Double Chocolate Day

There's a guy that Duncan works with, P, who's allergic to eggs. I used to feel guilty every time Duncan took some of my baking to work - it all had eggs in it, and P couldn't have any of it. So, Amazon to the rescue. I found a book on baking wthout eggs (Bakin' Without Eggs by Rosemarie Emro), and started baking a few things from it, which seemed to be fairly well received. But then I sort of stopped baking as often, and things didn't go to work with Duncan.

However, P recently helped me out with sourcing a good price on my Dad's birthday present. He's good at that kind of thing, among all the other stuff he does to help people out, and I figured he deserved a little thank you. So I dug out the egg-free baking book, and whipped up a batch of the chocolate muffins that had gone down so well before. Apparently they went down pretty well this time too - not just with P, but with everybody else there too. So well, that I'm making another batch this weekend. Although, for variety, I plan on using Green & Black's Maya Gold cocoa, instead of their plain cocoa powder. Hopefully that should give a slight orange spice taste to them.

As the chocolate muffins were going to work, I thought we might need something else chocolatey to stay behind. This time, it was out with the not-quite-so-bad-for-you baking book (One Smart Cookie by Julie van Rosendaal), and into the chapter on brownies, where I picked a simple plain chocolate brownie.

Recipes:

Chocolate Sour Cream Cupcakes
(Adapted from Bakin' Without Eggs by Rosemarie Emro)
225 grams plain flour
50 grams cocoa powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
225 grams sugar
250 ml sour cream
125 ml vegetable oil
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
125 ml soda water

Preheat oven to 350F/180C Placu muffin cases in muffin tin.
In a large bowl, sift together the flour, cocoa and baking powder. Add the sugar and mix through.
In a jug, beat together the sour cream, vegetable oil, vanilla and soda water.
Add the wet ingredients to the dry, and stir until completely mixed.
Divide between muffin cases.
Bake for 15 to 20 minutes.


Easy Cocoa Brownies
(Adapted from One Smart Cookie by Julie van Rosendaal)
50 grams unsalted butter -- melted
200 grams caster sugar
1 large egg
2 large egg whites
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 teaspoon instant coffee granules -- dissolved in 1 teaspoon water
140 grams plain flour
50 grams cocoa powder
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt

Preheat the oven to 350F/175C. Line an 8x8 inch pan with non-stick baking parchment.
In a large bowl, mix together the butter and sugar until well combined.
Add the egg, egg whites, vanilla and coffee. Stir until thoroughly blended and smooth.
In another bowl, combine the flour, cocoa, baking powder and salt.
Add the dry ingredients, together with any optional additions, to the egg mixture and stir until just combined. Do not overmix.
Spread the batter in the pan. Bake for 25 - 30 minutes, until the edge is starting to pull away but the middle is still slightly soft. Do not overbake.
Cool in the pan. Cuts into 16 pieces.

Lemon Ice Cream & Blueberry Sauce

You know those kitchen gadgets that you get, thinking you'll use but which end up just taking up space? I've had two of those. The bread maker, which did get used a few times but ended up acting as a shelf, got passed on to Duncan's mum. Who uses it a lot. The other gadget is, of course, an ice-cream maker. This was given to me by my brother for Christmas a year or so ago. I made one batch of ice cream from the recipes that came with it, then the bowl got put into storage in the freezer, the motor went into a cupboard, and I never used it again.

Well, until now. I don't remember which blog I got the link from, but this recipe for Cornstarch Ice Cream from the New York Times seemed like a good reason to get the machine out.

I pretty much followed the basic recipe, making the honey-jam variation, but using lemon curd in place of the jam. To be honest, this was so good that I would have been quite happy to pour the hot custard straight into a bowl and eat it. But I had to make do with sharing the scraping of the pan and jug with Duncan, after the bulk of it had gone into the machine to freeze.

The machine makes a very soft ice-cream, so one it had done its work, the ice-cream was transferred to a tub and into the freezer to firm up some more. And I started trying to think of what to put with it. I had some blueberries left in the fridge (from last week's non-blogged blueberry muffins), so made a warm blueberry sauce to spoon over.

And yes, I do have a number of other variations of this recipe I'd like to try. But maybe I should finish the tub of this that's still in the freezer first.

Recipes:

Lemon Ice Cream
1 carton double cream (284ml size) made up to 475ml with whole milk
Pinch salt
60g caster sugar
60ml honey
100ml whole milk
3 tablespoons cornflour/cornstarch
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/3 cup (80ml, I didn't weigh it) lemon curd

Mix cream/milk mixture, salt, sugar and honey in a pan. Heat until it begins to steam.
Meanwhile, mix remaining milk with the cornflour until smooth.
Once the mixture in the pan is steaming, add the milk/cornflour mixture.
Cook, stirring, until it starts to thicken.
reduce heat to low and stir for about 5 minutes until thick.
Stir in vanilla.
Remove from heat and leave to cool slightly. When still slightly warm, stir in lemon curd.
When cold, transfer to an ice-cream machine and follow manufacturer's instructions.


