Peanut butter butterscotch scotcheroos

I liked the sound of this recipe, so felt I just had to investigate further.  I had been lucky enough to receive some Hershey's Butterscotch Chips as a gift from a pupil who had been on holiday to Florida over the summer, and was keen to try them out.

This recipe is a no-bake one, and is basically rice crispy treats with added melted peanut butter and then a layer of the melted butterscotch chips on top.

It sounds a bit crazy with all those flavours, but it was so easy to eat!  We chopped it into bite-size pieces, then managed to bite our way through the entire tin in just a few days.  The Team could probably make a dessert like this themselves, with minimal supervision, so this is going into the must-bake-again folder.  

Blonde Rocky Road for a meeting

Mr Becca has a pretty stressful, customer-facing job and when it comes time for staff meetings - they have decided to have them after-hours, to not impact customer service.  Which is exceedingly kind of them, don't you think? :) 

I knew that this one would run late, as I overheard him talking to a colleague (and I wasn't sure if he was joking or not, so took it at face value) saying he had added a point 20 to the agenda. Eek!

So I offered to make him a sweet treat to take along, to gee everyone up when their spirits were flagging.  Because a hit of sugar always perks you up - it's a scientific fact!

I gave him my recipe binder and said, choose what you want (because frankly, he had no idea and neither did I).  So he chose this one from the archives, Blonde Rocky Road by Gizzi Erskine. Although having Googled it just now to add in the link for you, I notice she spells it without the e at the end, hmm.  

Either way, here are the add-ins, plus the crushed all-butter Scottish shortbread that is underneath these goodies.  The recipe calls for macadamia nuts, which I used when I first made this recipe a few years back, but we had eaten all of ours, so I chopped up some blanched almonds instead.  

 

It took hours and hours to set, and even then wasn't fully hard.  But I was able to cut it straight from the fridge, then made sure to keep it in the fridge for as long as possible.

As you can see, it's super-rich and decadent, and had a slight coffee taste even with me just using half a teaspoon of powder.  After all, it was a late night meeting and I didn't want them being too wired! Plus I knew our kids and friends would want to taste-test it too. 

You can see here the fudge I used, and some of the remaining mini marshmallows.

And one last gratuitous shot of that divine rich treat...  all gone now I'm afraid.  But you'll be pleased to know that it got rave reviews.

We built a house, a rice crispy house

Now that I  notice cake and baking-related things a little bit more than I used to (small understatement there, you understand) I couldn't help but notice all the mentions of gingerbread houses at this time of year.  I felt it was possibly a bit beyond me, what with the working and kids and their activities and so forth, so picked up a box kit for a rice crispy house at a local supermarket.  We waited for a suitable afternoon and all got down to the important business of house-building...

 The kit gave you all the ingredients in the right quantities, so we just followed the instructions.

They didn't mention what a mess the marshmallow made of your pots though - this looks like it's gonna take some serious elbow grease to wash!

After pressing the prepared mix into the mould, and putting it in the fridge for the required time, we had our house components.  A little bit of icing was used as the mortar, and the house was ready to be decorated! Both girls were given a side each, some extra mini Smarties and relevant sized sweets and got to it.

The line sprinkles were meant to look like sparkly snow, but kinda got stuck along the way, and all over the work area.

This was mine and Mini-1's side, fairly neat and straight.  We tried to co-ordinate our colours so they made lines along the roof panel.  It sorta worked, right?

And here is Mini-2's side.  She used some of the other sweets and went for a different pattern with her mini Smarties.  

And here's a lovely line-up of all the treats we had available to eat on Christmas day itself, made by our fair hands...

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!

4th of July is red, white and blue fun!

We're not American.  Don't have any specific ties with America - though there is an Uncle living in Tacoma. WA and a good friend living in NYC, and another good friend who used to live here in Dundee but is now back in VA I think.  And I follow a few American bakers, like Bakerella, The Girl who ate Everything,  Created by Diane, Pint Sized Baker, Rose Bakes and so on .  And I am part of an American baking group on Facebook, so see a lot of American style cakes and 4th of July ideas in my Facebook newsfeed and in the emails I receive to my baking/work email address.

So actually, America does seem to feature quite heavily, hmmm.  Anyway, a lot of great red, white and blue ideas have come my way recently, some trickier than others, and I fancied trying my hand at some of them.  These looked fun and easy, and the girls wanted to help with some of it too.  They would have helped with all of it, but it was warm and sunny outside and they were desperate to try out the new Slip 'n Slide that we'd bought last weekend.  

