Chocolate Swirl Brioches

It’s ridiculous that I’m saying this on 27th January but; Happy New Year! It’s getting to that time of the month where Christmas and New Year are distant memories and New Years Resolutions have long been forgotten- my unofficial one was to blog more often: the fact I’m writing my first post of 2013 today shows how well that one’s going and is why I never make New Years Resolutions.

12 Tastes of Christmas: White Chocolate and Cranberry Cookies

An oven full of cookies has to be one of my favourite smells ever. And biting into a warm, soft, freshly baked cookie one of my favourite things ever.

 

White chocolate and cranberry is the perfect Christmas cookie. You can bake them as thick cookies, my personal favourite or, bigger, flatter ones (see recipe for how to make each) and the use of bread flour, which came about because I’d used up all our plain flour actually makes the cookies chewier in the middle which is just how I like them.

This recipe makes a lot of dough so it’s great if you have people coming over or if you want to give them as a gift and if not, make up the log/balls as you want to bake them and chuck them in the freezer ready to throw into the oven when you fancy one or when you have an unexpected Christmas visitor. Just add an extra 5 minutes to the cooking time if cooking from frozen.

Ingredients

250g butter, melted then cooled to room temperature

100g granulated sugar

250g light brown soft sugar

1 tbspn double cream

2 eggs

100g plain flour

200g strong white bread flour

1/2 tsp salt

1/4 baking powder

100g white chocolate chips

100g cranberries

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 170° and pour the butter into a free-standing electric mixer with a paddle attachment. Add the sugars and and mix thoroughly on a medium speed until well incorporated then add the cream and mix again.
2. Add the eggs one at a time, mixing well in between each, be sure to scrape around the bowl too to make sure that there are bits stuck on the bottom or sides that haven’t been mixed in.
3. Sift in the flour, salt and baking powder in two halves, mixing well in-between each and again, scrape the bowl.
4. Stir the white chocolate and cranberries through so they’re evenly dispersed the either:

– Roll the dough into a long log shape and put in the freezer until hard (about an hour) then, cut 2cm discs from it for big cookies.

or

– Shape the dough into small balls with your hands then flatten them slightly before putting in the fridge or freezer until almost hard (about 20 minutes) then put the balls onto a baking tray, placing two on top of each other then pressing them down slightly (see below) to form smaller, thick cookies.

    5. Bake in the centre of the oven for 10-15 minutes.

    6. Cool slightly on a baking rack then tuck in while they’re still warm.

LG x

Chocolate Ice Cream

I promised some ice cream recipes, so here’s the first one and I feel a bit stupid as the weather has now decided we’re going back to winter but hey, there’s no problem with eating it inside with the heating on! And maybe next week I’ll bring out the minestrone soup recipe that I decided to save for another time when the sun came out a few weeks ago.

Anyway, I’ve picked chocolate as my first ice cream recipe because no matter how many times we go to Italy and no matter how many ice cream parlours I go to, I can never quite bring myself to step away from chocolate and try something new. And if I do, I go for two scoops and get a safety scoop of chocolate!

I love home-made ice cream and my ice cream machine, it tastes so much better than the brought stuff and I’m verrryyy close to getting that authentic Italian gelato flavour. The only problem with it, is that because it’s home-made and has nothing added to it, when it freezes, it really does freeze. I suggest you take it out about 20minutes before you plan on eating it or get a hot ice cream scoop and be prepared for a bit of a battle!

Ingredients

1 quantity of custard, cooled slightly (Recipe here)

150g Dark Chocolate

25g Caster Sugar

300ml Double cream

1tbspn cocoa powder

Method

1. Break the chocolate into a bowl and place over a pan of simmering water with the sugar, stirring often until it has melted.
2. Meanwhile, stir the cocoa into the custard- this is why it’s better if it’s only slightly cooled as the powder will dissolve better if however, you want to pre-make the custard then it’ll be fine to leave out the powder and replace with and extra 50g of chocolate- until dissolved and evenly mixed.
3. Once melted, add the chocolate mixture to the custard and whisk to ensure it’s well incorporated.
4. Whisk the cream into the custard mixture. Once it’s all the same colour, it’s mixed evenly and can be frozen, this can be done two ways: Churn in an ice cream machine according to instructions (Mine takes about an hour but each machine is different) or, if you don’t have a machine then place in an ice cream tub in the freezer, removing every half hour or so and mixing it. This will imitate the churning of an ice cream machine, repeat until it’s frozen.
5. Eat!

