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| The Crazy Cook! |
Every now and then I get the urge to cook and the time to indulge in it. Even better, I had an excuse to try a new recipe and friends to try it out on, with a bonfire to attend in the evening. So I decided to go over board and cook a selection of sugary goodness, including craisin cookies, brownies, stuffed figs and homemade snickers.
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| Mmmmm Cookies |
The craisin cookies were a signature recipe from a friend who wouldn't be able to make the bonfire and I had made them previously. They're a delicious mixture of rich chocolate and tart cranberries, heavily spiced with cinnamon. Usually they turn out somewhat chunky, however for some reason these ended up flatter. Thankfully they still tasted awesome! For those of you interested in the recipe, you can find it here:
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| Artistic Cookies |
http://www.leiagraf.com/
(go to other and recipes: Choc Fudge Craisin Cookies)
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| Before . . . |
The stuffed figs were a recipe I had concocted during a chocolate making episode with a friend over Easter and I had wanted a chance to refine it. It starts by soaking dried figs in massala over night then simmering the figs and massala until the figs are covered in caramelised liquid. This also makes the figs soft which is convenient as the next step involves stuffing them with a hazelnut ganache.
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| . . . after - sweet, plump figs! |
Originally this was made by mixing ganache with hazelnut meal, but this time I also added frangelico to intensify the hazelnut flavour. To get the ganache mixture into the figs, I used a chopstick to poke a small hole in the base of the fig and a pipping bag to insert the mix. I then dipped the figs in dark chocolate to seal the hole. My favourite part of this whole process is filling the figs, creating the illusion of fresh, plump figs.
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| Brownies! |
The brownies were loosely based on a recipe from my sister, choc walnut brownies. Unfortunately I was running out of chocolate by this time so I had to forgo the choc pieces that I usually throw in. However I had some left over ganache and a couple of figs that had exploded so the brownies became walnut and fig choc brownies. I think the ganache added a bit more liquid than I had counted on so they didn't quite cook as quickly as I expected. Still there's nothing wrong with undercooked brownie!
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| Oozing Brownie - can it get any better? |
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| A little gooey . . . |
The snickers bar recipe was something that had popped up in face book and had caught my eye, so this was as good a time as any to try it. It seemed to be fairly simple though some of the ingredients were a bit odd (marshmallow fluff) so there was a bit of improvisation. I'm also more of a dark chocolate girl, so when the chocolate layers looked a little on the pale side, I may have slipped the odd half a block of dark chocolate into the mix.
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| Progressing to Very Gooey! |
It was a staged process, but each stage was fairly quick, except the caramel, but that was because I totally ignored the recipe for this and made my own caramel from scratch. I may need more practice at this (it was my first time) as I managed to make it a little on the dark side and a lot on the gooey side. Still, this made it all the more interesting to watch friends try and extract a piece and eat it! Unfortunately I don't have any photos of that!
For those of you who want to play along at home, the recipe that I started with is here:
http://www.howsweeteats.com/2012/01/homemade-snickers-bars/
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| Guess what this is . . . |
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| I promise it's food! |
All in all it was an enjoyable way to spend the afternoon, and made even more enjoyable in the evening in the company of good friends and an oversized bonfire. Many thanks to CLP for the majority of the photos and the willingness to perform kitchen hand duties for wages made from sugar!
