb and salt. And then you’re going to beat/whisk together the eggs, olive oil and caster sugar, either by hand (go you) with a whisk/wooden spoon or with an electric contraption (hand held or free standing).

Nigella says to use the paddle attachment, I always use the whisk because I can never find the paddle attachment. Beat electronically for three minutes until it’s syrupy and fluffy and pale yellowy. By hand: until your hand falls off.

To the eggs/oil/sugar mixture slowly add the cocoa mixture (turn down the speed if you are doing this with a gadget). When all incorporated add the ground almonds/bicarb/salt. Scrap down, make sure all mixed then pour into the tin.

Bake for 25-45 mins. Nigella says 40-45, mine is done in 25. You want it to be a bit quivering on top in the middle (Nigella describes it as looking a bit damp) but defo set at the edges. A skewer should come out pretty clean.

Spelt, nut butter, chocolate chip cookies (aka mummy’s lockdown cookies)

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I was craving a very particular kind of cookie when I made these: I wanted peanut butter, I wanted spelt or rye flour rather than white flour, and I wanted oats. Basically something a bit wholegrain, not madly high in sugar but definitely still feeling treaty. Because otherwise, just eat something else no?

This is a mishmash of a few recipes I had and really  tasty with, dare I say it, quite a lot of depth to them (dare I say it because: wanker alert). I’m not usually one to ‘make up’ a recipe (and I don’t feel this is really made up in that way but you know…as close as I’ll get). The chocolate chips still make these feel norty, but the other ingredients lessen the sweet-treat hit that makes you want to eat more and more. So in other words, a good, tasty cookie that isn’t just empty calories.

I used some hazelnut paste in the cupboard that I wanted to use up, but if you don’t have it then any nut butter will do. You absolutely do NOT need it for these and I wouldn’t buy it especially, it’s insanely expensive and rather a waste here but like I said, it was in the cupboard and needed using up so…

You need:

100g soft unsalted butter (or you can use salted and don’t add the salt later)

120g nut butter of your choice (so, I used half hazelnut paste, half peanut butter, crunchy)

150g sugar – I used caster and light brown

Two eggs

90g spelt flour (you can also use wholemeal plain, white plain if you must, or rye)

100g oats, any size or if you want to you can blend them so they are fine. I used large oat flakes which makes them a bit chewy

half a teaspoon of baking powder

a good pinch of salt (unless you are using salted butter in which case you don’t need any)

150g chocolate chips/pieces of your choice. I like to use a mix of small pieces and quite large bits and I use milk and dark because I’m all over the place with what I like

Method:

These make about 24. Oven to 190C you’ll also need a baking parchment lined tray.

Mix together the butter, nut butters and sugar until one big, buttery, sugary whole.

Add the eggs one at a time, until all blended, then add the flour, oats and baking powder with the salt if using. You can do this all by hand, it doesn’t need a lot of mixing.

Finally mix in the chocolate chips gently. You can dollop these onto the tray straight away – use a tablespoon or an ice cream scoop. They don’t spread out madly but give them a little space to do their thing.

You can also chill the mixture in the fridge for a few days. I bake some from fresh, chill the rest and I’ve also chilled then rolled into cling film and stored some in the freezer.

I’ll report back on how they fare.

Mine were done in 9/10 minutes. You want to take them out when they are fairly ‘dry’ looking, it’s okay if they look a bit ‘wet’ just in the middle. I like to flatten them gently with a fork the moment they are out. Leave on the baking tray for a few moments before sliding the parchment straight onto a cooling rack. I really like these still a bit warm so the chocolate is still melting and liable to make a mess so you have to sit still for a moment whilst you eat them.

Update. What I do now, if I have some white chocolate spare, and I invariably do, is when the cookies are just out of the oven, I press them down with the back of a fork, then gently press a square of white chocolate in…

 

Chocolate rye cookies

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The desire for these was fuelled after visiting the excellent Wooster’s Bakery in Bury St Edmunds. There is, to my mind, only one bakery which tops Wooster’s for excellence and that’s Pump Street Bakery in Orford (there used to also be an outpost at Snape Maltings which has gone much to my chagrin). If you ever go to Wooster’s be sure to buy the morning buns. If you ever go to Pump Street the gibassiers are what I aim for.

We went to Wooster’s the other day and I saw giant chocolate rye cookies. But as I was busy ordering a morning bun I didn’t feel I could also have a giant chocolate rye cookie.

But I thought of the rye cookies all week and finally gave in and made my own after looking up a ton of recipes on line. It also helped use some some of the staggering amount of chocolate I’d accumulated in the house.

