lemon meringue

i am experimenting with a lemon meringue chocolate as a new flavour for a cocoa bean bar. we had a lemon chocolate in the past as part of our classic collection, made initially with just lemon zest and later with the addition of a lemon oil from urru. having tasted meringue in chocolate alchemist's eaton mess, i became inspired. only one batch has so far been combined with chocolate; the rest disapearing into the mouths of my family before i could spirit them away!

the white chocolate experiment was too sickly, even with the tartness from the zest. i still stick to my belief that white chocolate needs spices to counteract the cloying flavour. when combined with our chilli, cardamon and ginger or chococo's cardamon and saffron it gains something verging on sublime. otherwise it still tastes to me like the offerings of the milky bar kid.

this meringue recipe has delivered great results every time - crispy outside, soft inside and i hope to soon be reporting on my results with milk and dark chocolate. the only problem is i have a punnet of fresh strawberries and just seem to have whipped up some double cream. hmmm...

ingredients

115g caster sugar
115g icing sugar
4 free range egg whites




method

heat the oven to 100 C
whisk the egg whites into stiff peaks in a metal bowl.
combine the caster sugar a spoonful at a time and whisk for about 5 seconds in between additions until thick and glossy
seive the icing sugar and combine a third at a time
spoon in dollops onto parchment and cook for about 1 1/4 - 1/2 hours
the meringues should sound crisp when tapped

cinnamon sausage chocolate

i know. it sounds gross but i can't get it out of my mind! i am in the middle of reviewing our whole range: experimenting, inventing and dreaming. i am looking for something to go with a milk chocolate, maybe on the dark side of milk. i am also just back from a crazy, stormy, lovely spanish holiday where i tasted cinnamon salami amongst other delicious tapas dishes and it somehow shifted my soul. it won't work with chocolate so i should just leave it but it is nagging away there. what if i just use all the other ingredients and leave out the pork? i don't have the recipe so i need to do a lot of testing and tasting. watch this space...

bad girls' breakfast

sunday morning chocolate blowout!

very, very bad but very, very good! wicklow fine food and wildes chocolate do a good irish made chocolate spread or nutella is wonderful if you can't get hold of the others. we used white and dark chocolate chips to contrast with the flavour of the milk chocolate spread and to look pretty too! to make the chocolate pancakes we added cocoa powder to the the flour and then made up the batter as usual.

chocolate pancakes with chocolate spread and double choc chips

makes approx 8 6" pancakes

ingredients

4 large tbsp plain flour

4 tsp good cocoa powder

1 large free range egg

milk to create correct consistency (similar to pouring cream)

chocolate spread

white chocolate drops

dark chocolate drops

vegetable oil

method

1. sift together the cocoa and flour

2.add the egg and beat well (preferably with an electric whisk) until a smooth paste is formed

3. add the milk, a little at a time until the right consistency is achieved

4. wipe a non stick frying pan with a little oil on a piece of kitchen paper and heat

5. add enough batter to the hot pan to thinly coat the bottom of the pan

6. when the first side is cooked it should unstick itself when you give the pan and gentle shake

7. flip it!

8. catch it hopefully and cook on the other side for approx 1 minute.

9. place the cooked pancake on a plate and spread with chocolate spread. scatter the choc chips down the centre and fold or roll as you prefer.

10. serve.

it helps to get someone to decorate the pancake while you cook the next. if the chocolate filling is all to much the chocolate pancakes are also delicious with freshly squeezed orange juice and a little sugar.

hearty autumn stew time - with a chocolatey twist

the cooler weather is the perfect excuse to start cooking up big batches of rich, warming stews and one of our favourites is alistair hendy's hungarian goulash from his indispensible book 'home cook'. the author himself doubts its hungarian authenticity, and i would think a goulash was more soupy than this intense stew, but noone can doubt the delicious comfort of this recipe. an easy and reliable one pot recipe to which i have got into the habit of adding about 25g of intense dark chocolate to at the end of cooking to rev the richness up a notch.

fantastic served with any of the following-

crusty bread and a simply dressed green salad

mashed potato

new potatoes

jacket potato

hungarian goulash (with the cocoa bean style)

serves 6

ingredients

1 kg stewing steak, cubed

3 tbsp seasoned plain flour

60g lard or 3 tbsp olive oil

2 red peppers, deseeded and cut into chunks*

2 onions, finely sliced

2 fat cloves of garlic, finely chopped

2 big tbsp paprika

2 x 400g tins chopped tomatoes

a small string tied bunch of fresh bay, thyme and parsley

750ml beef stock

25g dark chocolate*

1 x 250ml pot soured cream

handful of flat leaf parsley

method

1. toss the meat in the saesoned flour, brown all over in hot fat in a casserole until quite dark then lift out. Cook the meat in batches so as not to sweat the meat. Reserve the remaining flour.

