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.

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.

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.

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.

Muffins

So hey. I've not posted in a while and it's the first time I've posted from my flash new phone (just an iPhone 5c, don't get excited). Anyway I made some nice muffins today which was a complete surprise because I always thought that this perfectly round-topped fluffy light creation was the stuff of Starbucks dream world. I found out today that this ideal baked good is not so unachievable as we all think. The recipe I found was from littlesweetbaker and the ingredients are all in cups. If you are clever and have a contraption with the cup measurements on it, use that. If you're like me just pick a mug - any mug- and use it to measure everything where the word 'cup' is mentioned. 

In the rewrite here I missed out bicarbonate of soda from the original recipe purely because I didn't have any and I wrote the oven temperature which I used on my oven after translating it. The article along with the recipe on littlesweetbaker.com discusses how to achieve that bakery style idealised iconic muffin we all dream of and apparently it's simply down to raising agents and temperature: the raising agent to make the batter rise and the high temperature at the beginning of the bake to make that top spring out straight away. Obviously after that happens it becomes necessary to turn down the heat to avoid book ends for muffins. If you want to read it for yourself go ahead, very interesting stuff! And if you're reading this littlesweetbaker...props to you! 

Here's the recipe anyway: 

2 1/2 cups plain flour

1 tablespoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 cup milk

1 cup sugar

1 tablespoon vanilla extract

1/2 cup butter (melted)

2 eggs (beaten)

1 cup chocolate chips

1) Preheat oven to 220 degrees / gas 5. Line a 12 hole muffin tin with paper cases.

2) Place the flour, baking powder and salt into a big mixing bowl and stir to combine. Mix through the chocolate chips and set aside.

3) In another bowl, mix together the sugar, eggs, milk, vanilla and melted butter. Gradually pour into the dry ingredients, stirring as you go. Once both wet and dry ingredients are just combined, stop what you're doing and take a step back.

4) Divide the mixture between the 12 cases, filling them right to the top. Bake in the oven for 5 minutes and then turn the temperature down to 180 degrees or Gas 4. Bake for a further 15 to minutes. Once springy to the touch get the muffins out of the oven and allow to cool or eat warm.

Chocolate Brownies or 'Brazzies'

Wow it’s been a while since my last blog post. When I last posted I was a week away from finishing my university final year exams, probably bored stiff of film and Greek revision so baked a cake to remain sane. So much has happened since then; I finished said exams, moved out, got my final degree classification and completely graduated from university (gown an’ all). So now that’s all done with I thought it was time to get back on the baking sharing thing. It’s not that I haven’t baked anything since my last post in May – BELIEVE ME there have been cookies and cakes baking in my oven since then- but I just had no energy to write about them after. But now I’m back on the baking blog writing wagon. For now.

So what better way to get back on track than with a brownie recipe that actually works.

Now, I think I can confidently say ‘I can bake’. But I have to say the humble brownie has always been something that I’ve not been that good at baking; you could say it is my Achilles heel in my baking arsenal. I have simply never been able to achieve that crunchy topped, chewy but not gooey brownie. Instead I have always achieved this very under-baked style brownie which is fine around the edges but a half-baked gooey nightmare in the middle. Don’t get me wrong I’m a huge fan of under-baking, for example in the loyal cookie (who wants a crunchy cookie over that dreamy chewy number we all know and love?), however in this case I would say my brownies have always been TOO under-baked. So you can imagine when I found the following recipe I was sceptical. Firstly the title of the book in which I found the recipe sounds dodgy: ‘Perfect Cakes Every Time’ along with the byline: ‘…guaranteed to succeed!’

I mean those are some bold statements right? When I saw this in the shop I just had to put it to the test. Once home I was flicking through the unillustrated pages of classic recipes when I stumbled across a recipe for ‘Rich Fudge Brownies’. I thought ‘hmm that’s always something I’ve fallen short of the mark of…so let’s put this failsafe status to the test!’

And I’m happy to say that I have now used this recipe three times and it has worked every.single.time!! Woop I am no longer a brownie baker failure!

Now the concept of this book really is very good. Apparently a newly-wed Victoria Combe baked a horrendous cake for her in-laws and, in despair, wrote a plea to readers of the Daily Telegraph for recipes that she could not mess up. Subsequently readers of said newspaper sent in their cherished and fool-proof recipes to help her out and of course her baking improved. THEN she put all of these recipes together into the book which I now hold in my hands ‘Perfect Cakes Every Time’. So even though this is a big statement I think we can all have a little faith that these recipes…well they clearly know what they’re talking about!

