Tropical Chocolate Cookies

With the spectacular failure of the cake which was meant to be my entry to this month's We Should Cocoa challenge, a busy weekend ahead, and a holiday at the end of the month, I've had to amalgamate two baking challenges in order to get them done.

These Tropical Chocolate Cookies, flavoured with cocoa, vanilla, dried mango, flaked coconut and glacé ginger, are going into both the We Should Cocoa challenge (to pair chocolate and mango) and the Tea Time Treats challenge, which is to bake biscuits and cookies for tea this month.

These aren't dainty biscuits for a posh tea party, but hunky, chunky, chewy-centred cookies, for when you're sitting with a mug of tea and feeling guilty about watching day-time TV, or for handing out to the builders working in the yard as they take their umpteenth tea-break.  But they are still a treat for whatever sort of tea-time you have!

As FB was visiting again, and would be taking some home, I used my oil-based recipe from Cookie Madness. I substituted 25g of the flour with cocoa and added 30g flaked coconut, 80g chopped dried mango and 15g glace ginger, (which was in very small pieces) instead of the nuts and chocolate chips in the recipe. The total weight of additions to the basic dough was the same in both cases.

Despite the strong flavours of each individual ingredient, these cookies were quite subtly flavoured - everything seemed to blend together to give an overall flavour which was quite delicate, with nothing being dominant. The mango and coconut flakes made the texture quite chewy too. All in all, these were very good - although they could probably have been improved by adding a handful of chocolate chunks!

We Should Cocoa is a baking challenge started by Chele from Chocolate Teapot, and Choclette from Chocolate Log Blog. Each month a different ingredient is chosen to be paired with some form of chocolate in our cooking.  This month the choice of mango was made by guest host Shaheen of Allotment to Kitchen, who will be posting a round-up at the end of the month.

Tea Time Treats is a monthly challenge co-hosted by Karen at Lavender and Lovage, and Kate at What Kate Baked. Karen chose this month's theme of cookies and biscuits. The name of the challenge is self explanatory, but more details can be found here.

What might have been

This was on course to being a spectacular cake, and a worthy entrant for this month's We Should Cocoa challenge, which is to pair chocolate and mango in the same dish. That was, until it stuck in the bundt tin. The relics of the cake were very crumbly too, so I think my adaptations may have destabilised the recipe.

I was a little concerned about the low number of eggs in this recipe I found for Whole Orange Bundt Cake with Chocolate Ganache, as cake batter recipe of this size would normally have a minimum of 6 eggs, rather than the three used here, but assumed the puréed oranges would make up for this. As it turned out, I had to add milk to the batter to give a dropping consistency and allow all the flour to be incorporated.  My mini-chopper didn't purée the oranges to a smooth liquid, either - it was a coarse paste with little pieces of peel still visible, which I thought would add to the visual appeal of the cake. These factors combined with the addition of 100g of dried fruit may have meant the cake batter was still too dry if the fruit absorbed some of the moisture during cooking. This could explain the cake being very crumbly, and being in a bundt tin only made that problem seem more obvious, as it was easier for the cake to pull apart than be released properly from the tin.

The only reason I'm bothering to write up the cake is that it had a wonderful flavour. I added 60g dried chopped mango, 50g dried chopped mandarins and 100g chopped 74% chocolate to the basic recipe. The puréed raw orange gave the cake a fresh taste and the little pieces of dried fruit added texture and intense fruit flavours which married well with the chocolate.

Obviously I didn't waste chocolate ganache on the ruins of the cake, but had it been more successful, I think I would have added some sort of chocolate frosting to increase the chocolate hit.

This is a fantastic combination of flavours which I will carry on working with, together with the concept of using puréed raw orange in the cake for a fresh, strong flavour. Watch this blog!

Oatmeal Brownie Bars

I'm very fond of oat bars, both filled bars and flapjacks, so imagine my delight on finding a recipe which put brownie batter between the oat layers! I can't remember now what I was looking for when I found this recipe at Land O' Lakes, but it was immediately bookmarked to be made as soon as possible.

The chance came when I needed something to share with CT, who was having a meal with us. We haven't seen him as much as expected since he moved into his new home, which is a Good Thing, as it means he's managing better than I expected, but I miss baking for him, and I'm sure he misses home cooked treats too. I thought these Oatmeal Brownie Bars would be ideal as they would be fairly sturdy when wrapped for him to take home.

I followed the recipe exactly, except that I baked it in a slightly smaller tin (a 12" x 8" tray) and I added about 100g of small fudge chunks to the topping. This added a nice butterscotch flavour, but wasn't really necessary as the bars were rich and sweet enough - I only added the fudge bits to clear the store cupboard of at least one half-used package. It was hard to judge when the second baking was enough. I left them for the whole 18 minutes, as I was using a smaller pan, but 15 minutes would have been better, as the edges of the brownie had cooked a little too much and had lost some of the moist fudginess of the centre. You can see what I mean in the photograph above

The bars where the brownie was still gooey were fantastic - both for flavour and the fudgy texture - although the pieces where the brownie had overcooked were still delicious. The combination of the oaty layers and the brownie was good too - a base layer of solid oaty biscuit made the whole bar more substantial than a brownie on it's own, while not detracting from the depth of the chocolate flavour. This is definitely going to be a recipe I use again!

