Double chocolate chip brownies, just because she wanted to

Now that school is in full-swing, and my hours at work have moved forward so that I start earlier, we are finding weekday mornings kinda tough.  We all still wake at the same time as before, but now there's no leeway or spare time whatsoever, and we've had to learn to love the clock, not.  If you aren't at the kitchen table and done with breakfast by 7.25am you miss out.  Seriously.  I've had to get creative with what can nourish the kids on the hop...

And the afternoons aren't much better - between homework, chill time, swimming lessons, Brownies, Girl Guides, dancing class and gymnastics, there's little leeway there either.  And we want to add ski lessons in to the mix, crazy!
So when one of the kids expressed a desire to bake brownies, well, we had to look at the schedule!  I felt bad about that, that we couldn't be a bit spontaneous, but I suppose that teaching them about commitments and responsibility will always be valuable.  So when today dawned wet, and resolutely stayed that way all day - we knew it was time to indulge.

As with any good teaching opportunity, we got out the recipe and all our ingredients.  Then started to prepare everything, so we would be ready to just toss them into the mixture at the appropriate time. White chocolate was chopped, eggs were cracked and mixed with vanilla extract, flour was sifted and so on.

As she is young and less experienced than myself, a lot of the white chocolate chunks melted when added to the brownie batter, so we quickly chopped some milk chocolate and sprinkled it over the top.  Time was of the essence, so the next photo is of the tray in the oven (hence the darkness - also it's quite rich and chocolatey).

It was quite wobbly when the timer went off, so I left it another couple of minutes before I removed it to cool.  We had started making it just before afternoon tea-time, so The Team were itching to try it! I cut it up straight away, and we all sampled it warm.  We were impressed, but also confused because it seemed more cake-like than our fudgy brownie usually is.  

But after we'd had our warm fill, it got more brownie-like as it cooled, and by the time the photos were taken, it was perfect!  Yummy, and the perfect rainy day activity treat.

Golf and a 70th, how do you combine the two?

One of the school mums got in touch via the Facebook page to enquire about a cake for her father's 70th birthday.  He really enjoys playing golf and gardening, so whe wanted them included somehow.  And the grandchildren would be present to eat it, so the flavour was to be chocolate.  Fair enough, i said, and got my thinking cap on.  I Googled golf cakes and there were some stunning design ideas to be seen - there are some seriously talented cake makers out there in internet land!

I baked up my go to chocolate sponge recipe, and layered the two large cakes with lashings of luscious and thick green vanilla buttercream icing, to act as the background.  I knew I wanted grass on there too, as the customer had decided on an all buttercream cake.  I went to our wonderful local cake shop, The Cake Guru, and described the shade of green I had, and what else I had in mind.  I'm so pleased with Wendy's recommendation, as the grass tones in perfectly, don't you think?

As the cake flavour was chocolate, and the buttercream vanilla, I didn't feel that the usual strawberry jam filling would be suitable really.  I hadn't been warned of any allergies, so I slathered Nutella in btetween the layers - perfect choice with those flavours, don't you think?

Careful and prolonged use of the grass nozzle tip created the top layer and the decoration at the base edge, a little crushed biscuit for the sand bank and we were good to go.

I'm so pleased to say that the customer feedback was very positive - not only did they love how it looked, it was totally devoured on the day.  A very happy 70th birthday indeed.

Pumpkin spice chocolate brownies

Thanks to the delicious chocolate chip pumpkin loaves I'd made a few days ago, I had more pumpkin puree to use.  I had looked out recipes for Pumpkin Snickerdoodle cookies, and Pumpkin cheesecakes, and Pumpkin chocolate chip cookies and so on and so forth.  But these American recipes seem to make huge quantities, like 4 dozen cookies, or 9" large cakes, and we just can't eat that much food quickly enough that it's fresh.  And as crazy as it sounds, we don't always have taste-testers handy to help us eat up all the delicious baking and cooking we do.  (if at this point you'd like to volunteer your services, leave a comment below, thanks)

So, I figured chocolate brownies with the delicious addition of pumpkin plus the relevant spice mix would work.

I used my go-to brownie recipe - you could use yours, or a packet mix, whatever you like really.  I layered in half the mixture, swirled some pumpkin across this part, then poured on the rest of the brownie batter and dolloped and swirled the remainder of the pumpkin puree on top.  I had recently found and bought Halloween coloured peanut M&M's, so sprinkled them on top.

