CHOCOHOLIC HANDBAG LOVER :

2013-01-01T01:08:00.002+00:00

Neven Maguires Mulled fruit trifle

Anyone who knows me knows I've tried many fancy pants recipes over the years, yet somehow never managed to made a trifle from scratch. How ridiculous is that? Long before we had celebrity chefs like Rachel Allen and Nigella Lawson harking on about organic this and guinea fowl that, we had Birds Eye trifle from a box. As a child of the 80s, It reminds me of my childhood, so it's vaguely nostalgic comfort food.

With Christmas fast approaching I decided to be super posh and make a trifle from scratch. That meant actually making custard and not just pouring it from a carton. I knew it could go either way, like the time I tried to make hollandaise from scratch. No reader, that didn't end well, but happily my custard making was more successful. Hooray. The recipe I used was taken from Neven Maguires Home Chef cookbook, pictured below, which was actually a Christmas present many moons ago. It tastes so good and everybody loved it, so I will definitely be making it again. Result!

Nevens mulled fruit trifle recipe

Ingredients

100ml (3 1/2fl oz) ruby red port

100g (4oz) caster sugar

1 tsp ground mixed spice

1/2 vanilla pod, split in half and seeds scraped out

500g (1 1/4lb) bag frozen fruits of the forest

200g (7oz) Madeira cake, broken into pieces

300ml (1/2 pint) double cream

For the custard

300ml (1/2 pint) milk

100ml (3 1/2fl oz) double cream

1/2 vanilla pod, split in half and seeds scraped out

5 egg yolks

4 tbsp caster sugar

2 tsp cornflour

toasted flaked almonds, to decorate

To make the custard, Place the milk, cream and vanilla pod and seeds in a heavy-based pan over a gentle heat and cook until it nearly reaches the boil - but don't allow to boil. Meanwhile, place the egg yolks, sugar, cornflour, sugar and vanilla in a large bowl and whisk together until pale and thickened.

Remove the milk and cream mixture from the heat and then slowly whisk it into the egg mixture until smooth. Pour back into the pan and place on a gentle heat. Cook, without allowing to boil, until the custard coats the back of a wooden spoon, stirring continuously. Remove from the heat and leave to cool, covering with a piece of clingfilm to prevent a skin forming on top.

Meanwhile, prepare the mulled fruit. Place the ruby red port in a large pan with the sugar, mixed spice and vanilla and then bring to the boil. Reduce the heat and simmer for 4-5 minutes until syrupy, stirring occasionally. Stir in the frozen fruits of the forest and set aside until cooled, stirring occasionally. The fruits should defrost naturally in the hot syrup but still hold their shape.

Scatter the Madeira cake over the base of a 1.5 litre (2 1/2 pint) glass serving bowl. Spoon over the cooked fruits of the forest mixture and cover with the cooled custard. Chill for 1 hour until the custard sets a little firmer or up to 24 hours is fine.

When ready to serve, whip the cream in a bowl until you have achieved soft peaks and place spoonfuls on top of custard, then gently spread with a palette knife or back of a spoon to cover the custard completely. Sprinkle over the toasted flaked almonds and place straight on the table to serve.

Notes !

I found the custard a bit on the runny side for my liking, so next time I would use a little bit less milk and cream. It's also worth noting that when you are adding the milk and cream mixture to the egg mix , you need to keep the heat very low, otherwise you could end up with scrambled eggs. If this does start to happen, immerse the saucepan in a bath of cold water in the sink and whisk very briskly with a fork to get any lumps out. I sieved Green & Blacks cocoa powder over the top with the flaked almonds to give it a nice finishing touch.

