Tagged: chocolate

Apr 15

coconut and chocolate macaroons

Today, Tim and I trekked out to sunny Melton to the 40k farm, to meet the newly formed SOC II (Seddon Organic Co-op II – more on this later). This was the groups first meet and a bit of a getting to know you session. We were asked to bring a plate for a picnic lunch, so I made these babies this morning. They are straight out of the diabetic living better homes and gardens magazine. They are super easy to make and medium GI – so a good kind of sweet that’s not too full on!

 

Coconut and Chocolate Macaroons

Makes about 18

3/4 cup shredded coconut

2 egg whites (from 50g eggs)

1/2 cup caster sugar

2 tblsp cocoa powder, sifted

 

Preheat oven to 170C(fan forced. Line 2 baking trays with baking paper. Spread coconut over a third baking tray. Bake stirring once, for 5-6 minutes until coconut is toasted. Set aside to cool. Reduce oven temperature to 150C (fan forced).

Using electric beaters, whisk egg whites in a medium bowl until firm peaks form. Add sugar 1 tblsp at a time, beating well after each addition, until thick and glossy.

Sift cocoa powder over egg white and whisk on low speed until combined. Stir in coconut. Spoon teaspoons of the mixture onto 2 lined baking trays, 3 cm apart. Bake for 20-25 minutes or until crisp. Set aside on the trays for 10 minutes to cool slightly, then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.

You can keep the macaroons in an air tight container for up to 1 week.

 

These macaroons are super easy, and take only minute to prepare. The good news is they all got eaten at the picnic and seemed win some fans. At the picnic there were all kinds of yummy things, looking forward to sharing recipes and ideas with this new co-op.

 

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Feb 05

the camo cake

Camo Cake with Chocolate Butter Frosting
serves 12
Melted butter to grease
1/2 cups self-raising flour
1/2 cup plain flour
1 cups caster sugar
150g butter, cubed
2/3 cups of milk
3 eggs at room temperature
1  1/2 teaspoons vanilla essence
1 tablespoon cocoa powder
green food dye

150g of dark chocolate, melted
150g butter at room temperature, cubed
2 1/2 cups icing sugar, sifted

Preheat oven to 140°C  (280F). Position a rack on the second lowest shelf of the oven. Brush a round 25cm (base measurement) cake pan with the melted butter to lightly grease. Line base and sides with non-stick baking paper.

Place the self-raising flour, plain flour, sugar, butter, milk, eggs and vanilla essence in a large mixing bowl. Use an electric beater to beat on low-speed for 30 seconds or until just combined. Increase the speed to high and beat for 1-2 minutes or until the mixture is thick and all the butter is incorporated.

Split the mixture into 3 bowls evenly. In the first bowl shift the cocoa powder into the mixture and stir/beat until combined. This is your chocolate cake. Move onto the next bowl, add around 3-4 drops of green food dye, mix it in and see what your colour is like! For this bowl you are going for a lighter green colour. I recommend trying to get the light colour sorted first, if you accidentally slip and add too much green food colour, you can always use this as the darker coloured green! Once you have the light one sorted move onto the brighter green. For this one go with 6-8 drops of food colouring. Mix it in and compare to your light green colour. There should be a marked difference between the two. Don’t worry if it’s really bright – this will just make it more fun!

Ok now you are ready to start layering your cake. Grab your prepared cake pan and 3 teaspoons. Begin by spooning lumps of alternating coloured cake mix into the base of the cake pan. Continue to layer until all of the 3 mixtures have been used. With a clean teaspoon smooth out the top of the mixture, at this point you can swirl some of the colours together to integrate the top of the cake. Don’t mix too much – just enough to smooth the top of the mixture out.

Bake in preheated oven for around 1 hour or until a skewer inserted into the centre of the cake comes out clean. Remove from oven and set aside for 10 minutes. Turn onto a wire rack for 2 hours or until completely cool.

