Mocha Choca Madeleines

Having chanced upon some madeleine tins while in Calais in November last year, I returned to London with all the best intentions of churning out try after tray of the tiny delicacies. I would be making madeleines every weekend, my kitchen would be filled with edible seashell shapes in all colours of the rainbow, all with different flavours. Best-laid schemes of mice and (wo)men, and all that...and so the tins languished in my kitchen cupboard for the next few months. 

Anyway, Ari sent me a link to that John Whaite off the GBBO's* recipe for madeleines flavoured with chocolate and coffee. They sounded tasty, and not too complicated. So I gave them a go. He also includes a recipe for a cocoa-flavoured dipping sauce, but I left that out and simply dusted with icing sugar instead.

*That's Great British Bake-Off for those of you not au fait with today's yoof slang. 

Mocha Choca Madeleines (adapted from John Whaite's recipe for the Telegraph)

Ingredients
100g salted butter
2 eggs
100g caster sugar
1 tsp coffee extract (I used this)
85gms plain flour
15g cocoa powder

Directions
- Preheat the oven to 190 degrees C.

- Melt the butter in a saucepan over a medium heat, then set aside.

- Put the eggs, sugar and coffee extract into a mixing bowl, and beat with an electric whisk until light and fluffy, and tripled in volume. This should take about 12 -15 mins.

- Sift the flour and cocoa powder into the egg mixture, then pour in the butter. Gently fold these into the egg mixture until smooth and silky.

- Fill the madeleine moulds about 2/3 full, then bake for 8 - 10 mins or until the madeleines look slightly browned around the ages. Turn them out of the tin as soon as they are baked or they will stick. Lightly dust with icing sugar or cocoa powder (optional). 

Christmas Past

Happy New Year, kittens! It was a few weeks ago, but here are some photos from Christmas, when all I did was eat a lot and have marathon sessions of movie-and-TV-show-watching. 

A rather unfortunate gingerbread man fell into my coffee. 

We had homemade gingerbread biscuits for breakfast on Christmas morning, made with the recipe from The Hummingbird Bakery Cookbook. I like my gingerbread really spicy, so I always add twice as much ginger to the recipe when making. 

Hot Cross Buns

Isn't it tough getting back to work after a four day weekend? An ample supply of hot cross buns should help ease the transition back. These were made with Nigella's recipe, and are supposed to yield 16 smallish buns. I like big buns (and I cannot lie), so decided to make 8 larger ones instead. 

Another change - I didn't have proper mixed dried fruit, so indeed of running to the shops, I made do with dried cranberries, candied ginger, glace cherries and chocolate chips. Rather unorthodox, but tasty! I'd also like to point out that my crosses look much neater than Nigella's scraggly efforts. Piping bag, you have come in handy once again.

Glazing the bun with a sugar syrup.

Eat fresh out of the oven with lashings of butter. For older buns, slice one in half and toast it for a couple of minutes, then eat with lashings of butter. It helps make the following week much easier to bear. 

Click here for Nigella's recipe.

Cranberry and Walnut Chocolate Muffin

No proper recipe yet - this is what happens when you wake up one morning and decide to throw some ingredients together. The result smells wonderfully chocolate-y, and weighs a ton due to amount of cranberries and walnuts stuffed inside. It came out rather dry though, which is why I'm going to redo it and add more moisture to it before I write down a recipe. A dollop of clotted cream on top certainly helps with the dryness though. 

Cheesy Tim Tams

Cheesy Tim Tams, that's right. The aforementioned biscuits were a gift from Ari, who purchased them while in Indonesia early this year. It took me about 6 months of looking at it gingerly before I dared crack open the packet. In the end, it was Manbacon who actually opened in and took the first bite. 

'Oh, it's not too bad...' was what he said. Well...it wasn't too bad, but it wasn't good either. For something with so much eurgh-potential, it was disappointingly nondescript. Meh indeed. The Tim Tams just didn't taste like anything, really. Not much cheese flavour, and that lame faintly chocolate-y taste you get from white chocolate products. 