2. next lightly blister the peppers by frying them in the remaining fat, remove and keep to one side. * I roast my peppers in the oven during the casseroles first half of cooking in the oven. I find there is never enough fat left at this stage and the lovely meaty/floury residues begin to catch at the temperature you need to cook the peppers at.

3. add the onion and garlic to the remaining fat in the pan, add a little more fat if required, and gently fry until well softened and touched with brown, then sprinkle over with paprika.

4. add the saved flour to the pan and stir through, cook for a few minutes more, stirring regularly to stop the floured onion catching.

5. add the tomatoes, stir through and bubble up. Add the meat and any collected juices along with the herbs and and enough stock to ensure the meat is completely covered. Bring to a bubble again.

6. put in a 150c oven and gently braise for 2 hours, stirring in the peppers and chocolate half way through the meat's cooking time.

7. serve with a dollop of soured cream and strewn with parsley.

also lovely if cooked the day before and reheated for 45 mins at 180c. garnish with the soured cream and parsley just before serving.

* cocoa bean twists

chocolate chilli cake

it has rained everyday since my birthday. my birthday happens to fall on st swithin's day. if it rains on st swithin's day it is supposed to rain for 40 days and 40 nights. it is having a damn good shot at it by the looks of things.

we are keeping our fingers crossed for a nice afternoon tomorrow. tomorrow we are joining in the neighbourhood street party and are contributing this cake to the cake stall, our spare chilli plants to the plant stall and spicy chicken kebabs to the barbeque...mmmm...anybody would think we have a thing for chilli in our house!

chris came across this recipe in his mum's enviably organised folder of cut out recipes and decided it was worth a go. i'm not sure what magazine it is from but james tanner is responsible. we've adapted a bit by thickening up the ginger chocolate sauce he suggested and making it into a ganache style icing for the top. the recipe below includes our adaptations.

ingredients

100g soft butter

100g caster sugar

100g self raising flour

3 eggs

2 red chillies, deseeded and very finely chopped

50g dark chocolate drops or grated cocoa bean chilli and pink peppercorn chocolate bar

for the icing

100g dark chocolate

75ml double cream

25g butter

1 piece of stem ginger, finely chopped ( you could use a couple of peices of cocoa bean chocolate coated crystallised ginger)

method

1. preheat the oven to 180c and lightly grease a 20cm cake tin.

2. cream the butter and suagr until light and fluffy. add the flour, eggs and chillies and whisk to make a thick smooth batter.

3. pour into the prepared tin, sprinkle with the cake chocolate and bake for 15 mins until risen.

4. to make the icing heat the cream gently in a small saucepan, when it is just beginning to bubble gently at the edge remove from the heat and whisk in the chocolate, ginger and butter until the chocolate melts.

5. when the cake is cool spread the icing over the top.

6. we then went wild with tubes of coloured icing.

update

the street party was a great success!

the rain held off at the right time - terrifyingly windy though!

the cake was very delicious and even went down well enough with the 80 year old cake judge (the lady who has lived in the street the longest!). we didn't win this week but the chilli cake was certainly a talking point and that was the point of the day - to get everyone talking to each other. the chilli lends a sweetness and gentle heat but nothing too spicy and combines delightfully with the gingery flavour of the icing. definitely one to make again.

i did face painting!!!!

happy birthday emily

we had a lovely birthday tea with emily, lola and chris - bump just starting to make an appearance!

i remember one birthday of emily's (25th??) when we were both desperately tempering chocolate at limerick food kitchens late into the hot, pre-air conditioned, july night. We were making truffles ready to set off at dawn the next day to a busy farmers market in dingle.

i often forget the sheer exhaustion of those crazy, early days of starting your own business. i have distilled the dingle days into a few perfect moments: racing down to the sea for a bracing swim before setting off home; having hot port with paulina in a cosy bar after enduring hours of rain; chatting as we all set up stalls in the early morning sun; eating smoked fish and still warm bread for breakfast and swapping star anise truffles for local goats cheese. 4am starts? i'm almost tempted...

back to emily's far more relaxed birthday 2009 and the all important cake! i wanted to try the celebrity masterchef penultimate episode chocolate cake: the one wendy made for the french chefs but i failed to find the recipe on the internet. i then realised i had no self raising flour and it was way too late to go out for some (with aidan out, it would mean waking up all three girls and loading them into the car)

thankfully, i remembered a green and black's recipe that uses plain flour and lots of eggs. perfect. i adapted it slightly, replacing double cream with greek yoghurt and fresh raspberries with frozen raspberries - purely through necessity as i was lacking the original ingredients. it worked fine and i managed to get double cream and fresh raspberries in the morning, for the icing and as decoration.