To complete your cake, you’ll need to ice it (well you don’t have to! It does seem like a shame to cover up that amazing looking top!), but if you want fatten up your cake eaters then I suggest a butter cream icing! In a bowl combine the butter and icing sugar, add in the melted chocolate and combine until smooth. This can at times take some balancing – if your icing is too thick and a tiny bit of milk. If it’s too thin add a little icing sugar until you get the mix right. Using a pallet knife smooth your icing on top of the cake. You can pick up little plastic army men to top your cake with as decoration and most of all enjoy!

 

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Dec 31

cookbook challenge 2011: 25th fortnight, cool

As I am way behind on my CBC, most of my recipes are currently syncing in with my Christmas food prep. So for cool I decided to tackle these cherry ripe balls as a sweet Christmas treat! I made them as little pressies for our work mates. To sex them up a bit I put them on bamboo sticks which I picked up at the Asian grocer. I have to say they looked pretty damn good. But I totally forgot to take a photo on them! So in place you have a shot of the recipe book. Aren’t you lucky!

 

Cherry Surprises, as seen in Sweet Treats by Frankie

makes 36

1/2 can of condensed milk

200g glace cherries

2 cups of desiccated coconut

a few drops of red food dye

200g of good quality dark chocolate

10g Copha

 

Line two baking trays with greaseproof paper and set aside. In a large bowl mix coconut, cherries, food colouring and condensed milk until well combined.

Roll into balls and place on  one prepared tray and refrigerate for about 30 minutes.

Boil a little water in a saucepan and attached a heatproof bowl firmly on top (the water should not touch the bowl). Over low heat melt the chocolate and copha together in the heatproof bowl.

Using a spoon, dip balls into chocolate mixture and place on your second prepared tray.

Let the chocolate set in the fridge for about 20 minutes.

 

As I mentioned above I stuck bamboo forks about 2 inches long into the balls before I dipped them in the chocolate. I also skipped the copha – it just seemed like a waste of time for 10g and would have only spoiled the chocolate flavour.

 

 

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Nov 20

flourless chocolate cake

This was my Sunday baking effort, a flourless chocolate and almond cake. While there is no particular reason for me making a flourless cake, there are added benefits of having a lighter more moist chocolate cake when taking the flourless route. I also really like the way they look so collapsed in photos. Although I kind of didn’t really pull that look off when baking this one.

Flourless Chocolate and Almond Cake

serves 12

200g Dark Chocolate, chopped
125g Unsalted Butter, chopped
225g Brown Sugar
100g Almond meal (can use hazelnut meal if you prefer)
100g Almonds, coarsely chopped (optional)
5 large Eggs, separated
1 pinch of Cream of Tartar
1 tablespoon of cocoa powder

 

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius. Line the base and sides of a 20cm round cake tin with non-stick baking paper.

Make a “double-boiler” to melt the chocolate and butter: Bring a large saucepan of water to the boil. Place the chopped chocolate and butter into a heat proof bowl and place the bowl over the hot saucepan to allow the ingredients to melt. Stir occasionally.

Once all is melted, stir in the brown sugar, almond meal and almonds until the mixture is smooth. Allow to cool slightly, then add the egg yolks gradually, stirring each time.

Meanwhile, place the five egg whites into a clean dry bowl with a pinch of cream of tartar. The egg whites will form the structure of the cake, so it’s important they’re well beaten. Using a hand whisk, electric beater or stand mixer, beat the eggs slowly at first until they are foamy and then gradually increase the speed every few minutes. (If you go straight to high-speed, you increase the chance of your cake collapsing). Continue beating until firm peaks form. Don’t worry if you over beat the eggs because you’ll beat some of the air out next.

Gently fold the egg whites into the chocolate mixture. The chocolate mix is quite heavy, so don’t worry if you need to stir quite a bit at this stage. Stop when the eggs are just incorporated with the chocolate.

Pour the cake batter into the tin and bake for 45-50 minutes until a firm crust forms on the top. A skewer test is not necessary. Leave the cake to cool completely in the tin before attempting to remove. Once cool, sift cocoa powder over the top.