See those orange insides that promised all sorts of fake-cheese flavour? Well, there was none. It was all rather cardboardy and yep, nondescript tasting (I don't think I've ever felt 'nondescript' to be such an apt descriptive for food before). Also, I don't know if you can tell, but these biscuits were tiny - maybe two-thirds of the size of a normal Tim Tam. They also failed the all-important straw test. I think the cheesy insides made them too dense and impervious to liquid being suck through. Well, Cheese Tim Tams, I won't be buying any more of you should I visit Indonesia (unless someone specifically requests them as a souvenir). 

Boutteau, Dunkirk

As I mentioned a couple of posts back, we took a daytrip to France two Saturdays ago. The ferry arrived in Dunkirk around lunchtime - perfect. After a quick sandwich, the three of us wandered around town and had a look at the market before we spotted Botteau. Time for dessert!

Its display cases were filled with dainty, delicious jewel-hued pastries, drawing us in like a siren song. What to choose? Everything looked too good, too colourful. It took me an age to decide on one, and even then I wanted more. 

Our travel companion J choose a flan, without really having a clue what it was. He seemed a bit disappointed by his choice, but I thought it was great. Creamy, slightly sweet, and rather light too. 

I finally decided on a frangipoire - a glazed frangipane tart with sliced pear, topped off with a chocolate button inscribed with 'Boutteau' in gold. It was wonderful, sweet and moreish, with a slight tartness provided by the glaze. 

Manbacon went with the chocolate bombe, a huge, round sugar grenade of a dessert. The meringue core was surrounded by a layer of chocolate, and coated with more chocolate, and finally dusted with icing sugar. Spectacular looking, but rather too sweet for me. 

Boutteau

19 Bart Jean Bart

59140 Dunkirk

France

Ribs 'N Beer

Sometimes, that's all you want in a meal. No need for extensive wine lists or square plates with delicate smears of jus, just a hearty rack of tender ribs, washed down with cool blonde beer. On our second night in Bruges, Manbacon and I headed to Ribs 'n Beer in search of some of the good stuff.

The restaurant was fairly empty when we arrived, with only a party of three middle-aged couples, and two other giggly girls occupying the other tables. We decided to go for the all-you-can-eat ribs and a glass each of Maes beer. Our waiter kindly gave us a plate of savoury starfish shapes to kick things off. Manbacon was excited by the prospect of 'all-you-can-eat', boasting that he would have at least four refills, and possibly even have the kitchen begging him to leave by the end of the night.

Tin for bones.

I went for the beer and chocolate sauce, over tender, falling apart slowcooked ribs, so soft that it all fell off the bone with hardly any persuasion from my fork. I still dream about the sauce sometimes - a slight hint of darkness from the chocolate, tempered by some sweetness from the beer. 

House sauce - Beer and chocolate

Manbacon went for the Chef's Special Rub, which was served with barbecued ribs. Although tasty, it didn't leave much of an impression on me, unlike the awesome beer and chocolate sauce. The barbecued ribs were juicy, but tougher than the succulent slowcooked ones.

Chef's Special Rub

The tin provided for bones soon filled up. I was ready to give up by the end of my first rack, but Manbacon wanted more. MORE! More came in the form of slowcooked ribs smothered in spicy barbecue sauce - another winner. The meat was just as tender as mine had been, with a memorably spicy dressing garnished with teeny-tiny little dried chillies. Despite his earlier boasts, this was the one the defeated my Manbacon. Only one half rack refill, and he was more than ready to throw the towel in. 

Spicy Barbecue Sauce

We didn't even have dessert.

According to our cute waiter, the most any customer had ever eaten at Ribs 'n Beer were four full racks of ribs - that's six portions of refills, readers! We'd need a lot more training to achieve anything near that record.

Ribs 'n Beer
Ezelstraat 50
Brugge 8000
Belgium

Out/About

Some things I've seen and eaten in the last couple of weeks. 

Ron Mueck show at Hauser and Wirth

Slow-cooked miso marinated pork belly at Akasiro in Chinatown. Lovely, especially when paired with hot steamed rice.

Insanely detailed chocolate creations at Choccywoccydoodah in Fouberts Place. 

