Chocolate Truffles

So yesterday, I made the truffle base (25g butter, 200ml double cream and 200g dark chocolate) which I left to cool and harden in the fridge overnight.

Today, I spooned out the mix, shaped into balls (I made 30), although my shapes and sizes varied considerably! I think I possibly need to weigh out the mix so that I get roughly equal sized balls. I also found that while the warmth of my hands meant that the top layer of each ball started to melt and was very slippery in my hands, the middle stayed pretty firm and was quite difficult still to shape easily! Leigh suggested using latex gloves and this made it a bit easier. Later on I read another recipe for chocolate truffles that suggested dusting your hands and the work surface with cocoa - sounds good, will try that next time.

Then we get to the covering of the balls. My imagined truffles are coated in white chocolate and have freeze-dried raspberry pieces sprinkled on the top. So I melted my white chocolate - fine. The rest didn't really go to plan! The first truffle I dropped into the chocolate bowl to cover, big mistake. The truffle just started melting! I hoiked it out as soon as I noticed but this left me with lovely dark chocolate streaks in my white chocolate. I then tried poking the truffles onto cocktail sticks and dripping the chocolate over the top. This worked better...until I had to remove the cocktail stick from the truffle - because the hot chocolate was melting the surface of the truffle, anything I used to try and pry out the cocktail stick resulted in a massive dent in the truffle and a big patch of dark chocolate that mingled every so nicely with the white chocolate. Still I persevered for another couple and I think I managed 5.

They actually don't look too bad in the photo, but closeup, the flecks of dark chocolate are more obvious.

I rolled the rest in cocoa powder. Much easier and they still taste good. I wanted the truffles to be white and pink as that goes with the theme of my mother-in-law's charity for the year, but now I'm also planning pink and white meringues, having the chocolate contrast might be good (notice how I'm wriggling out of trying another batch of covered truffles again!).

Onwards and upwards!

More sweets...

In pursuit of my search for sweets I have a bowl of chocolate ganache cooling in the fridge tonight for the making of chocolate truffles tomorrow. Hoping these go well...

Also, Leigh made some great peppermint and chocolate mini meringues yesterday

I'm hoping to also try and replicate these are the event, but with strawberry flavouring and a bit of pink colour. If the truffles work out - that's 2 out of 3 sorted!

Trillionaire's Tart

Mmmmm...quite nice!!! (and that's the 3rd tin of condensed milk I've used in baking this week - hee hee!) ;

335g unsalted butter
 100g caster sugar
 100g plain flour
 25g cocoa, sifted
 140g ground almonds
 175g light brown soft sugar
 450g sweetened condensed milk (I used a regular 397g tin and it worked fine) 
4 tbsp golden syrup
150g dark chocolate
½ tsp sea salt
200g milk chocolate

1. Line a 20cm x 30cm tin with baking parchment and preheat oven to 180C/160Cish fan/gas 4. Cream 160g butter with the sugar and then sift in the flour, cocoa and ground almonds. Mix well. Press into the lined tin and bake for 20 mins. Set aside.

2. For the caramel, put 175g butter, the brown sugar, condensed milk, syrup, 50g dark chocolate and salt in a heavy-based pan; heat gently, stirring until the sugar dissolves completely. Bring to the boil and simmer briskly for about 8 minutes, until thickened. Pour over the shortbread; smooth evenly. Leave for at least 1 hour to cool completely.

3. For the topping, melt 100g dark chocolate and the milk chocolate separately, in a bain marie or the microwave. Pour the milk chocolate over the caramel layer, then drizzle the dark over and swirl together with a skewer. When cool, mark into squares and serve.

Garden birds

We've had a bird feeder in our garden for a good few months now, and apart from being ravaged by some wood pigeons, it's remained untouched by the other feathered lovelies in our garden. But, with a slight change to the arrangement of the feeders, the wood pigeons are no longer easily able to access the hanging feeders (without sliding down the wall!) and the smaller birds are finally joining us!

We believe the blue tits are nesting in our nesting box again and we've seen them regularly at the feeder over the last few days. A few blackbirds, sparrows and a greenfinch this morning - brilliant! We had some long-tailed tits in one of the other bushes in the garden last year...I'm hoping we'll see them again soon. Might even get some pictures.

Sweeties

Aaargh! What has happened to Blogger?? New layout and look...I don't like it. I don't know where anything is now - being a good Methodist I don't like change!!

Anyway, the reason I'm blogging is that I've agreed to provide some sweets for a golfing event that my mother-in-law is running at her golf club in June - she's Lady Captain this year and this is for her Lady Captain's day. It appears that the ladies will golf 9 holes, then stop off with me and Leigh for drinks and nibbles before completing the course.

