You may already know I worship at the shrine of Donna Hay. My bible is Modern Classics Book 2 and it is a well-thumbed book. When a lovely friend at work announced she was leaving for an amazing job opportunity I knew a choc cake was in order. Continue reading
I may have mentioned that chocolate orange is my favourite sweet flavour combination. Maybe I was just thinking it. Either way, whenever I see a choc orange recipe I am all over it. These are lovely and so moreish – you will eat many. This is adapted from Simply Recipes. Continue reading
My love of choc chips in baked goods is well known so when I came across recipe for a chocolate cake with choc chips I was sold. I found the recipe on the allrecipes.co.uk site but the original didn’t specify how much milk so I had to guesstimate. I think I guessed correctly! This isn’t a fancy cake but I bet it will be gratefully received by your guests. Continue reading
Oh my, this is good. It isn’t often you can quote Homer Simpson in baking but his line in relation to his Flaming Homer cocktail, ‘fire made it good’, can definitely be applied here.
First step: vanilla cupcakes. I’ve been making these babies, courtesy of Australia Women’s Weekly’s ‘Quick Mix Cakes’ book, for yonks. They are one bowl, delicious, fail-proof and never last long! They are hardy enough to withstand being made by little helpers, too. I’ve tweaked the recipe.
As usual I dress my cupcakes with Donna Hay’s dark chocolate glaze which I have blogged about previously.
But here’s the trick: make the cupcakes, allow to cool completely before dressing with the choc glaze. Stud with mini marshmallows. Then, place under the grill [broiler] for a few seconds. Keep an eye on them cause the marshmallow will melt quickly. Eat. And eat and eat. Oh, baby…
CUPCAKES:
GATHER:
125g diced butter at room temperature
good splash vanilla
½ cup caster sugar
2 eggs
1 ½ cups self raising flour
½ cup milk
LET’S GET TO IT:
Preheat oven to 170C and line 2x 12 hole patty pans with liners.
Place everything in the bowl of electric mixer and blend until all combined and smooth.
Place in party pans and bake until golden 17-ish minutes.
Cool on wire racks.
Meanwhile, make the glaze:
Melt 150g best quality dark chocolate with ½ cup pouring cream in a small pan over low heat, stirring until melted and smooth. Stand for 20 minutes to thicken.
Spread thickly on cold cakes and immediately add mini marshmallows.
Place under a preheated grill until the marshmallows melt and bubble.
I adore Donna Hay. I love her magazine, her homewares, her style, her gorgeous store, everything. I’ve been lucky enough to meet her a few times and begged her for a job [no luck there, unfortunately]. I have every edition of her magazines and the vast majority of her cookbooks. All get a workout in my kitchen and her recipes are versatile, simple and usually no fuss.
For my mum’s birthday recently she decreed a ‘no gifts’ policy. The exception was anything home made. With this in mind I set about making her some gingerbread bickies. Mum adores gingerbread and I knew she’d love these.
The recipe is from Donna Hay Magazine issue 6. I use it every year to make gingerbread men at Christmas and it always turns out beautifully.
I dressed the biscuits up with dark chocolate glaze, another Donna Hay recipe, this time from the Simple Essentials – Chocolate book.
GATHER:
125g softened diced butter
½ cup brown sugar
½ cup golden syrup
2 ½ cups self-raising flour
2 teaspoons ground ginger
1 teaspoon bicarb soda
LET’S GET TO IT:
Preheat oven to 190C, line two baking trays with baking paper.
Place butter and sugar in bowl of electric mixer and beat until light and creamy then add golden syrup.
Add sifted flour, ginger and bicarb soda and stir to combine.
Knead lighty on a floured benchtop to form a smooth dough.
Roll dough between two sheets of non-stick paper until 5mm thick. Use cookie cutter to cut out shapes.
Bake for 8 or so minutes/until golden.
Cool on trays.
When totally cold decorate with choc glaze.
CHOCOLATE GLAZE:
Melt 150g best quality dark chocolate with ½ cup pouring cream in a small pan over low heat, stirring until melted and smooth. Stand for 20 minutes to thicken. Then dunk the biscuits in the melted, gooey mix. Yum.
I keep a container of this in the fridge as it can be used to top a big cake, cupcakes, sandwich biscuits together, heated to pour over ice cream or eaten by the spoonful.
I’ve come across these biscuits before with different names but I think the genius cooks at The Australian Women’s Weekly have bestowed upon these sweet morsels the best name: chocolate lace crisps. Once again this recipe is from their bible Bake.
I’ve made these many times and despite not having an overly sweet tooth I adore them. According to the notes I’ve scrawled in my cook book I first made them for a mother’s day picnic in 2010 and I made them recently for another picnic that was called off [due to bad weather]. In fact I love them so much that they are used as my WordPress image.
These are so delicious due to the dark chocolate so make sure you don’t use nasty compound stuff or they won’t taste anywhere near as good.
GATHER:
100g chopped dark chocolate
80g butter, diced
1 egg
¾ cup caster sugar [or even a smidge less]
1 cup plain flour, sifted
2 tablespoons cocoa powder
¼ teaspoon bicarb of soda
¼ cup sifted icing sugar
LET’S GET TO IT:
Place chocolate and butter in a medium sized pan and melt over a very low heat until glossy and smooth.
Remove from heat, allow to cool for about five minutes, then stir in sugar, cocoa, flour, soda and egg.
Place in fridge for 10-15 minutes or until mix is firm enough to handle.
