Friday 16 September 2016

Lemon and white chocolate biscuits

I went on a shopping trip the other day and of course what happens when you go and randomly browse the shops? Yes, you come back with something completely random. And that’s exactly what happened to me. I went shopping with my best friend and we made the mistake of going in the cookware shop in town which had a few discount baskets…and the next thing I knew I’d left the shop with a cookie stamp, with which you can stamp your very own messages onto your bakes. Before I picked this little gem up I didn’t need anything but once it was in my hand I just couldn’t imagine my baking cupboard without it. So of course I had to make some biscuits to test it out.
I used the basic biscuit dough recipe on the BBC website (find it here), but tweaked it a little, halving the butter and sugar, adding a tad more flour but keeping the same amount of egg. The basic biscuit dough on the BBC website is just a canvas, upon which you can add whatever flavours you want. I chose lemon and white chocolate.
These biscuits are perfect for a light afternoon treat with your cuppa.

Ingredients
125g softened butter
70g caster sugar
1 egg yolk
160g plain flour
1 teaspoon lemon juice
Zest of a lemon
100g white chocolate

Method:
   1)    Grease and line a baking tray with grease-proof paper. Preheat the oven to 170°C/Gas 4. Cream the butter, sugar and lemon zest together until light and fluffy. Mix in the egg yolk and then gradually sieve in the flour, mixing after each addition. When the dough gets stiffer to stir, get in there with your hands and gently knead the rest of the flour in. The dough will be softer than a normal biscuit dough but still mouldable. Wrap the dough in cling-film and refrigerate for 20-30 minutes.
2)   Take half of the dough and roll out to the thickness of a £1 coin. Cut out 3-4 inch rounds with a fluted cookie cutter (I find the crimped edges these cutters create, hold the melted chocolate a lot more).
3)   If you have a cookie stamp, now would be the time to use it! Once you’re happy with the design of your biscuits place them on the baking tray, leaving a few centimetres between each one. Bake for 13-16 minutes until the edges are brown but the tops are only a tiny bit golden. Leave to cool on a wire rack. You’ll find you need to do about 3 batches of baking.
4)  Place a sheet of grease-proof paper on a couple of trays. Melt the white chocolate in the microwave or in a bowl over a pan of simmering water. Allow to cool a little bit. Take a biscuit and twirl it so that only the edges get covered in chocolate and then place on the tray to set. To speed up the setting process, put the biscuits in the fridge for half an hour.
5)     Boil the kettle, get the tea or coffee out and enjoy.

Sunday 3 July 2016

Salted Caramel Brownies – Belgian style!



In the past I have had a love-hate relationship with brownies. Love, in the sense that I loooooovveee eating them. Hate, in the sense that any brownie mixtures I tend to make HATE me and the resulting brownie is always too much on the underbaked side.
However, I ran into this little recipe by Asda Good Living, claiming to be the ‘ultimate’ recipe so, naturally, I just had to give it a go. This recipe informs bakers to plunge their tray of fresh from the oven brownies into a tray of cold water to start rapidly cooling them. This sounded a bit extreme but once I tried it I never went back. I’m not sure on the science aspect of this but, in my head, it would make the sugar crystals seize up a lot quicker, hence helping the brownie set. Whatever the scientific reason, it works and that's all I need to know.

As well as chocolate brownies, I wanted to do something with this product.......Lotus Biscoff spread! If you haven't heard of this stuff you should educate yourself. You know those caramelly little biscuits you get with your coffee in a cafe? Well..lesson 1: that is called a Speculoo and it comes from Belgium. Lesson 2: there's a spreadable version. And whilst in Belgium, I thought it only right to do something with this little beauty.

So I went on the Lotus Biscoff website and found this recipe, which involves creating lotus balls of goodness (go with me on this one) and submerging them in the luscious brownie mixture. I was sceptical at first too.
So I combined the 'ultimate' brownie recipe I adopted recently with the above 'lotus balls' recipe, made a few tweeks of my own and hey presto, I give you my own version...with the added twist of the salted caramel flavour rather than just plain Jane.
Here's what I did and how you can make it too:

Ingredients:


Brownie mixture: 
225g plain chocolate
225g butter
3 eggs + 1egg yolk
275g light brown muscovado sugar
125g plain flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
Lotus Biscoff spread spheres:
100g smooth lotus spread
100g icing sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt.
To decorate:
100g white chocolate
2 tablespoons smooth Lotus Biscoff Spread
1-2 Lotus Biscoff Original caramelised biscuits, bashed up
sprinkle of salt
Method:

1) First, make the Lotus Biscoff spread spheres: In a small bowl, mix the lotus spread with enough of the icing sugar to create a pliable dough, similar to fondant icing. Divide the mixture into conker-sized spheres. Place on a plate and sprinkle with the salt.


