Category Archives: Chocolate

Home made bourbon biscuits

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Although I make almost all the biscuits and cakes we eat, I do think there are some things that are just better shop bought. Shop bought custard creams are just what they are and impossible to replicate at home. (This doesn’t mean I won’t try but I won’t expect to get them to compete with shop bought and compete is the right word here.)

But a few weeks ago, I was out for brunch and gossip a very important business meeting with my friend Fiona Hughes and we went to the Orchard Cafe in London’s Holborn.  On the way out, after we’d devoured extremely good scrambled eggs with home made bread and smoked tomato ketchup, I spotted a giant bourbon biscuit, filled with salted caramel goo.

Now. I don’t eat biscuits and cakes ‘n’ stuff like that, during the week, only at the weekend. And as this was a Tuesday, I couldn’t justify it.

However, because I am a greedy thing at heart, the memory of these biscuits scratched away at me, like a sticky out label on a T-shirt, and eventually I decided to try to make my own.

I finally found a mention of an edition of Jamie Magazine that had a recipe for home made bourbon biscuits and so determined was I, I tracked a back issue down, paid for it and waited for it to arrive.

These biscuits are great. Really, really good. I do of course want to get a specialist rectangular cutter and maybe a Barbieri stamp. [Update: believe it or not, I now have both of these.]  But until then, I just cut a line of these, and then cut the rectangles by hand. It made for a very artisan finish but no less impressive.

You need:

For the biscuits:

50g soft butter, unsalted
50g soft brown sugar (I used dark)
1 tablespoon of golden syrup
110g plain flour
20g good cocoa powder (don’t go using any of that ‘bad’ stuff)
half a teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda
a bit of caster sugar for sprinkling

For the filling:

75g icing sugar
50g soft butter
1 tablespoon of cocoa powder
1 teaspoon of cold, strong coffee (use milk if you don’t like coffee, but the coffee really, really adds something)

Put the oven on to gas 150C. You need a baking tray lined with baking parchment.

Either cream the butter and sugar for the biscuits by hand, or use an electric whisk (the recipe calls for latter, I did former). Do this until pale and fluffy. I love the word fluffy.

Then beat in the golden syrup using a wooden spoon (even if you’ve used an electric whisker you’re now instructed to STOP and use a wooden spoon and put your arms to work). Then sift in the flour, cocoa powder and bicarbonate and beat into an even dough. You may need a few drops of milk. Try not to use it but if you do, literally put the milk in half a teaspoon at a time, you want a fairly dry, low hydration dough not something really sticky.

Turn it out onto a piece of baking parchment and top it with more baking parchment so you roll it out between two sheets of baking parchment. Roll until about 3mm thick. Because you want the biscuit to be crisp, don’t make it too thick, although you can’t make it too thin either. Get the ruler out, this is biscuits for goodness sake. It’s important to get it right.

Cut the dough, however works for you, into about 24 fingers of about 5cm x 3cm. I cut long rectangles and then cut into smaller rectangles. Place on parchment lined baking tray, with about 1cm gap in between (they do rise a bit but not much). I prick with a fork for a birruva pretty pattern.

Sprinkle with caster sugar and cook for 8-10 minutes. Make sure they are cooked, not soft as they won’t harden up much and you really do want these to be crispy not cakey. But of course, don’t overcook (am I being too bossy? I want you to get these right you see).

When done, wipe the sweat from your brown, transfer to a wire rack etc. Cool.

For the filling mix the sugar and butter together, add the cocoa powder. At this point it will look pale and unpromising and you may start to panic. Have faith! When you add the milk (a scant teaspoon, just to bring everything together), it will go dark and glossy and glorious and you will be SO pleased with yourself.

Spread on one biscuit, sandwich with another. Daintily arrange. Eat and be amazed.

Chewy scoop biscuits

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 These have just come out of the oven. They are crispy, salty, sugary, chocolately. But not sickly, because that would be wrong.

As I’ve mentioned in the past, I keep all my torn out recipes in Muji PP Portfolio books. I have about 12 of them covering different subjects like ‘Everyday’, ‘Pasta’, ‘Fish’ and of course one just for biscuits…

I had cut this recipe out of the Waitrose magazine some time ago and recently refound it. It was the word ‘chewy’ that got me, even though these biscuits aren’t, actually chewy (or I have not found them to be so).

