Mary's Chocolate Orange Tart - GBBO Bakealong

Chocolate week on Great British Bake Off would once have seen me coming up with some elaborate creation, no doubt a lavishly decorated cake. But I don’t have the luxury of a lot of time any more and wasn’t really in the mood for cake - I fancied making a dessert that would keep for a couple of days. It seemed appropriate to use a GBBO recipe book and having a flick through, I settled on Mary Berry's chocolate orange tart from the Great British Bake Off Big Book of Baking.

The chocolate filling is a mixture of chocolate, sugar, butter, flour and eggs - so it's no wonder that it seemed quite cake-y to me. But the trick is not to overbake it and leave it slightly wobbly in the centre - I always have my mum's voice in the back of my mind at times like that, warning me that it isn’t cooked (or half raw, as she would probably put it) which explains why my brownies are usually overbaked! 

There is also an orange filling that you make in a similar way but using egg yolks not whole eggs, white chocolate, and the grated zest of one orange. But for some reason oranges were completely out of stock on my online shop that week (perhaps as we go into lockdown in winter, people are worried they will get scurvy?!) so I made do with a few drops of orange essence instead.

The idea is to swirl the two fillings together inside your pastry case to create a marbled effect. I think this looks quite pretty, don't you?

It is delicious served warm and also very good served cold a day or two later - if it lasts that long!

Orange and White Chocolate Cake with Flower Nozzles Piped Buttercream Flowers

This is the cake I made for Mother's Day this year and finally tried out my set of flower piping nozzles which I got I think for my birthday last year - I hadn't gotten around to using them as I hadn't really made anything that I wanted to decorate with buttercream, but now I've seen how good they are I will definitely use them again!

The nozzles have different patterns of dots and swirls and allow you to pipe different types of flowers that look amazingly realistic and detailed. You just squeeze the buttercream out and pull up, which cuts off the flower -you pipe one at a time. These would work really well on cupcakes, or as I've done with different types and colours of flower covering a large cake, or you could do all the same type of flower on the top of the cake.

You use regular buttercream for this - it needs to be stiff enough to hold its shape but not too stiff that you can't pipe comfortably.

The cake itself is a recipe from the Clandestine Cake Club Cookbook, edited by Lynn Hill. This is one of Lynn's own recipes which I adapted a little; I didn't make the orange syrup and I used more milk as I prefer a looser batter.

You need:
225g butter
225g caster sugar
4 large eggs, beaten
225g self-raising flour
zest of 1 large orange
1/2 tsp baking powder
4 tbsp. milk

For the filling:
150g white chocolate
grated zest of 2 large oranges plus 4 tbsp. juice
200g butter, softened
75g icing sugar

Preheat oven to 190C / 170C fan. Cream the butter and the sugar and beat in the eggs. Fold in the flour, orange zest and baking powder and beat in the milk.

 

Spoon into two greased round cake tins and bake for 20-25 mins

When cooked, allow to cool in the tins then turn out onto a wire rack.

To make the filling, melt the white chocolate in a microwave or bain marie and allow to cool until it is still a consistency that you can stir. Cream together the butter and icing sugar and stir in the melted chocolate and the orange zest and juice.

Mix the buttercream (about 500g icing sugar to 250g butter) and separate into different bowls and add a couple of drops of food colouring to each one. Use the different flower piping nozzles in piping bags with each colour buttercream and pipe groups of a few flowers all around the cake. I filled in the gaps afterwards with green buttercream and a leaf nozzle, at least I think it was a leaf nozzle as it doesn't look quite right, but I still think the overall effect of the cake was good - and it tasted really nice too!

Below are some close-ups of the different flowers I piped:

 

I'm sharing this with Cook Blog Share

 

Chocolate Orange Croissant French Toast

I don't usually eat croissants unless I'm out for breakfast or staying in a hotel - I do like them but they seem a bit much for a regular breakfast at home. Also, they have to be bought or made fresh, and are really fiddly to make.

A few months ago we were given a packet of croissants - I think that were leftover from a family brunch - and I put them in the freezer. As we hadn't gotten around to using them and I wasn't sure how nice they would be once defrosted, I decided to use them in a dessert.

The Co-Op had a recipe in their free magazine (which I love - pick it up if you get a chance) for baked croissant French toast. These were served with frozen mixed berries but I decided to stick with the chocolate orange flavours. I also increased the amount of chocolate!