I've been looking through Leigh's sweet making books to try and narrow down a list of possibilities. I need sweets which can be produced in quantities of 80 easily and quickly and at not too high expense. They need to be things people can eat while also holding a drinks glass and managing a golf bag (the original idea was to package 2 or 3 sweets for each lady in a nice box but clearly that's not going to be practical if they're just stopping off in the middle of 18 holes!).

Also, I'm trying to make sweets which do NOT involve boiling sugar - no toffee, caramel, fudge etc etc. I really don't trust myself to be consistent, even if I do actually manage to get one batch right! One possibility I saw is coconut ice. There were a couple of variations on the recipe but I went with the one I found first in Life is Sweet.

It is basically 500g icing sugar mixed with 2 tins of condensed milk and 400g desiccated coconut and then refrigerate overnight. Yum. So...most of it made it into the tin...and having been in the fridge longer than suggested, it's still quite soft - not at all the consistency I expect for coconut ice. But it is totally yum. How can it not be with those ingredients! But sadly I think it's going to be too sticky for the occasion. I have another coconut recipe I might try, but I need to work through my other possibilities first - chocolate truffles next...

Coffee time

I was sitting in Starbucks with the boys this afternoon, managing them and their drinks, wiping up after chocolate eating, making sure things didn't get spilt, preventing arguments over who gets my straw...and I remembered a time when I used to be able to go out for a coffee, take a book, read for a while, relax...and wondered what that would be like again! But then I looked at the boys and thought that actually this is more fun all in all - I might miss some alone time occasionally, but sharing time with the boys is much better. After all, Zachary will be starting school in September and I'm sure that all too soon I will become an embarrassing parent who must be shunned at all costs, so (without making this too mushy) I must make the most of time with him and Leo together now.

By the way - when I went to get the boys up this morning, Leo presented himself at their door sans pyjama bottoms, having removed his nappy, which he was presenting to me saying "I've got my nappy," and with his pyjama top on inside out and with one arm through the head hole. Guess he'd been awake for a while!

Ta da!! The hot cross buns!

Hurrah! Finally had time to make them today - and it did take all of 6 hours in total...but that was mainly because the dough needed 3 lots of rising/proving. I'm glad I left them until I had proper time to make them rather than trying to rush the rising and they actually seem softer and less dense than my dough usually is. The real test will be whether they're hard as rocks tomorrow...

Here they are ready for final proving



Out of the oven and glazed



And a pic of the inside. Yummy.

Time Off

We are off out for a slap-up Chinese meal tonight with some of our friends so the boys are staying overnight with Leigh's parents. The boys were collected at 1 this afternoon and how have I enjoyed my free time off with my husband - done the ironing and finished Zachary's Spiderman hooded towel. And watched LOTS of TV!!!

PS

And we had lovely mocha creams for dessert made by our guests. I've pinched the recipe to have a bash at them myself!

Pesto Chicken Stew with Dumplings

We had friends over for dinner tonight and I made Pesto Chicken Stew with Dumplings - a recipe I had come across in the April Good Food magazine (along with hot cross buns [bear with me...] and the lovely fruity simnel cake. Also a recipe for chocolate hazelnut torte - still to be tested!).

It needs 12-15 chicken thighs to serve 6-8 people so I went for 12, to feed the 4 of us this evening and then have (hopefully!) 1 or 2 dinners left over to go in the freezer. I managed to fit 8 thighs in my pan with all the stock and other liquid!!! Had a panic about an hour into the cooking when the liquid didn't look as though it was reducing at all and I still had peas, sundried tomatoes and pesto to fit in! Fortunately it did go down enough for me to mix that lot in although I don't think I was careful enough putting the casserole in the oven as I now need to clean spilled stew from the oven tomorrow! Still it tasted really good (I thought it might end up too pesto-y but it didn't) and there's another dinner in the freezer. Yum!

Easter 2012

It's been a busy Easter weekend this year. We went to Snibston Discovery Museum with Leigh's parents on Good Friday, had a brilliant roast dinner (courtesy of Leigh!) on Saturday. Then it was Easter breakfast at church and morning service for me and the boys followed by Easter egg hunt at our friends' house. The weather was not great, but good enough for the children to have an excited 10 minutes running round the garden searching out chocolate!

Easter Monday we went to another friends' house for a late Mardi Gras party - we made carnival masks for the occasion...




I'm not sure, but I think Zachary's face says "do I really have to pose for this?"! I made some mini key lime pies



The recipe described them as "speedy," but I think that was solely on the basis that the filling didn't need to be cooked! Pressing biscuit mixture into 24 mini muffin sections of a tin was not speedy! Fortunately though, the mixture puffed up quite a bit in the oven (the base did need to be cooked) and I could reshape my otherwise slightly ropey bases when they came out and were still hot!