The mixture tasted AMAZING! I pretty much cleaned up the spoon and bowl when it went into the oven. The mixture of  light and heavy made for a pretty seemed pretty foreign to me and my cake making efforts – it’s actually really different from the flourless orange cake that I make too. But all in all very tasty. I burnt the edges of the cake – which didn’t really help things, but I would certainly give this one another crack.

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Sep 17

cookbook challenge 2011: 17th fortnight, baking

Time to bake! I love baking. I’m a bit pressed for time this week so I went for something simple, Petit-Brownies. These aren’t too fancy but are lovely and rich so you only need a little square to satisfy even the biggest cravings!

 

20110912-011040.jpg

 

Petit-Brownies, as seen in How to cook the perfect…

makes about 30

300g icing sugar, plus some extra for dusting

180g plain white flour

40g cocoa powder

300g good-quality dark chocolate (at least 70% cocoa solids), chopped

180g unsalted butter, diced, plus some extra softened butter for the tin

 

Heat the oven to 180C fan (200C gas 6). Brush a 30 x 20 x 3.5cm baking tin with soften butter and line the bottom and sides with baking paper.

Sift the icing sugar , flour and cocoa powder into a large bowl. Set aside.

Melt the chocolate in a baine marie. Remove the bowl from the pan, add the butter and the golden syrup, and stir until they are melted and evenly incorporated with the chocolate. Leave to cool at room temperature.

Beat the eggs and vanilla extract into the chocolate mixture,then add to the dry ingredients and beat again until smooth. Pour into the baking tin and smooth the top. Bake in the middle of the oven for 20 minutes until the top is slightly cracked and the centre feels soft and still a little moist. Leave to cool in the tin.

Turn the cake out and remove the baking paper. Trim the edges to make them straight, then cut into squares. Sift icing sugar over the brownies, before servings.

Yum yum yum! Is all I have to say about this one. I required double the cook time as after 20 minutes the brownies were waaaaaay too runny still. But after 40 minutes I achieved a somewhere between cakey and soft fudgy mix. Highly recommend this one, it probably doesn’t need too many changes, unless you want to add in some goodies.

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Jun 27

cookbook challenge 2011: 11th fortnight, cup

Cup is this fortnights theme, and I have been a little behind in my posting again, but never mind they are hopefully worth the wait when they do make their way onto the blog! I wanted to avoid cupcakes for this challenge and then I recalled making this relatively easy dessert. I had a couple of friends over from Adelaide (Hi Kristie and Dom), and whilst Tim had the mains covered, I needed to come up with a dessert for our guests.

 

Coffee & Chocolate Mousse Cups, as seen in Gordan Ramsay’s Sunday Lunch cookbook

serves 4

100g good quality dark chocolate (about 60-70% coca solids)

125g mascarpone

2 tbsp icing sugar

4 tbsp strong espresso coffee, cooled

150ml double cream

 

to finish:

4 tbsp double cream

a little dark grated chocolate

 

Break the chocolate into small pieces and melt in a heatproof bowl set over a pan of barely simmering water. Stir until smooth, then remove the bowl from the head and leave to cool.

With a hand whisk, beat the mascarpone and icing sugar together until smooth, then whisk in the espresso and melted chocolate.

In another bowl, whip the double creame until soft peaks form. Fold the cream into the mocha mixture until welll combined. Spoon the mousse into four cappuccino or ramekins and chill overnight.

Just before serving, lightly whip the 4 tbsp double cream and swirl over the mousses. Sprinkle the grated chocolate on top and serve immediately.

 

Don’t be fooled by the amount that this recipe originally produces, It doesn’t look like enough when you first spoon it into the cups, but consider this.. it’s incredibly rich! So you really don’t want a lot of it. The recipe is totally easy to make and is great when you want to have dessert sorted when you have a mates over, as it can be finished off in a flash and made the night before.

A couple of notes from me, I always serve this with a crunch biscuit. This time I used from hazelnut bread. It’s totally perfect for scooping into your cup and eating straight off the bread. Be careful not to whip your cream too much, double cream doesn’t need much – you don’t want to end up with butter.

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