To serve 2, you need:
2 large or 4 small croissants, cut in half or quarters
275ml semi-skimmed milk
2 eggs
25g caster sugar
1/4 tsp ground cinnamon
zest of 1/2 orange
20g dark chocolate, grated

Preheat oven to 170C/ fan 140C. Place the croissants in a single layer in an oven-proof dish. Beat the milk, eggs, sugar, cinnamon and half the orange zest in a jug. Pour over the croissants then sprinkle over the grated chocolate for 45 minutes until the croissants are golden brown.

It does have a taste and texture similar to French toast - nice!

Mascarpone Orange Streusel Slice from Burnt

 

I'm hosting Food 'n' Flix this month and the film I have chosen is Burnt. (If you haven't seen the film - spoiler alert!). There are so many wonderful scenes that centre around food - at the beginning when Adam has gone to work in obscurity in New Orleans, as a self-imposed punishment for his bad behaviour, he is shucking oysters and only once he has done 1,000 will he stop.

When he returns to London there's a great sequence where he's eating different foods including a lamb wrap and another where he is cooking food late at night in a friend's flat where he is staying. His friend and the guy's girlfriend are surprised to find him cooking in the middle of the night but happily tuck into mussels, summer veg on a bed of ricotta, and smoked mackerel on duck egg.

When Adam is trying to persuade Sienna Miller's character Helene to work for him, he arranges to meet her in a Burger King; she refuses to eat there and there is a conversation around the consistency you get in a Burger King which they hate.

Adam meets Uma Thurman, a top restaurant critic, over a cooked breakfast in a café and when he takes over the restaurant, there are beautiful montages of cooking and food being plated up.

I thought about making turbot for my Food 'n' Flix recipe as in one scene, Helene messes up cooking a piece of turbot and Adam humiliates her by making her apologise to the fish; we then see a sequence where she is repeatedly cooking the fish for her daughter at home (even for breakfast) in an effort to perfect it. I did look at the major supermarkets to see if they had turbot but none of them did. There's also a scene later with Adam at Billingsgate fish market but I wasn't going to go there to buy fish!

Ultimately it's Helene's idea to bring in a sous-vide cooker that changes the way the restaurant cooks food, to great acclaim. A sous-vide seals food in a packet and poaches it slowly at a low temperature to seal in the flavour - you can buy the cookers from Lakeland but I don't have the space or think I would use it that much.

While I was trying to decide what to make, I googled the film to see what recipes were already out there and found an official site for the movie, that actually had recipes on it! Needless to say they were really complicated recipes, sometimes involving things I'd never even heard of (trimolene, anyone?) - but as I'm not one to shy away from a challenge, and I was at the start of a whole week off work, I decided to have a go at this recipe for mascarpone blood orange streusel.

I'm not going to re-post the recipe so do have a look at the link. It was very time consuming and complicated involving four different elements - not including the ice cream which I decided not to make. I had varying degrees of success with each one!

I started by making the mascarpone mousse which should have been fairly straightforward. I mixed the mascarpone, cream cheese, crème fraiche, sugar, vanilla, orange and lemon zest and juice and slowly added the Cointreau, which I already had in the cupboard. I softened the gelatine in water, but when I melted in the pan I had a slight concern that I couldn't get it all out of the pan. I added it to the mousse and blended it but when I strained the mousse, I could see that some bits of the gelatine were left behind in the sieve where it had already congealed. I suspected that the mousse might not set and I was right, so after a couple of hours in the fridge I put it in the freezer to harden. Failure number one.

The blood orange gel was easy enough, other than the fact that I couldn't get hold of blood orange juice and had to use regular OJ. I actually had some agar agar powder - it's a vegetarian alternative to gelatine and was part of a molecular gastronomy kit I was given once, similar to this:
Molecule R-Evolution Cuisine Kit plus Molecular Gastronomy Book with 40 Recipes Introductory Package

 

I simmered the juice and added the gelling agent, and spread the resulting liquid onto some clingfilm. It set quite quickly and I was able to slice it into strips easily. Success!

I was excited about making the honeycomb as it's something that I love to eat and the recipe didn't look too complicated. I put the honey, sugar, liquid glucose (which I already had from making marshmallows) and water into a pan and let it caramelize, then whisked in baking soda which made the whole pan froth up. Apparently all I needed to do was 'pour onto a baking sheet.

Allow to set and then break into pieces'. I ended up putting it in the fridge and even then didn't set - it firmed up a bit, but I had to scrape it up with a spoon and it looked nothing like honeycomb! Another failure.