Not that that matters, because they’re delicious, easy to make and – best of all, for me – you can make the dough, shape them and then freeze them so when you fancy home made biscuits you’re only a quarter of an hour away from them. It also means you can cook just a few at a time (important for greedy types such as me).

Anyway, here is the recipe. I didn’t have hazelnuts so I used walnuts. The three types of chocolate is really important, as is the salt (obviously all the ingredients are important. But what I mean is something that seems unimportant, like the salt, is actually crucial in my view).

I didn’t use an ice cream scoop, just shaped them with  my hands into walnut sized balls. My biscuits, as you can see, aren’t flat like those in the magazine.

I found 12 mins was plenty, but my oven is fierce.

If you want to freeze them – and I recommend you do as this dough makes loads, you just shape them and them freeze them spaced out on a tray or plate or something. When frozen, then you can bung them all into a freezer bag (if you bung them all in to begin with they will all freeze stuck together, and you don’t really want that), to pull out and cook – from frozen – whensoever you wish. If cooking from frozen, give them 15 mins.

A white chocolate lolly ‘cake’

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I don’t even like white chocolate, but let me tell you, these were so good I almost ate them all in ‘quality control’ before the actual day.

Yesterday was my eldest daughter’s first holy communion. I made her a cake made entirely of white chocolate lollies. Since first experimenting with chocolate lollies last year, I’ve really moved on with them and by investing in a few things: proper moulds, sticks and a stand, you can really make something quite simple and easy to make (but ssssh, don’t tell anyone) into something that looks spectacular.

I made these the day before, and just assembled them on the day (i.e. slotted them into the holes in the stand). Once I’ve had an alcoholic drink, my guests have to pretty much fend for themselves so anything that can be pre-made plays to my great organisational skills and my weakness for being a dreadful, drunk, host.

I usually make chocolate lollies in 70% cocoa chocolate. But a few months ago, my friend Lucy (who is the only person in the whole of East Anglia who possibly has more baking gadgets/biscuit cutters than I) mentioned that she had made some lollies in white chocolate using crystallized violets. I stored this bit of information away in my brain, thinking white lollies would be lovely for a holy communion, instead of a cake, say. We had some crystallized violets that my partner and the girls had made for mother’s day (every aspect of that sentence sounds smug, but I don’t mean it to), I used Green and  Black’s white chocolate (which is, I have to say, absolutely superb). And this is what I did.

Melted the white chocolate.
Poured it into the moulds.
Put in lolly sticks.
Scattered on some crystallized violets or freeze dried strawberries (from Waitrose, they come in a tube, in the baking aisle).
Put in fridge to set.
Removed from moulds after a couple of hours.
Tasted one for quality control purposes.
Decided they were so amazingly good I had to have more.
Cycle to Waitrose to buy more white chocolate.
Repeat process.
And then, when time comes, slot the lollies into the holes in the stand and da-dar.

A note about the stand. I bought mine from Amazon. It doesn’t appear to be sold anymore, but I’m looking out for other stockists as it’s really lovely and minimalist and classy.

Willie’s Delectable Cacao Single Squares

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Happy Easter. This is what I got today instead of an Easter egg. I really love plain chocolate, preferable 70% cocoa one, for a real punch.

You can get these Single Squares from Waitrose and they cost from £1.80. Not cheap (they weigh 50g) but the chocolate is excellent; I much prefer it to Green and Black’s dark chocolate which I find bitter. And I’d rather have a hit of really good chocolate than lots of cheap, sugar-filled stuff.

The ones I got – you can see them above – were hazelnut and raisin, ginger and lime and luscious orange. They are all delicious. There are others that are just chocolate: milk, plain or white.

I haven’t managed to ascertain what the fairtrade credentials, if any, are (I do try to buy fairtrade wherever possible). But you can read more about Willie’s chocolate  here.

Your own orange chocolate orange

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Okay. Two chocolate recipes in a row and then I think that’s enough. I must talk about something hard core and tecchy next like SIM card entry systems (I do know about those, actually).

