Lovely Recipes
Hello to everyone,
Been a bit of a strange few days. Still recovering from my op & feeling a little whooozy. I will not be writing everyday but will try to make regular updates.
I thought, with the nights drawing in & stuff it might be a good idea to share some recipes to beat the November blues. I’ll dust off some of our old classics this week & make sure I can scale them down to cook at home.
It has been really grim & blustery here in Dorsety over the last few days & I think we’re all in need of a bit of comfort food!
Our Chocabloc is a bit of a belter. HIDEOUSLY de luxe in every sense but a little really does go a very long way. It freezes beautifully so you can chop it into slivers, freeze & bring out to serve with strong after supper coffees. We do not make it commercially at the moment, but may well bring it on as a Special ‘guest cake’ for next Christmas. As always, it’ll be fun to see if any of the bigger cake manufactureers try to rip this one off. Somehow we doubt it- it’s just too darned expensive & fiddly for them to bother with.
I’d advise you to buy a ‘Blade’ baking tray from Lakeland the following recipe will be enough to fill one such tray:
400 grm Amaretti biscuits: roughly broken into chunks (you can also use Honeybuns amondi cookies ( recipe to follow later in the week)
100 grm toasted, rough chopped almonds with skin on
150 grm golden syrup
225 grm butter. We use Denhay Farm butter & it really is worth buying proper farm stuff rather than the cheap as chips supermarket stuff.
2 teaspoons pure coffee extract
320 grm good dark choc -Valrhona Tropila Noir is awesome, you just need to remortgage! Green & Blacks is fine though.
1 tespn Boyajian orange oil
Zest of one orange
i tspn sea salt
method:
Pop butter & syrup in microwave on high for 1 min intervals, stir in between & cook until melting.
Stir the mix and add the salt & coffee extract.
Melt the dark choc using the same method but on moderate power.Stop short of melting the chocolate right through-it’s too easy to burn it. Once it begins to think about melting, take it out & stir vigorously.
Add the chocolate to the butter, syrup, salt & coffee mix.
Add the amaretti, almonds, orange oil & zest & mix tiol all the chunky bits and bobs are coated.
Pour into the blade tray & knock about a bit to ensure the tray’s corners are filled with the mixture.
Pop into the fridge or freezer to chill & set. Takes 8 hours in the fridge to set.
Best served in teensy tiny slivers.
I really hope you enjoy making this. You can always add brandy steeped fruits if you like but I personally like the crunchy almonds & orange on their own.
The rest of this week will involve working on the final, final version of the BumbleO snack, our savoury solution for those who need a snack but can’t have wheat. All very nerve wracking as we’re not quite happy with it & we’re running out of time!!
We’re very pleased though with our newly improved Moooosh Bar which is extraordinarily chocaltey but still dairy & gluten free..Our carrot cake has also had some re touching & now proudly sports a slight glaze of icing: just made with organic icing sugar & orange oil & a little orange zest.
We’ll look at tweaking the rest of the Honeybuns range over the coming year. All of our cakes, however popular, have at least an annual MOT- appraisal kind of thing to make sure they are still more than holding their own in terms of taste & innovation.
Animals are all cool & Sammy & Joan went out for some grazing today- they only need top be outside for a couple of hours before they’re asking to be let in again- they’ve gone soft & are very attached to their warm & comfy barn aka the Equine Hilton!
see you soon,
Em x