Don't know what this is?  Oh, you're missing out!  My siblings and I had a yellow one when we were growing up and used it loads!  Mind you, we did grow up in Melbourne, Australia, where they know how to do Summer.  Months of daily temperatures from 25-40c and sun - glorious warm, yellow sun!  Ahh, takes me back, ha ha.   Anyway, it's a plastic rectangle mat that goes on the grass and it has a tube through the middle of the mat that is poked with holes.  You attach the garden hose to the mouth of this tube and water sprays over the mat, through the holes and kids run up to it then slide along it on their tummies.  Make sense?  Kids love them!!

So, getting back to the baking.  I decided to go for two things I'd seen on my newsfeed from Facebook...  A variation on this Red, White and Blue Cookie Bark and some patriotic Marshmallow treats.  What fun they were to do, and easy too!  And oh my gosh, I had a sneaky taste of the bark - it is amazing!!!  We decided that adding Oreo's would be too much, and what a tasty decision that was.  The salt and crunch of the pretzels goes really well with the sweetness of the white chocolate.

You lay out the pretzels underneath (and Oreo's, if you're going to use them), then add the melted white chocolate over the top.

Then you carefully, or otherwise, place your selection of red and blue M & M's over the top before the chocolate sets.  I didn't think we'd have enough chocolate M & M's so used the crispy ones too.  Mmm, great idea methinks.

 Here's the finished product, all ready for the fridge.

 And here it is ready to eat, cracked into pieces for ease of nibbling.  Mmmm...

For the marshmallow treats, we even had real American wax paper - oooh!

These were a bit fiddly to do, but easy enough.  Although by the time I got around to them, the girls had had their hair-washed and gone to bed.

So they'll be a lovely surprise for them, and our friends coming to play after lunch, for tomorrow! 

 And here's wee funny for you.  Sadly, it's not that funny for me, ha ha

The Rocky Road melted

We love Rocky Road chez Becca.  It's crisp, crunchy, chocolatey and chewy - as my friend Sheila would say, what's not to love?  Incidentally, Sheila isn't Australian.  Just in case you were wondering.

Normally, you add the marshmallows at the last moment, give them a twirl into the chocolate mixture then pour the whole lot out into the tray to set.  But this time I was using pink and white mini marshmallows and they melted really quickly, whilst I was twirling and swirling them through the mix!  I had no way to rescue them, and thought - what the heck, I may as well go for pretty rather than stylish here...

So I added on pink Smarties, covered the whole lot in the last of our Colourburst Candy Melts and gave it all a good dose of pink fairy dust, oops, I mean edible glitter.  Et viola, treats for us at Becca Towers.  Mmmm...

Biscoff crispy treats

Have you ever heard of Biscoff?  They're the spiced thin biscuits that sometimes get served with coffee in restaurants.  In the UK they're called Lotus cookies, and you can buy them in a pack or individually wrapped (ideal for lunchboxes, or just general nibbling.  But it is a bit fiddly to get the package off when you want one quickly).  I have loved them for years, and always thought of them as coffee biscuits.    Lidl, the fabulous little supermarkets from Germany, stock their own brand of them (thus much cheaper, and you get more for your money) as a special treat leading up to Christmas.  For me, this just added to the allure because I would invariably get sick of them after a 600g packet of them.  Then a few years ago I saw them in local branches of Tesco supermarkets and was thrilled - now I could buy them whenever I felt the need.  Which strangely enough, wasn't that often.

But the point I wish to make here is that I recently saw a little sticker on the packets at Tesco, offering a new treat, Biscoff spread!  Now this I wanted to try.  I follow a few baking blogs and a couple of ladies had mentioned them too, so I was really keen and went online to try to find a local stockist.  No luck, as they are exclusive to Waitrose supermarkets at the moment, and we don't have that retailer in Scotland.

But my in-laws were due to be visiting from London, and they have a branch not too far away I think.  Just as I was considering how much of an imposition it may be to ask them to trek across London in search of a peanut-butter like spread to bring up on an airplane, I found a jar of each smooth and crunchy in a local pound-store.  Woo hoo!!  And at a little under half the RRP.  And within date, tee hee.  Score!

Now, just to find those recipes...

Then I got this recipe via Bakerella and was off.  Like her, I've never made Rice Krispy Treats before.  A lot of bakers use this as a modelling substance, to make structures on their cakes, but I feel that's a little beyond my skill set at this stage.  Suffice it to say, I found the melted marshmallow/rice crispy combination really odd.  It's an odd colour too, because the Biscoff spread is brown, and many of my marshmallows were pink.

But it smoothed down well into the square tin and I decided to cover it in a thin layer of milk chocolate, some gold sparkle and a little message to a good friend who has just given birth to a bouncing baby girl - her first child.  

