Happy birthday to Carters and Kelly V

It was Carter's and Kelly V's birthday last Wednesday and to mark the occasion I whipped out my newly acquired copy of Delia's Book of Cakes for a fast simple no-faff sweet treat that I could take down to the pub without too much drama.

I decided to make her Chocolate fudge brownie recipe and as per usual I couldn't help meddling - I increased the chocolate and flour quantities and added orange blossom water and pistachios.

Things started to go a little pear shaped when I realised I didn't have the correct tin, I used the smallest one I had, but it was still waaaay too big. I ended up with brownies that looked like they'd been run over by a steam roller. In the end I sandwiched them with some hazelnut spread and it was all good. The moral of this story...use the right tin and all will be fine.

Chocolate, pistachio and orange blossom fudge brownies

What you need

A 18x28cm baking tin

90g dark cooking chocolate, preferably unsweetened, I used Green and Blacks cook's chocolate
110g butter
2 medium eggs
225g caster sugar
90g plain flour
1 level teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
110g pistachio nuts (hold back about 5 nuts for garnish)
1 tablespoon orange blossom water (you could add more, but taste as you go so it doesn't end up tasting like shower gel)

Garnish
1 punnet of raspberries
Green and blacks Hazelnut chocolate spread

The do
Line a rectangular brownie tin (18x28cm) with silicone baking paper. allow the paper to come up a good 5cm above the rim of the tin.
Melt the butter and broken up chocolate pieces together in a heatproof glass bowl over a saucepan of simmering water. Make sure the bowl doesn't touch the water. Stir in the remaining ingredients, then pour into the lined tin and bake for around 30 minutes or until a skewer comes out clean.
Leave to cool in the tin for 10 minutes, divide into approx 15 squares and transfer back to wire rack.

Chop the remaining pistachios as finely as you can. Spread a little hazelnut spread on the top of each brownie, sprinkle with a little pistachio dust, then place a raspberry on top

Warning: these brownies are evil. Diabetics beware!

Chocolate time is here

Being pregnant has made me chocolate obsessed, so one night after work in the lead-up to Christmas I decided to make my own festive chocolate. Making your own chocolate is fun because it's all about taking something you like and remolding it into something even better. Plus, doing it yourself allows you to control what goes into it - keeping it free of excess sugar and additives

What you need
2 handfuls of brazil nuts (or any other nuts that you like, macadamias - for an Australian vibe, pistachios, peanuts)
1 1/2 blocks of Green and Black's dark cooking chocolate
1 block of Green and Black's milk chocolate with almonds, broken into pieces
1 handful of dried cranberries

The do
Line a 15x15 tin or container with non-stick baking paper. Put the nuts into a plastic bag and bash a few times with a rolling pin to break them up, don't pulverise them!
In a bowl, melt the cook's chocolate in the microwave on high for 1 minute at a time until completely melted.
If you don't have a microwave, melt the chocolate in a bowl fitted over a saucepan, making sure the bottom of the bowl doesn't touch the simmering water.

Spoon a 5mm layer of melted chocolate into the tin/container. Sprinkle on the cranberries, nuts and squares of almond chocolate then cover with the remaining melted chocolate. Keep in a cool place to set, then chop into bite-sized squares with a sharp knife.

You can add anything you like to this 'chocolate sandwich' - experiment with white chocolate or other dried fruits.

part two: the Tim Tam travesty

Holy crap, it's an international phenomenon. After reading of Adam's Kit Kat malfunction here on Lily & Chew, LC sent us news of a similar state of affairs in Melbourne. This time it appears workers at the Arnott's factory have been struggling to hit their Tim Tam moulds. (No, the obvious similarities in the aliterative word patterns of the two biscuit treats in question have not been lost on us.)

It is worth stating for readers unfamiliar with the Tim Tam that 35 million packets of this tasty chocolatey biscuit treat are sold in Australia annually -- that's nearly two packets per Australian. According to Wikipedia, the biscuit was named after the winning horse in the 1958 Kentucky Derby. While there have been many variations produced since the first Tim Tam was sold in 1964, the basic formula of a cream centre sandwiched between two biscuits and smothered in chocolate has remained constant. Until recently, that is.

Earlier this year, LC's regular Friday afternoon tea fell to pieces as she tucked into her beloved Tim Tams with her work mates at SB only to find something quite unexpected. Here is the account posted to Arnott's of what followed:

Good aftenoon,

I never thought I would see the day that I'd find reason to compose this feedback to you over a Tim Tam, however...

At our workplace, we have just bought and gleefully begun consuming our beloved Friday afternoon Tim Tam fix. To our surprise, we've found several of the TTs to be without their cream centres!

These biscuits did seem to have a slightly different external appearance ... then once bitten in to there was a slight hollow where the cream normally is, and just, really, biscuit-on-biscuit action.

