No-bake PMS bars

So at a certain time of the month, the need for chocolate becomes as strong as our need for extra sleep. We women are wired for it.

Image credit: www.marksdailyapple.com

But if we're not careful we can load up on too much sugar and feel really crappy. Also concentration can be tougher premenstrually and we can be clumsier.

I am currently not eating wheat and sugar, but I wanted a snack to get me through the tunnel of PMS - and this one takes the biscuit! A recipe that needs no chopping or baking, and minimal work, which has no added sugar, but is nutrient rich with nuts, seeds and oats, giving you the nutritional boost you need premenstrually, without the sugar rush. And most importantly a rich, dark, deep hit of chocolate.

The only part of the recipe which requires a little vigilance is the first, toasting the nuts, seeds and oats. But it only takes about 10 minutes. So have a cup of tea and sit in stillness in front of the cooker. Or set a timer!

 Ingredients
2 cups rolled oats, not the powdery porridge ones
1 cup almonds (with skins on)
3/4 cup pecans
1/4 cup pumpkin seeds
200 grams 70- 75% dark chocolate
2 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 tsp sea salt
1 packed cup pitted dates

 Pre heat the oven to 170C (fan), about 350F.

Pour the oats onto one large baking tray, and the nuts and seeds onto the other. Pop them into the hot oven. Check after 6 minutes. If the nuts smell toasty and are a little darker, take them out. Toss the oats so the ones on bottom are now on top, and pop into the oven for another 5 mins. If about 1/4 are starting to turn golden brown then you can take them out, if not, toss again and put in for another couple of minutes.

Pour the nuts,seeds, oats and salt into a steel bladed food processor and grind until gritty.

Then add the pitted dates, vanilla and chocolate (broken roughly into pieces)for another minute until it is all brown and has come together, stop once or twice to push any stray oats down into the chocolatey mush.

Pour into an 8 inch square brownie tin which is lined with baking parchment. Cut into 16 squares and chill in the fridge for an hour or so before eating.

Thanks to http://www.brighteyedbaker.com for the original recipe inspiration which I have adapted.

Christmas Traditions: Fresh cranberry choc chip cookies

These are a recent Christmas tradition for me. A discovery from Rose Levy Beranbaum's festive book: Rose's Christmas Cookies. They are by necessity a seasonal treat in a world where you can have anything you want year round, as they require fresh cranberries which we can only get for a couple of weeks in early December. Frozen cranberries don't work and dried cranberries just don't cut it for these jewelled wonders.

Just a gentle suggestion, but you might want to double the quantities. That's if you're willing to share. But the heavenly smell wafting from the oven of chocolate, orange and toasted walnuts will mean that your secret won't be safe for long!

Makes 30

Preheat oven to 170C
50g walnuts, toasted
160g plain flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
Zest of one orange, removed with potato peeler and finely chopped
75g granulated sugar
80g soft light brown sugar
110g soft butter
1 large egg
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
150g fresh cranberries
150g dark or white choc chips or chunks

Cream the sugars and butter with an electric whisk till light and fluffy. Add the egg, vanilla and orange zest. Add flour and baking soda, mix till combined. Chop the cranberries (the bigger they are, the juicier, and therefore soggier, the final cookies) and walnuts, add and stir by hand to combine.

Spoon mix out onto lined baking sheets, a heaped tablespoon for each. Don't overcrowd. It will make 30, so you will need to use 3-4 baking sheets.

Bake for about 12-15mins, turning the sheets halfway through cooking. They should be golden and still soft. Leave to cool for a couple of mins on the baking sheet before tranfering to a wire cooling rack.

Perfect Pecan Choc Chip Cookies

Pecan nuts and chocolate are a classic combination. In our house the kids hate nuts so I make half a batch with and half without.

I realised that I have been focusing on cakes on the blog - when in reality about 50% of my baking is cookies. A strange oversight you might think. But the reality is, photographing cookies is tricky... and they tend not to last long enough (in our house) anyway!

But that stops here - I am famous for my cookies - so here's MY recipe (with a picture that someone else took!!)

Image: smittenkitchen.com

Speedy chocolate sauce

I recently made the fudgey All-American Chocolate cake but was in too much of a hurry to eat it to wait for it to cool. And so I made a speedy, no cook, chocolate sauce to pour over and served it warm, like a brownie with ice cream.

Though I have given a stand alone recipe here, in truth what I did was make up the full volume of cocoa and water needed for the recipe, and then just used half to make one cake - I was trying to be a good girl! - and the other half to make up the sauce!

Choc-orange-cranberry-almond-oat bars!

These are crammed with goodness and easy as pie to make.No easier. Absolutely NO cooking skills needed. The original recipe come's from the speedily super Nigella Express  where she calls them breakfast bars- because that's what they really are - oats, milk, sugar and nuts and seeds. But I had to add chocolate. And orange. And change the nuts. So now they're all mine!

Do note the low oven temperature.
And the oats. DO NOT whatever you do use the powdery, crumbly porridge oats. You must use rolled oats, the thicker, jumbo oats that all keep their shape. Otherwise... yuck!