I added the pumpkin pie spice mix to the brownie batter before I poured it in, so that it would fully mix.  I kept tasting it to check, and added 4 tsp of spice before I felt I could taste it.  This baked up quite strong-tasting, and on my first bite I must have bitten into a little puddle of ginger, so I got a little fright that they were too strongly spiced, eek!

I gave some to a friend to test, as she hadn't had pumpkin much before, and her family's verdict was that they were great - just the right amount of everything.  Team Becca liked them too, especially the edges as they were a bit less squidgy than the very middle.  I think it was more moist than usual because of the pumpkin - yummy!

Mini-2 and the Peppa Pig sandwich cookies

Every now and then, Mini-2 gets the notion to use a box mix of something from the baking aisle of the supermarket.  We've been caught out by these before, because they look nice on the packet, but the taste is never as good as we can make ourselves.  So while we have fun making and baking them, we are not usually impressed by the taste.  This time, I figured I would just go with the flow, because they were Peppa Pig and I can't get her those little edible images any other way.

We followed the recipe on the back of the pack to make the dough, and she enjoyed rolling it out.

Well, mostly she enjoyed it - sometimes the dough got stuck to the rolling pin and it all got a bit messy.

Next it was time to use a fluted scone cutter and cut our the round, and a small diameter circular cutter (neither were provided in the box)  to cut away the interiors.  So it was kind of like making Empire or Linzer biscuits.

Once the dough was baked and had cooled, you made up the chocolate spread for the interior and sandwiched a full and a cut-out cookie together.  Then it was time to pop the little Peppa Pig images out of the icing sheet and onto each cookie.  

And the final result was these super cute Peppa Pig chocolate shortbread cookies.  They look good, but sadly tasted as expected.  But we had fun, and the whole family joined in eating the end product.

This post is our own opinion and we purchased the cookie box mix ourselves, no sponsoring or free product was provided.

Chocolate chip pumpkin cake

I follow quite a few American baking blogs and Facebook pages, and at this time of year they all talk about the most wonderful sounding Autumn flavours of pumpkin, caramel, cinnamon, apple and the like.  So much so that I even made a Pinterest board just for Autumn flavours, mmm...  Feel free to follow that board, any board of mine, or even every board of mine - it'll be fun to have you along.

So anyway, one of these recipes I noticed was for a chocolate chip pumpkin cake (I don't have the link handy, but will add it in when I remember where I found it) that sounded easy and tasty.  Ok, found it! and it turns out it is actually for Easy Pumpkin bars, I must have tweaked it a little...

Although, looking at the photo I seem to recall that this may not have been quite the right recipe, because I remember halving it as I only wanted two, not four, loaves.  So I think the one I used must have been called a pumpkin loaf, or pumpkin bread.  Ah well, it will have been similar.

As you can see, the loaves are very low, so I could have just made one larger/taller one with all the batter I had... I probably made a note on the recipe to remind me of that for next time.  Because yes, dear readers, there will be a next time.  This was delicious, like an afternoon tea type of cake that suits the British palate quite well.  I have found in the past that pumpkin items tend to be incredibly moist, and not our favourite texture (like a pumpkin pie perhaps).  But this was eaten by the whole team, and all taste-testers were pleased with the texture.  Well, all the British locals were - one good friend, American, felt it wasn't quite moist enough for her!  ha ha.

You can't please all of the people all of the time, I guess...

Rolo slice for the work picnic

Mr Becca's work have an annual staff picnic.  I remember my dad's work doing this - only he worked in a HUGE company, so there were rides and tents with food and everything!  To us children it was heaven, and we looked forward to going on the ski-jump ride each year, as we never went to fair or carnivals or fairgrounds or whatever those places are where they have a lot of rides and rubbish food to eat.  The work picnic was our carnival, and we loved it.

Mr Becca's work however, is small.  They have a marquee in case it rains, and a barbeque and some tables laid out for folk to sit at.  There is a large open grass area, and a playpark just through the trees. Actually, for a kid that's still kind of perfect :)

He asked me to make a couple of traybakes to take along with us, and I was happy to oblige.  A kind reader had once emailed me her secret recipe for a Rolo traybake slice and I had bought Rolo's a few months back in preparation, but forgotten about them.  Lucky for me, they were still within their use-by date.

The recipe needed milk chocolate, but I felt it would be a bit sickly, so added in a third dark chocolate.  Don't they look lovely melting up together?  Psst, Mr Becca didn't seem to notice there was any dark chocolate involved, so let's not burst his bubble, ok?  ;)

 

 At this stage, I really wasn't convinced.  I mean, be honest, that doesn't look fabulously tasty now, does it?

