Midnight Garden Cake.

       Back at the beginning of May, I decided to enter Karen's Tea Time Treats blog challenge as this month's challenge was 'Flowers'. The main reason was that I wanted to practice making lots and lots of sugarcraft flowers. Fast forward to the closing date and here is the final production, The Midnight Garden Cake, with its one sugarcraft flower lol. Oh the floral extravaganza that was going to adorn my dream creation! To be fair, I did make two flowers, but one, my first, was just seeing if I could make an Osteospermum 'Whirlygig'....

.... and it didn't come off too badly :) But it wasn't for this cake.

        Originally I was going to have more different coloured flowers round the edge, daytime sky (Mix the blue too dark did we? - ed.) and a cloud top that would be adorned with pure white 'flowers in heaven' type thing. This is why I don't bother making plans normally. So, that was my first attempt at a rose on the top. It wasn't bad, just have to work on getting it more 'delicate' instead of a hefty lump of a rose. 

        The cake contained a few other firsts that I wanted to do. This is the first time I've rolled out an icing covering using a pack of the ol' white Regalice. The second attempt was more relaxing after dusting the work surface with a bit more cornflour thus making it not stick like the frustrating arse first one! So finally I got it off the surface on a rolling pin, onto the cake and averagely smooth and tidy. Hooray! 

       There isn't a recipe for this as I used the chocolate celebration cake recipe Here, saving a bit of the buttercream to mix with green gel colour for the grass.

So I made this purely to try new things and also to enter this months #TeaTimeTreats being run by Karen over at Lavender and Lovage. and after having a month to do something, I'm now doing blog first draft with 11 mins left to enter! and I will finish the post tomorrow....goodnight :)

....and suddenly it's June 3rd! lol Anyway, a bit more info on the cake. After getting the rolled icing on, I used some blue blossom tint mixed up with some Rejuvenating solution to make the paint, and started doing the sky on the sides. I was going for a smoother covering of colour, but with the way the icing soaks up the paint I ended up with the brush-strokey look, which I kind of grew to like. Another case of practice will make perfect, or at least better. I did the paint on the top a day later which didn't work as well because where the icing had dried a bit, it got a sugary dust on it and this went into little lumps with the paint and also gummed up the end of the brush. I think it would probably have been ok if I'd buffed off the top a bit first. 

     Next I mixed up some green paint and drew on the flower stems, rolled out some white icing for the flowers and cut them out then pressed straight onto the side of the cake. Then piped some green buttercream through a grass/hair nozzle for the grass around the base of the cake.

     Then, the next day, I made the clouds using the marshmallow frosting mix that Ros used for her amazing Hi Hat Marshmallow Cupcakes. I did wonder how much the recipe would make, and it was, er, quite a lot lol About 20 times too much for my few clouds, and there's only so much marshmallow frosting you can eat straight out of the bowl lol I think I also either over whisked or left the frosting too long before I piped it as it didn't pipe as smoothly as I was hoping and so ended up with quite angular clouds instead of the smooth fluffy ones I was looking for, but they worked ok.

    Next I took some white flowerpaste and mixed in some yellow gel colour. This was for the 'moon' rose (I'm really hoping at least a few of you realised the rose was representing the moon! :D ), the stars and the side flower centres. There's plenty of rose tutorials on t'web out there for you to see. It is quite simple, even for me and especially making my big lummox of a rose. I pressed out the petals inside one of those clear flexi plastic A4 paper folders. Then I rolled out some thin and cut out the stars, then rolled little balls and pressed into the centres of the flowers. 

       And hey presto! Midnight Garden cake! :)

Some tunes for the garden.....starting with the flippin brilliant Miranda Sex Garden - Peep Show

Chill with The Orb - Little Fluffy Clouds

The Creepshow - The Garden

I like a bit of the Levellers now and again and went to their brilliant Beautiful Days Festival in Devon last year. I don't really rate this from them, but it's cakey linked :D The Levellers - In This Garden

LOVE! This one though. The Levellers - 15 Years

Any excuse for some Manics - Small Black Flowers That Grow In The Sky

Ok, 2 more. First, All About Eve - Flowers in our Hair

and finally, The other good track from The Killers - Mr Brightside. Brandon Flowers innit ;)

Stay dark and floral people.

