Choc Cherry Slice…..Again….and Again….

I was so happy with the choc cherry raisin slice I made the other day, that I have made it another two times since – 3 times in 3 weeks! I think this easy no-bake treat will be a firm, no-fail favourite for a long time to come. A great thing to have the ingredients always on stand-by for, as you can make it and cut up an hour or so later – it doesn’t take a long time to set, so you can easily make it at the last minute.

Yum!

Happy Fooding!

Slice Me Up Baby….

Last week when I made the Soupe Barley, I bought a box of raisins, but had 3/4 of a boxful left over. Now raisins are not something I eat or use much, so I decided to try making the no-bake choc cherry slice on the back of the packet, just to use some of them up.

I fudged it a bit as I used different biscuits and changed the quantities slightly, so I wasn’t sure how it would turn out – but the verdict was fantastic! It was a huge hit at work for morning and disappeared mightily fast!

I made the slice the night before, as the recipe said to leave it to set before spreading with the melted chocolate topping; however I’ve written it below as I will do in future, which is to put the topping on straight away. This is because when I cut the slice up the icing had not properly ‘melded’ with the base, and tended to crack a bit.

Crunchy Choc Raisin Slice

1/2 cup raisins

1/2 cup walnuts

250 gm pkt Granita biscuits

1/3 cup glacé cherries, cut in half

90 gms butter

370 gms condensed  milk (not quite all of a tin)

300 gms dark cooking chocolate

1 tsp butter, extra

Crush biscuits in a food processor until finely crumbed. Add the walnuts for the last few seconds of processing.

In a microwave-proof bowl, melt the butter, condensed milk and 150 gms of the chocolate, stirring frequently until smooth.

Add the biscuit mixture, raisins and cherries to the chocolate mixture and mix well.

Place in a lined slice tray (28cm x 18cm).

Melt the remaining chocolate and extra butter, in the microwave until smooth, and spread evenly over the top of the slice.

Refrigerate for a few hours, then cut into squares to serve, and stuff your face!

Happy Summer Fooding!

Delectable Desserts, Christmas Style

Lindy’s ice cream pudding

No recipes for these (although I can put in a request from my mum for the cheesecake one if you want it, but I think the ice cream plum pudding is a family secret of my step-mum’s!), but I just wanted to share these pictures of some of the sweet goodies we enjoyed on Christmas Day.

I don’t usually eat sweet stuff much, but I could not resist the ice cream pudding, and boy was it amazing!

Hedgehog (above, on the same plate as the Christmas cake) is a staple sweet thing in my family – my mum is famous for hers. I thought I’d shared that recipe with you but I can’t find it, so I must not have…yet. And the Christmas cake is the dead easy low-fat one you can make at the last minute (we did pour some booze over it a few days before!).

Fruit salad is….well….fruit salad! And of course we had chocolates, chocolates and more chocolates. We totally forgot to get out the mince pies (bought ones, cos’ sometimes you just have to be lazy about things) and I don’t think we even had any shortbread this year. There’s always plenty to go around though, no one ever goes hungry on Christmas Day!!!

Happy Post-Christmas Fooding!

Peppermint Slice

Well it’s back to reality and work, here – am back in Perth (40C every day, loving it!) and Christmas is all over for another year. I got some great food-related presents for Christmas – you can never have too many gadgets!

5 of us girls went to see Les Miserables on Boxing Day. Not a dry eye in the house! Amazing movie and a great way to finish off the festive season. I have a friend coming over from the UK in a couple of weeks, and it hasn’t opened there yet, so I’ll be forced to go again to accompany her to see it….not hard!

I have had another go at the Caramello Slice, because I wasn’t happy with the stickiness. After reading reviews and different variations, I did it like this:

Peppermint Slice

200 gms condensed milk (skim)

220 gm block Cadbury Dairy Milk Peppermint Chocolate

1 tbsp butter

250 gm pkt Granita biscuits

desiccated coconut

In a microwaveable bowl, place the condensed milk, chocolate (broken up) and butter. Cook on Medium until melted (for me this was 2 x 20 second bursts), stir until smooth then add the biscuits, crushed quite finely.

Mix until well blended then place in your usual slice container/tin. Sprinkle coconut over the top and refrigerate for several hours/overnight to set firmly. Cut into squares.

Makes 24 pieces.

I am still using a very old laptop while my Macbook Pro is at the doctor’s, and it is quite frustrating – I cannot find the photos of this peppermint slice anywhere!

Happy Fooding!

