GBBO Cartoon Time

Another GBBO inspired toon...

Chocolate, Honey and Almond Biscotti - for Organic September

When the good people at Sainsbury’s asked if I would like to be sent some of their So Organic range to come up with a few new recipes, I knew I would love the challenge. This is to promote Organic Food Month this September.

I didn’t know what ingredients I’d be sent or what I would make, so when I said yes and the So Organic goodies arrived my brain got ticking. I will have a few recipes using the produce through September, but the first batch I used included honey, blanched almonds and Fairtrade dark chocolate.

I took a look at these ingredients and they screamed the word biscotti at me. I have made biscotti before, namely chocolate and hazelnut biscotti. But this recipe was to be a plain biscuit with chocolate chunks studded throughout, toasted almonds and the sweet addition of the runny honey. Here's how I made it...

Ingredients:

2 eggs

115 grams granulated sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

2 tablespoons Sainsbury’s So Organic Clear Honey

235 grams plain flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

¼ teaspoon salt

100 grams Sainsbury’s So Organic blanched almonds

100 grams Santo Domingo Fairtrade Organic Dark Chocolate, chopped

adapted from Joy of Baking

Method:

Preheat the oven to 180^oC. Lay the almonds out on a baking sheet and toast in the oven for about 8 minutes, or until they have turned slightly brown and you can begin to smell them. Remove from the oven (keeping it at 180^oC) and give them a rough chop. Set aside.

In a mixing bowl, sift the flour, baking powder and salt, set this aside. In the bowl of a mixer, beat the sugar and eggs on high for 3-5 minutes, until the mixture is very pale and creamy looking. Add the vanilla and honey and beat for a further minute.

Add this wet mixture to the flour mix and combine. Add the almonds and chocolate and mix through evenly. Line a baking sheet with greaseproof paper and spoon the mixture into the middle. With a couple of knives, form the dough into an oblong about 4” by 10”. This is pretty sticky stuff, but using the knives avoids any mess.

Place into the oven and bake for 25 minutes. The oblong will turn dark brown and rise slightly. Remove from the oven (drop the temperature to 165oC) and carefully remove the greaseproof paper. Let it cool on a cooling rack for 15 minutes. Then with a bread knife, cut into 1” thick slices. Place each slice back onto the baking sheet (lined with new greaseproof paper) on their side and bake for 10 minutes. Flip each biscuit over and bake for a further 8 minutes.

Again, remove from the oven and greaseproof paper and allow to cool on a rack completely.

The biscotti is very crisp. It has delicious floral sweetness from the honey and the dark chocolate and creamy almond compliment each other well. These go great with a hot coffee and are just waiting to be dunked! Enjoy…

Disclosure Statement: I was sent So Organic items free to bake with. Any opinions expressed are my own.

Twinings Tea Review and GBBO Week 3

I have to admit, even though I go to Starbucks A LOT, when at home and at work actually, I drink mostly tea. So when I was recently asked to review some Twinings teas, I jumped at the chance.

Twinings, as you may know, are an English purveyor of tea. They carry an amazing amount of the stuff, loose leaf, bagged, fruit, herbal, green, black, etc. the range is actually very surprising.

I was sent a selection to try including some of their fruit and herbal tea range, namely settling ginger and camomile and maple sensation. I was also sent pineapple and grapefruit green tea and some loose leaf low grown Sri Lankan strong black tea.

I actually took these into work to give my colleagues a bit of a tasting session. I tried the maple and camomile, as I love maple flavour and I was not disappointed. The maple was not overpowering and complimented the earthy camomile tea well. A few folk said this was too sweet for them, but I don’t like sweet tea myself and didn’t find it so.

One of my colleagues tried the pineapple and grapefruit green tea as she drinks quite a lot of regular green tea. She was sceptical, thinking that the fruit flavours might be too acidic with the green tea, but she was surprised by how pleasant it was and not cloying at all.

A couple of others tried the settling ginger. This went down well, with them saying that the ginger was warming and left a tingle at the back of their throats. One friend even took a couple of bags home for their daughter as she had a sore throat and thought it would soothe her.

And lastly to the loose-leaf black tea, which I tried today at home (as there were no strainers in the office!). This was a good strong black tea, perfect for a morning cuppa with a splash of milk, as I like it.

Overall the Twining teas impressed. As I said they have many many teas and their earl grey would be good to try with my London Fog recipe I made a while back.

Disclosure Statement: I was sent the teas free to review. Any opinions expressed are my own.

And my GBBO Week 3 thought of the week – Poor Ali and his Petit Four! They barely got a fleeting glance, only Dame Mary Berry pointing out that one effort was just a shortbread biscuit with icing on! Oh well, he got through to next week anyway!

Chocolate Chocolate Chip Cupcakes with Cookie Dough Frosting

You know those days when you just fancy chocolate? Well, I was having one of those. And I was in the mood for cupcakes, so I knocked up a batch of chocolate flavoured batter, and added chocolate chips (hence the chocolate chocolate chip part).

I baked these off. But they looked sort of naked without any frosting. And by this point I was in the mood for something else as well – cookie dough.