Chocolate Macarons.

             Well, here it is, finally, my first attempt at Macarons. I don't think I've ever eaten one of these let alone baked them. Oh, I've seen what they are supposed to look like, with their perfect little 'feet', perfectly squeezed filling, and and entire care bear rainbow of colours! But to start with, I just wanted to go for some choccy ones. Partly because I wanted to do something for this months 'We Should Cocoa' blog challenge, who's special ingredient this month is 'almonds'. I had a look at a few recipes and in the end went for this fairly straightforward one for French Chocolate Macarons with Chocolate Ganache Filling by Jill Santopietro. I've changed cups for g/ml here, so if you want cup measurements go with the linky :) 

              I didn't have any problems with the process and the 26 Macarons were split between 28 baked on a silicone macaron mat sprayed with a bit of cake release spray and then wiped with kitchen towel to remove any excess, and 24 on baking paper lined trays. Both methods worked fine, with the silicone ones coming out just that little bit more uniform. Just make sure you let them cool totally before trying to shift them after baking.

So, for my first taste of a Macaron? Pretty bloomin nice! Love the mix of the crunchy outer, the airy centres that turn to a gorgeous, tasty goo as you chew, and then the lush, smooth, dark chocolate ganache caresses your tongue as you......god! Anyway, I'll stop there. 

These little fellas are entered in May's We Should Cocoa, A blog challenge based on, can you guess? YES! That's right! Chocolate!  run in turn by Chocolette, Chele, and this month, by Laura. So do have a good looky around their drool-inducing blogs :)

Ingredients:

• 280g Icing sugar.
• 80g Ground almonds
• 3 TBSP cocoa powder
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 3 Large free range egg whites at room temp.
• 1/4 tsp Cream of tartar powder.
• 3 TBSP Granulated sugar.
• 125ml Double cream.
• 120g Dark chocolate, about 50-60% cocoa.
• 20g Unsalted butter at room temp.

Preparation:

• Prep baking trays with baking paper, or silicone macaron mats. You will need room for about 50. I got 12 on a 7" x 11" tray area. 
• Put the Icing sugar, almonds, cocoa and salt into a food processor fitted with a blade attachment, and blitz for a couple of minutes. Give it a stir round with a fork to mix in any bits that might have sat away from the blades and blitz for another minute.
• Sift about 90% of the blitzed mix into a bowl. Put any bits left in the sieve back in with the last 10% in the food processor and blitz again. Sift this into the bowl and chuck the last small amount of un-siftable bits. (I only had about a teaspoon left, but if you have a finer sieve than me and you have loads left either blitz it again or just chuck it all in the bowl as it is :) )
• Put the egg whites into a bowl and whisk until frothy.
• Add the cream of tartar powder and whisk on med-high speed until they turn white and start to fluff up.
• Add the sugar a tablespoon at a time while whisking.
• Stop whisking when the whites hold a peak when you take the whisk out.
• Fold in the dry mix a third at a time with a spatula.
• Keep mixing it all in until it's completely combined and the mix is uniform.
• Put the mix into a piping bag then cut the end off where it's about 1cm across flat, and pipe the mix out onto the trays, remembering that the mix will settle and spread. You'll soon see how they settle if you leave one or two for a minute and then you can gauge the rest.
• Bang the trays on the work surface to release any trapped air bubbles then leave for about 45mins so that the surface of the macarons dries out and forms a skin.
• Before the 45 mins is up, preheat the oven to 170c.
• In my oven I just baked one layer of trays at a time, no higher than on the middle rack. 
• Bake for 7mins, and then turn the tray(s) around and bake for another 7 mins.
• Take out and leave to cool on a cooling rack in the trays.
• While they're cooling....
• Pour the cream into a small saucepan and, whilst stirring to avoid a skin forming, heat until it just starts to boil. 
• Take off of the heat and add the broken up chocolate.
• Stir slowly until melted and mixed in with the cream.
• Add the butter and stir slowly until melted and mixed in.
• Allow to cool. Then put in the fridge to cool more for about 20-30 mins, until it holds it's shape, but can still be piped.
• When fully cooled, loosen the macs from the trays/silicone mat.
• Put the ganache into a piping bag, cut a small hole in the end, and pipe the mix out onto half the macaron bases.
• Pick similar sized macs if you baked freeform on a tray, and sandwich together. You'll soon get used to how to handle them during this bit :) and this is also why you don't want the choc ganache too firm, and then, if you can manage this next bit without eating any (I didn't) Chill for 24hrs. 
• Eat! Then eat another one! Then eat another one by dunking it in the double cream you have left over!   Then eat healthy stuff for a little bit...then eat another one! :)

Tunes!!!!!