Finally for the streusel layer which is somewhere between a crumble and a biscuit - I mixed the flour, ground almonds, sugar, salt and butter, moulded it into a block and put it in the fridge. But even after two hours it was still really crumbly and difficult to roll out without breaking. I baked it in the oven for longer than the given time, since after 10 minutes it was still soft and crumbly, but I ended up over-baking it and when it came to cutting up, the strips I cut broke into a couple of pieces. Partial success.

So when it came to assembling the dessert, I laid pieces of the broken streusel on the bottom, a thick slice of the semi-frozen mousse, then a slice of the gel, and a few pieces of the sticky in-set honeycomb on top. I added some crumbled streusel on the side and a few dots of the gel layer on the plate.

 

 

And how did it taste? The streusel was nice but a bit overcooked; the mousse had a delicate flavour and didn't come out too badly from the freezing (it had the consistency of soft scoop ice cream) but I didn't like the gel layer - the texture was just a bit strange. The amount of effort this took meant it is definitely not something I will be making again - it also shows me how skilled chefs in places like the Langham actually are!

If you want to join in Food 'n' Flix you don't have to make anything this complicated - there are lots of ideas you can take from the film! Find out how to take part here.

 

 

 

Hoxton Street Monster Supplies Cookbook Giveaway and Halloween Chocolate Orange Tart

 

 

I've got a great giveaway just in time for Halloween where not one, not two, but three of you can win a spooky cookery book full of recipes and ideas for party food for Halloween and any sort of horror-themed party (movie night?) you might want to hold at any time of the year.

The Hoxton Street Monster Supplies Cookbook is worth £13 and is a beautifully illustrated 160 page hardback cookbook with over 70 recipes and humorous advice for entertaining.

Hoxton Street Monster Supplies claims to be London’s "and quite possibly the world’s only purveyor of quality goods for monsters of every kind." All profits go to the Ministry of Stories, a creative writing and mentoring charity for young people which looks absolutely brilliant; I would have loved something like this when I was a kid and am going to look into signing up as a volunteer.

The cookery book says it is a revised edition featuring recipes suitable for humans, but has plenty of advice for what to do if you are inviting the undead to your party - allow extra time for zombies to eat dinner as they tend to be very slow; never seat a cyclops next to a giant spider (cyclops are sensitive about the fact that they only have one eye) and so on.

Recipes are divided into chapters: sweets and pastilles (including crunching bone toffee and fairy brain fudge), biscuits and cookies  (phlegmy dodgers, gingerdead men and toenail macaroons), cakes and bakes (clotted blood cakes, fresh maggot brownies, which I couldn't bring myself to make, and spiced earwax pie, which looked like treacle tart from the recipe), jams and curds (including human snot curd and pickled eyeballs), savoury snacks (chunky vomit dip, small intestine skewers) and potions and poisons (eg satanic smoothie).

The recipe for brain cake, or rather 'braaaiiiinnnn cake', made me laugh - translated for use by zombies. The recipe runs: "Oooooooog. BBBRRRAAAIIINNNNS! Brraaaauuuunnnnns. AAR! Errrrrg" and so on. So I won't be attempting that one.

If you can get past the slight sense of revulsion that I felt when reading the names of some of the recipes (yes I know they are not serious but some are just gross!) and read the introduction to each recipe they are really funny - and I can assure you that the recipes contain perfectly normal ingredients! I think this would go down really well with children in particular so if you fancy being in with a chance to win a copy of the book scroll down to the end.

 

The giveaway is open to UK addresses only and the books will be sent to the winners directly by the publishers.

I decided to make one recipe from the book so I could review it, and since it was over a week until Halloween and I wasn't about to throw a party I decided to make one of the most normal sounding recipes: Night Terror Torte. This is basically a chocolate and orange tart, using a ready-made sweet shortcrust pastry base.

You slice two oranges and cook them in a sugar syrup (mixture of sugar and water); bake the pastry case blind and then make the filling from ground almonds, butter, sugar and eggs then dark chocolate. Add some of the orange slices which you have chopped while keeping the rest for decoration, and bake the assembled tart in the oven.

 

raw:

 

 

cooked

 

 

scroll down for the giveaway- starting at midnight tonight!