2012-11-21T23:01:00.005+00:00

Clodagh McKennas Spiced Butternut Squash & Coconut Soup

It's been a while since I blogged - ok a long time. So much has been going on. I've moved house and job and it's been a bit of a rollercoaster year. So I'm back cooking again and trying yummy new recipes ( when I have the time which sadly isn't that often) Anyway, It's Winter and there's nothing better than a lovely warming soup! I got this recipe in a pull out from Clodaghs Kitchen Diaries in The Sunday Times a few weeks ago. I originally made it with pumpkin at Halloween but the actual recipe uses Butternut Squash. Either will work.

Ingredients

20g butter
1kg butternut squash, skinned, deseeded & cut into 2.5cm chunks
1 teaspoon of ground cumin
1 teaspoon of garam masala ( If you don't have it don't worry just leave it out !)
2 cloves of garlic crushed
200g chopped onions
600/700ml of hot vegetable stock
1 can of coconut milk ( you can use full fat or low fat- doesn't matter)
salt & a good grinding of black pepper

Method

Melt the butter in a saucepan, add the squash, spices, garlic and onions. Add the salt & pepper. cover and leave to simmer, stirring occasionally for about 15 minutes. Stir in the hot stock and coconut milk and bring to the boil. When the butternut squash is nice and tender, the soup is ready to be blended using a food processor or hand blender. (you can use a potato masher if you don't have a blender or if like me you're feeling lazy) I like to fry one or two rashers of bacon and chop them up and add to the soup at the end to give it a little extra flavour. Yum.

Lorraine Pascale- Baking Made Easy

2011-04-11T21:18:00.000+01:00

I recently saw a few episodes of this amazing cookery show on BBC 2, called ' Baking Made Easy' and saw the accompanying book so obviously I had to buy it. The photos in the book look so pretty! I have been meaning to make the ' Cookies & Cream Fudge Brownies' with Oreos in them for about three weeks now, but as usual, haven't had the time...... The programme is amazing, you can watch the episodes on the BBC website or by cutting and pasting this link;

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00xk0dm

Rachel Allens Mendiants

2011-02-23T22:39:00.002+00:00

I had never heard of Mendiants until I went to Lilly Higgins Loaves & Fishes Supper Club last month. They're served at the end of a meal with a cup of tea or coffee. They look fancypants but they're actually really easy to make! YAY ! I only had enough chocolate to make about 12/15 mendiants but the recipe says 20..... so it depends how generous you are with the chocolate!

Mendiants

By: Rachel Allen From: Rachel Allen's Dinner Parties

Prep time:
5 min

Cook time:
5 mins

Mendiants are a traditional French dessert canape, or to serve with coffee at the end of a meal. Store them somewhere cool but preferably not the fridge as they will 'sweat'.

Ingredients

* 100 g dark, milk or white chocolate, broken into pieces

To decorate

* dried fruit, such as cranberries, raisins, sultanas or candied peel
* chopped crystallised ginger
* nuts, such as shelled whole (or chopped) almonds, hazelnuts, pistachios,walnuts or pecans
* pinch dried red chilli flakes
* pinch cinnamon, or ginger
* pinch sea salt, flakes
* a little edible gold leaf

Method
1. Place the chocolate in a heatproof bowl set over a saucepan of water. Heat the water until it just begins to boil, then remove from the heat and allow the chocolate to melt slowly in the bowl, stirring from time to time.

2. Line a baking tray with baking parchment. Carefully drop a teaspoonful of liquid chocolate on 1 corner of the paper – it will spread out slightly to form a small disc. Repeat with the rest of the chocolate, then while the chocolate is still liquid, decorate the discs with your chosen toppings.

3. Allow to set in a cool place, then carefully lift them off the paper to serve.

Loaves & Fishes supper club- Jan 2010

2011-02-01T13:47:00.006+00:00

I first read about the Loaves and Fishes Supper Club a few months back in The Sunday Times. The comedienne Maeve Higgins and her sister Lilly decided to open up their home( which is a converted church in Kilmainham) to the public. I mentioned this to a friend of mine, and it turns out, one of her very best friends was the architect John O' Connell who restored the property to its former glory. Small world ! So, we emailed Lilly Higgins and booked our places.

