375g (x3 boxes) Cadbury’s Chocolate Fingers
225g pitted dates
300g Green and Black’s 72% cook’s chocolate
300g Green and Black’s white chocolate
200g butter
100g mini marshmallows
115g Rice Krispies
Line a 20x30cm cake pan with baking parchment, leaving flappy bits hanging over the sides to use as handles for pulling the cake out of the pan.
Chop fingers into small, bite-sized pieces (the Cadbury’s chocolate fingers that is – not your own).
Whizz the dates in a food processor until they turn into a smooth paste.
Melt the chocolates and butter in a bowl set over a pan of warm water.
Stir in the dates and mix until combined.
Add the chopped fingers, marshmallows and crispies. Stir to incorporate evenly.
Scrape into the prepared cake pan and spread with a spatula. Leave the cake to set in the fridge for an hour or so, or for as long as you can put off eating it (whichever comes sooner).
One of the consequences of moving house last week is that I’ve had to say goodbye to my Rangemaster induction cooker.
While its new owner gets to grip with cast iron saucepans, I’ve returned to cooking on a standard Belling ceramic halogen hob with a rather fierce electric fan oven. Although it seems to be handling fish fingers and chips fairly well, I’ve been putting off the moment of baking anything less straightforward for fear that everything would crumble under the intensity of the fan.
Yeterday however, my children returned home with the intention to bake spotty cookies for their school cake sale today to raise money for Children in Need. I ventured into the garden shed with a torch to find the baking trays and wire cooling racks we needed. With the torch batteries failing, I dug down through the piles and piles of boxes. Naturally, I’d packed the baking trays at the very bottom of a very large box full of cake pans and mixing bowls, and I still have no clue at all about where I stored the wire cooling racks. Now completely in the dark, I eventually gave up the search and pulled out instead a couple of pizza trays with circular holes in the base – not quite as aerated as a cooling rack, but I thought I could turn them upside down and perhaps the cookies wouldn’t end up too soggy-bottomed if they cooled there rather than on their hot trays.
And so at 7pm yesterday evening we set about baking our first batch of cookies in our new oven in our new house.
It turned out that I needn’t have worried at all about baking in my new oven. I reduced the temperature by 10 degrees C and the cookies baked evenly and completely as expected. Perhaps I’ll try baking a cake again sometime soon …
You’re looking at the final slice, the very last square of that single most delectable confection that has ever tortured your sweet-toothed craving heart.
Buttery shortbread.
Oozing caramel.
Smooth, dark chocolate.
Perhaps you can’t see the beauty in this sticky, gooey slice. After all, I’m posting this on an Easter Sunday already replete with chocolate gifts in all shapes and sizes. Although L’s chocolate feast was delayed by her chorister duties at the Cathedral this morning, the choristers all made up for this by clutching armfuls of chocolate eggs as they emerged from the vestry after Mattins. By that time however, her younger sister and brother had already consumed an entire chocolate bunny each for breakfast. Things have been going downhill since then …
But when you’ve emerged from the nausea of the chocolate-induced hangover, do give this recipe a try. It didn’t hang around for too long in our fridge and I had to be quick off the mark to snap even this very last slice for you. A moment later, there was nothing more than a few lonely crumbs on an otherwise empty baking tray.
Chocolate Caramel Shortbread
Shortbread
2 oz light muscovado sugar
4 oz butter
5 1/2 oz self-raising flour
Caramel
3 oz light muscovado sugar
4 oz butter
2 tbsp golden syrup
1 x 14 oz tin condensed milk (NB not evaporated milk)
Chocolate
7 oz plain chocolate (or a mix of milk and plain)
Shortbread: Preheat the oven to 180 degrees C. Grease and base-line a 7″ x 11″ baking tray. Cream the butter and the sugar. Stir in the flour to make a smooth dough. Press into the base of the baking tray and bake in the centre of the oven for 10 to 15 minutes until golden.
Caramel: Place all the ingredients in a saucepan and stir over low heat until melted and combined. bring to a slow boil, stirring continuously to prevent burning. Simmer whilst stirring for 10 minutes until the caramel becomes a rich toffee colour and thickens. Pour onto the shortbread base, spread evenly and allow to cool thoroughly.
Chocolate: Melt then spread over caramel layer. Leave to cool, then cut into squares. Can be stored in the fridge for several days (if it hangs around for that long).
It’s probably best to cut it into squares before the chocolate becomes too firmly set. I left the whole tray for too long in the fridge before attempting to cut it into squares, hence the cracked chocolate layer. It’s certainly not a disaster – more of an aesthetic problem than a taste one!