chocolate raspberry torte recipe

25g plain flour

5 teaspoons cocoa powder

75g dark chocolate

25g unsalted butter

5 teaspoons greek yoghurt or double cream

4 egg whites

3 egg yolks

3 tablespoons caster sugar

250g fresh or frozen raspberries

125ml whipping or double cream to serve

icing

100g dark chocolate

50g unsalted butter

3 tablespoons double cream

1 teaspoon icing sugar

method

butter and line with greaseproof an 18-20cm, 6cm deep cake tin. pre-heat oven to 140c/275f/gas mark 1

sift the flour and cocoa. set aside.

melt the chocolate slowly in a bowl above warm water. removefrom heat, add butter and yoghurt/cream and stir well.

whisk egg whites until stiff peaks, add sugar and whisk again until thick and glossy. in another bowl, beat egg yolks and gently fold the cocoa and flour into the yolks. add the melted chocolate and stir well. spon a few dollops of egg white into this mixture and stir. gently fold in the remainder of the egg whites.

pour half the mixture into the cake tin, sprinkle over the raspberries and then cover with other half of mixture.

bake for 35-40 mins until a skewer comes out clean. cool in the tin for 5 minutes and then take out onto a wire rack.

for the icing, melt the chocolate as before. remove from heat and stir in the butter, cream and icing sugar. pour it all over the cake, top with fresh raspberries and leave for an hour to harden. (don't put it in the fridge at this stage or the icing wil lose it's shine!)

serve with whipped cream.

enjoy the rest of your birthday emily!

better than bucket chemistry or leaving nigella

muffins are my new favourite discovery! i have eaten them for many years but only rarely made them and never before realised that they free you from the baking tyranny of sieves and scales.


i love them! they take me back to the heady days of bucket chemistry before the rigorous precision of a-level or restrictive safety policies: we had great fun throwing a load of chemicals together and seeing what would happen (sometimes with disastrous, though thankfully never fatal, results.) muffin making feels that liberating-this is what happened...

i nearly followed nigellas recipe for banana butterscotch muffins in nigella express except i only had one egg and no butterscotch. i substituted raspberries instead of the butterscotch and halved the recipe. they were lovely but esme doesn't like bananas and this was not disguise enough so my adventure continues after the recipe:

1 and a half ripe bananas

125ml vegetable oil

an egg

125g flour

50g caster sugar

1/4 teaspoon bicarbonate

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

few handfuls of raspberries

preheat the oven to 200 C/ gas mark 6 and set out 6 muffin papers in a muffin tin

mash the bananas

pour the oil into a jug and beat in the egg

put flour, sugar, bicarbonate of soda and baking powder into a bowl and then mix in the oil/egg and the bananas

add the raspberries

spoon into cases and cook for 20 minutes

they worked beautifully and were made mostly by esme and elsie who were thrilled by the lack of instructions limited only to the mantra that 'lumpy is good'

so, to muffins with no bananas. my thinking was that the banana might need to be replaced with something to help keep the muffins moist. i used the recipe above with no bananas and a good dollop of greek yogurt and threw in some white and dark chocolate callets. they worked! succulent, tasty and risen to perfection. i had taken my first small muffin step away from nigella and into my own kitchen of creativity...

last night i invented the lemon zest and honey muffins. i discarded the recipe and roughly estimated the same ingredients as my original banana and raspberry muffin minus the bananas and raspberries. i added a dollop of creme fraiche (because it's what was in the fridge), a large spoon of honey, zest of one un-waxed lemon and the juice of half a lemon squeezed. I then sprinkled lemon zest and brown sugar on the top.

i held my breath as the lumpy mixture entered the oven...and about 20 minutes later -perfection! is this now my own recipe? have i let go of nigella's comfortingly warm and reassuring hand and started on a journey of my own?

daddy's day chocolate brownies

chris is away on a stag weekend (camping in the countryside - meant to be fairly civilised...) and is only due back tomorrow evening, so all our father's day celebrations will need to be crammed into the short space of time between his return and lola's bedtime.

so me and lola are preparing by making chocolate brownies

i have taken the recipe from a beautiful little book i have called edible gifts by kay fairfax, which i am alarmed to see costs £34.95 on amazon - mine cost £8.99!!! it is full of inspirational homemade gift ideas for foodies and beautiful photography to complement it.