Now I have to say a big thanks to ‘Karin Smith from Reading, Berkshire’, who sent this recipe into this charity baking mission. It truly is fab. The only thing I tweaked was the sugar. Firstly I tried the recipe straight with the caster sugar it suggests, and they came out well if a little lighter in colour to what I’m used to. So the next time I used light brown muscovado sugar to add more density in colour and flavour and I haven’t looked back since. I find muscovado sugar always adds to the chewy element of baled goods too, hence why it is used in the likes of cookies and other chewy nuggets of joy. As well as this I’ve messed about with adding choc chips too and I find doubling the ingredients is always a better idea. THIS TIME however I dipped some of my brownie cubes in chocolate and hundreds and thousands to channel that well-loved chocolate drop sweet ‘Jazzies’; I call these beauties ‘Brazzies’. I did leave half of them naked though because my Mum was disgusted I had the audacity to pimp a brownie. Let’s just say we have agreed to disagree.

So here’s the recipe from this book (in doubled format):

200g / 8 oz plain chocolate

100g / 4 oz unsalted butter

4 eggs

300g / 12 oz light brown muscovado sugar

1-2 teaspoons vanilla extact

150g / 6 oz self-raising flour

·     100g / 4 oz  chopped walnuts/ chocolate chips (optional)

·         For ‘Brazzies’: 100g / 4 oz melted chocolate and a bowl of hundreds and thousands.

1) Preheat oven to 180°C / Gas Mark 4. Grease and line a 9x9”/22x22cm square baking tin.

2) Melt the chocolate in a heatproof bowl over a pan of simmering water. Once melted add in the cutter bit by bit and stir to combine to a smooth chocolatey silky bowl of joy.

3) Whisk the eggs, sugar and vanilla extract together until pale. Pour in the chocolate mixture and whisk to combine.

4) Sieve in the flour and use a metal spoon to fold everything lightly together. Now stir in any nuts or chocolate chips you desire. Pour into the tin, leveling off with a spatula. Bake for 30-40 minutes. The brownie is baked when the surface is crispy and cracking, pulling away from the sides a little and not wobbly when shaken slightly. Allow to cool in the tin until cold before cutting up.

5) For ‘Brazzies’: Melt chocolate as above and pour hundreds and thousands into a bowl. Dip the bottom of each brownie cube into the melted chocolate and then into the sprinkles. Leave to set, dipped side up.

Enjoy x

Raspberry and Apple Country Crumble Slice

I made this traybake with wholemeal flour for a change, something I've never used before but I've always heard is supposed to seriously pimp up any normal cake mixture. And I can safely say it does! The wholemeal flour definitely adds an extra nutty layer to the cake flavour and goes really well with anything fruity. Plus the use of less refined sugar and flour always makes you feel that tad bit healthier even if you are still eating cake ;). Here's my recipe:

For the cake:

250g / 10 oz light brown muscovado sugar

250g / 10 oz margarine

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

5 eggs (beaten together)

250g / 10 oz wholemeal self-raising flour

75g / 3 oz sultanas

1 green apple (Granny Smith’s)

50g / 2 oz raspberries (each one cut in half)

Crumble Topping:

 75g / 3 oz butter (chilled)

150g / 6 oz plain flour

40g/ 1 ½ oz demerara sugar

Icing:

6 tablespoons icing sugar

3-4 teaspoons water (more or less, go by eye rather than recipe with this one)

Method

1) Grease and line a 12 x 9 rectangular tray-bake tray with baking paper and set aside. Preheat the oven to 180°C / Gas 4.

2) Make the cake batter: Cream the margarine, vanilla extract and muscovado sugar together until pale and fluffy. Add the beaten egg and wholemeal flour bit by bit, mixing after each addition. Once combined, stir through the sultanas.

3) Make the crumble topping: Dice the butter and rub into the plain flour until a breadcrumb consistency has been achieved. Stir through the demerara sugar.

4) Spread half of the cake batter into the tin, leveling it off nicely. Peel, core and cut the apple into four wedges. With a vegetable peeler, peel length-ways down the apple wedge to get extra thin apple slices.

Use two apple wedges for the middle layer of fruit, distributing the thin slices evenly onto the cake batter.

 Follow with half of the raspberries. Spread the rest of the batter evenly over the layer of fruit. Peel the last two apple wedges and scatter slices over the top along with the rest of the raspberries.

Sprinkle the crumble topping over the top fruit layer, pressing down lightly. 

5) Bake for 40-50 minutes, until golden, springy to the touch and an inserted skewer comes out clean.

  Top tip: Place a bit of foil on top of the cake after thirty minutes to prevent further colouring on the top – just because it looks golden and lovely on the top doesn’t mean it’s cooked all the way through yet!

6) Once baked, allow to cool in the tin for 10-15 minutes, before tipping out onto a cooling rack. Sprinkle liberally with more demerara sugar and cut into squares.

7) Make the icing: Sieve the icing sugar into a bowl and gradually add the water, until it reaches a thick pipeable consistency. Pipe or drizzle the icing over the squares with a spoon. Store in the fridge to retain the fresh flavour of the fruit. Simply eat with a cup of tea, or warm up in the microwave and serve with ice-cream or custard for a lovely dessert.