This is an alteration to a Donna Hay recipe, I adapted it have it contain rye flour: you can up the quantities of rye to normal flour if you want to but I do half and half. Try not to look at the terrifying amount of chocolate there-in and the butter. When I melted the chocolate and butter together one of my daughters said: “there’s a heart attack in a bowl”…this made about twenty cookies. I like to think it spreads the risk. You can of course make them even smaller. I’m afraid I ate nearly three on the day I made them for testing purposes. This I don’t recommend.

I also used a mish-mash of chocolate I had in the house, even including some with pretzel pieces in it. I think as long as you don’t veer too far from half of the chocolate being around the 70% mark you can’t go too wrong. You could also bung in some nuts if you wanted to. (I think macadamias would work really well or pecans or…) But these are perfect, and very popular, just as they are. Don’t be temped to overcook them. They come out of the oven looking very soft in the middle but they harden up.

250g unsalted butter cut into a few pieces

400g of chocolate varying from 40-70% (but you know, if you have a bit of 30% don’t sweat it but you don’t want to go too milky for too much of it). Don’t go too high either and definitely no 100%, this isn’t a masochistic biscuit.

4 eggs

220g granulated (note granulated) sugar

175g soft brown sugar

(this is a lot of sugar, I know. In time I may experiment with lowering it slightly but these are biscuits and if you muck about with the sugar quota too much the biscuits won’t have the proper structure)

Two teaspoons of vanilla extract

150g of plain flour (you could also put a bit of wholemeal in there if you fancy a ‘meatier’ biscuit)

150g dark rye flour

sea salt

Oven to 180C – I used fan so I could bake two trays at once.

Melt the butter and all the chocolate in a large bowl in a bain marie or in a bowl atop a saucepan of simmering water.  Take off when nearly all melted and continue to stir until smooth.

Whisk together the eggs, all of them, the sugars, both of them, and the vanilla. I confess I did this in a freestanding mixer whilst the chocolate was melting because I’m lazy and like leaving a trail of melted chocolate everywhere. I whisked it for quite a long time, very absent mindedly, on low. When the chocolate has melted set aside for five minutes whilst you get the flours together.

Then, add the chocolate to the eggs/sugar mixture – mixing all the while, gently. Now add the flours a tablespoon at a time.

Now put this in the fridge for ten minutes and line your baking sheets with parchment and find an ice cream scoop or a two -ablespoon-measure or similar.

After ten minutes in the fridge, take out the mixture and, using your scoop or spoon, dollop your cookies one at a time on the baking tray which has been lined with parchment. I did six on one tray, five on another. Don’t over cram them. Sprinkle with sea salt before they go into the oven, don’t panic if you forget – you can do it when they are just out or omit it all together.

Put the mixture back in the fridge whilst you bake the cookies for 8-9 minutes (know your oven but do not overbake). They come out and seem quite molten in the middle. Don’t panic.

I use reusable baking liners so I need them asap after the first batched has baked so I very, very carefully fish-sliced the biscuits off the tray onto the cooling rack, placed the baking liner back on the tray and loaded up again from the cookie mixture just out of the fridge. If you are not so confident, then either give the cookies ten minutes on the tray to firm up before transferring to a cooling rack. Or if you are using re-usable baking parchment slide the whole thing onto a cooling rack with great adeptness, tear off some more parchment and start loading on more cookies to bake.

My eldest, who accompanied me to Amsterdam last year, said these were on a parr with the Van Stepele cookies.

Don’t have a heart attack.

 

Nigella’s rather good banana and chocolate bread (which can be gluten free).

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I always associate banana bread with Nigella. I think it’s because, it was in one of the first recipes of hers that I read, I’m sure, that she said baking a banana bread filled the house with a fug of domesticity.

Or some such. Since then I’ve made dozens of banana breads and it usually
disappoints, probably because I keep changing recipes. Faced, however, with a huge batch of frozen, overripe bananas in the freezer (I always freeze overripe bananas) and more chocolate than any sane person needs (this is what happens when you get made Chocolate Correspondent of a national newspaper) I decided to have another go at making banana bread.

Also, for complicated reasons that I don’t fully understand myself, I hadn’t cooked or baked anything in weeks when I first made this last year. Which is really not like me, but this glorious little cake gave me my baking mojo back.

For a writer, I am remarkably picture led where recipes are concerned and thus it was that I found this recipe for Nigella’s Gluten-Free Banana Bread and it was, I confess the picture of the large slabs of chocolate which lured me in.  I planned to make it gluten free (why not) but in the end found no rice flour in my flour cupboard so made it with normal plain flour. I also lowered the sugar and used pecans instead. I think this would also be great made in muffin size. I’ve put the recipe below as I made it – do refer to the original if you wish and if you want to make it gluten-free which this ain’t.