Kicking off with the classic.... Paul MACartney! - Live and Let Die!

The classic Fleetwood MAC! - Go Your Own Way!

..and the classic, heheh, well, it's a classic bit of dark trance to me :) Scott MAC - Damager 02  BOUNCE! BOUNCE! BOUNCE!!!

...and just for the hell of it, one of the two good songs from The Killers - When You Were Young.

Chocolate and Hazelnut Cake.

You know that time when you want to bake and have a quick look through the shelves and cupboards to suss the options available. Well this is where this baby was conceived. Right up to when I decided I wanted to try to replicate some awesome looking caramel hazelnuts I'd seen on Pinterest, when a shopping trip was needed for whole hazelnuts. After making daft looking cakes like Oxford Rocks with it's leopard spot sponge, and before that the Valentines cake I wanted to pull things back a bit towards the basic tasty and good looking cake that takes about a tenth of the hours to make. I was quite happy with the Easter pimped Honey cake but even that had decoration un-relating to the actual cake, so with this one, I actually managed to keep the decoration chocolate and hazelnut based. I even felt a bit bad for veering off into the world of caramel lol.

1st May - Chocolate Celebration Cake version added below the choc/hazelnut. :)

Ingredients:

• 250g Golden Caster Sugar
• 130g Unsalted Butter (Room temp)
• 2 Free range medium eggs
• 30ml Sunflower oil
• 80ml Milk
• 2 TBSP Nutella
• 200g Plain Flour
• 2 tsp Baking powder
• 40g Cocoa powder
• 30g Ground Almonds

Filling and sides:

• 150g Unsalted butter (Room temp)
• 2 TBSP Nutella
• 1 TBSP Milk
• 30g Cocoa powder
• 300g Icing sugar

Topping:

• 60g Double cream
• 120g Dark chocolate
• 15g Unsalted butter

Extras:

• 3 Hazelnuts
• 50g Hazelnut bits
• 30g Granulated sugar

Preparation:

• Turn the oven on to 170c
• Prep two 7" or 8" tins, either by greasing and lining with baking paper or spraying with cake release spray.
• Put the butter and sugar into a mixing bowl and cream together.
• Keep mixing. Add one egg at a time.
• Add the oil
• Add the milk.
• Add the Nutella.
• Sift the flour, baking powder, and cocoa into a bowl and add gradually to the mixing bowl.
• Add the ground almonds.
• Mix until just fully combined.
• Split evenly between the tins and bake for about 25 mins.
• Check they're cooked with a cocktail stick or knife which should come out clean when inserted into the centre of the sponges.
• Allow to cool in the tins for 15 mins, then tip out onto a cooling rack to cool completely.
• To make the buttercream, beat the butter and Nutella together for a couple of minutes.
• Sift the icing sugar and cocoa, and add to the butter mix a bit at a time.
• Add the milk and mix for at least 5 mins.
• Spread on one sponge and then place the other sponge on top so that the 2nd sponge's flat base is facing upwards.
• Apply buttercream to the sides of the cake with a palette knife. You can do this properly by applying a thin crumb layer first, which traps any loose crumbs, and then another layer. 
• Press crushed hazelnuts into the sides of the cake in whatever style takes your fancy. I poured some out at the base and then pushed up into place with a palette knife. 
• For the topping, pour the cream into a saucepan and heat until bubbles start to form at the sides.
• Turn the heat off and add the chocolate. Stir gently until melted.
• Add the butter and stir until melted.
• Allow to cool for 5 mins.
• Using a teaspoon, dribble some of the choc mix down the sides of the cake.
• Then spread the rest over the top of the cake.
• Decorate with chopped hazelnuts as required.
• To make my not-quite-what-they-were-meant-to-be caramel hazelnuts, I melted 30g of granulated sugar in a small saucepan, just gently moving it with a spatula as it melts. I then arrange 5 hazelnuts on manipulated paper clips sandwiched between 2 cartons of fruit juice and two tins of beans. I then sprayed a baking tray with cake release spray and placed it underneath the nuts, the hazelnuts. I then dribbled the melted sugar over the hazelnuts. What I was looking for was a long, sleek, single pointy caramel finger, like the T-1000's finger in Terminator :) I think that involves dunking the nuts in the caramel or allowing it to cool a bit because when I dribbled the caramel over the nuts it tended to fall off before it got right round to the underside. Also 2 flat juice cartons weren't quite high enough and the strands backed up on themselves and contorted or snapped off. I'll find out next time :)
• Allow to cool and place on the cake. You can also string some of the caramel and use that as decoration.
• Eat cake :)

