Chocolate Viennese biscuits sandwiched with chocolate Ganache

This week we have these pretty little Viennese Biscuits sandwiched with a luscious chocolate Ganache.
They sit there all dainty and innocent but making them to begin with was infuriating! I used Jo Wheatley's Melting Mousse Moments  for this recipe, I didn't fancy the raw egg in her Choc mousse filling so I opted for a safe yummy Ganache instead.

So what was hard about making these pretty little things? Well as all they contain is dry ingredients so combining them was beyond frustrating. The mixture nearly got stuck in my electric mixer- I thought it was gonna break! So after that I turned to a trusty wooden spoon, but the mixture was so stiff  it wouldn't reach the mixture at the bottom of the bowl and to top it of the bowl kept trying to run away from me. It was a pain in the butt! Got me well and truly annoyed so i chucked it in the fridge and left it till the morning when I was seeing something other than the colour red.

So, the next morning brought round 2  with the mixture, as there was no pointing even contemplating trying to pipe them on to the baking tray as you normally would I decided to roll and cut them like your average biscuit. They took about 12-15 minutes in my oven I took them out when  the tops were firm to touch but still had a bit of a give. Let them cool before moving them they are delicate little things.

Right, having baked them all I was on much better terms with these biscuits. Once assembled I tasted..... they were seriously  delicious! Lovely and crumbly not too buttery which is something I  found last time I made Viennese bics. Seriously chocolaty,which was beautifully complemented by the fluffy light chocolaty Ganache filling. Once you bit in to it you got intense crumbly chocolaty biscuits followed by lovely sweet fluffy Ganache YUM! They were truly forgiven!!!

I was really happy with these and think I will like to try more biscuits filled with yummy things, especially as I  think I'm getting the hang of not over baking a biscuit. Gone are the days I would wait till they were really coloured to take them out which meant when I got round to tasting they were seriously hard. I'm thinking something with lemon curd maybe......
Have you guys made any yummy biscuits with an even yummier fillings lately? Any suggestions on what should next fill my biscuit tin?

Salted Caramel Chocolate Brownies

Hey, so sometimes I like to take my sweet time trying out a particular baking trend. Sometime I'll think about it for while...daydream about what I could do with it then finally one day I stop thinking and starting doing. Which is how you come to see this little Salted Caramel beauty in front of you. This was my first time EVER trying anything Salted Caramel so I'm not quite sure if this is how its meant to be or this is just how I've made it. Not a clue guys but nevertheless it was awesome! 

I liked the idea of having lovely little pools of golden caramel hiding in and around a lovely dark rich Brownie. I had some Carnation Caramel (yeah I'm too scared to try caramel from scratch!) in the cupboard to which I added some Sea Salt. Bit by bit as didn't want to go overboard and have it overly salty...that would be typical me. I liked that the salt took away some of the sweetness from the Caramel. For the Brownie I adapted a Jo wheatley's Brazil Nut Brownie recipe....I remember changing lots of elements around so can't quite remember what quantities went in at the end! 

I put half of the brownie mixture in to my tin, smoothed it out and pushed it in to the corners. Then I poured the Salted Caramel on top, I used about half of a small tin,  pushed that in to the corners smoothed it out. Finally topped that with the remaining Brownie mixture, making sure the Caramel was safely tucked away inside not peeking out any where.

Right, as you might be able to see I took them out  when they were still quite gooey...I waited and waited afterwards for it to set like a good little baker but it just wasn't getting stable! Hence the roughly cut portion you see above. I think maybe the hot caramel inside wasn't allowing it to firm up and set completely. The top would be quite hard and then I would plunge the knife in thinking I'm gonna cut some pretty slices to photograph and then it would just squirt out the sides. It wasn't playing ball.....but when something tasted that GOOD it can do whatever it liked!! and oh boy did this taste amazing guys. It was beautifully chocolately and fudgey then you would get the salted Caramel coming out to say hello which you gave you gorgeous Caramel hit. It was amazing people!! 

I'm not mentioning the slight anaemic colour to my brownie...just like I'm not mentioning that the fact that it was my twin who forgot to put the Cocoa powder in......totally NOT mentioning that.

