Day three of five... Adventures in Chocolate!

Dear Readers, 

How are you bearing up during The Marathon of Whimsy? Silver Whimsy herself is becoming slightly fatigued by all this baking, but is nonetheless ENJOYING the CHALLENGE! (Never a good sign when one talks of oneself in the third person is it?)

So today, the Whimsy Kitchens bring you what has been described by our Number One Baking Guru Dan Lepard as "simply the best chocolate muffin you'll ever eat". And, by George, I tell thee this needs be true because this is quite probably the most complex chocolate muffin you will ever make as well. I started baking at 11 am and I have only just finished, so from mise-en-place prep through to baking to icing to Whimsy photoshoot, these chocolate muffins have taken THREE HOURS to make. That is a long time in my book! 

First things first, here are the ingredients: 

50g cornflour

3 tablespoons cocoa

100g dark soft brown sugar

225 ml cold water 

75g unsalted butter (cubed) 

125g dark choc broken up into small pieces

75ml sunflower oil

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

2 large free range eggs

125g caster sugar

125g plain flour

2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder

So, these are entitled 'Chocolate custard muffins' and come from Dan Lepard's 'Short and Sweet' book. The name instantly put me off as did the complexity of the recipe. It has;t really been noted here but I have NO luck when it comes to baking with chocolate. It always seems to go wrong. SIBF suggests it's just that my palate doesn't really work around chocolate in baking and I think that's true, but I also think I just suck at baking with chocolate. I was hoping Dan's recipe would break that trend! 

The first step was super-exciting because it felt like SCIENCE! Place the cornflour, cocoa, brown sugar and water into a saucepan. Whisk under a medium heat constantly and watch the magic happen!!! As it reaches boiling point (don't be put off - it will take a few minutes), your mixture will begin to turn incredibly thick, smooth and shiny as pictured above. It is v exciting! When this happens, remove from the heat and...

...beat in the butter and chocolate until melted and absorbed (doesn't take very long at all). 

Then, beat in the oil, vanilla and one of the eggs until it's combined before...

...beating in the caster sugar and remaining egg until the mixture is smooth, glossy and thick. It will probably look a bit like this: 

Sift the flour and baking powder together into the pan and marvel as your hand too turns preternaturally enormous as mine in the picture below. (Sorry, I just had to include this image as I CANNOT BELIEVE how long my fingers look. I am also EXTREMELY AMUSED by the shape of my little finger.)

 Scoop out into your muffin tray. TOP TIP: I wasn't sure how deep I could fill them and ended up with some mixture left over but having made them I can now confirm that you can fill your cases to the top as they don't rise *that* much and mine could have definitely taken more mix.

 Bake in the oven at 160 fan assisted for twenty five minutes. They do give you a sense of pride when they come out of the oven because they promise so much! Especially for a baker renowned (by her SIBF) for chocolate baking disasters.

 I'm not even going to BEGIN explaining how I made the extremely extra-chocolatey-get-me-some-more-chocolate-oh-no-that-is-way-too-much-chocolate-help-I-have-now-o'd'd-on-green-and-blacks chocolate icing, but if you would like the recipe, feel free to email me or leave a message on the blog.

 I suggest serving in the garden with a cocktail umbrella. And possibly a cocktail.

 Anyone want a chocolate muffin? Seriously I have SO MUCH CAKE IN THE HOUSE HELP! COME AND EAT SOME!!
Until the next time, which I calculate to be tomorrow,
Silver Whimsy x

Parallel Lines

Dear Readers,

I am amazed / awed / thrilled to discover that I do not blog and yet still you read! Many thanks for that. I am going to try and set myself a five day project, today being day one. It will be a somewhat costly project but one I will attempt to adhere to nonetheless. I intend to bake once a day for the next five days. That means Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday. (Those of you who grew up in the 80s might note the similarity that sentence holds to Sinitta's 'Toy Boy' - except that whilst aforementioned pop starlet was going out on dates every night, I will be getting flustered in the kitchen  with the baking powder and wooden spoons.) Anyway, that is my intention but, as I so frequently tell my students, 'the best laid schemes of mice and men gang aft agley' so we'll see how it all turns out...

But enough of this chattering! Today I have been experimenting with Dan Lepard's 'Short and Sweet' recipe book. I am not much of a banana eater unless the fruit features in a cake, but when faced with some over-ripe bananas today I didn't want to resort to the usual fail-safe banana and chocolate cake and so looked to Dan Lepard for the answer. And, Dear Reader, indeed he held that answer!

Dan Lepard's recipe says that "if Carmen Miranda ever wondered what to do when her bananas ripened, she should have got some of her personal stash of baking powder out ( I hear she'd hide it in the heel of her shoes) and made these." Well, I'm not beginning to compare myself to Carmen Miranda (although I have been known to wonder around with a fruit hat) but I was wondering what to do with my over-ripened bananas and I do have a very lovely pot of baking powder so I thought I was all set to make these little wonders.

The recipe is slightly more complicated than I initially thought because to begin with you have to make BRAZIL NUT TOFFEE! Yes! Actual home-made toffee with brazil nuts. In all my baking adventures I have never experimented with HOT SUGAR until today and it was mighty exciting.

Put 75 g caster sugar in a pan with two tablespoons of cold water and heat it to the boil!

(I took photos of the process so that if, like me, you too are a novice at sugar-boiling hopefully you won't get too scared.)

Dan Lepard says to wait til it turns a 'reddish-golden caramel' and then take it off the boil. I sort of had to guess what the colour was but I guessed that it meant this colour:

and the smell coming from the pan seemed to confirm my belief. Have 75g of roughly chopped brazil nuts ready and stir them into the toffee immediately.

TIP: Work very quickly!! The toffee sets faster than you can imagine and I soon realised I needed to up my speed if I was going to get the toffee out of the pan and onto the pre-prepared baking tray with a sheet of baking parchment. Spread the mixture out and wait for it to go cold. When it's cold, cut it up into small bits and try to resist the temptation to eat it all like sweets and try to save it for your actual tray-bake.

I have to say the BRAZIL NUT TOFFEE was a BIG hit with my SIBF who enjoyed it very much.Thinking about it, if you were super-organised you could have this made in advance and stored in your cupboard for a rainy day.

Next, make the blondies! This is the easy bit. Heat the oven to 190/170 fan and line your brownie tray with foil. Melt 100g unsalted butter with 200g white chocolate over a low heat.

Add it to a bowl and beat in 225g sugar, two teaspoons vanilla extract, 2 ripe bananas peeled and chopped, and one free range egg.

Then sift 225g plain flour with a quarter teaspoon of baking powder into the bowl and fold it in along with the (remaining) BRAZIL NUT TOFFEE.

Scrape the mixture into your brownie tin and bake in the pre-heated oven for 35minutes.

I baked it on the middle shelf and thirty-five minutes was spot on for my fan assisted oven.

Unfortunately, you have to hold off eating them straightaway as Dan Lepard said they needed to be stone cold before cutting...but I would be lying if I told you I managed to wait until they were stone cold...they were just too tempting.

The brazil nut toffee provides a wonderful contrast to the squidy smooth white chocolate cake and the whole blondie is infused with the taste and scent of bananas. In a better way than that sounds. To sum up in the words of the SIBF: "I have to step away from the blondie!"

Best served next to the record player with a healthy dose of 'Parallel Lines'. (Beats Sinitta any day of the week.)

Love and other demons,
Silver Whimsy x

PS You can find Dan Lepard's original recipe here: Banana Blondies