“Loving Truffles”

This alternative recipe for truffles doesn’t need condensed milk, which makes it easier to gather ingredients for.  In fact you may have them already in the house.  The downside is that they lack the richness of their brethren, which we mitigated somewhat by lacing them with amaretto.  They do taste pretty great, and once I’d gotten over the fact that they weren’t my favourite truffles I found them pretty tasty (certainly nicer than the M&S ones we had in the house, which are themselves pretty tasty).

Obviously the quality of the chocolate is very important.

Ingredients

For the filling:

• 150g plain chocolate
• 3 tablespoons double cream
• 2 tablespoons liquor (brandy, amaretto, Tia Maria, etc).

For the coating:

• 250g milk chocolate

Our strategy is to melt half of the coating into soft ice cube trays, pop them into the freezer for 10 minutes, mix and melt the truffle mixture, pour in and return to the freezer.  Then when it sets, cover with the remaining chocolate and return to the freezer for a final 10 minutes.  They look exactly like our previous ones since they were made in the same way.

Next time we are going back to condensed milk, which is a little more hassle but oh so worth it.

Who made it: A joint effort between Anna and Dan.

Recipe: “Baking, making and sharing” by Susan Over, page 6.

Truffles, Mark 2

I claimed I would never make truffles as a present.  I lied.

Trufflicious, and beautiful. Score 1 for science.

These are the same recipe as the previous truffles, with only one difference: I used a chocolate mould.  (Actually an ice-cube mould, but who is to know?)  Instead of fighting the cooling of the mixture, simply pour some chocolate into a mould, smooth it around the edges, then leave to set.  Then pour in some truffle mixture and leave again.  Finally add a chocolate layer to seal the truffle inside.  The end result tastes the same as hand-crafted variety, but is infinitely easier to present well!

I also tried some variation here.  Notice that there are white and milk chocolate truffles.  Much to my dismay, the white chocolate ones were a little too sweet since the truffle mixture is also filled with condensed milk.  They weren’t bad, but not as good as the milk variety.  However, more successful was cherry brandy flavouring – a dash or two in the truffle mixture lead to a divine melting on the pallete, and Tia Maria worked as well.

Tasty yummy goodness, and I’m not even sad that I left it ages to blog about it – we had mixture left over and this evening another dozen truffles have mysteriously appeared.  I’m off now to eat them…

Who made it: Dan

Recipe: See my previous post.

Bittersweet Easter Basket

There is nothing bitter about this basket of goodness.  Take a look:

Chocolate cookies, Lindt Bunny, grapes, mini-eggs and Lindt eggs. Mmmm.

Again my photography skills have let the baking down – the chocolate cookies here are really divine; melty and oh so chocolatey. The weird thing about them is they have marmalade in.  As with all biscuits, they are actually done before they look done – the ones on the middle were soft and the edge ones were hard.  Which way you like it might be a matter of preference, but for me the gooey meltiness of the “just-done” biscuit is divine.

I’d really want to make these again and try to get the whole batch gooey because the extreme chocolatyness was overwhelmingly tasty.

Ingredients: 110g margarine, 50g soft brown sugar, 110g plain chocolate (melted into the mixture), 110g milk chocolate (chunks), 2 tablespoons marmalade, 175g self-raising flour.

Who made it: Anna did everything.

Recipe: Baking, Making and Sharing, by Susan Over, page 14.

Spiced Easter Biscuits

Spiced and non-spiced, our recipe book claims that these originated in the West Country as an Easter tradition.  We’ve always been keen on tradition when it involves tasty food.

Spiced Easter Biscuits

There are two types of biscuits here – some flavoured with cinnamon with caster sugar, and others with golden caster sugar.  There is a definite difference, with the golden caster sugar giving a more subtle, buttery taste and of course the cinnamon ones tasting of cinnamon.  The cinnamon batch were just slightly overcooked so the comparison isn’t really fair, but we think the golden ones were the best.  Both are quite heavy in consistency, quite shortbread-like, and are very more-ish.