I really need to make brownies more often!!! I used to be scared of having them too underdone but if a gooey fondant didn't hurt me then why would a little gorgeous gooeyness inside my brownie. I shall be a lot braver with Brownies from now on...I will aim to have them a tad firmer so next so I can actually pick it up...I ate most of this baby with a spoon :) 

PS So how is salted caramel supposed to taste like?! Should you be able to taste the salt?!

Lemon+Blueberry Yoghurt muffins....disappointed/PICKY baker :(

So I had this lovely idea of making some yummy refreshing Lemony muffins.....alas my idea didn't quite come to fruition. Once this was what I had decided upon I went  looking for a recipe and after a while settled on this Hairy Bikers one. The making part went down fine.....but then I tasted it..... how can I describe my feelings errm....disappointment at first bite would be rather accurate.

The point of baking is that at the end of it you get a sugar kick, that was what hurt the most! I'm such a sugar nut, if something I bake doesn't deliver on that then its dead to me.....lol...ok I'm being a tad dramatic but it had like no sugar seriously I was well annoyed. Then to make it worse the texture wasn't great it was a bit dry.  I thought having the yoghurt in there would help make it moist- well I wrong about that. Plus it had like no lemon flavour at all, turns out zest of one lemon  was NOT enough lads.

So my way of rectifying the no sweetness came in the form of slathering some left over chocolate Buttercream from the fridge in the middle. That certainly fixed the sugar element and eating with it a cup of tea fixed the texture dilemma, after that it was nice enough.
I feel like I'm being harsh they were nice enough but I've come to expect certain things before I've even baked something and unfortunately these muffins didn't deliver on those things for me so they were disappointing.

Have you guys been disappointed with a bake recently? I'm not over reacting am I?
See u next week with something chocolaty x

Chocolate Chip Shortbread

Hiya
I have some  Choc Chip Shortbread for you this week, this was prompted by eating some yummy Shortbread someone brought in to work recently. I decided must try some for myself and fancied putting some Chocolate chips in them.
This was my first ever go at making shortbread  they were super simple to make but I found the 'when to take them out' tricky. The timings  given by the recipe were too early and they looked really pale, which I know is how they are supposed to look, but I have a thing about things not being baked probably so I kept them in a longer. So mine were a lovely golden colour...but technically I guess for Shortbread they were over done. I really liked  the flavour of them nice and buttery packed with choc chips but quite crunchy!
 I used this  recipe from BBC Food website. I think next time I might give a different one ago and see how that goes for me plus I will try my hardest to stick to their timings and we shall see if our 2nd tempt will be more Shortbread like.
A short & sweet post....just like the Shortbread!






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Mint Madness

My beloved cupcakes are back on my blog! all is well the world....and they've gone all minty. It been ages since I've posted cupcakes,Mint and Chocolate have been on my mind since my twin bought home some peppermint essence. I've been waiting to make them because...errr.....I wanted to purchase some nice dark brown cupcake cases to put them in .......don't judge me! If I'm gonna make something I want it to look amazing, so my head colour co-ordinates my bakes and that is the ONLY way they can look......admit it they would have just looked silly with blue cases right? Just don't ask how long I  actually waited!

Moving on from my baking vanity, to these minty lovelies which have a rich Dark Chocolate base.They are topped with a Peppermint Buttercream and some have been flourished with chocolate chips.I used The More Than Occasional Baker's chocolate cupcake recipe which was amazing! A lovely moist chocolaty sponge with some serious chocolate flavour, they were even better the next day. I used 70% Lindt Dark Chocolate which has a really high cocoa content, so you if ate one on its own it was a tad bitter but they balanced out once paired with the sweet Peppermint Buttercream. They complimented each other beautifully making one hell of a cupcake! The choc chips added a nice crunch which added a different texture.

I'm always looking for great rich Chocolate cupcake and find it interesting how different they can taste depending on whether the recipe calls for Buttermilk,Yogurt or Sour Cream. Ros's recipe called for Sour Cream which was a first for me, I think it added a  lot to the texture of the cupcake. I think that's something I might dedicate some posts to.... my search for the best chocolate cake/cupcake recipe which will require tasting a lot of Chocolate cupcakes....it will be hard.....but I'll manage..... SOME HOW.