Hmm. I can’t work out how to rotate this. Although I guess there’s no right way up…

These are even simpler than the salted caramel chocolates because it’s all done in one stage. BUT you do really need to have made the candied orange peel before that. That’s the secret weapon.

The good news is that you eat far less chocolates if you’ve made them yourself. Promise. At least you do once the novelty has worn off.

So obviously you can do this in any sort of mould. You could even make them lolly shaped. But I just happentohave, woudln’t you know it, some orange segment moulds.

Melt some chocolate, I always use 70% cocoa but you could use more or less. Chop up some candied orange peel, really small. Then pour some chocolate into the moulds, half way, sprinkle the chopped up candied orange peel in. Top up with more melted chocolate. If you put the orange peel in first (which you can do) they will show at the top. Perfectly fine but not as pretty. That’s it. Put in fridge for half an hour. Turn out. Eat. Won’t make you quite as sick as a Terry’s chocolate orange and much better for you.

I’ve checked with the Department of Health and these are officially one of your five a day…

Salted caramel chocolates

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Here it is, cut in half.

I’m very fond of salted caramel chocolates. I know salted caramel is a bit everywhere now, but I am partial.

L’Artisan du Chocolat’s are my favourite. But expensive. I went into the store within Selfridges not so long ago and a box costs £12 million pounds. Or nearly that.

Anyway, whenever I’m on a deadline, which is often, I think about how I can waste time in the kitchen. Because when I am failing at writing I need to achieve at something. Be it ironing or stuffing envelopes. I need a task that has a beginning, middle and end. Unlike writing which seems like all beginning and then huge relief followed by anxiety.

So this is what I did. I got my button chocolate mould, what I bought at Lakeland. This doesn’t make buttons like Cadbury’s buttons, it’s bigger. Each button is about 2cm across at the widest part. (Or something, I haven’t measured it I can if anyone wants me to). I melted some 70% cocoa chocolate, which isn’t really chocolate, it’s health food. I half filled the mould. Then put it in the fridge until set (not long). Then I put in some caramel sauce.

Here they are, chocolate at the bottom already. I actually put a bit more caramel in than is shown because I am very greedy.

Don’t be mean with the caramel sauce. But don’t fill so much that you can’t seal the chocolate up. They key is not to get the chocolate too thick, but to strike the right balance between enough chocolate to hold the caramel in, without making it too thin/thick. Even if you get it wrong the result is totally delicious, so fret not.

I use this caramel toffee sauce, aka dulce de leche. I don’t know how authentic it is but it’s what I use.

You thought I made my own caramel to go in these? You were wrong.

On top of each puddle of caramel, I then put a sprinkle of sea or rock salt. My two year old sometimes helps with this bit and some get enough salt to put you in a coma and I have to go round cleaning up.

You then let it rest for a bit more in the fridge, then top up with more chocolate. I keep my chocolate runny by keeping it over a pan of boiling water (but not on the stove).

Voila. Easy. Let’s just have another look at the finished product:

Pretty nice eh?

 

Addendum, November 2012.

I have now started making my own caramel to make these and it elevates them into something else. It doesn’t take long to make, the caramel, but as it’s my secret ingredient I am, for once, not going to share it. I’ll just post this here to be really annoying.

But you can find a recipe for caramel anywhere…

Chocolate Mulled Wine

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I found this recipe, in amongst various things I’d torn out of a magazine one Christmas past. It answered my question: “should I serve hot chocolate or booze (to the grown ups)?” for a Trick or Treating treasure hunt extravaganza that we were staging in our garden (for the children). It came from Delicious magazine and was written by Laura Santini. I really can’t impress on you how very good it is. Even my partner – a wine expert and hater of mulled wine – got all knee-buckly about it.

This apparently serves six but there was four of us and we managed quite nicely…

750ml red wine
1 cinnamon stick
1 large dried red chilli (I didn’t have one so I used some chilli flakes)
1tsp ground spice
5 whole cloves
100g caster sugar
50g Venezuelan Black chocolate, 100% cocoa – grated*

*if you’ve never grated 100% cocoa chocolate, be warned: it’s very brittle/dry and it goes EVERYWHERE. I wouldn’t personally recommend grating it, but instead, scraping it off with a sharp knife.