And be sure you have condensed milk - which is thick like syrup, not the runny evaporated milk.

No, I don't think you're stupid. It's just easy to skim read recipes. Especially easy ones!

Mint choc brownies with hot mint choc sauce

Apologies for the absence - there has been no baking in the Pink House due to chicken pox and book-writing and birthdays. That's right, not even a birthday cake! But normal service has now resumed - and how - with these brownies!

Top of my birthday list was Fat Witch Brownies - oh my what a tempting book it is - but very American in its measurements (fine if you're an American of course!!). And today I tried my first recipe from there (see below for my tweaked version with Europeanised measurements). Oh mama! I added my own simple chocolate sauce recipe, adulterated with mint and served with vanilla ice cream - though for the total full-on experience this calls for mint-choc chip ice cream as well! These are moreish, and if you will believe me, refreshing because of the mint.

Makes 16
Preheat oven to 170 C
Line a 9 inch square tin with foil and grease with butter.

6 oz butter
4 oz chocolate (I used 3/4  70% dark and 1/4 left over Easter egg - yes we STILL have lots!!)
10 oz sugar
6 oz plain flour
3 large eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 tbsp peppermint extract/ essence
4 oz mint chips (optional )  - have no idea where to get these- but I remember them from childhood

Melt the butter and chocolate very gently in a small saucepan - remove from heat before completely melted and stir till melted. Leave to cool a little.

In a bowl whisk eggs and sugar till smooth using a electric whisk.

Add chocolate mixture, peppermint and vanilla and whisk again. Then flour and whisk briefly till combined. Fold in mint chips if using.

Pour into prepared tin and cook for 20-25 mins until a tooth pick comes out with crumbs not batter - do not over cook!

Leave to cool in the tin, cut into 16 squares. Serve alone at tea time or with ice cream and the sauce below for dessert.

Chocolate sauce 
1 tbsp butter
2 tbsp good dark cocoa powder
2 tbsp sugar
8 tbsp boiling water
a few drops of peppermint extract

Mix together in a small pan, bring to boil and simmer till thick and syrupy - check for sweetness- if too sweet add a little more cocoa and use a whisk to disperse the lumps (about 5 mins). Stir in the peppermint extract totaste. Serve hot/ warm/ cold!

Lucy Loves...chocolate

It being that time of the month, chocolate is on my mind - did you notice? It is like medicine for me... and my two little girls - melt downs and disasters are swiftly averted. A square of chocolate is adminsitered, and normality resumes.

We took delivery of our bulk order from the health food wholesalers. Usually my chocolate of choice is Divine - a fair trade bar, the 70% bar is smoky and sexy, the milk version is creamy and rich. The white with strawberries is to die for. But this time I tried the Green and Blacks (organic) cooking chocolate. Wary at first, becaase cooking chocolate usually means low cocoa mass, this is 72%. In their words, "a combination of cocoa mass, which gives the chocolate its intense flavour, and cocoa butter, which gives it a smooth consistency when melted - makes it suited perfectly for cooking & secondly, each piece of chocolate weighs exactly 5g, making it easy to measure the exact amount needed."
Clever - huh? And taste wise certainly lives up to its write up...
But the best thing? Because it is classed as "cooking" rather than "snacking" it is not a luxury item, and so you don't pay the 21% luxury VAT rate. Hurray!

We have had coconut kisses and up-cycled easter egg cake here on Queen of Puddings in the past week! And while we are on the subject - have you tried my very first posting Chocolate cherry cupcakes? Or my chocolate pavlova with raspberries? Or my red velvet cupcakes with white chocolate cream cheese frosting?
Not yet, what are you, mad?!

And my ultimate All-American chocolate cake - I have fantasies about this one! What, you're gluten-free? Then try my flour-free chocolate cake with almonds

Or feeling worthy? Then I dare you to try my secret brownies made with tofu! No one would EVER guess!

So it would be of no surprise to those of you who don't know me that I used to have a little chocolate making business... rose creams; peppermint creams; Old Morgan spiced vanilla rum truffles; spiced chocolate with orange, cinnamon and chilli;  dark chocolate dipped citrus peel...

I noticed a triple chocolate mousse cake over at The Year of the Cookie - one layer baked, one a mousse and the other lighter and fluffier. I used to love a version of this as a child which my dad and step-mother both claimed to make and I never knew who it was!  Oh the innocence of childhood, my dad would be no more capable of cooking this as push out a baby!
http://theyearofthecookie.blogspot.com/2011/05/triple-chocolate-mousse-cake.html

Coconut kisses

So with the taste of the coconut mice in my mouth and half a tin of condensed milk in the fridge needing to be used up, I decided I needed an adult version.

So if you like coconut, you might just want to kiss me now! Hence the name! These are the real deal, a million times better than Bounty bars... humble, moi, not a chance!

Makes about 30

120g icing (confectioner's ) sugar
100g condensed milk
85g desiccated coconut


To coat
40g desiccated coconut
70g dark or milk chocolate

Sift icing sugar into a bowl, add condensed milk, stir until you have a paste.