LG x

Christmas Cooking

School holidays mean loads of extra time on my hands and loads of extra time to cook. Today I made pizza from scratch; at the start of the week I made whoopie pies; a few days ago I made lasagne and I think everyone is sick of my competition meal the amount of times I’ve cooked that.

Yesterday I spent pretty much my entire day making a gingerbread house, I was really happy with how it turned out. Until this morning. It looked like it had been hit by a gingerbread bomb. I think it taught me two things. 1) I should follow recipes and 2) I should learn that bigger isn’t better when it comes to baking and start off small when it’s my first time making something. I know I won’t learn from either of those but I will be trying another gingerbread house next year.

Of course Christmas means presents too so I did lots of baking and made some little boxes full of baked goods for my friends. I made Chocolate meringues, Chocolate truffles, Christmas biscuits and Christmas crackles.  I know, a lot of chocolate but people who don’t like chocolate are just strange.

Chocolate Mousse and Tuile Baskets

I had a late, well very late, Birthday party a few weeks ago- I will post my cake at some point, timings not my strong point as you can see- and I got The Great British Bake Off book from one of my friends so this week I  made my first recipe from it.

Chocolate mousse, not strictly baking but it was, at five o’clock on Sunday night, one of the only things I could find all the ingredients for. And I can, for a change say that I did follow the recipe. Not exactly of course, I couldn’t resist making a few additions but I had the book open which is more than I can normally say. I added rum and orange juice to it which I thought worked really well, it gave the flavour more depth. 

To serve them I made tuile baskets but, I used a Masterchef at home recipe and probably should have stuck with Mary Berry as they didn’t mould quite as well as I’d hoped.

Ready, Steady, Bake!

As you may know from my post earlier in the week, this week was National Cupcake Week. And that meant I spent most of yesterday baking. I made two different batches of cupcakes, the first was banana split cupcakes which have gone in the freezer until Tuesday when I can take them out and decorate them in time for my Birthday! Yay!

The second lot were rocky road cupcakes which I’ve been saying I’m gonna make for ages but haven’t managed to until now. The base was a chocolate cupcake, it was topped with caramel icing and finished with mini marshmallows, walnuts, raisins and chocolate syrup which I also made.

Chocolate Syrup is used quite a lot in America but is pretty difficult to get hold of here in England. When I was looking at recipes for these cupcakes yesterday loads of them used chocolate syrup so I had  look around at recipes and managed to figure out how to make it. It couldn’t have been easier and didn’t take longer the 5 minutes. It really finishes the cakes off, in looks and taste, it will keep for a couple of months in the fridge and can be used for all lots of the other things, a sauce on ice cream, chocolate milkshake when added to milk being some of them.
 

 

Celebration Cupcakes

As of today, my blog has officially been online for 5 months, yay! I made these cupcakes in celebration of it, they were chocolate and vanilla flavour with cream cheese frosting.

Thank you to everyone who’s visited over the last 5 months and I hope you continue to do so.

Cheesecake

For me, in a pudding, there’s nothing better than a big chocolate hit and that together with an amazing, crumbly, biscuit base makes for one of my favourite ever desserts. This is a simple chocolate cheese cake with a little bit of orange liqueur for added flavour. 

Chocolate Cake

You might have seen my tweet earlier in the week about chocolate cake (Follow me here), I made a chocolate fudge cake complete with mini Mocha cakes on top for my grandma’s 83rd Birthday.

Get Well Cupcakes

My grandma-or Nonna as she’s from my Italian family- went into hospital last week so when I went to see her, some get well cupcakes were in order! I made vanilla cupcakes with chocolate frosting and cut out icing letters and plasters, topping them off with a little edible glitter.I was pleased with the results, here’s some pictures…