On the evening in question I typed the address into my sat nav( or sat nag as I call it) and set off quietly confident that we would find it no problem. As usual, things didn't go according to plan....what's new there? I found the church, or so I thought. I mean, how many churches could there possibly be on Inchicore Road anyway? Answer : two. In my defence, Inchicore Road is not a very long road. We pulled up outside church number one( the wrong one I may add) We had a hunch, that it wasn't the right one, thank god ! Excuse the pun. Otherwise we would have been drinking altar wine and eating the holy bread. We decided to drive around again, unfortunately, I didn't realise I was driving the WRONG WAY down a one way street. Well, I did, after three taxi drivers flashed their headlights at me. Whoops. Anyway, we just about made it on the dot of half seven.

We had lovely chorizo & beef stew with Yotam Ottolenghis root mash. ( I actually thought Ottolenghi was some type of exotic root vegetable) How sad.... then thanks to the wonders of the interweb and google, I discovered he was a well known chef ( really?) Okay,apparently he's well known in London but I had never heard of him! He has several restaurants in swanky areas like Notting Hill and Kensington. Anyway, much of the night was spent asking each other "hows yer ottolenghi love?" and " do ya have an ottolenghi" and "do yiz know wot an ottolenghi is" in our fake Dub accents which sent us into fits laughing. Maybe you had to be there.....

For dessert we had sticky toffee pudding with toffee sauce. Yum. The recipes for both dishes are on Lillys blog;

http://lillyhiggins.blogspot.com/2010/10/loaves-fishes-supper-club.html

The drive home was as successful as the drive there, in that I managed to get lost again and the' sat nag' took me back to Terenure in a very round the world kind of way. But we got there in the end. They say life is about the journey, not the destination. Which is all well and good, but sometimes I'd like to get to my destination without getting lost all the time!

Chez Emily Chocolate Boutique- Ashbourne ~ Yum ~

2011-01-19T21:27:00.006+00:00

Happy Belated New Year !

I have been a very bold girl and haven't posted anything in a looong time, anyway, I'm not sure anyone actually reads my blog anyway soo.... I was driving through Ashbourne a few weeks ago and noticed a little ' chocolate boutique' across the road from Aldi, but was in a bit of a hurry ( what's new ?!)so I didn't have a chance to investigate. Last week I finally had the chance to put my curiosity to rest and am so glad I did ! Chez Emily is quite a find. Yay ! The Chocolate Boutique is Wall to wall chocolate. When I say chocolate, I mean proper chocolate, none of that cheap supermarket checkout rubbish. They have about four or five tables where you can enjoy a coffee and any slice of cake for €5.00. While you're there you can pick up a jar of yummy fudge sauce or their very own chocolate spread. The chocolates are very reasonably priced and everything is beautifully packaged, so it almost be rude not to! If you're looking for a present, they have lots of purse friendly options and they can write a message or personalise something for you too. They also sell quirky birthday cards so it's a one stop shop.

For more information copy and paste the the link below. Happy eating ! Lots of love, Jill x

http://www.goodfoodireland.ie/Member331/Chez-Emily-Fine-Handmade-Chocolates-Meath.html

P.S: They also do a small selection of diabetic chocolates too :)

It's been a while / Nigella Lawsons dinner party brownies.. oh yum.

2010-07-27T21:49:00.000+01:00

I haven't blogged in ages, what with having a newborn baby and not having a minutes peace, so I'm not getting off to a very good start really.... Anyway, I decided to make Nigella Lawsons chocolate brownies with decadent chocolate sauce as a friend was calling over today. Oh wow, these are so dense and gorgeous, they're to die for! I have tried numerous chocolate brownie recipes but I always come back to this one as it's the best! I think the secret is the fact that there's no flour in the recipe, and it's great for parties if there are any coeliacs. (And there always are)They will love you forever ! Yay! Anyway this recipe is from Nigella Express. Do use the best quality chocolate you can find, anything over 50% is fine. I sometimes use 100g of good quality milk chocolate mixed with 100g of dark chocolate.