desribed in the introduction as 'a chocoholic's dream come true' and knowing what a sucker chris is for a proper rich, gooey brownie, how could i resist?! i didn't have the size tin specified so went for the closest i had, a bit shorter and deeper, and added 5 mins to the recommended cooking time.

ingredients

brownies

170g butter

3 free range eggs

325g golden caster sugar

75g cocoa powder, sifted

1/2 tsp vanilla extract

75g plain flour, sifted

250g dark chocolate drops, or finely chopped if using a bar

150g nuts, such as walnuts, almonds, pecans, coarsely chopped (optional)

( i only had 50g of walnuts so they has to suffice)

chocolate cream

100ml double cream

125g dark chocolate drops, or finely chopped if using a bar

cake tin, 28 x 18 x 1 cm, lined with baking parchment extending 5cm beyond the long ends.

method

1. melt the butter gently in a small saucepan

2. put the eggs in a bowl, whisk lightly, then whisk in the sugar. stir in the melted butter, cocoa and vanilla. using a wooden spoon or spatula, stir in the flour, stir through the chocolate and the nuts if you are using them.

3. pour into the prepared cake tin and bake in a preheated oven (160c) for 25-30 mins until just firm in the centre and still moist at the bottom.

do not overcook the brownies, they are not meant to have the consistency of a cake and should be moist and gooey in the middle. they will dry out as they cool.

4. remove from the oven and let stand, still in the tin, on a wire rack, until completely cool.

5. using the overhanging paper, carefully lift the brownies out of the tin onto a flat board and peel off the paper. dust with cocoa powder or cover with chocolate cream. cut into squares.

chocolate cream

1. put the cream in a saucepan and heat until; just simmering. add the chocolate and stir til smooth and glossy*. cool in the fridge for about an hour til firm enough to spread over the brownies.

* we managed to overheat the cream a bit and as a result the sauce went a bit grainy - we added about 25g of butter and 25ml cold double cream and gave it a good beat and it came back to a lovely shiny gloss.

we are trying to resist eating them until tomorrow - so i'll let you know the verdict then - but they certainly look good - and with that amount of butter, sugar and dark chocolate i don't see how they can fail to taste pretty spectacular!

we didn't manage to resist - we had to check it after all...

the flavour is glorious, and the texture, certainly at the edges, is perfect. the middle is currently a bit too gooey ( maybe another 5 minutes more would have helped in my deeper tin) but it is a lovely, fondanty experience, the flour is cooked - it just requires a spoon to eat it. i think it will probably have dried out enough by tomorrow to serve in the traditional brownie style!

five little chocolate girls

baby iris joins her sisters, esme and elsie, her cousin lola and colm's daughter, ella as the fifth cocoa bean/skelligs daughter. does this suggest a link between girls and chocolate? i certainly think so!

hehir frolics in the glen

we have just had a great time in the glen. esme, elsie and i flew into kerry airport for a week of getting stuck into real work at the factory! a lot of what i do at home in kent involves computers, emails and thinking and it is no substitute for actually being there in the factory surrounded by chocolate and the heady aroma of spices .

as soon as i stepped out of the car in cahirsiveen and smelt the turf, i felt like i had come home. i always feel like this, despite being born in the northern steel town of scunthorpe. if i could persuade emily, colm and the chocolate buying public to accept a smoked turf chocolate, i would go into mass production tomorrow!

emily had cooked a wonderful sunday roast with vegetables fresh from a friends garden. my girls were so excited to see lola that we didn't get them to sleep until nearly midnight.

the next day we dropped all three girls into the creche in the glen where they met up with colm's daughter, ella and immediately settled into a few days of irish dancing, t-shirt printing and eating martina's wonderful home cooked food looking over the stunning views of the bay.
the weather was changeable. at times it was wild and as i walked between office and factory, i was continually struck by the magnificence of our surroundings: wild ocean and misty mountains.

i miss the factory with its bustle of creativity, the bright packaging and the adrenalin rush when big orders come in or go out. it feels like a seam of rich chocolate is threaded through everything. we did a lot of chatting, planning for christmas, designing brochures and sampling some new ideas dreamed up by colm and orla. and then i did some more sampling. and some more...

on our last evening we drove over the hills to valentia in hot sunshine to have tea at the lighthouse cafe. as we came back on the ferry, we watched children diving into the clear waters of valentia harbour and it was almost possible to believe that irish summers are always this warm and calm. it reminded me of our honeymoon in liscannor five years ago - a blissful week of swimming, drinking ice cold bulmers and eating great local food.

i can't wait to bring hehir girl number 3 to the glen in the new year to introduce her to chocolate, and the strangely heady smell of turf!