I'm submitting this production into May's Alphabakes. Alphabakes is run monthly, alternately by Ros at The More Than Occasional Baker, and this month's by Caroline at Caroline Makes... This months letter is 'H', and what letter does hazelnut begin with children? That's right! :)

Chocolate Celebration Cake.

I contemplated giving this fella his own page, and might do, but for now he's so linked to the cake above I think I'll tag him down here...and also the photos were a bit pants :)

Same recipe as above but:

No Hazelnuts.
No Nutella.
All over buttercream with 250g butter, 250g icing sugar, 1 TBSP milk and 2 heaped TBSP cocoa powder.
A sprinkling of cocoa powder.
2 flakes, crushed.
2 bags of maltesers.
1 bag choc buttons.
Melt dark and white choc onto baking paper or a sheet of acetate, then chill, for the shards, and also to drizzle over the wired maltesers.
I was going to decorate with milk and white choc curls as well, done with a peeler, but they didn't come out nice enough so I ended up just putting a few right in the centre where the wires go in.

Tunage courtesy of course from Hazelnut O'Connor - Eighth Day

Rabbit action! Watership Down featured a rabbit called Hazelnut! (Are you sure? - ed.) Written by Mike Batt of the Wombles fame, Art Garfunkel - Bright Eyes.

Talking of Terminator fingers, a Tuuuuuuuune! from T2 - Guns and Roses - You Could Be Mine

...and finally, random gorgeous tune of the day. One of the best from Elastica - Never Here.

What's that? You want to see Julianne Regan lipsyncing on Japanese TV? Why certainly! Here's All About Eve - Every Angel.

Oxford Rocks cake for The Oxford Bake Off

A long, long time ago, March 24th to be precise, there was in Oxford Town, a Bake off. I attended along with this time-eating cake, some mad chocolate brownies, and a loaf of Sun-dried tomato and basil bread.
The cake and brownies took hours and hours of planning, practice runs, frustration, sorting logistics and setting up. The bread took a few minutes, got un-ceremonially placed on a plate at the bake off, and then won it's category! Yay! lol To be fair to it though it did bake really well, looked ok, and tasted good.

So, to start with, the cake. As it was the Oxford Bake Off, I wanted to do something Oxford based, and after a few other ideas, came up with a music from Oxford theme, and the original design is pretty much what the final cake ended up being. It is a Chocolate and Orange sponge made in a rock n roll leopard skin stylee, with a truffly chocolate filling, then I tried to make an Oxford blue buttercream, but didn't quite get there, then I decorated with regalice records featuring bands from Oxford (Radiohead got the 3 centre spots), some icing musical decoration, a base ring of Crunchie rocks, and finished off with a bit of airy height from the 'Oxford Rocks!' Maltesers. The last time I used maltesers on the Valentines cake, they were randomly placed, so when I went to line these up I didn't foresee the frustration of getting the little sods lined up properly lol

Ingredients:

• 225g Self Raising Flour
• 25g Cornflour
• 2 tsp Baking Powder
• 250g Caster sugar
• 250g Unsalted butter at room temp
• 4 Free range medium eggs
• 5 TBSP milk (Or just enough to make the batter easily spreadable in the tins)
• 1 Heaped TBSP Cocoa powder
• 1 tsp Orange extract
• Yellow, red and black concentrated colour gels.