 

Be warned - enter with your sweet tooth in tow. My friend Sheree and I shared the peanut butter milkshake and chocolate sundae between us - a dastardly concoction of chocolate ice-cream, whipped cream, brownie, fudge, some kind of berry jam-like thing, as well as plenty of chocolate buttons and who knew what else. We had to admit defeat about three-quarters of the way through. The milkshake tasted like a cold, soft Snickers bar (if you like that sort of thing, which I do), and went down slightly easier, but we still left without finishing the whole thing.

St. Paul's looked lovely in the last light of day. 

Sugardaddy Cakes

Something tasty will be happening at the Tea Rooms this weekend. The Bake Club boys and I are teaming up to start a new cake stall, serving plenty of homemade goodies. If you're around Brick Lane this weekend, why not come over to say hello, and have some tea and biscuits? 

Novelty Food

 A tin of Hello Kitty pasta shapes in a 'tomato based sauce'. As yet unopened (working up the courage) but expect a visual report of the contents when I finally crack it open. It's rather encouraging that this helps make up 'one of (my) five a day'.

Chocolate boobs from Brussels, with a red pompom and nipple tassles, filled with marshmallow-y cream. What else can I say? 

Triple C - Chocolate and Coffee Cake with Chestnut Buttercream

This cake came about mainly because I really, really wanted to try making a Swiss meringue buttercream. And no, I couldn't just make the buttercream, because eating buttercream on its own would just be sinful, wouldn't it? Whereas eating buttercream and chocolate cake together is totally acceptable. Yup.

Chocolate and Coffee Cake (adapted from BBC Good Food: All-In-One Chocolate Cake)

Ingredients
175gm selfraising flour
3 tbsp 70% cocoa powder
175gm unsalted butter, softened
175gm golden caster sugar
1 tsp baking powder
3 eggs
1-2 tbsp milk
1 tbsp coffee flavouring (similar to this)

Directions
- Preheat the oven to 180C. Butter and baseline two 5-inch sandwich tins. Remove 3 tbsp of flour from the full amount ( the cocoa powder will make up the difference).

- Put all cake ingredients (except milk) into a large bowl and beat until creamy. Add the milk if mixture is too stiff - it should fall easily from a spoon.

- Divide the mixture evenly between the prepared tins, and level the surfaces of the mixtures. Bake on the same shelf in the oven for 20-25 minutes or until sponge springs back when pressed. Cool for 5 minutes, then turn the sponges out onto a wire rack to cool completely (peel greaseproof paper off if attached to cake).

- Level the sponges if necessary, by slicing off the tops.

Swiss Meringue Buttercream with Chestnut Puree (adapted from Life Is Great)

Ingredients
340gm butter, cubed, room temperature
5 large egg whites
220gm granulated sugar
2 tbsp pure vanilla extract
1/3 cup chestnut puree
pinch of salt


Directions
- Combine egg whites, sugar and salt in a clean*, heatproof bowl over a pan of simmering water. Whisk constantly over the heat, until mixture reaches about 70C and sugar has dissolved** (rub some mixture between fingers - if it feels grainy, then it hasn't dissolved).

- Take mixture off heat and beat with an electric whisk (or better yet, one of these bad boys if you're lucky enough to have one) on medium-high for about 8 minutes, until stiff peaks have formed and mixture has cooled to room temperature.

- Lower speed to medium and start adding a couple of small cubes of butter, making sure it has incorporated before adding more. Once all the butter is added, add in vanilla extract and chestnut puree, and beat until just combined***.

- Sandwich buttercream in between both layers of sponge, and over the sides and top of cake (I'm sure you can make it much prettier than mine - my spatula skills are non-existent. I also found that fish knives make nifty little 'spatulas' for tight spaces.)

(N.B. - this gives enough buttercream for 2 cakes. Leftovers can be refrigerated or frozen until needed. Just before using, defrost and bring to room temperature, and whip to a smooth consistency before using.)

* Clean your bowl and utensils with vodka beforehand to ensure there is no residual grease left. 

** I haven't got a sugar thermometer, so tested it with my fingers. Go ahead and dip your fingers in, and feel for a fairly hot and smooth texture. 

***You may find the mixture looks curdled after adding in butter - DO NOT PANIC! Keep beating it and it will smooth out fairly soon.