Category: Recipes

When we went to the Hummingbird Bakery, one of my friends said she normally got a graasshopper bar, but they didn’t have them this time. When she described them, they sounded amazing- a chocolate base, a minty filling and chocolate on top. I fancied making some, but after a lot of searching I mainly found recipes for grasshopper pies. So I made my own.

I have a good brownie recipe, but it goes very squidgy, so I used one instead of two eggs to make the batter a bit less liquid.

(Melt together 100g butter, 175g caster sugar, 25g dark chocolate, 1tsp golden syrup, 1 tsp vanilla extract. Leave to cool. Beat in one egg, and sift in 100g plain flour and 25g cocoa powder. Pour into a brownie pan and bake for 20-25 minutes, until firm).

To make the filling, I warmed 200ml cream (I used alpro cream because I had some, but normal would work too I am sure) until tiny bubbles appeared. I put 200g white chocolate in a heatproof bowl, and poured the warm cream over it. I stirred it until the chocolate melted, and then added a tsp peppermint, and a little green colouring. I put this in the fridge to cool while the brownie base cooled.

It does look a bit lumpy at first, but I promise if you stir gently it will all melt and go all thick and gloopy. Not a good recipe word, but that is how it is.

After spreading the cooled mint filling over the base, I melted 100g dark chocolate and drizzled this over the top, although that turned out to be an awful lot, and I think 50g would have been fine.

Mmm I just love the chocolate and peppermint combination- I already want to make them again!

Have you ever had grasshopper pie?  Weekend plans?

I shall be parkrunning in the morning- hooray!

White chocolate is my least favourite chocolate- I quite like it, but I don’t love it. However, I do seem to use it in quite a few recipes- especially at the moment. Perhaps it is more summery than other chocolate. It does seem to go with fruity flavours.

Last weekend I made a white chocolate and raspberry loaf for Sunday tea. The recipe, of course, is from the CCC book, although I subbed a bit of the regular flour for ground almonds as I think that goes nicely (It’s a normal loaf recipe with raspberries added to the batter, then topped with melted white chocolate). As I had the raspberries (they are little freeze-dried ones in a tube) I made some white chocolate and raspberry fudge, as end of term gifts for people at work. Can you believe I forgot to take a photo though? On a side note, I used my KitchenAid for beating the fudge and it was so much easier than using hand held beaters over the saucepan- the way forward from now on.

This weekend I fancied trying something new, and when flicking through the book I came across Orange and White Chocolate Cake- Andy liked the sound of it too, so I went with it.

Basically, it is orange cake, sandwiched with an amazing white chocolate and orange buttercream. In the photo, the buttercream is the filling, but it made so much I put half on top too (and you can see from the blob missing on the top, it touched the top of my biggest container- we took it for Sunday tea and brought home a large piece to share another day.

To make the icing you warmed some freshly squeezed juice, poured it over white chocolate, to melt it. Then left this to cool. Then you need to make a little buttercream, and pour in the white chocolate mixture to the buttercream, and fluff it all up. Really tasty, but so sweet.

Action shot!

There’s cake somewhere under all that icing.

Are you a white chocolate fan?

A while ago I was contacted by Stork, to see if I fancied creating any of their cakes using their new Stork with butter.

Well, I came across this amazing looking owl cake, and knew I had to have a go.

They kindly sent me a voucher for the ingredients, so after buying what I needed, I set to work. Making the chocolate cake was fine- I liked the addition of the milk and lemon juice- you do that in a red velvet cake to imitate buttermilk and it makes the cake lovely and light. I baked it for less time though, but that might be down to my oven.

Then, the fun part.

I kept the cake in the baking paper (I did loosen the paper) because my only tin big enough for a plate was at school after the bake sale.

I made the owl eyes and beak with marzipan, because I like that more than sugar paste (and a minstrel for the centre of each eye). I put the first batch of buttercream on, and then disaster ensued. Basically, my kitchenaid mixer has two switches- one to raise and lower the top of the unit, and one to turn it on. I had raised the unit to add more cocoa powder to the icing (to make it darker) but instead of switching the right one to lower it, I moved the left one which turned it on. Now, you might think that it would not work if the unit was raised. Well, it does. So it sprayed chocolate buttercream all over me, all over the kitchen, all over the floor. Argh!

Anyway, after stopping to clean up, I added the darker buttercream, and then some grated chocolate.

It was very well received on Sunday. I was really pleased with how it turned out. It looked very impressive, but actually (with a bit of patience) the end result was fairly simple and I would certainly make it again.

Any kitchen disasters?

*I was sent a voucher to cover the cost of ingredients. All opinions are my own.

So a while ago the lovely folks at Urban Fruit sent me a parcel of their goodies.

I love Urban fruit, especially the cherries and mango. If you don’t already know, Urban fruit gently bake all different types of fruit to make dried fruit. They don’t add sugar, or sulphites, which is why I love them so much (sulphites give me stomach ache and most dried fruit contains it as a preservative). They are brilliant as portable snacks, and unlike fresh fruit, they survive a week being squashed in the bottom of a handbag.

They also have a fantastic range including strawberries (I always used to love these on long runs instead of jelly beans), cherries (amazing in brownies or porridge), mango (amazing dipped in melted dark chocolate) and seasonal ones such as apples.

I have saved the cherries to add to porridge, but after seeing the packet of new “Tremendously tropical” with mango, coconut, banana and pineapple (and having a very overripe banana on hand) I decided that tropical flapjacks would be the way to go.

I had seen a recipe in the Deliciously Ella book (the recipe is here if you are interested) so I made that, with added tropical fruit.

When mixing the banana and nut butter, I added in the tropical mix (I chopped some of the larger pieces of pineapple so they were a bit smaller). Then baked the flapjacks as the recipe stated.

It smelled really delicious as it was baking.

I followed the instructions and waited until the next morning to cut them, as usually with flapjacks I get impatient, cut them before they have cooled, and end up with a sort of granola mess.

I took most of them into work (I didn’t even mention they were healthier versions in case it made people suspicious) and they were really popular.

I would definitely make these again, and explore using different types of dried fruits too.

Are you a fan of flapjacks? Which flavour would you choose?

*Urban fruit kindly sent me a selection of their products but did not ask for a review. I just posted the recipe because it worked very well, and I love their products.