Filling:

• 100ml Double cream
• 170g Dark Chocolate
• 1/2 tsp Orange Extract

Covering/Decorations:

• 200g Unsalted Butter at room temp
• 400g Icing Sugar
• Blue and Black concentrated colour gels
• Black and White Sugarpaste/Regalice for the records
• Icing Sugar and few tsp of Lemon juice for the icing. 
• Maltesers 

Preparation:

• Make 3 records and allow to dry for a few days.
• Preheat the oven to 180c
• Prep 2 9" round tins as you like. Greased and lined or cakey release spray.
• In a mixing bowl, cream together the butter and sugar.
• Sift the Flour, Cornflour and baking powder into another bowl.
• Add one egg and some flour at a time to the butter mixture and mix well until all 4 eggs and all flour added.
• Add a tablespoon of milk at a time until the batter is of a consistancy that will push out to the tin edges easily.
• Take out 300g of the batter into a seperate bowl.
• To the remaining batter add the tsp of Orange extract and a few drops of yellow colour gel and mix.
• Split the batter evenly between the two tins and smooth level.
• Put the 300g of batter back into the mixing bowl, add the cocoa powder, a drop of red and drop of black colour and mix well. This will be piped, so add a small amount of milk now if necessary.
• Spoon the batter into a piping bag with about a size 5 nozzle or cut a similar sized hole in the end of the bag.
• Poking the nozzle down into the yellow batter, squeeze out lots of little blobs without breaking through to the surface. Then squeeze lots of little blobs out onto the surface of the batter, so it looks something like this on one of my practice run cakes.....

• Give the tins a bit of a wobble then bake for about 30 mins or until a cocktail stick comes out of the centres clean.
• Leave in the tins for 15 mins then tip out gently onto a cooling rack
• When the sponges are cool pour the cream into a saucepan and heat until bubbles appear at the edges.
• Add the chocolate and stir together.
• Allow to cool a bit until not runny but spreadable, and over the surface of one sponge.
• Sandwich the sponges together.
• Mix together the butter and icing sugar and add colour if you want to.
• Cover the cake with the buttercream using a palette knife.
• Use a black food pen and write on the 3 old records and place them in the centre.
• Roll out black and white Regalice and using whatever you can find to make the right sized circle cuts, in my case an old baking powder tub, a bottle cap, and a straw, make 6 records and place on the cake Let them dry a while before writing on them. (Slightly quicker to write that than make them lol)
• Mix together some sifted icing sugar and drops of lemon juice to make enough icing for the musical bits and pieces, and go as mad as you like piping the icing on. Save some for the maltesers.
• Pipe the letters onto the Maltesers, attach to wires, stick in cake.
• Take to Oxford Town Hall and eventually, eat :)

The Oxford Bake off was conceived by Kate and was a charity event for the benefit of:

Oxford International Women's Day

CoppaFeel

Oxford Rape Crisis

Cecily's Fund

As I write this, there is currently a wonderful Oxford Bake Off recipe book available to buy for just £5 from here with contributions from the likes of Holly Bell, Kate Shirazi, Oxford Cupcakes, and Jane Asher!

Piccies from the bake off:

And a few tunes from the Oxford boys and girls:

Another excuse to slip in this baby from Death By Crimpers - Obsessive

Radiohead - Creep (Uncensored, so don't click 'play' kids! Oi, no, stop that, oh now you've done it, that's the end of the world, you're all going to end up foul mouthed criminals, oh wait, that's from playing COD.) Oh, ignore all that, it's the radio friendly 'Very' version lol

Some tunage from Swervedriver - Dual

Some Supergrass - Richard III 






Classic from The Auteurs - Lenny Valentino






The Candyskins - Submarine Song.