This is what you do:

Put the wine and spices in a saucepan and warm slowly, over a very low heat. Then, add the sugar and stir until dissolved.

Add the chocolate and warm through. I used one of those Aerolatte whizzer things to homogenize it as it had a tendency to go a bit ‘speckedly’ with the chocolate. You can either then strain and serve, or strain and chill until you need it (it says it’ll keep for two days), then warm it up again and serve.

I really don’t plan to make mulled wine any other way now. And look: 100% cocoa is terrifically good for you, so this is practically a health drink.

 

Snow Boots

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My very best snow boots were bought when I was fourteen from a ski shop in Kensington, London.  In preparation for a school ski-ing holiday to Caspoggio in Italy. I forget the make of them, but they served me for about twenty years (my feet didn’t seem to grow again til I got pregnant). I do remember that they were Canadian, made of leather, lined in sheepskin and with an extremely thick, rubber sole that seemed to stick to sheet ice. Eventually, they fell apart.

I don’t have snowboots as such now. I wear my neoprene wellingtons, my sheepskin boots or my Ecco Voyages, which are brilliant (best buy!). But living in the country, we feel the winter more keenly than we did in London.

Raindrops is where I buy my children’s snowboots. Every year I ring them up (excellent service) and trying to get them to work out what size I should buy, because I try to eek out two winters’ wear out of them.

The eskimo boots, £42, look like they’d be the best boot of all, but for my eldest I bought the Molo boot (the design has changed this year, it used to be nicer: these ones, which they still do for £20 but in limited sizes), which is plenty warm and practical enough for a Suffolk winter.

Last year, for my youngest (who was a size two then), I bought her these baby snowboots, £32, which were utterly brilliant. The baby snowboots have a tight ankle, so they’re quite a struggle to get in to, so go larger if need be, whereas I think the Molo and the limited stock ones come up quite big.

To help you with sizing, my youngest is a size 4G in StartRite and I got her a six in the baby snowboots – they are huge, but she can walk fine in them and there’s a hope they’ll still fit in February. Maybe even next year. My youngest is an 11.5F or G in StartRite and I got her a 12 in the Molos and they are big, but I’m not sure I’d go smaller. Thick socks and all that. Both these styles can go in the washing machine and I really rate them.

In fact I’m selling last year’s baby snowboots in grey, size 3 if anyone is interested: email me annalisa dot barbieri at mac dot com.

Home made Nutella

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Not the most amazing pic but it’s real life home made Nutella-type spread in a jar, look!

I know this doesn’t look good; two consecutive posts concerning chocolate.  There is tons of other stuff I could be writing about, I’m just not very fired up about them though. And as this is a blog, and I’m not being paid, it has to be a bit enjoyable for me.

In Italy Nutella comes in glass jars you can use, when you’ve scoffed the lot, as glasses to drink out of. They come in pretty patterns. I think you could get them here at one point too, but I don’t see them anymore.

I used to eat Nutella out of the jar, on a spoon. I can’t believe this now as I find it quite disgustingly sweet. The ads sell it to you as having slow release energy thanks to the 1.5 hazelnut you get in every serving…we have Nutella in our house but I loathe it now. It’s laden with sugar.

So when I saw Annie Rigg’s book about Edible Presents and saw there was a recipe for Chocolate and Hazelnut spread in it, I jumped.

You probably can do this without a food processor, but I don’t.

Makes 1x 450g jar

75g blanched hazelnuts
100g 70% cocoa chocolate
100ml condensed milk
1-2 tablespoons of hazelnut oil
a pinch of salt
3-4 tablespoons of hot water (if you even need this much)

The recipe asks for you to use sterilised jars. I use them straight out of the dishwasher, if it’s good enough for Nigella, it’s good enough for me.

Toast the hazelnuts; you can do this in an oven or in a dry frying pan. Until they’re golden. Cool slightly and then  grind to as smooth a paste as you can get in your food processor.

Melt the chocolate, condensed milk and hazelnut oil, very gently, in a saucepan. When the chocolate has melted and it’s all mixed up nicely, pour this into the food processor, add the pinch of salt (I always use ground up rock salt in sweet things) and blend. Add as much hot water as you need to give it a thick, spreadable consistency. Don’t panic if, like me, you see it has gone really runny. It firms up in the fridge. That said, you shouldn’t overdo it, I’m just saying don’t go into a tizz if you have (you can always use it as super luxurious ice cream topping if it does go wrong).