Add in the coconut and stir to combine, it will be very thick now.

Roll into large marble sized balls. Then take your pick of coatings... you can do just one, or a selection of three.


Toasted coconut
Take a clean, dry frying pan and add the 40g of coconut. Put on a medium-high heat and WATCH IT LIKE A HAWK! Coconut goes from white to burnt FAST. You want a mix of white and golden shavings, NOT golden and black. Once it has reached the right level empty it immediately onto a plate to cool. 

Melted chocolate
Take 2/3 of the chocolate and break it into a bowl, and melt over a pan of simmer water. Watch and stir. DO NOT let the water touch the bottom of the bowl. When 2/3 of it is melted remove the bowl and keep stirring until totally melted. Then stir in the remaining 1/3 of the chocolate. It should start to thicken a little. This is called tempering (it is a simplified version) and should help to keep your chocolate shiny and professional looking, rather than developing a mottled look.

So now you have three choice...you can
1) Roll the kisses in toasted coconut.
2) Dip them in the melted chocolate. Put them in one by one, spoon a little extra over the top. Slip a fork underneath to remove them, letting any excess chocolate drip down, and leave to dry on some baking parchment.
3) Roll these chocolate dipped kisses in the toasted coconut.

Can keep in or out of the fridge. They won't last long... because they'll be eaten! There's nothing really to go off in them so I'm guessing they would keep happily for a few weeks.

Up-cycled Easter Egg Cake

There comes a time when the excitement of Easter eggs has worn off and the children are less interested in them but there are still odds and sods and bits and pieces scattered around looking lonely and unloved. Cue chocolate biscuit cake to breathe yummy new life into these no longer glossy bits of choc.

This makes a big batch, so take it to someone's house, have a party, be self-restrained OR make half quantities!

Apologies for the lack of picture - no excuse except gluttony!

400g chocolate - mix of milk and dark
175g butter
4 tbsp golden syrup (corn syrup)
200g digestive biscuits (graham crackers)
100g nuts (pecan/ brazil or hazelnuts - toasted is best) - roughly chopped or smashed
150g dried cranberries (the sweetened type) or raisins or glace cherries or a mix
100g chopped mixed peel- or mini marshmallows if you hate peel

Break all choc into small pieces and put with the syrup and butter into a pan over simmering water. Mix and DO NOT let the water touch the bowl, DO NOT let it get too hot, keep mixing and remove from heat when about 2/3 melted and continue stirring till all melted.

In a plastic freezer bag put the biscuits (and nuts if wanted) and smash to smithereens with a rolling pin. You want a mix of small chunks and crumbs.

Add the fruit, biscuit and nuts into the choc, mix well and tip out into a brownie tin (about 25cm by 30cm). Flatten down, leave to cool (this takes about 2 hours) and cut into squares. Keeps for about 10 days in a biscuit tin or extra yummy cold from the fridge - though it never lasts that long!

Chocolate almond cake (gluten free)

This one's from my friend Rachael Tomkins, a regular Queen of Puddings reader. She had a winning discovery of this gluten-free chocolate cake, which uses almonds instead of flour. It went down a treat with her sister-in -aw (who is coeliac). There were no complaints from the rest of the family either apparently! It was, according to her "really easy and super yummy!!!" 

So I had to try it didn't I? And she also suggested it might be nice warm with ice cream - well what are friends for but to act on your every whim? That is my professional obligation, here at Queen of Puddings. Nothing goes on here unless it's been tried and loved first. So warm with ice cream it was. And I agree wholeheartedly. Super yummy. My two-year-old (nut hating child) is currently devouring it beside me! It also fills the house with a chocolatey fug for the whole day so you get to waft around feeling like a true domestic goddess, despite the sink stacked with washing up!

I am still on the look out for a dairy, egg and wheat-free cake for Andra - I have a great  vegan cake recipe, but it has wheat flour. Any suggestions dear readers?

Secret Brownies

Brownies... the ultimate gooey, gunky chocolate sensation. But definitely NOT good for you.

Well not any more. These secret brownies are super-chocolatey yet light, gooey and cakey...and nutritious. The secret? Tofu! It replaces some of the eggs, sugar and butter. And you would NEVER know it was there! Tofu is a great low fat protein source. As well as containing all sorts of cancer protecting isoflavins and the like. I also find for some reason that they don't give me a nasty sugar high like other brownies.

You'll have to trust  me on this one. I do not do worthy bakery. But I may, in this recipe, just have found a perfect compromise. I ate six today...I'm not sure if they're THAT healthy... ah well!

Chocolate Cherry Cupcakes

These are the love child of Nigella's Choc Cherry Cupcakes from Domestic Goddess and Bill Granger's Easy Mix Chocolate Cake, perfected, if that is not too strong a word, by me. So they are naughty but nice, cheeky and sexy, and bound to add to your wobbly bits! They take after Nigella more in the looks department - dark, sexy, sultry and very yummy mummy! They are deeply delicious with a hint of sweet, rich, mellow cherry. Just cook 'em and see. And then thank me!