Finishing with the awesome Ride - Time of her Time

Biscuit Selection Pack 1

    Cookie fest!!!! I made these beauties to give to my Dad and tried to use flavour ingredients that I knew he liked. So here we have, from left to right, Dark Fruit n Nut Chocolate biscuits, Toblerone Biscuits (Based on a Dan Lepard Recipe), and Chocolate fudge Biscotti (Based on this AllRecipes recipe). All of these worked quite well, apart from the fudge bit, which to be honest I would have been better off making a plain Biscotti and nibbling on a finger of Fudge inbetween bites lol. I chopped up Fudge fingers for these but sadly they bubbled and baked apart during their time in the oven, and disappeared. No fudgyness :( But in the end, they were very edible, very tasty, and looked nice :) Feel free to leave them naked, or clothe them in a drizzling of white chocolate as shown.


Dark Fruit & Nut chocolate biscuits.

Ingredients:

• 125g Unsalted butter (Room Temp)
• 90g Light brown sugar
• 1 Tsp Vanilla extract
• 1 Large free range egg
• 90g Self raising flour
• 50g Wholemeal flour
• 30g Cocoa powder
• 1/4 Tsp Baking Powder
• Pinch of salt
• 50g Dark Chocolate
• 100g Cadbury's Fruit n Nut 
• 3 TBSP Milk

Preparation:

• Prep 2 baking trays with baking paper or cake release spray
• Add the butter, sugar and vanilla to a large bowl and mix well (I used my Kenwood)
• Beat the egg, then add and continue mixing.
• Sieve the flours, cocoa, baking powder and salt and then slowly add to the bowl whilst mixing.
• Add the milk and mix.
• Chop up the chocolates into fine chunks and add to the mixture. I mixed these in by hand as they get a bit mashed by the paddle in the Kenwood.
• Chill in the fridge of freezer for a while until the dough is slightly hardened
• Preheat the oven to 190c.
• Take large teaspoons full of the mix and shape into rough balls and place on the baking tray leaving room for them to spread when they bake.
• Press the top of each one down slightly with the back of the teaspoon.
• Bake for about 15mins or until the edges are slightly browning.
• After 5 minutes hardening on the tray, transfer to a cooling rack.
• Eat!

Toblerone Biscuits:

Ingredients:

• 50g unsalted butter (Room Temp)
• 175g Golden caster sugar
• 1 tsp Vanilla extract
• 1 Free range egg
• 100ml Sunflower oil
• 150g plain flour
• 1 tsp Baking powder
• 100g rolled oats
• 30g chopped almonds
• 200g Toblerone (Variety of your choosing)

Preparation:

• Add the butter, sugar, vanilla to a mixing bowl and mix well until light and smooth.
• Add the egg and continue mixing.
• Add the oil and continue mixing.
• Add the oats and almonds and continue mixing.
• Sieve the flour and baking powder and add the the mixture. Mix in well
• Chop up the the toblerone into small chunks (I blitzed mine in the processor and it was a bit too fine)
• Add the Toblerone bits and mix in.
• Cool the dough in the fridge of freezer so it hardens slightly
• Preheat the oven to 170c
• Teaspoon out lumps of the and make them roughly ball shaped.
• Place on a prep'd baking tray, leaving room to spread, and press down slightly with the back of the teaspoon.
• Bake for about 15 mins, or until the edges start to brown slightly.
• Cool on the tray for a while until they harden slightly then transfer to a cooling rack.
• Eat!

Chocolate Fudgey Biscotti.

Ingredients:

• 75g Unsalted Butter (Room temp)
• 135g Golden caster sugar
• 2 Free range eggs
• 1 tsp Vanilla extract
• 100g Dark chocolate
• 1 pack (85g) Dr Oetker Fudge chunks, or similar. (Cadbury's fudge didn't work!)
• 220g Plain flour
• 30g Cocoa powder
• 2 tsp Baking powder
• 1 TBSP Water
• 1 Free range egg (For an egg wash)

Preparation:

• Preheat the oven to 190c
• Add the butter, sugar and vanilla to a mixing bowl and mix together until light and smooth.
• Add the 2 eggs one at a time and mix well.
• Sieve the flour, baking powder and cocoa and add slowly whilst mixing. Mix together well.
• Chop up the chocolate into fine chunks.
• Add the chocolate and fudge chunks to the mixture and stir in well.

Chopped up Fudge Fingers look nice, but don't work!

• Prep a large baking tray or 2 smaller trays with baking paper. (I just used cake release spray, and afterwards remembered that I wanted to lift them from the tray to cut. Ooops)
• Divide the dough equally into 2 and form 2 'loaves' on the baking tray about 9" x 3" x 1"

Mmmmmmmm!

