Archives for "Food Books"
BAKED brownies
Yep.. this is the 3rd recipe I’ve tried from the Baked book. And I have to admit, I really REALLY wanted to drizzle the tops of the little brownie cakes and the big pan with a LOT of chocolate ganache.
But I held back. After all, I’d already used 350 grams of good chocolate in the mixture (minus a couple of pieces – hey, I had to sample a few pieces) and the cream I had in the fridge had expired. Besides, chocolate ganache on top seemed to be over-kill – NOT.
Verdict? They are just about the bestest (if there’s such a word), moistest brownies that I’ve ever tasted.
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- Melt the butter and chocolate over a pan of simmering water
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- Get your tins ready while the choc + butter is melting
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- Stir in the sugar
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- Add the first 3 eggs and mix well
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- Add the last 2 eggs + vanilla extract
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- Add all the dry ingredients
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- Fold in the dry ingredients gently
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- One final stir
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- Look at that chocolatey mix!
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- Uncooked brownie cakes ready for the oven (12 are sprinkled with dk choc drops)
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- Ready to be baked in the oven
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- Warm brownie cakes
Here is the purple foodie’s adaptation of the recipe. Definitely a ‘must-try’ for people who love chocolate.
Malt-Ball Cake
When I saw this recipe in the Baked book, I thought, “Hmm.. interesting…”.
It’s 9:30 pm and I’m waiting for the last of the cupcakes to finish baking so I can make the frosting. See, the husband has to go to work at 2:30 am tomorrow (in 5 hours time), and I thought why not try this recipe on him and whoever is game enough to sample it.
Anyway, the recipe calls for malt milk powder. Here we were, combing the aisles in the supermarket trying to find this, then Mr K googled it on his phone. Horlicks! So we got a container and the other ingredients and trotted on home.
The recipe makes one 8-inch cake, but I managed to get 24 medium cupcakes and 24 mini cupcakes out of the mixture.
If you like Horlicks, Maltesers and chocolate, this is definitely a recipe to try. The end result is delicious!
Malt-Ball Cupcake
Sweet and Salty Cake
I love cook books – especially ones with LOTS of pictures. I don’t have a collection of cook books (even though I would love to have one). However, my local library does and I usually “max out” my library card whenever I visit. What’s even better is I can order the books from the library’s online system and pick them up when they are ready – at no charge. Pretty cool, isn’t it?
Anyway, a few months ago, I borrowed a book from the library. It was called Baked: New Frontiers in Baking. It was a gorgeous book – the pictures made me want to make and eat all the cakes I saw. But I had never attempted big cakes like the ones in the book. They all looked pretty daunting to make.
I was browsing through www.marthastewart.com one day. I was after some new cupcake recipes and happened to click on this page which featured one of the cakes in the book. There were a couple of video clips to show how it was made. I asked Miss S who was watching along next to me if I should even attempt to make it and she said “yes”. What almost 3 year old would say no to cake?
I had most of the ingredients in my pantry except for corn syrup and fleur de sel. Didn’t have any of that fancy salt but I did have a little package of pink salt flakes that came with a goodie bag from the Auckland Food Show.
It took one whole day to make – the cake, the caramel, then the butter cream. My poor hand mixer nearly had a heart attack. But ta-da, my first “proper” cake.
Sweet and Salty Cake
It was a very rich cake. One small slice was all I could eat, but thankfully Mr K took the rest to work for morning tea the next day. 
Would I make it again? Probably, but not with the caramel buttercream – I think it would taste better (to me, anyway) covered with a dark chocolate ganache. And the salt does add an interesting talking point to the cake. If I do happen to find fleur de sel, I’d make it again to see what the differences are.
Note: I substituted veg shortening for butter, the fleur de sel for sea salt and pink salt flakes, and omitted the corn syrup.