Remember way way back at the start of Cakeyboi I made cookie dough pops? Well, I decide to use this recipe for my frosting, making it a little looser, so it could be piped easily on top of the cupcakes.

To garnish, I popped weenie choc chip cookies in the top and voila – my craving was set to be satisfied…

Yield: 24 cupcakes (my craving was well satisfied!)

Cupcake Ingredients:

260 grams plain flour

75 grams unsweetened cocoa powder

170 grams granulated sugar

1 tablespoon baking powder

½ teaspoon salt

320 ml milk

2 eggs

80 ml vegetable oil

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

100 grams plain chocolate chips

 adapted from culinaryarts.about.com

Method:

Preheat your oven to 180^oC. Place cupcake liners in two 12 cup, cupcake trays.

In a bowl whisk together the flour, sugar, cocoa, salt, baking powder. In a separate bowl mix the milk, eggs, oil and vanilla.

Add the wet mix to the dry and mix just until the dry ingredients have been fully incorporated. Add the chocolate chips and mix through.

With a scoop, fill the cupcake liners ¾ full. Place the two trays in the oven for 18 to 20 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean from the centre. Allow the cupcakes to cool fully.

Cookie Dough Frosting Ingredients:

110grams of unsalted butter, softened

250grams plain flour
200grams of light brown sugar
1 tsp Vanilla extract
 1 can (397g) condensed milk

1 tablespoon milk
50 grams mini chocolate chips

Method:

In a mixing bowl, cream the sugar and the butter together until light and fluffy. Add in the vanilla and mix through. Once combined add your flour and condensed milk and tablespoon of milk. Mix until totally combined and no flour is visible. Add in the chocolate chips, mix through well. Place the cookie dough in a piping bag an pipe onto the top of the cupcakes. Finish by placing a mini chocolate chip cookie in the frosting.

Keep the cupcakes cool in the fridge, which helps keep the frosting firm, until you are ready to eat them.

There you have a chocolate and cookie dough craving all satisfied in one. Enjoy!!

GBBO Cartoon Time again...

After last week's homage to the queen of cakes, we had to honour the 'silver fox' didn't we?

Treat Petite – a new baking, blogging challenge!

  

Welcome and a big thank you for stopping by to check out ‘Treat Petite’. It’s a new baking, blogging challenge hosted on alternate months by myself - Stuart from Cakeyboi and Kat over at The Baking Explorer.

The idea behind Treat Petite is quite simple – it’s any sweet treat you can think of that’s not a big cake! From cookies to macarons, krispie treats to truffles; we want to see any delicious concoction you conjure up in the kitchen that is individually portioned!! And don’t worry; cupcakes are permitted.

Each month will have a theme for you, to get those ideas flowing.

Each challenge will begin on the 1^st of every month and will close on 25^th. We aim to have a round up online at the end of the month.

Here are those all important rules;

1. Email that month's host by the 25th of the month, midnight at the latest – include in the e-mail your name, if you have a blog the URL of your post and name of your blog, recipe and a photo (640x480pixels max) of your bake.

2. If applicable post your bake onto your blog and link back to Cakeyboi and The Baking Explorer, stating who is hosting that particular month.

3. Follow Cakeyboi and The Baking Explorer blogs via the Google Join this Site button, if you haven’t already.

4. If you tweet use  #treatpetite and mention @MrCakeyboi and @BakingExplorer – we will retweet
   
   
5. Add the challenge logo to the post and ‘Treat Petite’ as a label to the post
   
   
6. Use any recipe as long as the source is noted

7. Add your photo to the ‘Treat Petite’ Pinterest board (request access from me – Cakeyboi)

8. Feel free to enter old posts as long as you update the post and meet all the requirements above!

And the theme for Treat Petite No.1 is ‘No Theme’. That’s right – to get us all into the swing of things, anything goes! Kat is hosting and she would love to see your petite makes, no matter what they are….

If you have any questions at all, please email Cakeyboi or The Baking Explorer.

Ready, steady bake!

Cartoon Saturday, Capt. Cakeman on Evap and Condensed, plus GBBO Week 2

Firstly a cartoon which I've shown before, but is kinda apt for those of you in the UK, this weekend...

Captain Cakeman is here...

Hi Katie,

Evaporated milk and condensed milk are very different products. Let’s start with Evaporated.

Evaporated milk is ordinary milk which has had around 60% of it’s water content removed. It is then canned and the cans are heated to prevent bacteria growing, giving it a long-shelf life. This heating process gives the sweet taste evaporated milk has. I have read that if you add enough water to evaporated, you end up with regular milk again! Not sure if that is true, as the sweet flavour might make it taste a tad different.

Now, condensed milk is milk which has sugar added to it, and had some of it’s water content removed. Due to the amount of sugar added (about 45%) it is a much thicker product, used in many recipes. Condensed milk without the added sugar used to be quite common but is now nearly unheard of. Like evaporated milk, canned sweetened condensed milk has a very long shelf life.

The two are not interchangeable in recipes! I hope this answers your questions Katie.

And lastly GBBO week 2, thought of the week - Poor Lucy, I'm not saying I could do any better, but I thought the bread was supposed to be a showstopper - not a doorstopper!!