Speculoos Blondies

This particular post is a bit shoved together I’m afraid. Just after I made these blondies, I came down with the Flu, so not many pics!

But I was on a roll in the kitchen after making my Speculoos frosting – Speculoos being that delicious spread made from the cinnamony, gingery biscuits that go so well with a cup of coffee.

I looked for a brownie recipe to bake the spread into and on the way discovered this recipe for Speculoos Blondies over at Tasty Retreat, which looked delicious.

Yield: 12 (depending how big or small you cut them)

Ingredients:

250 grams Speculoos spread (smooth), split in two halves

75 grams unsalted butter, softened

150 grams granulated sugar

100 grams light brown sugar

2 large eggs

½ teaspoon vanilla extract

100 grams plain flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

Pinch of salt

100 grams dark chocolate chips

Method:

Preheat your oven to 160oC. Spray and flour a 9” x13” baking pan. I used my individual square pan, which meant I had to bake for a little less time.

In a bowl, sift together the flour, baking powder and salt. Set aside.

In the bowl of an electric mixer, cream together 125 grams of the Speculoos and all of the butter. 

Add the sugars and cream them altogether until smooth. Add the eggs and vanilla and beat until the mixture is smooth and thickens slightly. Add the flour mix and combine until no streaks of flour are seen. Lastly add the chocolate chips, folding them through the batter. 

Place the mixture into your pan and bake in the centre of the oven for 25 minutes (or 20 minutes if using an individual brownie pan like I did).

Remove from the oven and allow the blondies to cool completely in the pan. Then turn them out and cut into 12 bars. Using a melon baller, scoop the centre from each blondie, taking care not to go all the way through. Then fill each cavity with a dollop of the remaining Speculoos. And there you have Speculoos Blondies. These are delicious, in the chewy blondie way and the caramel overtones of the Spec’ really comes through. Enjoy!

Oh and I was asked to review an item called a Hoorag here on Cakeyboi. This is a stretchy tube of material which has many many uses apparently. I was told it is very good for keeping hair out of the eyes of chefs. But I forgot, I don’t have much hair, but I imagine the Hoorag would be good for that. It is good as a fashion accessory also, and on our trip to London, I wore mine’s around my neck as a scarf, as it was soooo cold. Check the website to see the different ways one can be worn and how to get hold of one! (They now have a snazzy one printed with kitchen untensils).

Disclosure Statement: I received the Hoorag free to review and was not committed to writing a favourable review. The views expressed are my own.

Cartoon Time - Cheesecake

Chocolate Orange Lasagne

As a child, ask me what my favourite food was and hands down, every time I would say my mum’s lasagne. Being brought up in an Italian family I was weaned on pasta, even before a lot of my classmates knew what the ‘weird, radical’ foreign food was. To me it was more common than a fried egg and chips for tea!

And when I saw that my friend Jac over at vegetarian website – Tinned Tomatoes – had a new challenge this month called Pasta Please, and that the theme was cheese, I knew I had to enter. But being Cakeyboi and predominately sweet, my thoughts turned to sweet lasagne!

Luckily I had also been asked to try some products for a company called Sugar And Crumbs who supply high quality baking ingredients, including flavoured cocoa powders and icing sugars. I was sent chocolate orange cocoa powder, white chocolate blossoms (little curls of chocolate) and natural orange icing sugar. (I will be using the orange icing sugar at a later date).

I adapted a recipe I found at Food Network and substituted the regular cocoa powder and orange zest, with the chocolate orange cocoa powder. I also used chopped white chocolate instead of chocolate chips, and half the amount of ricotta cheese (half the fat!).

Yield: one 8”x8” baking dish worth

Ingredients:

5 sheets of fresh lasagne – (not dried)

500 grams ricotta cheese

110 grams icing sugar

50 grams chocolate orange cocoa powder

2 large eggs

150 grams chopped white chocolate

50 grams pistachio nuts, chopped and toasted

50 grams of white chocolate blossoms

Method:

Preheat your oven to 170oC. Line an 8”x8” pan with foil.

In a bowl whisk together the cheese, sugar, cocoa powder and eggs until smooth. Stir through the chopped chocolate. Spread one quarter of this mix on the bottom of the baking pan and sprinkle with some of the nuts. Lay a sheet and a half of lasagne on top. Then repeat with the cheese mix, nuts, more lasagne, finishing with the cheese and nuts. 

Pop into the oven for 30 minutes. The lasagne will puff up slightly. Remove from the oven and sprinkle the chocolate blossoms on top.

Allow this to cool for at least half and hour and then divide into squares ready to be devoured. As pasta is neither sweet nor savoury, this works so well with the chocolate orange flavour. The nuts give great texture and the chopped white chocolate gives a nice contrast to the cheesey chocolate filling.

As said, I am entering this into the Pasta Please challenge, hosted this month by Tinned Tomatoes. And the Sugar and Crumbs ingredients were brilliant – the blossoms were handy to use straight from the bag and the flavoured cocoa, really was a new one for me! They are to be introducing lots of new products and if I am sent any to try out, I will be sure to share them with you. Enjoy!