For the Buttercream  I creamed 150g of Lurpak with 250g of Icing Sugar to which I added  just a teaspoon of the Peppermint Essence. This amount gave it a lovely Peppermint flavor any more would have been overpowering, lastly a splash of milk which made the Buttcream nice and creamy. I used a tiny bit of the Wilton Lime food colour gels.

Commitment!...I going to put it in writing now... I really want to get regular on my blog so I've decided that Monday evenings are going to be my official post night, I'm gonna try my very best to post something every  Monday (InshaAllah) so do please keep an eye out.

PS Would love it if you could point me in the direction of your fave chocolate cake/cupcake recipe...I'd love to give them a try!

Almond + Cherry Couronne

Hi

Guess who had her first ever go at making bread? ooo me!  me!  
I'm sticking to my blog resolutions  to try and bake different things...so this week  I had a go at bread!! Its me so it was a sweet bread of course...I made a Couronne which was the week 6 technical challenge in GBBO.
I really wanted this to work for me I can't bear it if my time and ingredients  avail to nothing plus I hate wasting food. So I turned in to a right little Herminone and did my research.... youtubed  the masterclass-watched Paul do his magic plus read lots of posts about other bloggers having ago.

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So the how was the actual Couronne? It was delicious!....lovely soft sweet bread sandwiched with a delicious Almond+ Cherry filling. That filling was divine, lovley sweet almondyness... biting in those parts were by far the best bit. .
My first attempt at sweet bread was relativley straightforward....having said that it wasn't all a breeze. Just little issues like my dough not rising much after the first proving. My filling was rather wet so twisting the two ends of the dough got tricky and VERY messy. The rather wet filling resulted in my Couronne taking a lot longer to bake as bread  touching the filling got wet and took longer to actually bake properly. I have a thing about making sure things are baked all the way through. I didn't really relax until I was certain  all of the bread was baked all the way through....to achieve this I sliced the Couronne up to get better exposure for the middle layers and popped it back in the oven for about 10 mins.

 I used a Paul hollywood recipe for the Couronne and after scouring the net used this filling recipe by Cookies Cakes and Bakes.  All in all I was immensely pleased with my first attempt it was well yummy..the icing on the top made it even nicer....I'm still annoyed I forgot to buy apricot jam which meant I couldn't do the glaze on top and is was my lovely Couronne is lacking the usual shine. I'm certainly spurred on to try other sweet breads+ rolls...I see cinnamon rolls in future!  x

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1st blogoversary! Chocolate & Orange Fondant

Happy New Year everyone!! So it my blogs birthday....I started it on the first of January 2013....I've been blogging a whole year! Before I get to anything else I would like to say thank you to everyone who has read, commented on my little blog I really enjoying reading your thoughts. I love it..... my mind is always thinking about what my next post could be and I'm forever wandering the home sections of every store looking for something pretty to put in my pictures.

So to celebrate I have made a chocolate &Orange  fondant, I wanted something a bit fancy and new so I decide to give these babies  ago. Oh boy am I glad a did,they were actually rather straight forward to make and as long as you stick to the timings all will be well. I used this Channel 4 food recipe by Ramsay but I used a different Ramsay cooker temp+time. I preheated my oven to gas mark 6 and had them in for 11 minutes exact and yes is it could have been runnier but I can live with it.  To flavor them I used some orange zest and orange extract as I was using  a very Dark Chocolate and I wanted to make sure you could taste the orange flavor. They were soooo nice, you get lovely chocolaty sponge from the base and top, then sandwiched between them is the silky smooth chocolate center...divine.  Not too sweet not too chocolaty...(like that even exists) just perfect, I devoured this with a bit of sweetened whipped double cream..

To kick start 2014 for my blog I wanted to make some resolution for My Cupcake Habit.

• I want to challenge my self and bake/post some complicated trickier bakes ....must try and be brave!
• I also want to try some different flavor combinations and different ingredients as I find my self just sticking to my favorites....believe it or not their some relatively normal fruits and things that are yet to pass these lips....so I aim to bake with them.

Back soon Bye :)