This particularly caused tears for one team member who broke a week-long wheat-free existence, for the love of the Tim Tam. She's a trifle upset that she'd lost her healthy high ground for little more than the wheat based portion of the TT, if you follow our drift!

I'm sure you can understand our compulsion to inform you of this immediately. After all, if we can't rely on Tim Tams in this world, I ask you - what is there left?

Here's the kicker. For their troubles, the gang at SB were sent $5... redeemable as a Coles voucher! That is TIGHT (about £2.20 worth of groceries at Tesco.) Thankfully, there was a special on Tim Tams in Coles Richmond that week so they were able to buy two replacement packets with their coupon.

Kit Kat Freak

It's amazing, you can live with someone for years, you think you know everything there is to know about them and then, boom, like a bolt out of the blue you discover they've had a favourite lunch snack all their life and you had no idea. This happened recently when adam came home from work one day banging on and on about a run in with a crazy Kit Kat. I can't possibly do the story that followed justice so I'll let him explain what happened...

I love Kit Kats and I have one as an after lunch snack pretty much everyday. This is in neat harmony with the history of the bar which, according to Wikipedia, "...was developed after a worker at the Rowntree's factory in York put a suggestion in the suggestion box for a snack that a 'man could have in his lunch box for work'." The real coincidence is that Kit Kats take their name from an 18th century literary club, the Kit-Cat Club, named after Christopher Catling the keeper of the pie-house in Shire Lane, by Temple Bar, where the club originally met. Where I buy my Kit Kats is freakishly close to being in that exact location. However, even knowing these facts couldn't have prepared me for what I experienced when I bit into a Kit Kat a couple of weeks ago on an otherwise normal day. Expecting the usual crunch of chocolate covered wafer, I was stunned when I realised that in my mouth, and in my hand, was a bar of solid chocolate.



With a telephone right in front of me, and vague tales of boxes of product being delivered as compensation floating around my head, there was only one thing to do. I called Nestle to complain. If I'd wanted a plain chocolate bar I would have bought one after all, and not one made of Kit Kat chocolate. The man I spoke with was very affable and he explained to me that I probably had no idea of the scale of the production of Kit Kats. Being that they are the UK's number one chocolate bar and number one biscuit, he was probably right. I confess, I'd never put much thought to it. Apparently, giant sheets of wafer drop into a mould which is then filled with liquid chocolate. Occasionally the wafer doesn't land exactly in the correct spot and some areas of the mould gets filled entirely with chocolate, which must be what happened to mine. It is the job of workers at the factory to spot this and make sure any mutant Kit Kats get destroyed. After quizzing me for some numbers on the wrapper, he said he'd send me a cheque. A few days later I was bemused when a cheque arrived in the post, for £3!



£3 is not quite as good as a big box of Kit Kats but, hell, it's better than a kick in the teeth.



If you have time, check out the Kit Kat Palace to find out all the crazy Kit Kat flavours they have in Japan. Anyone for Green Tea Kit Kats?

A sweet root

Aside from slurping on a bit of borscht here and there, I'd have to admit that I know very little about eastern European cuisine - and even less about eastern European desserts.
So it's just as well I was assigned dessert course for our lastest eastern European themed dinner party, huh?
Sweet stuff ain't my forte. I'm a savoury lady through and through, although I do enjoy the odd slice of office birthday cake from time to time. My baked goods rarely make the cut because of my tendency to go freestyle with the ingredients.
This time, I tried really really hard to stick the recipe. It isn't eastern European, but it has beetroot in it, so I figure that counts for something.


'EASTERN EUROPEAN' CHOCOLATE + BEETROOT MINI CAKES
(with cherry and beetroot coulis)

What you need
75g Green and Black's Cocoa Powder
180g SR flour
250g caster sugar
250g cooked fresh beetroots
3 large eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
200ml corn or sunflower oil

(Makes 12 muffins)
Preheat oven to 180C
Grease a muffin tray
In a saucepan, cover beetroots with water and boil until soft
Sift cocoa, flour and baking power into a large bowl
Stir in sugar and set aside
Puree beetroot adding one egg at a time. Add vanilla and oil and and whiz until smooth.
Make a well in the dry ingredients and stir in the beetroot mixture.



Divide evenly into muffin tray and bake for 50-60 mins or until a skewer comes out clean.
When done, allow to cool down in the tray and then turn out onto a wire rack.

The coulis
1 can pitted cherries
1 small fresh beetroot
1/2 can water and cherry juice (from can)
squeeze of lemon juice
2 tablespoons sugar

Put ingredients in saucepan simmer until beetroot is cooked. Push through a fine sieve.

Serve cakes with some cream or ice-cream or soy ice cream (I used Swedish Glace) and drizzle with coulis.