Blueberry Sauce
100g blueberries
5g caster sugar
2 teaspoons water

Combine all ingredients in a pan. Cover and cook over a low heat until the blueberries have burst and you have a thick sauce.

Venison with Red Onion & Cherry 'Chutney'

Yes, I did bake this week. I made these Carrot, Apple & Honey Muffins from Baking Bites. But I didn't make many modifications to the recipe (except for my usual conversion to metric), so I'm not going to repeat it here. They're very good. Although I might up the amount of carrots next time.
So, what goodies did I make that I consider worth sharing? Well, tonight's dinner was venison steaks with new potatoes, baby corn and a red onion and cherry chutney. Now, normally I make this recipe with cranberries (so it's normally a red onion and cranberry chutney), but this week I couldn't get any. So I had to improvise, and instead of the frozen cranberries I got frozen cherries. I was a bit worried about whether it would turn out, but I needn't have been. It seemed to meet with approval, so here it is. While I served it with venison, it would probably go quite well with duck.

Recipe:
150g frozen cranberries or cherries
1/2 green chilli, finely chopped
2 garlic cloves, crushed
1/2 red onion, chopped
50 ml red wine
100 ml vegetable stock
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1 tablespoon lime juice
2 tablespoons orange juice
1/2 tablespoon worcestershire sauce
2 teaspoons balsamic vinegar
3/4 teaspoon ground cumin
3/4 teaspoon ground coriander

Place all ingredients in a pan. Cover and simmer, stirring occasionally, until the onions are soft and the liquid reduced.

Chocolate Gingerbread

No entries for a couple of weeks. Well, I did make some biscotti a few weeks ago, but I've been on holiday, so no baking got done since then. I was in Orkney, where I picked up some interesting flour, bere meal. There was a recipe leaflet to go with it, but I plan on using it a bit differently to the usual savoury scones and bannocks; hopefully I'll talk about that in a week or so.
Anyway, this week I was in the mood for cake. Thinking of Nigella's chocolate gingerbread, I thought I'd try a chocolate variation of the buttermilk gingerbread in my last post. Very simply, it's the same recipe, with the addition of some melted good quality dark chocolate. The method's also a bit different, more akin to a brownie. How did it turn out? Well, I think I had my oven a bit hot or left in it a little too long because the crumb's a little bit loose, but it tastes delicious.

Recipe:
150 grams plain flour
60 grams wholemeal flour
1 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1 1/2 teaspoons ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
1 1/2 teaspoons bicarbonate of soda
50 grams unsalted butter
75 grams dark chocolate (Green & Black's, 70%)
80 grams sugar
1 egg
100 grams molasses
110 millilitres skim milk

Preheat oven to 325F/170C. Line an 8 inch square cake pan with non stick baking parchment.
Mix together the flours, spices and bicarbonate of soda in a medium bowl
In a large bowl, melt together the butter and chocolate.
In a bowl or jug, beat together the sugar and egg.
Once the butter and chocolate are melted, allow to cool slightly then beat in the egg and sugar.
Add the molasses and milk. Mix well.
Add the dry ingredients to the wet. Mix until smooth.
Pour into the batter into the pan.
Bake for about 20 minutes.

Buttermilk Gingerbread

Another recipe from a blog Baking Bites this time. It sounded delicious, and I haven't made gingerbread for a while, so I thought I'd give it a try. It does call for one ingredient I don't normally have in my cupboard: molasses. I suppose I could have substituted black treacle, but I decided it would probably be better to just hunt some down. I think it was probably worth it. I did make one main change to the recipe, substituting some of the plain flour with wholemeal. I'm going to make this again, but I want to try a chocolate version.

Recipe:
150 grams plain flour
60 grams plain wholemeal flour
1 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1 1/2 teaspoons ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
1 1/2 teaspoons bicarbonate of soda
50 grams unsalted butter
80 grams sugar
1 egg
100 grams molasses
110 millilitres skim milk

Preheat oven to 325F/170C. Line an 8 inch square cake pan with non stick baking parchment.
Mix together the flours, spices and bicarbonate of soda in a medium bowl
In a large bowl, cream together the butter and sugar.
Beat in the egg.
Add the molasses and milk. Mix well.
Add the dry ingredients to the wet. Mix until smooth.
Pour into the batter into the pan.
Bake for about 25 minutes.