Tag: Easter

Flourless caramelised white chocolate and mini egg cake

My contribution to Easter: taking a recipe that really really doesn’t need to be any sweeter, and adding Mini Eggs to it. It sounds gross, but most of what baking is is layering sweet things on top of each other. You’re supposed to introduce a savoury element, reduce the sugar where appropriate, balance the flavours (salt, acid etc.) in your baking to make sure the end product isn’t cloyingly sweet. Instead, I thought about the flourless dark chocolate cake and I wondered whether it would work with white chocolate and Mini Eggs. The result has the texture of a blondie, just a little bit gooier because of the lack of flour. You still get a crackly top – I always feel disappointed when I see a brownie/blondie without one so this was definitely a win-win situation.

The cake would have been too sweet if I didn’t caramelise the chocolate for an hour and a half, even if sticking your head in a hot oven every ten minutes to stir chocolate feels a bit OTT – caramelising the chocolate is necessary, especially if you’re going to add crushed up bits of chocolate that contain an indecent amount of palm oil and E numbers. If you can’t be bothered to caramelise the white chocolate and can’t justify buying a 2.5kg bag of it (smaller quantities yet to be seen), you could fold through crushed raspberries. Or save yourself the hassle, use dark chocolate, leave out the Mini Eggs and serve with a dollop with crème fraiche – it doesn’t get much more sophisticated than a flourless chocolate cake, and it would make the ultimate dinner party dessert.  Continue reading →

In Season: March (and Easter!)

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t my parents’, we have an annual Easter egg hunt, despite the fact that we are all at least 12 years too old for such antics. The point of the hunt isn’t really finding the chocolate and gorging until we have to allocate one person to roll the rest of us into the dining room for lunch. The real point is finding the most difficult places for the eggs for my oldest brother, so we can sit back and snigger as he wanders about looking for them.

Until this year. This year, with one heart attack behind us and a wedding in the near future, we’re foregoing the chocolate. Instead, I’ll have to live vicariously through you lot and Instagram. This month’s round-up slightly reflects this.

Last thing before we hop off to the good stuff…don’t forget that you can get £10 off at Bloom & Wild (in time for Mothers Day) here! This isn’t even a paid-for endorsement, they’re just…really good. Continue reading →

Lemon syrup cake

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lemoncakesideSo you know how the foodie section of the internet is all creme eggs and hot cross buns and chocolate nests right now? Yeah, I thought maybe we could shake things up a bit.

I love a chocolate egg as much as anyone – I swear, chocolate always tastes better in egg form – but this year Easter weekend will bring three extra things: Doctor Who, Game of Thrones, and The Walking Dead finale. It’s a big TV weekend for nerdy people, and I for one am excited.

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Spiked hot cross bread & butter pudding

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SpikedTrayI noticed last week that my front page is getting really, er, brown. A lot of the foods I’ve been enjoying are shades of beige and brown – largely because carbs are brown and carbs are brilliant. This spiked twist on bread and butter pudding is no different.

I’ve said before how much I love hot cross buns – there’s nothing quite like the sweet, spicy smell of cinnamon and sugar and fruit wafting from the kitchen. As much as I’d be happy to eat them simply toasted and smothered in butter, dressing them up with a little egg and dried fruit spruces them up just enough that maybe you’d be judged less for consuming it all. Maybe.

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