I’d like to talk to you for a moment about my brother-in-law, keeping my fingers crossed that he won’t mind too much that I’m doing so. The recipes I’m about to present won’t really make much sense without hearing just a little of his story.
Uncle Mark, as he is known by my children, has been seriously ill over the course of the last two years. A grueling combination of surgery, intensive chemotherapy and radiotherapy, whilst largely achieving its goals, has unfortunately also had some unwanted consequences. Considering Uncle Mark’s passion for cheese and chocolate, it seems to be especially cruel that he is now no longer able to digest fats.
Low-fat and fat-free cooking throws up its own challenges, none felt more keenly than in the area of baking. At Christmas last year, I made a fatless chocolate/raspberry cake that Uncle Mark (perhaps politely?) complimented by carrying home the left-overs. It may have been the brandy syrup with which I laced the cake … but Aunty Lucy emailed me to ask for the recipe.
Following this apparent success, I wondered whether he might also like a couple of low-fat cookie recipes and decided to do a spot of online research to discover the principles of fatless baking. I stumbled upon a goldmine of information on fruitful fat substitutes by Sandra Woodruff, excerpted from her book, The Best-Kept Secrets of Healthy Cooking. Rather than reproduce her insights here, I’ll leave you to find out which conversions give the best results, how to calculate the amount of fruit to use, how to avoid toughness when eliminating fats, how long to bake your fat-free goodies for and at what temperature by clicking on the links above.
And when you’ve done that, please do return here for some As-Fat-Free-as-Possible Banoffee Cookies and Melt-in-the-Mouth Gingerbread.
To Uncle Mark, with love.
xxx
Errr … yes, that photo does have chocolate chips in it, and no, they’re not fat-free. Sorry. It’s just that I wanted to test out the cookies on my children before offering the recipes to Uncle Mark, and T helped with the baking … I’m sure you get the picture. You could pretend that they’re brandy-soaked raisins, if that helps …
Banoffee Cookies
3 1/2 oz mashed banana
5 1/2 oz granulated sugar
6 1/2 oz light muscovado sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
3 egg whites (3 1/2 oz without shells)
2 oz porridge oats, blitzed to a flour in a food processor
8 oz plain flour
4 oz rice flour
1 tsp baking soda/bicarbonate of soda
1 tsp salt
7 oz raisins, soaked for 10 mins in a little hot water or brandy, then strained
Preheat the oven to 180 degrees C.
Beat together the banana and sugars in a large mixing bowl.
Add the vanilla and egg whites gradually, beating to incorporate.
Stir in the dry ingredients, mixing until just combined. Add the drained raisins and stir to incorporate evenly.
Drop generous tablespoons of the dough onto parchment-lined baking trays (allow room for spreading). The dough is very sticky, so the parchment lining really helps here when removing the cookies after baking.
Bake for 8-9 minutes (8 minutes gives toffee pools, whilst 9 mins gives a drier cookie).
Remove with a spatula and allow to cool on wire racks.
Makes c. 23 cookies.
Gingerbread Cookies
1 oz pitted dates, finely chopped
2 1/2 oz sweet potato purée
5 oz castor sugar
7 oz dark muscovado sugar
1 tsp whisky
2 eggs (3 1/2 oz without shells)
2 1/4 oz porridge oats, blitzed to a flour in a food processor
9 oz plain flour
4 oz rice flour
1 tsp baking soda/bicarbonate of soda
1 tsp salt
1 tbsp ground ginger
Preheat the oven to 180 degrees C.
Beat together the dates, sweet potato and sugars in a large mixing bowl.
Add the whisky and eggs gradually, beating to incorporate.
Stir in the dry ingredients, mixing until just combined.
Roll generous tablespoons of the dough into balls. Place on an ungreased baking tray and squash to a 3/4 inch thickness with a spatula, the heel of your hand or the back of a fork.
Bake for 8 minutes.
Remove with a spatula and allow to cool on wire racks.
This post started out nearly three months ago as an exposition on sugar.
Photograph: D Morrison/Express/Getty Images
More specifically, I planned to write about the new Fairtrade sugars of Tate & Lyle and the 6000 small-scale sugar cane growers in Belize who have benefited from this conversion of the sugar giant’s retail range. I wanted to tell you how the farmers now receive a Fairtrade Premium in the region of US$60 per tonne for their crop as a result of the certification. This really has significant effects on investment in environmental and economic changes. Raynaldo Aban, a sugar cane farmer from San Joaquin village in Corazal, Belize, described how crucial this premium is to his community:
“The income that we will get will help us in many projects, such as infrastructure, and community development. I would like to tell the people from Great Britain that Belize has a good quality of sugar, and that farmers in Belize will benefit a lot from being certified as Fairtrade.”
