Like many lovers of food, as I am, I like to collect cookbooks. Especially one’s with glorious pictures. (why buy a cookbook with no pictures??) Along with the recent purchases, I pulled every cookbook off the shelf that could have a decent dessert / tart / cake in it, which means most of them. I realise I have a lot of recipes to try that I never have.
I invited two of my girlfriends over to dinner and chose two chocolate recipes to try. I needed basic recipes, as I really don’t have much experience with desserts and then I can work up from there. So I go with a Coffee Granita and a No-bake chocolate squares. They both look really simple.
I made the coffee granite first as it needed a few hours to freeze. Just water, sugar, cocoa, and coffee. Easy. Looked fine as I put it into the freezer.
Next were the chocolate squares. Again, just butter, sugar, cocoa, golden syrup and crushed digestive biscuits. Easy. I pressed this mixture into a square tin and prepared the chocolate to go on top. I tried the “microwave” method of melting chocolate that I have never attempted before, which I saw on one of my many TV cooking shows. Microwave for 30 seconds, stir, 30 seconds, stir, 30 seconds, and stir. It worked well.
There seemed to be a lot of melted butter on top of the pressed mixture in the baking tin before I pour on the chocolate, which I hesitate on whether to mop up with some absorbent kitchen paper or not. I decided not to and pour on the chocolate. Into the fridge it goes.
So the girl’s come over and we have the granite first. …….Phoa! It blows our heads off!! All three of us were tired beforehand – we certainly weren’t anymore! Wow it was so strong!
Yeah, so, ahh, I think that maybe there was a little too much coffee in this one. Perhaps it may have something to do with using normal cutlery to measure out the coffee, rather than proper measuring spoons. I do own measuring spoons, but have never used them. That’s what I enjoy about cooking savoury dishes – you just throw in what feels right and tastes right at the time. I compared the two spoons and yes, the regular tablespoon used is almost double the measuring tablespoon. Mental note, use proper measures for all recipes. I may need to try this one again…
After dinner, the chocolate squares came out of the refrigerator. Hummm. Looks like I should have soaked up the excess butter from the top of the mixture first. There seems to be light yellow bubbles around the edges next to the chocolate, which doesn’t look great, quite ugly in fact.
I also discovered that I can’t cut chocolate squares in a straight line. Some squares were the size of a finger and others the size of a cassette tape. They tasted alright. The girl’s enjoyed them enough to go back for seconds but there was no wow factor. I might just remember lessons learned, make notes in the cookbook and move on. Not sure how to improve the cutting chilled chocolate straight though, perhaps practise?
Next time, I will only make one item, not two. We all seemed to be on the biggest sugar & caffeine high afterwards and then absolutely crashed at 10pm – this may not have been the healthiest day either and I don’t think my girlfriends would want to be my tasting guinea pigs for long if they end up gaining a nasty sugar / caffeine addiction and an extra 10kg….
Learn to Bake 