I was introduced to this delicious dark chocolate, from New Zealand. I won't rest until I acquire a bar all my own!
I purchased new wine glasses, cutesy and ridiculous. Perfect. Disappointed there was no Ariel versions! 3 for 99p though, can't complain.
I've started reading for pleasure again. I have acquired new titles and some editions of old favourites (The Silver Chair was my favourite of the Narnia series, it had a much more eerie atmosphere in comparison to the others. I also rather favoured the first Narnia book over the rest).
I bought some sensible rainboots for the Glasgow winter and picked up my new favourite evening bag for £3 in Salvation Army.
I made these again this year as they went down a treat. I followed a couple of recipes, but the simplest I've found is Jamie Oliver's:
Jamie's amazing diy chocolate truffles Makes about 40-50 teaspoon-sized truffles, depending on how big/small you want them
• 300ml double cream • a knob of unsalted butter • finely grated zest from 1 clementine (I had none so used a lemon instead) • 300g good-quality dark chocolate (70% cocoa solids), broken into small pieces • a pinch sea salt • a splash of brandy • a handful of mixed nuts (Brazil nuts, toasted almonds and hazelnuts)
Put the cream in a pan over a medium heat and let it heat up. You don’t want it boiling, just hot. As soon as tiny bubbles start to appear add the knob of butter and the clementine zest.
Once the butter has melted pour this hot mixture over the chocolate pieces whisking as you go so the chocolate melts nice and slowly. If the mixture splits slightly, don’t worry, you can bring it right by adding a splash of boiling water. (Be very wary of adding hot water though!)
Add a pinch of salt to the mixture; it may sound bonkers, but the smallest pinch of salt actually makes chocolate taste even chocolatier! Stir in a splash of brandy.
Once completely melted and smooth, pour your melted chocolate mixture into a nice little serving dish or bowl. Pop this in the fridge for about 2 hours to set. Christmas is a busy time so you can always do this a few days before you need it if you want. About 30 minutes before you’re ready to make your truffles pull the bowl out of the fridge and let the chocolate warm up to room temperature.
Put your mixed nuts into a plastic bag and use a rolling pin to bash them up quite finely. Get some little saucers or bowls and put the nuts in one and your cocoa powder in the other. Put a teacup filled with boiled water on the tray and pop a few teaspoons in there for scooping the chocolate. Get everyone around the table to spoon their own truffles out of the serving dish and roll them in cocoa powder, crushed nuts or anything else you fancy. Or, you can let them smear their truffles over a biscotti like some posh Nutella! Serve with a few glasses of your chilled Vin Santo.
Of course, I'm on student budget so I haven't bottles of Vin Santo laying around, but this is a perfect treat for serving to relatives and friends that call over the festive season.
Oh and I actually ended up not using the cocoa powder in the end. These keep well in the fridge for a week, the nut coating loses its crunch after 2-3 days however.
This comes a bit late for Christmas day, but you've got New Years ahead of you and everyone loves finger food this time of year, so try it and let me know how you get on!
I'm even going to go far as to say that these are better than Ferrero Rocher because you made them yourself!
(crap photobooth picture because they were all eaten before I took a picture of them all prettied up! d'oh!)
Nigella's Chocolate Guinness Cake Makes about 12 slices
250ml Guinness 250g unsalted butter 75g cocoa 400g caster sugar 1 x 142ml pot sour cream 2 eggs 1 tablespoon real vanilla extract 275g plain flour 2 1/2teaspoons bicarbonate of soda
ICING: 300g Philadelphia cream cheese (I used mascarpone instead) 150g icing sugar 125ml double or whipping cream (I probably used only a third of this amount)
Preheat the oven to gas mark 4/180°C, and butter and line a 23cm springform tin.
(Melted butter and guinness mixture)
Pour the Guinness into a large wide saucepan, add the butter - in spoons or slices - and heat until the butter's melted, at which time you should whisk in the cocoa and sugar. Beat the sour cream with the eggs and vanilla and then pour into the brown, buttery, beery pan and finally whisk in the flour and bicarb.
(Before adding the flour. Don't worry that the mixture seems watery, it'll all come together beautifully in the oven)
Pour the cake batter into the greased and lined tin and bake for 45 minutes to an hour.
(Typically there wasn't a decent sized cake tin in my house so I put the remainder into fairy cake cases)
Leave to cool completely in the tin on a cooling rack, as it is quite a damp cake.
When the cake's cold, sit it on a flat platter or cake stand and get on with the icing. Lightly whip the cream cheese until smooth, sieve over the icing sugar and then beat them both together. Or do this in a processor, putting the unsieved icing sugar in first and blitz to remove lumps before adding the cheese.
Add the cream and beat again until it makes a spreadable consistency. Ice the top of the black cake so that it resembles the frothy top of the famous pint.
And if you're stuck with Guinness leftovers and you don't drink the white stuff yourself, theres always willing participants!
The finished product:
I got a bit snap happy! It was delicious, despite the small tin, I'm not one for icing usually, but this was smooth and with a kick. There was no Baileys in the house so I improvised and added a splash of:
Gin and tonic (almost) icing of course!
It got the Dad stamp of approval and his opinion of most things is "It's grand". Maybe he was being nice because it was my birthday.