 

 

 

 

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Chicken with Awesome BBQ Spice Rub

 

Last year a friend gave me Jamie Oliver’s Food Tube – The BBQ recipe book, which I’ve used several times when we’ve done barbecues at the weekend. During the week, even though we have a gas barbecue so the cooking itself is quick, I don’t want to faff around in the kitchen and am more likely to do something simple like a tuna steak, sausages, or ready-made chilli beef koftas, which my husband loves and work really well on the barbecue.

 

This recipe though is really quick and is something that you can prepare in advance and keep in the cupboard. The full recipe actually involved brining pieces of chicken overnight and then coating them with a “mix of awesomeness”. I decided to skip the brining and use boneless chicken thighs, which are quite thin when you unwrap them so cook really fast. I prepared the mix and rubbed it onto the chicken thighs, which were simply barbecued – and tasted really good.

The recipe for the brining is available online here, and the chef calls the mix by the same name as the one in the recipe book but it is slightly different.

 

For the one I made, you need:

zest of half lemon

zest of one quarter of an orange

3 tbsp. brown sugar

1 tbsp. sea salt

1 tbsp. black pepper

1 tbsp. onion granules

1 tbsp. garlic granules

1 tsp smoked paprika

Optional: 1 tsp chilli powder

 

Scatter the zest onto a baking tray, and bake in a preheated oven at 110C for 10 minutes.

 

Mix the zest with all the other ingredients and use to coat the chicken.

 

 

Barbecue or grill the chicken until cooked through.

 

Summer Soft Drinks: Apple Ice Tea and Orange & Lemon Barley Water

 

 

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You replied on 17/08/2016 06:17.

It's nice to have soft drinks in the summer that are a bit different - especially if you're having a barbecue and don't just want to serve lemonade, water or squash.

I've made two drinks over the last couple of weeks that are delicious and really nice in hot weather - I made up a big jug and served it over ice.

The first one I made was a very simple ice tea using an instant mix from Whittards and the second was orange and lemon barley water, from a recipe in Tesco magazine (see below).

 

 My favourite instant tea from Whittards was peach flavour but they don't seem to make it any more. This time I tried Turkish Apple flavour - I made it up with a little boiling water to dissolve the granules then topped up the jug with cold water and waited for it to cool. I added some sprigs of fresh mint from my garden and some apple slices - a few added extras like this make drinks look even more appealing at summer parties.

I came across the recipe for orange and lemon barley water and realised I'd had no idea you actually use pearl barley to make it.

 

 

 

 

 

To make a large jug, you need:

75g pearl barley

1 lemon and 1 orange, zested and juiced, plus extra slices to serve

3 tbsp. runny honey

 

Soak the pearl barley in cold water for 15 minutes. Drain, then simmer in 1.5 litres of water for 20 minutes.

 

Remove from the heat and add the orange and lemon zest. Allow to steep for 20 minutes.

 

 

 

Strain the liquid to remove the zest and barley and allow to cool. Stir in the orange and lemon juice and the honey and garnish with extra slices of orange and lemon.

 

This is a lovely refreshing drink that tastes as good as, if not better than, the shop bought stuff but with nothing artificial!

 

 

Cinnamon French Toast with Caramelised Peaches

I love picking up free magazines from supermarkets, and often get the Tesco magazine, which is packed with features, snippets about new products and recipes. I decided to make a few things from the latest issue, starting with French toast with caramelised peaches. In the recipe, it was served with rum-spiked mascarpone but I decided to do this for brunch and decided the mascarpone would be a bit much. It would have been a nice touch but if you are counting the calories it’s still a really nice dish on its own.

 

I bought a loaf of pre-sliced brioche which made the recipe very easy. To serve two people, you just need to mix 1 egg, 50ml milk, a dash of vanilla essence, a sprinkle of cinnamon and sugar and the zest of one orange in a wide shallow bowl, and dip each slice of bread in.

 

Heat a little butter in a frying pan and fry each slice of bread on both sides until browned. I put the oven on low (100C) to keep the slices of brioche warm as I was doing a few rounds in the frying pan. This way, you can also do the peaches in the same pan to save on washing up.

Peel and halve a fresh peach, removing the stone (one per person is about right) and heat a little more butter in the pan. Mix brown sugar and cinnamon and press onto the cut side of each peach. Fry in the frying pan on both sides until softened, and serve with the French toast.

 

 

If you want to serve with mascarpone you just beat 75g mascarpone cheese with 1/2 tbsp. rum and 1/2 tbsp. icing sugar and serve.