FLOURLESS CHOCOLATE BROWNIES WITH HOT CHOCOLATE SAUCE

INGREDIENTS

For the brownies:

225g dark chocolate, 70% cocoa solids

225g butter

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

200g caster sugar

3 eggs, beaten

150g ground almonds

100g chopped walnuts

For the sauce:

75g dark chocolate/ 70% cocoa solids,125ml double cream

2 x 15ml tablespoons Camp coffee or 2 teaspoons instant espresso powder dissolved in 2 tablespoons water

1 x 15ml tablespoon golden syrup

Serving Size : Makes 16 squares

METHOD


1.	For the brownies:
2.	Preheat the oven to 170°C/gas mark 3. Melt the chocolate and butter gently over a low heat in a heavy-based saucepan.
3.	Take the pan off the heat, mix in the vanilla and sugar, and let it cool a little.
4.	Beat the eggs into the pan along with the ground almonds and chopped walnuts. Turn into a 24cm square baking tin or, most sensibly, use a foil one.
5.	Bake in the oven for 25–30 minutes, by which time the top will have set but the mixture will still be gooey. Once cooler, cut carefully, four down, four across, into 16 squidgybellied squares.
6.	For the sauce:
7.	Break up the chocolate and put into a heavy-based saucepan.
8.	Add the remaining ingredients, then place the pan over a gentle heat and let everything melt together.
9.	Once everything has melted, stir well, take off the heat and pour into a jug to serve. Happy eating !

And baby makes three

2010-03-26T21:52:00.000+00:00

Well baby Lucy decided to make a dramatic entrance, and arrived eight days early ! WOW ! The same night as the Green & Blacks ice cream ! LOL. Who knows, maybe that did the trick. LOL. More posts to follow.......

Green & Blacks Organic Chocolate Ice Cream - AMAZING !

2010-03-11T01:11:00.001+00:00

I think it's because I'm pregnant and I'm due in 9 days, but I just can't stop eating! HELP! I've been so good for the last 9 months, eating fruit and drinking lots of water etc... but now that it's down to the last few days, I've just been soo bold. Last night I just HAD to have a McDonalds at 10pm...and tonight I was just about to go to bed after a gorgeous bath, I couldn't help myself I ended up having a bowl of Green & Blacks organic chocolate ice cream.... so bad, but oh so good. This is without a doubt the BEST ice cream ever. Ben & Jerrys eat your heart out. They also do a vanilla version, which I haven't tried yet. I'm baking Nigella Lawsons brownies tomorrow, so plan on buying a tub to have with brownies.... mmmmm..
By the way, the Green & Blacks Ice Cream is on special offer in Tescos at the moment at a very reasonable €3.00. It would be rude not to ........

Donal Skehans recipe for Peanut Butter Snicker Squares ..... mmmmmmm

2010-03-06T12:48:00.005+00:00

I recently made these for the first time and brought them into work: they went down a treat! I'm not normally a big fan of peanut butter, but the flavour isn't too strong in this recipe. I didn't bother using white chocolate in the end, I just used milk and dark chocolate. The special K is really nice too and makes a change from using boring rice crispies.

Peanut Butter Snicker Squares – Donal Skehan

This snickers recipe makes delicious squares which are miles better and totally different than the commercial bars you can buy in the shops, way more chewy, crunchy and chocolatey and totally worth it! We used 100g of white chocolate and 100g of milk chocolate when we made these and swirled the two together to get a super marbled effect to make our squares a little unique.