Christmas Truffles

What a busy time! I can’t wait for tomorrow, when I break up from work at lunchtime (and we have an afternoon Christmas bbq at the beautiful Kings Park) for a two week break. I’m off to Melbourne next week for Christmas with my family – haven’t seen my kids since March so am really looking forward to it.

As promised the other day, here is the recipe for the chocolate balls I made to take to my work Christmas bbq.

These are rich, chocolately, boozey and gooey. Just the things we all love at this time of year!

Fruity Christmas Truffles

500 gms bought Christmas cake (the “dark” variety seems to give a richer flavour)

200 gms good quality dark chocolate (I liked to use Lindt 70% cocoa)

60 gms butter

2 tbsp cream

2 tbsp brandy or sherry

dessicated coconut, cocoa or chopped nuts, to coat

Crumble the Christmas cake into a bowl. Combine the chocolate, butter and cream in a separate bowl and microwave until chocolate is melted and smooth. Pour melted mixture over the cake and add the brandy.

Stir until well combined and refrigerate for about 20 minutes, until firm enough to handle.

Roll into small balls and then roll in desired topping (above as you can see I have done half with coconut and half with cocoa).

Refrigerate until firm.

Makes 40-45 (depends how big you like your balls lol!).

If you buy a Christmas cake that is a bit bigger, cos’ they vary, use it all and just slosh in a bit more cream, butter and brandy (hic!) – it will still work just fine with a bit of “fudging”.

Happy Christmas fooding!

Caramello Slice

Gooey! That’s the only word to describe this rich, caramel slice. As with the M&M slice, this is from the 4 Ingredients: Kids cookbook, and is no-bake and super simple.

I made this to take to work, as at home there is no one to eat up all the sweet stuff. It was VERY sticky underneath, so I think next time I’ll sprinkle some extra coconut on to the base of the slice container, to make it not stick to the bottom. It was, however, very popular and was all eaten by the end of the day, despite the sticky fingers!

I did some searching and found that there are a few variations of this slice around, including a variation using peppermint chocolate instead of caramel. I also found slightly different quantities, which might make a difference to the stickiness.

I think my colleagues are going to have to be guinea pigs again next week – I don’t think they’ll complain…..

Caramello Slice

250 gm block Caramello chocolate

1/2 cup butter

200 gms Marie biscuits, coarsely broken

1/2 x 400 gm tin sweetened condensed milk

Melt chocolate and butter in microwave; stir in condensed milk and biscuits.

Press into slice container/tin (I use a Tupperware Slice N Stor) and sprinkle with coconut. Place in fridge to set.

Cut into 24 pieces.

Happy Fooding!

M&M Bars (Sort Of)

How about this for a slice so easy your kids could make it in a flash! This was in a magazine recently, promoting the 4 Ingredients Kids cookbook, and in fact only has 3 ingredients. It is quite sweet to taste, so for most of us one piece would be enough (I say MOST lol).

I prefer Smarties to M&Ms so I used those instead. You could use peanut M&Ms if you prefer, and I reckon you could easily add some chopped walnuts, almonds, raisins or coconut, or top the slice with melted chocolate. Using Malt-O-Milk biscuits would be good too.

Start with these basic 3 things and then experiment. You don’t have to be a kid to like quick and easy baking!

You can find this recipe and a heap of other 4 ingredient recipes here.

M&M Bars

250 gm pkt plain sweet biscuits (ie Marie, Arrowroot)

400 gm can condensed milk

1 cup M&Ms or Smarties

Preheat oven to 160C. Line a 16 x 26cm baking tray with baking paper.

Blend the biscuits to a fine crumb, in food processor. Add remaining ingredients and combine well.

Scrape the mixture into the baking pan and bake for 20 minutes.

Cool, then cut into bars to serve.

Happy Fooding!

Choc Cherry Muffins

I burnt these! I’m still not used to just how hot my current oven is – I keep turning the temp down lower than every recipe says, but it is still too hot. Actually it has been great for cakes rising so far, much better than my previous oven, but I must remember to turn it down even more. Also the oven doesn’t have a window in the door – how archaic – which is a bit frustrating, as you can’t see how things are going, but you don’t want to open the oven too often to check, especially with cakes.

Despite their burnt bums, these muffins, which use yummy Cherry Ripe bars in them, were all eaten by the TAFE class that I took them to!

I’m sorry if you are not able to get Cherry Ripes where you live – you haven’t lived ’til you’ve tried one!

