Tag Archives: chocolate

Cook Book Challenge: Week 9

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Some time ago, my father picked up Family Circle's "Crazy for Chocolate" book for himself. Now, this is a rarity, as most dessert books he buys on his op-shopping expeditions are for me. I didn't see it for the longest time until one weekend he handed it to me to have a look through. He told me it wasn't great, that there was "nothing really decadent in there". It was in this moment my father was classified as certifiably insane. Not is it the greatest chocolate cookbook I have ever seen, it is right up there with my favourite desserts of all time. I want to bake this book from cover to cover, and I probably eventually will. He told me I could have the book, but I think he already knew I was not leaving his house without it.

Last night, I turned to it in an attempt to rid myself of some of the 7 punnets of strawberries my dad bequeathed unto me. I came across the following recipe and decided that it would be a suitable dessert for a lazy Sunday in: Chocolate Shortbread Stacks…

Cook Book Challenge: Week 7

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For this week's challenge I baked from Murdoch Book's "Bake It".

This one was a gift from my boyfriend's brother and sister in law a while ago. It's your typical baking book with a difference: most of the recipes have some sort of twist from the old classics. This usually involves use of spices or various substitutes for flour, like polenta or semolina. They're definitely not your typical ingredients-you'll-find-in-your-cupboard type recipes, but they are nice to try something new! There are some ginger cupcakes I've been wanting to do for ages, which I was planning to do this week. But I haven't found time to grocery shop, so had no cream. So I've gone for the choc fudge cookie sandwiches instead.

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Father’s Day Mud Cake

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This would have to be one of the most last minute celebratory cakes ever. I mean, I literally woke up on Father's Day, went "Oh, I should make dad a cake", realised I had 3 hours before he was coming over, and I was cooking him a beef osso bucco that was going to demand my oven for an hour and a half.

Quick, think, think, what do you have in the house? Chocolate. Strawberries. Dad loves mudcake and strawberries. WIN.

So I went digging through my usual chocolate cake books to try to find a moist chocolate cake recipe. I have tried so many chocolate cakes, but always fail to find the one. You know, that one chocolate cake that is so rich and moist that you can feel coronary failure approaching just thinking about it?

I got what you usually get when you totally rush a cake; something that was not very aesthetically pleasing. But who cares when you get a cake that tastes so good?

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Cook Book Challenge: Week 4

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A belated post, and a rushed one (I’m not keeping up with this challenge very well).

This week I turned to one of my most disliked cookbooks. This is one part of a 4 pack of Pilsbury’s “Cookies, Brownies and Chocolate Galore”, this one being the “Cookies, Brownies and Bars” book. Another op-shop find from my dad, and was chosen for this week by my boyfriend.

Don’t get me wrong, there are some great looking things in here. But all recipes advocate using their brand, most of the recipes advocate using something that isn’t easily substituted.

I live in Australia. I can’t get most of it here.

Oh well.

But a cookie pizza? Cinch to sub.

Grab a slice…

Cook Book Challenge: Week 3

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For this week of the challenge, I am turning to one of my favourite mini books. My boyfriend’s mum got me New Idea’s “Ultimate Chocolate Cookbook”, a tiny book that has 25 delicious recipes inside. One of my favourite aspects of the book is the troubleshooting chapter in the back, which shows you how to recover failed recipes by morphing them into something new. I haven’t had to resort to this myself yet, but I think recipes books need more of these.

As for the recipes, they range from the fun to the decadent. I think I have cooked almost all of them, so finding an untouched one was a challenge in itself. I happened to cook two recipes out of it today. One being white choc chip banana pikelets. The other being this molten chocolate torte:

Tuck in!

Asparagus Cake

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I must admit, I had a bit of bakers-block for this month’s "green" theme challenge on bakebakebake. The only thing that came to mind was mint, and, well, that had been done. As had almost every other thing I thought of. When they did a pandan chiffon cake on MasterChef, I drew inspiration from there… until none of the pictures accompanying the recipes I found had the lovely green colour I wanted.

It was after a bout of Googling images using a green filter that I sprung upon the idea of an asparagus cake.

Sounds gross, no?

Well, it’s not flavoured asparagus.

Though I'm sure you've already guessed the flavour of the cake…