Heat oven to 180C and line two baking sheets with baking paper.
Place icing sugar on a small plate.
Make a ball [about the size of a golf ball] with mixture, roll in icing sugar and place on baking tray.
Bake 12-15 minutes and cool on trays.
This is a one bowl, super easy, kid-friendly chocolate cake. It isn’t glam and won’t impress baking experts but for morning tea or a fast dessert you can’t beat it. If you can turn on an oven you can make this chocolate cake, which is great served with ice cream, cream or even just a sprinkling of icing sugar on top.
Making it in a ring baking tin makes it look a little bit more fancy than using a round tin. You could fill the berries to serve if you want to up the glam factor.
It is from a book called Quick Mix Cakes by AWW.
GATHER:
125g melted butter
2 eggs
1/2 cup milk
1/4 cocoa powder [Dutch for preference]
1 cup self-raising flour
3/4 cup caster sugar
dash best vanilla
LET’S GET TO IT
Preheat oven to 170C, and grease a ring pan with non-stick cooking spray.
Place everything in bowl of electric mixer and beat until smooth and mixture has changed colour.
Pour into pan, bake 35-ish minutes/until a skewer comes out clean.
Leave in tin 5 minutes then remove to wire rack to cool.
This recipe is from a book called [take a deep breath] Green & Black’s Organic Ultimate Chocolate Recipes The New Collection. The recipe is ‘the Hummingbird Bakery’s ginger chocolate cupcakes’ and I made these for my mum at Easter, who adores choc ginger.
GATHER:
100g plain flour
1/2 tablespoon baking powder
140g caster sugar
20g cocoa powder, sifted
40g butter at room temperature
100mL full at milk
1 egg
1 heaped teaspoon powdered ginger
LET’S GET TO IT:
Preheat oven to 170C and line cupcake pan with wrappers. I used a muffin pan and made larger sized cakes.
In an electric mixer combine butter, sugar, flour, baking powder, ginger and cocoa until all mixed together.
Combine milk and egg in a jug, whisk and add to the mixture in two lots. Mix until everything is combined.
Fill wrappers two thirds full and bake for 15-ish mins [for small sized cupcakes] to 20-ish [muffin size].
Remove to wire rack to cool completely.
The book had a choc/ginger icing combination but I used my go to, fool-proof Donna Hay chocolate glaze recipe: mix 1/2 cup of cream with 150g dark chocolate in a small pan. Stir over low heat until melted and smooth. Remove from heat; allow to stand 10 mins until thickened. Pour over a well chiled ckae and tap to remove air bubbles. I usually have a container of this in the fridge and use it for ice cream topping [a few seconds in the microwave makes it gooey and warm], icing for cakes and slices, and eaten by the spoonful… it is good just to have on hand…
I decorated mine with little edible silver balls because they are pretty. Ginger crystals would have been the logical decoration.
There is no getting away from the fact that these biscuits are not what you call pretty. They aren’t even plain – they are lock-them-away-in-the-tower unattractive and they aren’t the type of sweet treat you’d see in upmarket eateries. But, if you squint or close your eyes as you take a bite you will understand that they are everything that a biscuit should be: sweet, chocolate-y, satisfying. So let’s remember that old cliche of looks not being important, shall we? This recipe is from Australian Good Taste but as usual, I tweaked it…
GATHER:
3/4 cup brown sugar
3/4 cup caster sugar
150g cubed butter, at room temperature
1 3/4 cup self raising flour
1 egg
150g good chocolate [they use chopped up choc, I grabbed buttons and they worked fine]
2 tablespoons sifted cocoa powder
Dash best vanilla extract [if you only have vanilla essence – skip it! That stuff is evil and a poor imitation].
LET’S GET TO IT:
Preheat oven to 170C and line two large trays with baking powder.
Place both sugars, vanilla and butter in bowl of electric mixer and beat until creamy and changed colour.
Beat in the egg until combined then add flour and cocoa. Keep beating until everything is combined.
Stir in chocolate using a spoon.
Shape into golf ball size blobs and gently flatten.
Bake 12-ish minutes [you may need a fw more minutes depending on your oven].
Cool on wire racks.
At the the risk of alienating myself from, well, everyone, I am not a fan of pavlova. I find it too sweet and it is my least fav dessert. Sadly for me but luckily for the rest of the country, it is a staple at barbecues and parties everywhere. I’ve been known to make pavs when we’re having a do and it is always pounced upon before every other sweet.
This choc version of the aforementioned sweet is designed to be served warm with a chocolate custard sauce. I made the sauce but it didn’t make it into the photo as it is, well, super ugly. It serves 4. The recipe comes from my bible, The Australian Women’s Weekly ‘Bake’, a behemoth of a book that never lets me down. And thanks to photographer Anna Warr [www.facebook.com/AnnaWarrPhotography] for these lovely photos. Aren’t they great?
GATHER:
2 egg whites at room temperature
1 1/3 cups icing sugar [sifted]
1/3 cup boiling water
1 tablespoon cocoa powder [sifted]
LET’S DO IT:
Preheat oven to 180C and line a large oven tray with baking powder.
Beat egg whites, icing sugar and water in bowl of electric mixer for about 10 minutes or until firm peaks form. Fold in cocoa.
Drop four equal amounts of mix onto tray leaving considerable space between each.
Bake 25-ish minutes or until firm to the touch. Serve immediately with ice cream and dusted with extra cocoa.
the hungry mum 