But wait, the addition of a layer of melted chocolate, pink glitter and some leftover Rolo's later and voila - That looks better!

 

It was so so good!  The children and adults alike absolutely loved it.  And despite there not being a full complement of staff and families that turned out for the picnic, there was no Rolo slice to take home to Becca Towers.  Score!

Classic chocolate chip cookies for the first day back at school

I don't know if you recall, but last year and the year before (and perhaps even the year before that), The Team had fresh-baked chocolate chip cookies as a treat for their first afternoon tea on their first day back at school after the long summer holidays.  I had seen the idea on another ladies page, and her son was going into his last year of high school (daughter was already at college) and as he left his house that morning he said to his mum, I hope you're baking cookies today.

And I thought that was just lovely, that he still wanted the cookies after so many years!

So I resolved to make our girls cookies, even though they'd forgotten that they'd had the treat for the last two or three years running... 

It was a new recipe I'd tried, one I found on an American page, and purporting itself to be the best chocolate chip cookie recipe ever. (sorry to say that for the moment I simply can't recall which site. But I promise that if I find out, I'll include the link here so you can try it out and judge for yourself). So I felt it was only right to give it a go.  

And it made so much batter that I made half of it into cinnamon apple cookies!  They were flavoured with a package or two of Whitworth's new little snack bags of cinnamon apple goodness.  These also contained yoghurt covered raisins, so I removed them as I didn't think they'd bake up well at all. These cookies smelled and tasted great, but the kids preferred the choc chip ones.  

There were so many cookies in total that we ended up gifting some to their new teachers, for their first day back treat!  I've never done that before, but am pretty sure the ladies liked it.

Cookies and cream bark, and peppermint bark. Christmas treat time

We love to make bark - it's so easy and fun, and there are so many variations and possibilities.  And it always taste so good!  We started, way back when, with classic peppermint bark, and wanted to make a fresh batch for this Christmas.  I did it with milk chocolate, because I had another idea for add-ins for the white chocolate...

We started by crushing the candy canes as best we could with a rolling pin.

And when we'd been in Australia back in October, I'd seen some Christmas coloured M&M's and just had to buy them.  I had felt they would come in handy for something around about December-time, and this seemed the perfect use for them.  

Add in some candy snowflakes, pop it in the fridge for a few hours and crush it up a bit, and Christmas 2014 peppermint bark was born!

Then it was time to try out that new idea I had - strawberry Oreo bark...  We had seen some Strawberry candy canes and bought them specifically for Mini-2, as she isn't keen on mint at all.  Once they were crushed, we added in some crushed mini Oreo's to the mix.

 I added some holly and Christmas tree sprinkles and popped this tray in the fridge too.

Cracked up and popped in a tin lined with baking paper and this new version of bark was ready for dessert too.  Merry Christmas one and all 

Sweet and salty Christmas treat

I love making this traybake.  A few times The Team have even requested I make a double batch, so we can keep one, ha ha.  It really is that good.  Such a taste sensation of salty nuts and sweet chocolate....  Mmmm. A friend's sister is pregnant at the moment, and had fallen in love with a photo from my Facebook page of another traybake and had been craving it.  But I hadn't managed to locate any Reese's pieces for a reasonable price (£1.50 per 50g bag was a tad ridiculous I felt) so the friend chose this one for her.  I delivered it in one piece, and I believe it was cut and placed in a gorgeous Santa tin, to be given as a Christmas gift.  Oooh, what a lucky girl!

Malteser Twirl birthday cake

I know it's been a while, and I apologise, and thank you for sticking around!  But life as a working mum is really rather hectic, I had no idea!  There's just no time for anything to be done well, sigh...  But that hasn't stopped me baking, oh no.

Here we have an unusual request this close to Christmas - a huge, decadent and delicious birthday cake smothered in chocolate buttercream and Twirl chocolate bars and Malteser malted chocolate balls.  K ordered it for her chocolate-mad hubby for his birthday, knowing how much he loves both the chocolates.  I was really keen to decorate this one, the smell at Becca Towers was something else!!

Happy Birthday Mr T (no, not the actual guy from the 80's tv series The A Team) - enjoy your cake.