This is a tricky recipe for biscuits, involving separating egg yolk from white. Only the yolk goes into the main mixture, with the whites being painted on the top halfway through cooking to give a lovely crisp shiny appearance.  Additionally, there is mixed spice and candied peel in both types of biscuit, giving a slightly spicy flavour.  Other than that its the usual mix of butter, flour and currents, with just a dash of milk to soften the consistency.

I’d recommend trying these biscuits – they are not like anything you can buy from the supermarket, and apparently keep for a while in an airtight container (we’ll see – probably not unless it has a lock!).

Who made it: Anna did everything.

Recipe: Golden: “Cakes, bakes, puddings and prayers” by Susan Over, page 56.  Cinnamon: “Mary Berry’s Ultimate Cake Book”, page 149.

Truffles

First up: acknowledgements.  Huge thanks to Anne for making these for us at Christmas, and putting up the recipe!

There is only one word to describe these truffles: divine. It might be blasphemous, but the only way I can describe the taste is as a Mars Bar made personally by God.

Home made truffles come in all shapes and sizes yet just one awesome favour. Trust me, you don't want them to taste of anything else.

Making your own truffles is a way of turning some tasty chocolate into loads of even tastier chocolate (again with the divinity thing – except that chocolate tastes better than loaves and fishes!).  It’s a fair amount of effort, and it matters which chocolate you start with, because “all” you do it melt it in with some condensed milk, refrigerate, and coat in chocolate.

Of course, that’s some “all”. Anne details all the clever tricks that make it easier, but at the end of the day warm melted chocolate goes on cold balls of truffle that melt at room temperature.  Its a very tricky business!  We don’t have Anne’s “truffle-fu”, so got a little more “variation” than would be ideal.  Still, the taste is all there.  After the ordeal of making them, we were wondering why we bothered since chocolate tastes so yummy anyway.  But the next day when I tried the first one…

Oh.  My.

I won’t be making them as a present – they are tricky, and I couldn’t get them as perfect as Anne did – but if anyone is reading this – I’ll take it as a present any time!  And getting the taste right is thankfully easy, and oh so worth it…

Who made it: A joint effort, though I’ll claim responsibility for the decoration!

Recipe: See Anne’s post, and the pioneer woman‘s post, which is two links in the industrious history of this magnificent recipe.

Chocolate Chip Cookies

The first rule of Cake Club is: you must not talk about Cake Club.

The second rule of Cake Club is: you must not talk about Cake Club.

Can you guess the third?  Yes, it’s that you must bring cakes.

Mega Chocolate Chip Cookies

When my turn for Cake Club came around, I looked for a simple yet tasty choice.  And here it is in all its glory: behold for yourself, the mighty cookies.

Cookies. With Chocolate Chips.

This is a trivial recipe courtesy of “Mary Berry’s Ultimate Cake Book”, consisting only of egg, flour, butter, and chocolate chips.  But what more is there to life, when it comes down to it?  I mean really?

Well OK, there is vanilla essence and a pinch of salt, but that’s just nitpicking.  You simply mix them all up, dollop onto an oven tray and bake for 10-15 minutes; try to take them out before they brown too much.

Taste wise, they are almost identical to the melt-in-your-mouth buttery goodness that we all know from those awesome supermarket cookies; you know, the ones we all trekked all the way to Sainsbury’s for because Somerfield didn’t do them back in the last millennium.  In these more enlightened times, its possible to get such tasty cookes at 4 for a pound at any medium-sized supermarket, which is a hefty mark-up considering I got 17 for less than this.  Additionally, this is a perfect base to make experimental cookie flavours from.  What party wouldn’t benefit from home-made raisin/cranberry/white-chocolate/dark-chocolate/double-chocolate/triple-chocolate… oh I give in, I obviously need some chocolate right now.

Any interesting cookie ideas?

Who made it: This was all Dan.  Anna helped with the eating though.

Recipe: Mary Berry’s Ultimate Cake Book, page 151.