• Beat the egg and brush all over the tops of the loaves (Look lovely don't they! lol)
• Bake for about 20 mins.
• Remove from the trays onto a cooling rack and allow to cool for no more than 10 mins or they get a bit crumbly. I left mine about 7 mins and a few of them were getting crumbly.

You can see where the fudge has just melted and bubbled out to nothing. 

• Using a sharp knife, cut into slices about 2 - 2.5cm thick.

• Return them to the baking tray and cook for 7-10mins (Don't burn them)
• Turn each one over and cook for another 7-10mins.
• Take them out and transfer to a cooling rack to cool.
• Eat! 

WobbleWobbleWobble!!!! Masterchef Synaesthesia by @swedemason

Of course, if I ate too many of these I would become........tada! Half Man Half Biscuit - Trumpton Riots.

Mr Cookie Monster shows how to eat cookies properly. 

And for no link whatsoever to biscuits - A triple play of the Manics! Manic Street Preachers - Stay Beautiful. (From 21yrs ago!!! aaaaargh!)

Suicide is Painless (Theme from M.A.S.H.)

Motorcycle Emptyness.

Did I say triple-play? lol Design For Life

If You Tolerate This Then Your Children Will Be Next

Awh, they won't let me have Little Baby Nothing :(

So, I'll finish with, um...... Some Kind Of Bliss  with little Kylie :)

Happy Biscuiting!

Chocolate Brownies.

Ah, biting through that light crust into the moist, chocolaty heaven inside, maybe stumbling across a little chocolate nugget angel along the way....Mmmmmmm

Anyway, My new brownie tin arrived this morning, so BAM! On with the brownies. Now I did have a recipe that a friend gave me ages ago, but can I find it? No. So trawling through a few recipes I found this relatively low-fat interesting one by Angela Nilsen on the BBC Good Food site and basically replicated but added some chopped up dark chocolate chunks. I bought some mayo the other day, then forgot what I was going to use it in, so now it ended up in some Chocolate Brownies! Yay!

I'm going to try out a few more recipes over the next few weeks and will add them here. Please feel free to add any ones that you love in the comments, and also any extras you throw in/or on. Any of you lovely bloggers please feel free to link to your own brownie posts in comments. Lets have a brownie orgy!

I'm entering some in the Oxford Bake Off in a few weeks. I'm hoping to keep them fairly simple, but make them so perfect that they hold their own. @dawnadays reminded me of the option of sticking a Rolo in them (I remember doing that with some cupcakes years ago!) and I might add some piped ganache on top. I'll stay away from nuts and marshmallows, but might add other chocolate types, and if I go completely mad, a cheesecake layer on top!

Ingredients:

• 200g Dark Chocolate
• 85g Plain flour
• 25g Cocoa powder
• 1/4 Tsp Bicarbonate of Soda
• 100g Golden caster sugar
• 50g Light Muscovado sugar
• 1/2 Tsp coffee granules
• 1 Tsp Vanilla extract
• 2 TBSP Buttermilk (Or Milk with a squeeze of Lemon Juice.)
• 1 Egg
• 100g Mayonnaise.

Preparation: 

1. Preheat the oven to 180c/Gas4
2. In a medium to large bowl (You'll add other ingredients shortly) Melt 100g of the chocolate in the microwave, in 30sec bursts, or over a simmering pan of water.
3. Allow to cool a minute.
4. Sieve the flour, bicarb and cocoa powder in to another bowl, then chop up the otther 100g of choc into small chunks and add to the flour mix..
5. Add both sugars to the melted chocolate and stir.
6. Add the Coffee granules, vanila extract and buttermilk, and stir.
7. Add the Egg, and stir well.
8. Then add the Mayonnaise and mix well.
9. Add the dry ingredients to the wet and fold together thoroughly.
10. Prep a (approx) 20cm x 20cm tin, or individual brownie tin like I used.
11. Pour the batter into the tin, and give it a good wobbly to get it settled in the edges.
12. Bake for approx 30mins for a tray bake, lower the time for the individual brownie tin - about 22-25mins.
13. Allow to cool for 1 second. 
14. Eat them all :)

....and here's a version I made for The Oxford Bake Off: The 'Out of this World' Brownie! :)

Yeah, I know, WTF? lol 

A lovely full-on choc brownie with dark orange choc chunks, a Chilli Chocolate pool covered with a white chocolate moon! So, straight forwards then.