Halloween mallows and pretzels, not at all scary

Halloween isn't my favourite holiday - simply because I'm a bit of a wuss and don't like scary things.  In case you hadn't realised by now, I'm a hearts and flowers kind of girl, so with all the ghouls and ghosts and spiders around about now, I'm not in my element!  We have a DVD in the house that the girls really enjoy, called ummm, gosh, I can't recall what is called just now, (will add in the name when it comes to me.  Oh, I remember!  It's called Hocus Pocus) and it's about Halloween and that's fun, but hey ho.

So, how does Becca do Halloween in a non-scary way then?  Lucky you, you're about to find out...  I really like the crunchy salty and sweet contrast within chocolate covered pretzels, and had some black candy melts in the house.  Why, you ask?  Why indeed.  I simply couldn't recall what on earth I could have bought them for - I mean, me and black decorations?  It just doesn't make sense.  So anyway, I had these black candy melts just sitting around, plus some orange ones (I know, that doesn't look like a coincidence, but it was - honest!) so got to work.

A little bit of time and a lot of fun later, we had double-dipped marshmallows and pretzels with halloween sprinkles!  These were great fun to make, and so much more fun to eat!

 Mmm, thick chocolate on crunchy salty pretzels...

And how fun are marshmallows?  With chocolate and sprinkles, why yes thank you!

Peanut butter and chocolate - a match made in traybake heaven

I subscribe to quite a few email lists from bakers - whether it be blog posts or email newsletters.  I love reading and saving or printing out the recipes and ideas for future inpsiration.  One such recipe was this from Betty Crocker, that great American powerhouse of ideas, for Chewy Chocolate Peanut Butter Bars.  I mean, that just sounds good right there, doesn't it?!!

And with a starting out photo that looks this good, you know it's gonna taste amazing!  Mmmm...

It was a pretty easy recipe to convert to metric measurements (I really don't like American cup measurements, they're too imprecise for my scientific mind to handle) and to get to this stage.  They asked you to sprinkle chocolate chips over the just-out-of-the-oven traybake.  You can see in the photo that a few have started to melt within moments of touching the warm peanut butter choc studded base...

Then a few moments later you had to use a palette knife or similar to smooth out the melted chocolate and quickly add the chopped peanuts, so they'd stick well.

I left it out on the kitchen counter to cool, and realised after a little while that it would never set hard at room temperature.  So I cut it into 'bars', which in my case were more like bite-sized squares, then popped it in the fridge for a while.

And got this as the end result.  Oh my, peanut butter heaven!!  This tasted so good, and was so quick and easy to make.  And only about 1000kcal per bite-size of luscious dessert.  You have to try this - let me know how you get on!  Enjoy.

Traybakes a go-go

What do you bring when you want to make something to bring, but it has to be easy to transport?  Why, traybakes of course!  Silly you, fancy needing to ask that question.  We love a good traybake chez Becca and had some Rice Crispies left (Rice Bubbles for those Aussies among you) - for some reason The Team don't really fancy them as a breakfast menu item...

So, Mars Bar Slice it was.  I had been given some fancy, schmancy milk chocolate drops (possibly Callebaut, from a large 3kg bag I seem to recall) by a colleague of Mr Becca's, and a friend, and was pleased to be able to use the last of them as the topping for this slice.   I decided to try to be a little arty and do white chocolate swirls on top - what do you think?

 Here they are from the interior - just to make you drool a little more...

 And this final shot is because they make me drool a little, ha ha.

I also tried a different recipe for Millionaire's Shortbread, as I'd been disappointed with the texture of the last one.  In that I'd used crushed actual shortbread held together with butter, and upon slicing, I didn't feel that it held together too well at all.

So this recipe required you to make your own shortbread, so I did.  However I couldn't get it in a thin enough layer to fill the size of tin required (28 x 18cm rectangle) so I put it in a 20cm square.  And the darn biscuit base rose as it cooked, leaving me little room for the next layer.

And I'd love your advice on this next bit - my caramel seems to have 'bits' in it.  They are smooth to the taste, and don't detract from the taste or texture much, but I can't think why they've appeared.  They appeared as I was stirring the mix on the stove as it bubbled, and I thought they would stir in and dissolve at some point, but they didn't.  Do you see what I mean?  Any ideas?

Then after a day of cooling, as suggested, I mentioned to Mr Becca that this recipe required just a drizzle of chocolate on top, not a layer.  And how much easier that should make it to cut...  But he wanted a layer of chocolate on top, and suggested a thin one might do.  So I did as he asked, but am now scared to attempt to cut it!  What a wuss, right?!

I'll need to get back to you to let you know how I got on...