Choc Cherry Muffins

2 cups SR flour

1/3 cup cocoa

1/3 cup castor sugar

60 gms butter, melted

3 x 55 gm Cherry Ripe bars, chopped

1/2 cup Nutella hazelnut spread

1 egg, lightly beaten

3/4 cup milk

1/2 cup sour cream

Sift the dry ingredients into a large bowl; stir in the remaining ingredients and mix (do not over-mix).

Spoon into a lightly greased muffin tray. Bake at 190C (unless your oven is super hot like mine in which case lower it a bit and keep an eye on them) for 25 minutes.

Makes 12

Happy Unburnt Fooding!

Chocolate Cake in a Mug!

Yes, in a coffee mug…..I’ve been wanting to try this super easy cake-for-one microwave recipe for a long time. There are many sources of this recipe (or a variation of it) online, but this is the one I tried.

The advertising says “Why is this the most dangerous cake recipe in the world? Because it’s always only 5 minutes away!”. This is true – 3 minutes in the the microwave and a bit of time to throw the ingredients in the coffee mug, and you have a chocolate morning tea fix.

Now I’m not saying this is a healthy snack – high in sugar and oil – the cake is originally from a rice bran oil company, and rice bran oil is supposed to be relatively healthy in the same way as olive oil or avocado oil. I don’t usually have rice bran oil lying around, so I used olive instead. I left out the optional chocolate chips, because I figured it was sweet enough (and also because I just didn’t have any choc chips!).

Interesting looking when you turn it out of the mug – kind of splodged with holes – obviously cooking it so fast in the microwave, there isn’t time for the ingredients to slowly settle into place. I did let it sit for a couple of minutes before I turned it out to cool. And I had used a soup type mug, quite large, so mine didn’t go over the top of the mug like the recipe said it would.

I didn’t in fact taste this myself – I made it for someone else to try – I sprinkled it with icing sugar before serving and the taste opinion was…..NOT GOOD lol! Apparently it was: dry in parts, downright hard & lumpy in parts, sweet in parts and bland in parts. Overall it seemed not mixed together properly, and was very dense and heavy tasty. In fact, a disaster!

I think it’s worth having a go again – I might mix it in a bowl first and aerate it a lot with a stick mixer, before pouring into the mug to cook. Also I will turn it straight out of the mug and not let it stand at all, or reduce the cooking time by 30 seconds, because it obviously overcooked.

Happy Fooding!

Not Quite a Sweet Success..

An almost-flop on the weekend….I recently borrowed the new “4 Ingredients: Christmas” cookbook from my library (which is also my casual job workplace – it is huge fun getting to see all the new release books coming across my path – I have enough books reserved to last me ’til the end of my days!). There are loads of simple, festive recipes in this book, a continuation of the 4 Ingredients series of books.

I decided to try the Rocky Road Bon Bons, only cut into squares rather than long rectangles wrapped in cellophane, for a bbq we went to. WELL, it didn’t quite turn out like it was supposed to – I had some milk cooking chocolate leftover from something else, so decided to use that. Not sure if it was a bit “old” or what, but it refused to melt properly in the microwave, and started to do that cooked/curdled thing that chocolate has a tendency to do if you’re not careful. It wouldn’t melt to a smooth liquid, so I threw in the other ingredients and hoped for the best – but it then wouldn’t mix together like it should……in desperation I added a 100g block of Lindt dark chocolate, put aside for my favourite chilli recipe (don’t think I’ve shared that with you yet) and a bit of butter, and threw the whole lot back in the microwave. I cooked it on Medium until the new lot of chocolate had melted; however, this meant of course that the marshmallows and turkish delight had also melted!

So what I ended up with was a sort of fudge/slice “thing”. Same flavours as the original, but the only lumpy bits were the macadamias. Also it was a bit skinny, so I should have used a smaller sized tin than the more lumpy version called for, to make it higher.

Oh well. Very rich tasting and chocolatey, so no problems with the flavours, but next time I will use fresher chocolate……

Here is the original, Christmas recipe anyway…..

Rocky Road Bon Bons

250 gms chocolate (dark, milk or white)

100 gms macadamia nuts, roughly chopped

1 cup marshmallows, cut in half

150 gms Turkish delight, roughly chopped

Break chocolate into pieces and melt in a microwave safe dish on Medium-High heat, stirring every 30 seconds. Allow to cool slightly before adding remaining ingredients. Mix until well combined. Line a 9cm x 13cm loaf tin with baking paper, pour the mixture into it, neaten edges and refrigerate until set.

Remove and cut into 8 rectangular slices. Cut in half again and wrap each in clear cellophane. These make a beautiful handmade Christmas gift tied at each end with a pretty ribbon.

Happy Fooding!