I should mention that, whilst I had noticed the Fairtrade logo on bags of Tate & Lyle sugar more than three months ago and had already mentally added them to the list of brands I will put in my shopping trolley, I hadn’t planned to post about this switch until I received an email from the agency representing Tate & Lyle. The cynical among you might now be thinking, “Aha – I thought you said you didn’t do advertising on your blog.” Well, no. I actually said that I rarely find anything to inspire me in the sort of generic, ‘write-about-this-and-we’ll-send-you-loads-of-freebies’ emails that seem to do the rounds in the food blogging world. I’m more than happy to receive suggestions that attune with my own passions and views however, and I welcomed an opportunity to delve further into the background behind Tate & Lyle’s conversion to Fairtrade.
I have to confess that I find Tate & Lyle’s new Fairtrade website more interesting than their Facebook page, We Love Baking, but that’s probably because I still don’t really ‘get’ Facebook. With three children, I struggle to find time even to check my email once a day, so I’m an unlikely candidate for becoming part of an active online community anymore. But that’s not Facebook’s fault, and the Tate & Lyle baking group certainly appears to be motivated and encouraging.
So why has it taken me so long to get around to writing this post? Well, as I just said, I’m slightly tied up in the taxi-driving madness of motherhood these days, so any job that doesn’t directly involve placating screaming children tends to be relegated to the bottom of the to-do list. But Tate & Lyle very kindly sent me a package of their Fairtrade sugar samples in a follow-up to their original email, so surely I could have kicked my ass into gear before now? Okay, okay, I know – but you see, the problem wasn’t solely a time-issue thing. I couldn’t decide exactly which recipe I most wanted to write about.
First of all, there was the best chocolate chip cookie recipe ever. The one that used Tate & Lyle’s Fairtrade granulated sugar.
Then there was the one for the white chocolate and cardamom cookies we made for the children’s ballet teacher at the end of term. Drizzled with melted white chocolate, the rich cardamom mingled with the perfumes of vanilla to create almost lemony overtones. Besides, I also wanted to tell you about the ballet school’s show and urge anyone within distance to hurry to the Manor Pavillion in Sidmouth on January 15th/16th next year to see The Lost Girl and other ballets.
Then the snow fell, fairy lights twinkled in the trees and we found ourselves racing headlong towards a breathtakingly beautiful white Christmas. We mixed together the seasonal colours and created orange-spiced cookies bursting with pistachios, cranberries and white chocolate chips for our neighbours.
It might have been three months in the making, but I would finally like to conclude my overdue exposition on sugar with perhaps the best gift of all (depending on your aversion or otherwise to cookies) – the recipe for the best-ever chocolate chip cookie with variations for white chocolate cardamom and seasonal colour varieties.
Enjoy – and Happy Holidays 🙂
Best Ever Chocolate Chip Cookies(by me and according to my children)
7 3/4 oz butter, softened
5 1/2 oz Fairtrade granulated sugar
6 oz Fairtrade light brown muscovado sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 large eggs (3 1/2 oz without shells)
12 3/4 oz strong white (bread) flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
12 oz plain/milk chocolate chips
Preheat the oven to 190 degrees C.
Cream the butter and sugar in a large bowl.
Lightly beat the eggs together with the vanilla and add gradually to the creamed mixture.
Mix together the dry ingredients, then stir into the dough until just combined.
Stir in the chocolate chips.
Drop large tablespoonfuls of the dough onto ungreased baking trays, leaving plenty of room for the cookies to expand during baking. Bake for 8-10 minutes in the pre-heated oven (9 minutes in my oven gives the best results for a crunchy-on-the-outside/soft-in-the-middle texture).
Remove the cookies carefully with a spatula and cool on wire racks.
Makes c. 30 cookies.
White chocolate and cardamom variation: replace the plain/milk chocolate chips with white chocolate chips or chunks and add the ground seeds from 3 cardamom pods to the dry ingredients.
Seasonal colours variation: replace the plain/milk chocolate chips with 6 oz white chocolate chips or chunks and also stir in 4 oz dried cranberries, 4 oz chopped pistachios and the grated zest of 1 orange.
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