Makes about 20 squares
200g of smooth peanut butter
100g of caster sugar
200ml of golden syrup
100g Special K flakes
100g coconut flakes
1 teaspoon vanilla sugar
200g of chocolate

Place the chocolate in a bowl over a small simmering saucepan of water and allow to melt gently.
In another saucepan, over a gentle heat, melt together the peanut butter, sugar, and golden syrup until runny and smooth.
In a large mixing bowl, toss the Special K flakes, flaked coconut, and vanilla sugar until combined.
Pour the peanut butter mixture over the dry ingredients and using a wooden spoon stir until everything is nicely combined.
Turn the mixture out into a 2 inch deep baking dish and spread out evenly pressing down with the back of the spoon.
Pour over the melted chocolate and place in the fridge for a few hours until firm.

3 NEW EDITIONS FOR THE COOKBOOK COLLECTION

2010-02-01T20:21:00.001+00:00

I just bought this book by Jane Asher. Can't wait to try out the recipes. There's a gorgeous recipe for a lemon traybake on page 33.... I also got two new books to add to the my collection. Gordon Ramsays 'World Kitchen' & Neven Maguires 'Home Kitchen.' Lots of new recipes to try ! Better get to it before the baby comes !!!

TOBLERONE CHOCOLATE FONDUE / CHOCOLATE SAUCE

2010-01-13T21:17:00.003+00:00

This was my first attempt at this ' recipe' although you could hardly call it a recipe, as there's not much to it. It's from Nigella Lawsons book ' Feast' . It's to die for !

Ingredients
500 g Toblerone
250ml double cream
60 ml milk

For dipping
Strawberries
Marshmallows

This is so easy to make- just melt the toblerone, cream and milk in a bain marie (that's a bowl over a saucepan of simmering hot water to you and me) If you really want to push the boat out you can use a fondue set, if you have one lying around. This would also make a great sauce for pouring over good shop bought vanilla ice cream. A word of warning though..... it's really rich and heavy so maybe you'll want to wear trousers with an elasticated waistband.... lol.

HAPPY NEW YEAR? or is it- THE BIG FREEZE .....

2010-01-09T21:43:00.003+00:00

Happy new year everyone ! Have decided to make more of an attempt to post on my blog since I haven't posted since December 2008...whoops.... is there anyone out there even reading this anyway ?? I suspect not. So it's the new year but I don't really have any resolutions, since I never keep them. We're in the middle of THE BIG FREEZE....brrr.... snow, snow and more snow. I've been housebound since Tuesday and am slowly going crazy! Temperatures are set to go down to -10 tonight and to top it off, one of our water pipes is frozen, so we've had to fill up the tank in the attic with a long hose from downstairs. Well I say 'we' but obviously I didn't lift a finger. What's new??! Well at least we have heat which is more than I can say for some people. Have decided to make a very simple chocolate orange cake tomorrow from Nigella Lawsons How To Be A Domestic Goddess book. Chocolate cake is the ultimate comfort food ( after chocolate brownies) and it makes you feel all warm and fuzzy inside : -)

Two weeks to Christmas !

2008-12-11T23:13:00.000+00:00

Christmas is only around the corner and I can't believe it. I put the tree up over a week ago, a little bit early, but I couldn't help myself. It really doesn't really feel like Christmas yet though!

Stop the madness !

2008-11-25T23:12:00.001+00:00

Wonder if I'll get any more cookbooks this Christmas? ? ?
Is this getting out of hand ??! : /

First post

2008-11-25T22:52:00.001+00:00

BAREFOOT CONTESSA COCONUT CAKE

Today I baked a yummy coconut cake with cream cheese icing from The Barefoot Contessa at home cookbook. the recipe was a bit fiddly as the measurements were all American, but for a first attempt I don't think it turned out too bad.

You really don't want to know how much butter and sugar is in this cake, but I think If you're going to be bad you may as well go the whole hog and do it right!

I bought the cute cake stand for three euro in Barcelona in a cheap and cheerful shop a few years ago on holidays: I had to drag it all the way home in my hand luggage though which was a huge pain in the arse :/