Ingredients: For a 9" x 12" tray bake and in brackets for the square brownies tin.

• 225g (150g) Unsalted Butter
• 275g (180g) Dark Chocolate
• 4 (3) Free range eggs
• 275g (180g) Dark Muscovado Sugar
• 200g (133g) Plain Flour
• 1/2 tsp (1/3tsp) Baking Powder.
• 100g Dark orange chocolate chopped into chunks

Preparation:

• Preheat the oven to 180c
• Grease and line a 9" x 12" tin (Cake release spray brownie tin) 
• Melt the butter in a saucepan
• Add dark chocolate and melt.
• Cool for a few mins.
• In a large bowl, or mixer bowl beat the eggs and then add the sugar and mix together.
• Add the choc mix to the eggs mix and continue mixing
• Sift the flour and baking powder and add to the wet mix.
• Add the chopped up dark orange chocolate.
• Fold in with a spatula until flour is fully incorporated.
• Pour the mix into the tin, or split evenly into the 12 brownie tin. 
• Bake for about 25 mins.
• If using the brownie tin bake for about 17 mins.

Now I didn't write down the quantities I used next for the individuals, but it was something like....

• During the next 3 stages, cut out holes in the brownies with a 5cm straight edge cookie cutter, removing about 3/4 of a centimetre of brownie with a teaspoon while the cutter is still in the brownie.

• While the brownies are cooling, heat 100ml of double cream in a saucepan until bubbles form around the edge.
• Turn the heat off and add 150g of  chilli chocolate.
• Allow it to melt a bit then stir gently until mixed together.
• I then used a tablespoon measure to add the choc mix to the holes in the brownies leaving a few millimetres for the white chocolate 'moons' to sit on top.
• Allow to cool and harden for a bit.
• Melt 150g White chocolate, and add on top of the dark choc pool so that the edges are flush with the brownie.
• Allow to cool a bit.
• While the white chocolate is still a bit warm but not liquid, use a modeling tool, or the end of a teaspoon to pull up little peaks on the moons.
• Allow to cool a bit more.
• When the choc is still malleable but not sticky, use a large and small ball modelling tool and a cocktail stick to make lots of little craters in the moons.
• Cool and Eat! :) Or if you want to be a complete loon, make a planet out of a too-small ball of Oasis with blue and green food dye and a sprinkling of icing sugar for the north pole, make brownie holders out of bits of wire and tinfoil, half fill an old baking powder tub with 20p's and push into the oasis planet, travel to Oxford Town Hall, put it all together finding out that the entire structure is nowhere near stable enough so that if anyone even looks at it it will fall to pieces! Keep checking it every 10 minutes! Oh to have been able to get a 20cm oasis ball locally at the last minute instead of a 9cm :D

Choooooons!!! Sorry, Chooooooon! Just the one for now, I've spent so many hours getting sucked into youtube for each post that by the time I've finished, I can't type for my beard getting in the way! I'll add some more as I come across them :)

But, for now, for my little square delights.... Ladyhawke - Delirium! (I've given up trying to embed vids for now as the big music groups are knobs. Thank you. (UPDATE: *nerd alert* OK, so if I can add an official video from the blogger YouTube search, I can then get an embed code from it, in-post, which works! Sweeeeeeet!)

...and the one and only Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine - The Only Living Boy in New Cross. (Can't have proper vid due to knobs) Lucky enough to see Jim Bob and Fruitbat at Beautiful Days Festival last year :D First time since Earls Court '91. 20 years!!! (Updated: Right, Stickin to the Man! Click play, slide to a couple of secs from the end, let it end, THEN you can play the official 'emimusic' vid from the selection! Muwahahahaha! When that's finished you MUST then play 'Bloodsport for All' Sweeeeeet!)

Mayonnaise! In Brownies!?! 'stwisted man! Edie Brickell and the New Bohemians - Stwisted.