Tuesday was fairly quiet although we did go out to Staunton Harold in the afternoon and today we have been to Twycross Zoo with Uncle Jamie. Again, weather not fantastic, but the hail did hold off while we were there and it was great. Hopefully swimming tomorrow and friends over for some dinner. Out for dinner on Friday night and then CBeebies Live on Saturday afternoon (which I think Leigh and I are looking forward to more than the boys!). Busy but lovely. Monday might come as a bit of a shock to the system...

Realisation

I have realised that lately this blog has become less about my general day to day doings and more just a run-down of what I've baked recently! I shall attempt to put this right...in the meantime though...just so you don't get bored...!

Auntie Becky's birthday cake - as decorated by Zachary. Vanilla sponge with jam and buttercream filling and topped with buttercream.




Easter fruity Simnel slice - delicious although highly bad for you. There's a 500g pack of marzipan in there (along with everything else!)



Uncle Jamie's birthday cake (essentially the same as Becky's but with a different colour icing and topping!)



Mini blueberry tarts. Nice.



I had planned to have another bash at something yeast-based this week - hot cross buns. But not managed it so far. Hopefully I will soon - I need a day when I will regularly be back at the house to check on the 3 risings/provings they need and not be rushed about how long I give them to rise (as it's turned colder, and despite what the recipe says, nothing will double in size in an hour at the temperature the house is at the moment!). Watch this space.

More baking - hooray!

I made a Mary Berry Hokey Pokey Coffee cake this week and some rather nice cherry biscuits (from a new baking book I was given for Mother's Day). The coffee cake came out really well and I even managed to get the walnut praline right this time round (no stirring, just swirling!), and the biscuits were good, although not as crisp as we had imagined they might be. Still tasty though and a good straightforward recipe.

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

(the title is really about my baking efforts but I got carried away talking about Zachary's party too!)

Zachary's party went really well - the balloon modellers were a massive hit with everyone! Paid them a flat rate for basically as many balloons as they could do in a hour - 2 or 3 children must have gone home with around 5 balloon models! Here's Zachary with his hat and his spider!!!




His birthday cake came out well - I had arranged to borrow a number '4' cake tin from a local cake shop, but when I collected it I realised it was much smaller than I had imagined...not really going to feed 15 children plus parents kind of small. But luckily, Leigh remembered that a cake decorating book I have has a grid at the back for making lots of different size vanilla sponge and fruit cakes (for wedding cakes and other tiered delights), so we cracked that open, got out the big square tin with adjustable sides and made a 9" square two-layer cake sandwiched with jam and buttercream. Yum. Then as befits the theme of the party, I decorated it...



and made some little gingerbread spidermen to go with it (please no comments on the 'skill' or otherwise of my icing here!!!).



I used Edd Kimber's recipe and I don't know whether I ended up using too much golden syrup (I prefer working with weight in syrup because I know my tablespoons always end up too full!) or something else, but it ended up really greasy and even adding more flour didn't really seem to help because then it was almost impossible to roll out! I did manage to salvage 15 men from it though and they were delicious. I shall definitely be using the recipe again, if just to prove that I can make it properly!


I also made some shortbread biscuits and piped webs onto them but forgot to take a photo!

Then we get to the chelsea buns. I have made chelsea buns once before and have been wanting to try them again ... but this was not a great effort.



They don't look too bad and were quite nice straight out of the oven, but as they cooled they got more dense and hard and I knew that leaving them overnight would result in little rocks the next day! I used our KitchenAid to knead the dough - I always get on really well with it when I make dough for our pizza bases, but it was not to be this time. I had worked out my timings so that I could make them while Zachary was at nursery one morning (and they had to be done by the time I went to get him as we were going straight out for lunch from school), but either the room wasn't warm enough, or something went wrong with the kneading because the dough just did not rise! I had allowed an hour for the first rising, then realised after 45 minutes that something wasn't right (!) and switched the heating on, but it was all too late by then. When I make pizza dough, I usually leave it to rise for the entire afternoon - I need to try these again when I have much more time available and I can really wait until the first rising is done properly. Ho hum.

Spider Walnut Halves

So, my Mum sent me a bag full of walnut halves as a birthday present (there were other presents too!) for my "creative side." Hmmmm. I had not come up with anything interesting so far and I mentioned it to friends who came over at the weekend.

They had many suggestions, nipple tassles and a string bikini being some of the more racy! Natalie suggested turning them into tortoises, then Lyndsey thought about putting jiggly bugs in them - this gave me the idea of getting them boys to paint them like ladybirds and beetles and then it hit me. Zachary's having a Spiderman party next weekend and I'm short of spiders for a treasure hunt game. I was going to print out some paper ones, but I can make them from the walnut halves! I can't believe we actually came up with something for them! We already have a can of black spray paint and I'm going on a googly eyes shopping spree tomorrow - just need to work out how to get legs on...