 2)Make the brownie mixture: Preheat the oven to 180°C/Gas 4 and line a square tin with baking paper. Chop the chocolate and, along with the butter, place in a heatproof bowl set over a pan of just simmering water. Do not allow the water to touch the bottom of the bowl.







3) Meanwhile, whisk the eggs and
egg yolk for a few minutes until thickened and frothy. Add the sugar and whisk to combine.
4) Once melted together, pour the chocolate and butter mixture into the eggs and sugar and gently fold through.
5) Carefully fold through the flour, baking powder and salt.
6)Pour the brownie batter into the tin and disperse the lotus spread spheres evenly throughout. Bake in the middle of the oven for 45 minutes. You may need to place tin foil over the top of the brownie at the 30-minute mark to prevent the top from burning. When a knife or cocktail stick comes out clean, your brownies are baked. Fill a roasting tin, or something similar, halfway with really COLD water. Once baked, immediately place your brownie tin into the cold water and allow to sit in this until completely cold (obviously don't let any water actually touch the brownies). Cut into squares.

7) To decorate, melt the white chocolate with the 2 tablespoons of Lotus Biscoff spread in a heatproof bowl set over a pan of simmering water. Stir occasionally. Once melted take off the heat and allow to cool for 5-10 minutes before pouring into a disposable piping bag. Snip a narrow end off of the bag and pipe drizzly lines over your brownie squares. Alternatively, just use a teaspoon for this. Sprinkle with the biscuit pieces, another sprinkle of salt and allow to set.

Tips:
*enjoy warm with vanilla ice-cream.
*an electric hand-mixer can be useful to whisk the eggs in step 3.
*a microwave can be used to melt the chocolate and butter/Lotus spread in steps 2 and 7, however, DO NOT leave the microwave alone and check and stir the chocolate at least every 10 seconds if you do go for this method of melting.






Sunday 24 April 2016

Rocky Road (UK name: Chocolate Tiffin)


So it’s a rainy day in Brussels (honestly the weather here is more confused than in London and that’s saying something). It's literally rained 4 times today and the sun has come out 5 times. I know what you're thinking- trust the Brit to make a point about the weather in a blog. I'm telling you though, us Brits are onto something because the weather here really is a good talking point! So in this confused weather day I decided to have tea, biscuits and update my baking blog. It's a very British past-time I'll admit.
When I moved to Brussels a month ago (albeit temporarily), I came with the fierce attitude that no matter the limits in my baking equipment, I would still manage to bake. I came true on this though I'm not going to lie- it’s been more EFFORT than usual. So far I've made cookies, cupcakes and rocky road, not bad going…So now for the next step- to crack out the laptop and actually write something down!
Now this week this bake has caused some confusion- it seems a lot of people don't actually know what rocky road is!! Well let me educate you about this gorgeously chocolatey sugary goodness bite of heaven. It's just chocolate, butter, syrup, biscuits and all things sweet meted down and mixed up and cut into bite-sized squares. It originates from America but when the British adopted it, they rather appropriately gave it the posh name of a 'Tiffin'. Call it what you want guys, as long as you enjoy it that's all that counts ;). For all those baking-shy people this is the best thing for beginners- there's no oven involved so you CANNOT FAIL. Give it a go. You'll love it.

