This week (10th October to 16th October) is National Chocolate Week and to celebrate, I chose to make a chocolate cake flavoured with orange in my new slow cooker which has a waffle topping which adds a different texture, colour and flavour. Slow cookers are a fantastic way to cook cheaper cuts of meat which…
Tag: chocolate
Exploring Chocolate Tarts: ‘Nuts for Chocolate’ Tart
You might have seen my recipe for Dark Chocolate Teacakes using Mr Toms but I chose to reinvent the way in which I used it in a bit of an experiment to make my Nuts for Chocolate Tart. Mr Tom is essentially a peanut praline bar and so I decided to crush it up into…
Exploring Chocolate Tarts: Bitter Chocolate Tart
The second of the chocolate tart recipes in my ‘Exploring Chocolate Tarts’ series is my Bitter Chocolate Tart. The shortcrust pastry base is filled with an intensely flavoured chocolate ganache-style mixture and is baked in the oven to set, giving it a smooth texture. The foundation of the filling is a ganache made with milk…
Exploring Chocolate Tarts: Chocolate Brownie Tarts
I’ve been wanting to do a series of different versions of the same bake and everything seemed to come together all at once. I found another one of my reduced bargains from Marks and Spencer and it was ready rolled shortcrust pastry for 80p and it tied in perfectly with the arrival of my Food Thoughts…
Dark Chocolate Teacakes with Marshmallow Meringue and Mr Toms
You may remember that I told you that I bought some silicone hemisphere moulds from my time in Hong Kong when we went to Shanghai Street in Yau Ma Tei, which you can read about here. I just couldn’t resist having a play with them as soon as we got back and I decided to…
Peanut Butter Cake with a Chocolate Topping
Peanut butter is always a favourite with its rich smoothness working well with many other flavours. Whenever I make anything with peanut butter, I always like to celebrate both its smooth and crunchy counterpart, adding texture into all my peanut butter bakes. Here I create a smooth chocolate topping for the cake, which complements the…
Dark Chocolate Chunk Cookies
The perfect chocolate chip cookie is crunchy and crisp on the outside, soft in the centre with gooey melted chocolate in every bite. I admit I do often shy away from making cookies because all recipes for them tend not to be crunchy on the outside and soft in the centre but this recipe is…
#fdbloggerfriends: The Improving Cook
Welcome to my brand new series, fdbloggerfriends! In this series, I will be finding out a lot more about the food bloggers that I follow on Twitter and hopefully introduce you to some new blogs to read. Today we start with Victoria aka The Improving Cook. Hi, I’m delighted to be guest posting for Andrew…
Mocha Choca Madeleines
The combination of chocolate and coffee is one of my favourites, whether that be in a liquid or an edible form. So when I came across a recipe for Mocha Choca Madeleines in John Whaite Bakes, I knew I just had to make them. Madeleines are traditional little scallop-shaped cakes that originate from the French…
Intensely Chocolate and Peanut Butter Cupcakes
My best friend recently celebrated his 18th birthday and I came up with this recipe for these Chocolate Peanut Butter Cupcakes. Having read quite a few cookbooks in my time, most peanut butter recipes always seem to end up using 2 jars of peanut butter and whilst it tastes brilliant, it can be quite rich…
My Thoughts on Chocolate Week
The semi-finals saw the tension rise like the soufflés in the Technical Challenge and a collapsed showstopper as well as the wrong baker eliminated for me! But we have our three finalists, Nadiya, Tamal and Ian! The Signature was a Chocolate Tart. Sounds simple enough except the pressure was on and none of the bakers…
GBBO Bread Week Challenge 3: Quick Chocolate Dough-Knots
The quick bread challenge is a fun one and I should expect it may encourage many at home to try their hand at bread making. The first thing I thought about was soda bread but I wanted to try something different, a sweet bread. I wracked my brain and came up with these Quick Chocolate…
GBBO Biscuit Week Challenge 2: Chocolate and Nut Biscotti
Biscotti are these dry twice-baked Italian biscuits, in fact the name itself originates from a word meaning “twice cooked/baked”. You’ll often see biscotti in coffee shops alongside an espresso or even as a dessert with vin santo, a Tuscan fortified wine. Some recipes for biscotti will make a very firm dough but this recipe is…
White Chocolate Mendiants
I’m continuing my exploration into making confectionery this week by giving you my recipe for the simplest little sweet treat you could imagine, and what’s even better they took me a matter of 10 minutes to make in total. These are my White Chocolate Mendiants. The great thing about mendiants is that you can…
Guest Post: Reindeer Cookies by Rebecca Herd
I’ve really loved how down to earth Rebecca’s Christmas recipes have been. They’re simple and something that you can do with little children across the festive period. You can see Rebecca’s other guest posts: Ginger and Fudge Cupcakes and Star-topped Mince Pies I love the way these turned out and how creative you can be…
Andrew in the Kitchen 