Pear and Almond Flapjack Tart

Well, the topping was not so flapjacky, but still very tasty! From Good Food magazine Feb 2012...



I think we took it out of the tin too early as the pastry just dropped off at the slightest touch! Either that or my pastry was too short...

500g block dessert pastry (I made my own pastry - 250g plain flour, 125g butter, 2 dessert spoons icing sugar, bind with 1 egg yolk and a tbspn cold water. I did have to add extra water on top of that but very slowly to make sure not too much. Then wrap in clingfilm and chill for 30 minutes)
5 pears, peeled, cored and sliced (I used conference pears which were quite crisp, but didn't taste very peary in the tart. Perhaps need riper pears or a different variety)
25g golden caster sugar, plus extra for sprinkling
large pinch mixed spice
flaked almonds, to finish
pouring cream or custard to serve

Topping -
140g porridge oats
50g plain flour
50g ground almonds (if your pears are really ripe and juicy, it's a good idea to sprinkle an extra layer of ground almonds over the pastry before adding the pears)
100g golden caster sugar
140g cold butter, diced
3 tbsp golden syrup

1. Heat oven to 180C/160C fan/gas 4. Roll out the pastry and use to line a 23cm tart tin (mine was a deep one), leaving a sight overhang. Line with greaseproof paper and baking beans, then bake for 20 mins. Remove the beans and paper, trim the pastry, then return to the oven for 10 mins more or until the pastry is biscuity brown.

2. Meanwhile, toss the pears in the sugar and spice, then set aside. To make the topping, tip the oats, flour and ground almonds into a large bowl with the sugar and a pinch of salt, then rub in the butter with your fingertips until you have a soft mixture. Stir in the golden syrup.

3. Increase oven to 200C/180C fan/gas 6. Tip the pears over the base of the tart, then flatten the oaty pastry into a round and place it over the pears - push/spread it with your fingers so the pears are completely covered. Scatter with flaked almonds and an extra sprinkling of sugar, then bake for 30 mins.

White chocolate chip and peanut butter cookies

Lovely, lovely recipe from Great British Bake-Off winner Jo Wheatley in last month's Good Food. Quick, easy and delicious - I have a fan oven and reduced the heat according to the recipe, but they still seemed a bit soft coming out after 10 minutes. For my second batch I reduced the temp but added 2 minutes to the cooking time and this seemed to work a treat.

100g unsalted butter, softened
100g crunchy peanut butter
50g demerara sugar
50g caster sugar
1 large egg
100g plain flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
50g white chocolate chips

1. Heat oven to 180C/160C fan/gas 4. Line 2 baking trays with parchment paper. Mix the butter, peanut butter and sugars together with an electric whisk until light and fluffy, then gradually add the egg, whisking constantly, until fully combined. Finally fold in the flour, baking powder, bicarb and chocolate drops/chunks.

2. Using an ice-cream scoop, place dollops of cookie dough onto the baking trays, leaving a generous border around the cookies as they will spread in the oven. (can freeze the raw cookie dough at this stage).

3. Bake for 10 minutes, taking the tray out half-way through and banging sharply on a work surface covered with a couple of tea-towels - this dispels the air, making lovely squidgy cookies.

Life Lesson learned this week - never take your 2-year old with you anywhere you might need to appear even vaguely professional...

I have joined forces with a local recruitment agency in an effort to get myself back into the workplace as a solicitor again. I needed to drop some ID documents and bits off to them so thought I would drop them round in person (rather than post them) and have a chat with the bloke managing me (hee hee!) while I was there. Leo came too.

Lovely conference room - in the middle a big glass table with 4 mirrored legs. Very nice. During my meeting (in preparation for which I had actually taken some books to keep Leo occupied - some hope) Leo started by popping in and out the door a few times. Then when he'd explored that he got under the table and had great fun working out that he could see me through it. Followed this up by licking and kissing the mirrored table legs, trying to bite the corner of the table and then doing a massive poo. Accompanied by grunts and smell. Then him looking at me plaintively through the glass table top and mouthing "I've done a poo."

Great work.

Eccles Cake

Again from Good Food January 2012 - this is a sponge cake with an Eccles cake-type filling. Very tasty and moist. It has apple chunks in the sponge as well which made me think the cake was vastly undercooked when we first cut it open but then I realised I was just looking at chunks of apple!

Sticky Toffee Tarts

Yet another try-out from Good Food mag January 2012. I was a bit concerned that my pastry was too brown after the blind baking, and I had the oven down too low for the last bake so it took another 15 mins on top of the advertised time for them to look done (that is, not wobbly on top!) but yum, yum, yum!!!