Disclosure Statement: I received the Sugar and Crumbs items free to review and was not committed to writing a favourable review. The views expressed are my own.

The Cakeyboi Alphabet - D

D is for Dough (not Doh!)

Dough is a thick, malleable paste made out of any cereals (grains) or leguminous crops by mixing flour with a small amount of water and/or other liquid. This process is a precursor to making a wide variety of foodstuffs, particularly breads and bread-based items (e.g.,crusts, dumplings), flatbreads, noodles, pastry, pizza, bread rolls, biscuits, cookies and similar items. This includes all kinds of breads or similar recipes made from maize, rice, sorghum, wheat, and other cereals or related crops used around the world. (thanks Wikipedia!)

I love Speculoos! (frosting)

On our trip to London, I finally bought a product I had been dying to try for ages – Speculoos. Now, you may not have heard of it before – it has several different names, such as Biscoff spread, Cookie Butter – here in the UK it is marketed as the punchy ‘Lotus – the original caramelised biscuit spread’ (!). I, however, love the name Speculoos and I'm sticking to it.

If you are new to it, it is basically a spread, the consistency of peanut butter that tastes like those little Lotus biscuits – they are cinnamony and gingery and delicious. It has been tricky to track down, but a couple of Twitter friends told me where to go to buy some. I tried it direct from the jar (with my finger - tut tut!) and it is very moreish, perfect for spreading on toast.

But I wanted to try something different with it and thought a frosting for cupcakes would be perfect to highlight it’s unique taste. I found a recipe and set to making it.

I knew that I didn’t want fancy cupcakes to put it on, which would take away from the flavour so was going to make vanilla cupcakes, when I saw a piece on a Food Network TV show – ‘Hungry Girl’ which said that if using a boxed cake mix – you don’t need to add the eggs, oil etc. that it tells you to. Just a can of diet soda in any flavour you choose works just fine. This intrigued me (and I had a box of vanilla cake mix in the cupboard) so bought some diet cream soda to try this out with. The cream soda is vanilla flavoured, so would match the cake, but ‘Hungry Girl’ suggested cola in chocolate cake, orange soda in vanilla etc. And it really worked! I mixed the soda and the cake mix popped in to some cake cases and baked for the time recommended. Kitchen alchemy at it’s best (and slightly healthier according to Hungry Girl as boxed cake mix is low in fat!).

Speculoos Buttercream Frosting (from Maison Cupcake)

Yield – Frosts 12 Cupcakes approx

Ingredients:

250 grams icing sugar

50 grams unsalted butter, softened

30 grams Crunchy Speculoos spread

50 ml milk

1 tsp vanilla extract

Method:

In a bowl of an electric mixer, cream together the butter and speculoos, add the icing sugar and mix until blended. Add the vanilla and dribble in the milk until you get a consistency you are happy with (you won’t need all the milk). Pipe this onto cooled cupcakes and allow the butter to firm up a bit.

There you have Speculoos frosting. Did I mention that it comes in crunchy or smooth? I used crunchy in my frosting, but smooth is fine too. I think it going to be popping up in supermarkets all over the place (not just Waitrose where I got it) soon, so - Enjoy – and I will have another Speculoos recipe coming your way soon!

Cartoon Time - Pancake

No, It's not Mr Tumnus but Pan the Greek God...

Outsider Tart Revisited

A few months back, when Cakeyboi was in his infancy, I ventured to a bakery I was desperate to try out in London. Outsider Tart in Chiswick was the place and on our last trip to London, I popped along solo, whilst Disneyboi was busy. It was a fleeting visit, but I enjoyed it – and the cakes especially! Check out my review here.

As you may know, we are just back from our latest trip to the Capital and Disneyboi was desperate to try it for himself this time. Being a fan on Facebook and checking out their website, I knew that Outsider Tart had extended their store and I wanted to see what it was like. We took the tube out to Turnham Green (the closest station) and ventured up Chiswick High Road. When we got there, firstly we had a quick look at the cakes and all the American goodies on sale.

It was lunchtime and we were hungry, so were delighted to see that savoury was on the menu too. We both plumped for a bowl of chilli, which came with a huge slab of cornbread. 

The cornbread was the best I had ever had, and the chilli that also came with sour cream and some salsa verde was warming and delicious. Perfect for the bitterly cold day outside. The café area was spacious and comfortable and very relaxing.

After the savoury, we had a hot cup of coffee and chose a couple of cakes. The guy who served us took ages to go through what each of the cakes were, there was so many. I chose a blondie and brownie combo, with raisins and oatmeal ( I think that’s what it was, I honestly forgot after eating it!!) and Disneyboi chose an orange and lemon cake with frosting. No pic of that, as it was eaten pdq!

I bought a couple of things on the way out and settled our bill, With full stomachs we had a quick wander around Chiswick High Road, a lovely area, to burn off some our of our grub. Disneyboi was very impressed and I think this may just be a regular haunt for us on our trips to London.