She doesn't live locally any more, so I'll enjoy a slice with my afternoon coffee on her behalf.  

Congratulations L and K!!  She's a beauty, awww...

Rocky Road please Mummy

I know, I know - I've been very remiss and not updated you for a good few weeks.  I promise, it's not intentional.  June was a busy month in our Kitchen and I had planned to bake no more until I'd got you up to date...

Then the school holidays came round and we went away for a week (to a wonderfully hot and sunny land, woo hoo) and now we have a week to ourselves before my in-laws come to visit for a long weekend, then my parents come to visit for the remainder of the holidays.  So we're very busy this week, entertaining friends and visiting friends whilst we can.  To this end, I wanted to make a traybake or two so that we'd have something to bring with us, or offer to our visitors.  Mini-1 piped up, Rocky Road please Mummy, so here it is.

 First we had to crush up the biscuits, but not too small so it's more fun to eat each piece...

Then decorate it with white chocolate stars (thus technically making it a triple chocolate Rocky Road) and pink sanding sugar.  Well, it is for the girls and their friends...  ha ha

Marshmallow Top Hats are just the cutest thing.

Marshmallow top hats are what it's called when you get a lovely fat marshmallow, dip it in chocolate then sprinkle it with edible coloured shapes.  They're a kids thing, as they're so easy to make that kids can make them by themselves, or with a bit of adult supervision.  Plus kids love to eat them!

Mini-2 is nearing the end of her pre-school nursery (kindergarten) year and they wanted to hold a Cake and Candy stall to help raise money to buy in some live chicks so the kids could watch them turn into bigger chickens and then hens.  But they took too long to get organised and there were a couple of animal regulations that wouldn't be fulfilled, so the idea was to raise the money to get an animal handler to visit both morning and afternoon nursery sessions, with a selection of larger insects and animals,  instead.  We were busy at Becca Towers, what with the anniversary cake, the birthday cakes, and customer orders that we didn't have much time spare to bake.  Then I rememberd top hats from other children's parties and knew we'd have time for them...

We had some green Candy Melts that we'd been waiting to use for some time, and I thought this would be a fun way to do so.  We followed the pack instructions and dropped a little into each petit four case. 

Then we had to quickly dip the marshmallow into position before the melted chocolate started to harden. We popped them in the fridge to firm up and slowly worked our way through 6 dozen marshmallows, eek!  We ran out of green coloured chocolate part-way through, so changed to white chocolate...

We chose a selection of all our lovely edible sprinkle shapes and colours and did a little bowlful at a time.  We chose to put chocolate on the top then dip them upside down into the bowl, rather than drizzle sprinkles from the bowl onto the marshmallow (much more dexterity needed, thus more potential for mess, for the latter method).  So some of them are a little smeared looking (those were Mini-2's ones, honest!), but they would all taste great.

And here's a selection of the finished products - so much fun, to look at, to make and to eat!  Enjoy.

Chocolate Fudge

Mr Becca likes fudge, and I'd found what seemed like an easy recipe by Lorraine Pascale when checking for recipes after watching an episode of her latest series.  We checked, bought some evaporated milk, then got down to business after the school run (walk).  We had a friend-of-Mini-2 coming to play about 10am so only had a wee while...

After melting the starter ingredients, we added in marshmallows and melted them through.  Mini-2 was really keen to help so I carefully let her mix the marshmallows in.  The pan was hot, the mix was hot and of course, the stove was hot, so she was very highly supervised at this point. 

I didn't have quite enough time to finely chop all the required chocolate so we broke it down then put it all into the hot mix to melt.  Not a problem as it happened, it melted easily.  Then it all set quite quickly as it was poured into the tray - I didn't expect that or I would have tried to make it flatter somehow.

The recipe recommended cutting it into 25 squares but they seemed a bit big to me, so I got 36 out of it instead.  We had some after lunch, then I took some to a couple of nursery parents.  Mr Becca and Mini-1 tried it when they got home and pronounced it good but sweet.  Mr Becca then decided that he preferred plain fudge, thanks.

I took the remainder in to Toddlers this morning and it was all gone in minutes - that's more like it!!  Glad you enjoyed it ladies ;)

Rocky Road for Liz and co

We have a playdate with friends whom we don't see very often tomorrow, so felt we wanted to bring them a treat that we'd all love to eat.  And it's been sunny for the last wee while, so gold glitter and yellow sugar sand seemed ideal.  This Rocky Road is truly divine, and has (so far) worked every time.  The recipe is quite similar to that of the Sweet & Salty Nut Crunch Slice, which is equally delicious. 

If you live locally, we make this to order...