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!






.