INGREDIENTS

250g chocolate (mixture of milk and dark)
125g butter (unsalted)
1-2 tablespoons of golden syrup/ honey/any other syrup
200g crushed biscuits (any you like)
100g marshmallows
-anything else you want to add (such as dried fruit, nuts, other chocolate or sweets)

METHOD


1)      Line a square tin (or anything you have) with cling film, using a dash of butter to make it stick. Set aside.
2)      Bring a pan of water to the boil and turn down the heat to a simmer. Chop the chocolate into small pieces and dice the butter into cubes. Place chocolate and butter into a heatproof bowl with the syrup. Place over the pan of simmering water, making sure the surface of the water DOES NOT TOUCH the bottom of the bowl (the chocolate will burn otherwise). Allow the ingredients to melt, stirring only occasionally. Once melted take the bowl off the heat and set aside to cool down slightly.
3)      Meanwhile break or crush up your biscuits in a big(ish) mixing bowl. It’s up to you how far you go with this; if you like chunks of biscuit then only break them up but if you prefer them to blend in more with the chocolate mix, go wild with a rolling pin/ mallet/ brick (just joking about this one).
4)      Pour the chocolate into the biscuits and mix to combine. Next chop up the marshmallows and any other ingredients you so desire, and stir into the mixture.
5)      Pour the rocky road mixture into the tin and flatten down with a spatula. Allow to cool properly for an hour or so before putting in the fridge to set for 2-3 hours minimum. Once properly set, run a large sharp knife under hot water (yeah you don't want to mess with this girl!), wipe and cut the rocky road into your desired portions. This will keep for a week or so in the fridge.
6)      Dish out to friends and colleagues to fatten them up (optional).

                                                                     TIPS AND TRICKS
*Going the extra mile: if you fancy being a bit..well…fancy…why not decorate the top of your rocky road? As Mary Berry says, it’s always better to show a bit of what’s on the inside on the outside! I was using this bake as an excuse to use up some leftover chocolate so I went mental with the decoration. A good technique to use is the following: after flattening the surface of the rocky road in step (5) melt down about 100g chocolate and drizzle about half of it over the surface of the rocky road. This will act like a glue to attach your toppings. Add whatever toppings you want, such as chocolate buttons, bits of broken biscuit, extra marshmallows etc. Then drizzle the other half of the melted chocolate over the top in as artistic a fashion as you can manage. I find using a contrasting chocolate to the one you used in the actual rocky road looks nice here (ie milk on white, white on dark). Trust me, the contrast looks very fetching to the eye ;)…as if a cake of chocolate and sheer sugar isn’t fetching enough to the eye!

*FANCY FINISH: Once you’ve cut up your rocky road, dust with icing sugar to give it a finished Starbucksy kind of finish.


Monday 11 January 2016

A Classic: Victoria Sponge

To start off the New Year I thought I’d go for a classic bake – the Victoria Sponge. I made this for my Nan’s birthday a few days ago on request. After all of the indulgent flavours of the Christmas season it was nice to go back to basics with a nice fluffy sponge sandwiched with fruity jam and a light butter cream. This cake really is perfect for those January babies who don’t want a birthday cake too heavy. Or you can use it as a base for an iced extravaganza. Your choice.
Rather than creaming the butter and sugar first before adding the flour and eggs, this time I went for the all-in-one method which I previously criticized. Turns out it doesn’t really matter how you mix a sponge. The trick is not to over-mix it!
I have also opted for the longer-lasting butter cream filling as opposed to fresh cream. But if you know the Vicky sponge won't last more than 2 days crack out the whipping cream!

Cake Ingredients
6 oz / 150g margarine or soft butter
6 oz / 150g caster sugar
6 oz / 150g self-raising flour
3 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Filling
5-6 tablespoons strawberry or raspberry jam
6 oz / 150g icing sugar
3oz / 75g softened butter
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
-dash of milk

Method
1) Grease and line two sandwich cake tins and preheat the oven to 180°C / Gas mark 5.

2) Put all cake ingredients in a mixing bowl and mix with an electric mixer or hand beater for approximately 2 minutes until everything is incorporated and a smooth light batter is achieved (I'm talking drop-off-the-spoon consistency...). Divide between the sandwich tins and bake for 20-25 minutes until slightly shrunken away from the sides and springy to the touch. Turn out onto a wire rack and allow to cool.

3) With an electric hand beater fluff up the butter. Add the vanilla extract and gradually sieve in the icing sugar, mixing after each addition. It may be necessary to add a dash of milk every now and then to loosen it up a bit. Once all the icing sugar is added continue to beat the icing until pale and spreadable- a couple of minute should do.


4) Spread the jam generously on one of the upturned cakes. Spread the other cake with the butter cream and sandwich them together – whether you have the jam or butter cream on top is entirely up to you! Dust liberally with icing sugar. Gorgeous.