175g plain flour (I use spelt these days, a mixture of white and wholegrain)

100g ground almonds

two teaspoons of baking power

half a teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda

a quarter teaspoon of sea salt

500g of very ripe bananas (weighed with skin on)

two teaspoons of vanilla extract

100g Greek yoghurt – full fat

Two eggs

125g light olive oil

100g light brown sugar

100g roughly chopped pecans (or any other nut you like)

150g chopped chocolate – I used a mixture of milk and plain in chocolate chip size and quite large chunks

You need a 2lb loaf tin for this (Nigella gives the sizes as 24cm x 12cm and mine was roughly that, why don’t cake tin manufacturers put the volume/measurements on the bottom of their tins?). Line this tin. Preheat the oven to 170C.

Mix together the dry ingredients, thus the flour, ground almonds, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda and salt.

In a larger bowl (for this will be the one everything else ends up in) place the bananas and mash them up, then mix in the vanilla extract, Greek yoghurt and the eggs one at a time. Then the oil and sugar. When all is better unified than a post-Brexit UK, add the dry ingredients bit by bit until combined. Then finally gently fold in the nuts and chocolate.

Dollop all this in the cake tin and bake for about forty minutes. Nigella says 45-55, my oven seems quite fierce so I started checking it after 35 mins. Also it does depend on how much moisture your bananas hold.

You know it’s done when the top is dry, it springs back, it’s shrunk away a little from the sides and a skewer comes out relatively clean (obviously not if you hit a shard of chocolate).

This is a beautiful cake. Unfortunately I can’t find a picture I took of it so this post will be picture-less until I make it again.

2024 I finally remembered to take a pic and post it on here..

Peanut butter and date protein bars (with a bit of chocolate on top)

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These came about after a desire to find something in the supermarket that was, basically, just dates and a nut butter. Because that is something I crave post-workout. I also wanted something which was as delicious as the protein bars that my ex-trainer used to get me which used to be so tasty I daren’t look at the ingredients, but they were also so filling that, with a glass of water (you should always drink a glass of water with protein bars) they’d often see me onto the next meal.

Then one day, I saw that Donna Hay published a recipe for something called peanut butter choco-coconut protein bars and I adapted them. I now make these regularly and eat them post work out, or if I haven’t got time for a meal (which is rare but does sometimes happen) or if I just fancy a little treat during the week when I try to really watch what I eat (one has to be realistic and these hit the I need a treat button without making me feel like I’ve fallen into the abyss of unhealthy eating). They also don’t make me crash, blood sugar wise and I would now, honestly, have these over pretty much any chocolate bar.

You can experiment with the amount of protein powder you put in – I did and I put more in than Hay originally suggested. But if you do that, I recommend you do so in 10g increments.

This is what you need:

260g fresh Medjool dates. You can use others but these really do make the best bars. If you use dried dates, rehydrate them in boiling water for half an hour before use, then drain them.

25g raw cacao powder

100g salted peanuts and 40g of unsalted, raw, cashews (or use half and half, depends on how big you want the salted peanut hit to be). You can of course use 140g of any nut you want, roasted or raw. A few extra nuts if you want to chop and sprinkle on top

Two tablespoons of peanut butter (or any nut butter)

50g desiccated coconut

35g unflavoured protein powder (I use an organic whey protein powder)

1 teaspoon of vanilla extract

45g cacao nibs

150g dark chocolate, melted

What you need

You can make this in a round cake tin – about 8/9″ would be ideal. I make it in my square cake tin which is 20cm. You might prefer the bars thicker but I like them like this. 20cm square is about as big as you want to go, any bigger and you’ll struggle to have enough chocolate to coat all the top – it just covers it as it is, but is still plenty, if you see what I mean.

Whatever tin you use, line with baking parchment.

Place everything except the cacao nibs and the dark chocolate (which you need to melt, for the topping) in a food processor and blitz til it’s all amalgamated – about one or two minutes. Right at the end, add the cacao nibs and blitz a couple more times.

Press this mixture into your prepared cake tin. Put it in the fridge for at least 30 mins.

Then you melt the chocolate either in the microwave or in a bain marie arrangement, and spread over the top. Add some chopped peanuts (or whatever nuts you are using) on the top if you like. Sometimes I do, sometimes I don’t. As I said, in my 20cm square tin it’s just enough to cover. You don’t really want to up the chocolate, as then it becomes all about the chocolate and turns this from an interesting, not totally nutritionally devoid treat into something else…

Refrigerate until you need them, which will be soon. Cut into whatever shape you like. I do long thin bars, little squares or if I want to pack it in my bag for a meal replacement (which I would only do in emergencies) or a good snack later, I cut it into a bar shape and take it in my bag wrapped in foil and then eat it feeling really smug and happy.

They keep for at least a week in my house and have never been around longer than that.