Spoon into a jar and keep in the fridge. Rigg says it keeps for up to two weeks. I doubt it will last that long.

Now, I didn’t want to interrupt the recipe further up, with my tales of hazelnut essence, but I bought some from Bakery Bits.  I was wary because, unlike the excellent other ‘essences’ I have from there (Aroma Panettone and Aroma Veneziana are exceptional) which have natural oils in them, the ingredients listed seemed decidedly un-natural. Stupidly I thought it was like extract of hazelnut or something (this is probably impossible to do). Anyway, the jury’s out on whether it’s nice or not but my verdict is: disappointing. Its aroma is rather synthetic and artificial. I liked it at first, but you need to go really easy on it as it can become very overpowering; and I’m not sure I’d use it again. My partner’s nose is far more sensitive and he found it overwhelming.

This recipe doesn’t call for essence of any kind, but because I had it I added a few drops – about four. My seven year old loves this spread but says it’s too ‘hazelnutty’ which is probably accurate. I think this essence is good for when you really need to convey ‘this is made of hazelnuts’ without actually adding that many real nuts and that isn’t the case for this spread, or anything I’m likely to make.

This spread is, anyway, delicious and whilst still not a health food, is a damn sight healthier than shop-bought.

Mmmmm. Eat on toast, or on a croissant or straight out of the jar with your fingers.

One giant after dinner mint

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I got this recipe from last month’s Delicious magazine.

After dinner mint chocolate: make it, smash it, eat it

I used a long tin of about 8cm by 30cm, cos I wanted that sort of shape. I lined it in baking parchment (tip: scrunch up the paper first, then flatten it out so it lays flat more easily, this also gives the After Eight an authentic looking side to it, all crinkly).

I melted some dark chocolate. I used about 100g for the bottom and 100g for the top (I’ll put the whole recipe, as I used it, below) I used 70% but actually you could easily go higher – and definitely no lower. It’s important to get the chocolate spread thinly. Thick sounds good but in reality this means you end up with chocolate that’s hard to crack and you want it thin. Don’t sweat it though because unless you’re an idiot you still end up with a great end product.

Pour/spread the chocolate for the bottom (so, 100g) on the bottom of the tin – refrigerate. Chocolate takes almost no time at all to set. Mine took what seemed like 10 mins. It should be hard and crisp.

Make the fondant bit. I used one egg white and 220g icing sugar plus of course the all important peppermint essence. Just in case your fondant is really stiff add a tiny bit of water. Go easy as you don’t want to add too much.

This is a suitable juncture to point out that this product contains raw egg whites so you know, don’t eat if you’re old/young/pregnant/prone to hysteria.

Mix the egg white and icing sugar together (sieve the icing sugar in) until you have a consistency that you like. Add a teaspoon of peppermint extract. Note that refrigerating it doesn’t really thicken it up much so aim for what you want the finished filling to be like, not what you hope it will turn into. To this end you may wish to add the egg white bit by bit. (I never have to as my eggs are laid by my chickens, so not giant).

I end up with really thick fondant that’s a great consistency for what it needs to do.

IMG_1130

When ready, spread over the base layer of chocolate and refrigerate for an hour or two.

Now melt more chocolate and spread it gently over the top – don’t drag it or you’ll end up with a mess.

Refrigerate and when ready to eat bring it out and smash it up with a hammer (but so you get big pieces, not lots of little ones) and let people help themselves. The circles on mine (if you look closely) are from the meat tenderizer I used. I’m sure finer folk have a toffee hammer or some such. DON’T bash it with a large thing like a rolling pin, you want to shatter it into shards, not smash it into a mess of tiny pieces.

You can cut this into squares, but they won’t be really neat. Or at least, mine weren’t. And I do think it’s fun to break it up yourself and eat shards of it.

Scoff after your meal with a strong espresso.

IMG_1136

In summary you need:

about 200g very dark chocolate
220g icing sugar
1 egg white
one teaspoon of peppermint extract (I used the Star Kay White one from Waitrose)

A greedy disposition.

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