Kentish Pudding Pie - for AlphaBakes

There are times when taking part in blog challenges stretches my family's tolerance a bit too far and I think that might have been the case here. K was never going to be an easy letter to use for this month's AlphaBakes Challenge, as there are very few ingredients beginning with that letter. Going for geographic Ks was just as difficult - I had to reject Kentucky Derby Pie, even though it sounded delicious to me, as being just too nutty for FB to want to eat.

 

Closer to home, Kent showed more promise, and I eventually settled on this traditional English pie, also known as Kentish Lent Pie, which is basically an enriched ground rice pudding baked in a pastry case. This sort of pudding dates back to the time when fat and flour was a major source of energy for many people, and eggs and milk were readily available for country dwellers.  Some sources suggest it was eaten during Lent, when meat was forbidden, as it would be quite nutritious, but to me it seems to be in the same class as pancakes, which were eaten just before Lent to use up excess eggs and milk, which wouldn't be eaten during the abstemious period leading up to Easter.  

This dessert is described in some places as similar in taste to a baked cheesecake, but to me, with the added nutmeg, it was more like a baked egg custard tart, with a less delicate texture. The flavour was very bland, and I'm glad I included the lemon zest and extract, as suggested in the recipe I eventually followed for the filling. Without it, I don't think anyone would have wanted to eat more the next day.

I made my own pastry recipe, using SR flour for a little extra lightness, and followed the Baking Mad recipe for the filling, using sultanas instead of currants. The pie tin I used was a little larger than the 20cm (8") suggested in the recipe, and I think an extra half quantity of filling would have made a better balanced pie.

This was a pleasant enough dessert, improved by a helping of roast rhubarb, but it's not going to make it's way onto the list of things to repeat any time soon. (I haven't even dared tell my husband that there's ground rice in it - rice pudding is anathema to him!)

AlphaBakes is a monthly baking challenge hosted alternately by Caroline of Caroline Makes, and Ros of The More Than Occasional Baker. It's name speaks for itself, but more information, and the rules, can be found here. Caroline is hosting this month, when the random letter to use is K, and she will post a round up of entries at the end of the month.

Rhubarb and Ginger Cake

Not a pretty cake, especially when the batter overflows the cake tin, but a very tasty one. The combination of warming ginger with fresh fruit helps bridge the gap between the rich flavours of winter and the lighter summer flavours. The availability of early season rhubarb from my garden is one of my culinary joys of spring, too!

Even though I used the same sized tin as stipulated in the recipe, it was almost full of cake batter. I reasoned that ginger cakes don't always rise a great deal, and Good Food recipes are usually reliable, so everything would be OK! The cake didn't rise a lot, but it rose quickly, while still liquid, so a little spilled over the sides, before setting to give a curious looking overhang! That's the problem with loaf tins - stipulating the length and breadth doesn't help if your tin is much shallower than the one used in the recipe. It would be much more reliable to go by a volume measurement!

Ginger and rhubarb is one of the classic flavour pairings and works quite well this way, although the flavour of the ginger together with treacle is very strong and almost overwhelms the rhubarb.

This was a very useful cake - it kept well and was equally good eaten as a cake or warmed as a dessert and served with more cooked rhubarb and vanilla pouring yogurt.

Honey Cheesecake, with a hint of Chocolate

If more than two years of the We Should Cocoa challenge has taught me anything, it is that I am no longer of the opinion that anything can be improved by the addition of chocolate. The idea for We Should Cocoa is that we should make something containing chocolate and an additional specified ingredient - a spice, fruit, nut or other flavour component. Over time, I've realised that I'm more of a purist than I thought, and although I've found new flavour combinations that I unexpectedly enjoy, I've also found a lot of combinations that just don't work for me.

 This month's challenge to use honey is a case in point. I tried to think of recipes where the flavour of the honey would be prominent, as that is surely the aim of the challenge - there's no point using an ingredient if you can't taste it in the finished article. There was the added problem that baking with large amounts of honey can be problematic too, as I found with a batch of biscuits that ended up like a lace curtain across the baking tray. The pieces tasted great, when I eventually got them to harden and set, but it was impossible to half-coat them in chocolate, which had been my intention.

Eventually, using leftovers from Easter, I decided to make a cheesecake, using chocolate coated oat biscuits for the base, and adding a chocolate sour cream layer on top. Unfortunately, although each component worked well on it's own (apart from a slightly soggy base!), the honey cheesecake mixture just didn't taste right with the two chocolate layers. It may just have been the particular honey I used - my current favourite is a Romanian Lime Blossom honey which has a distinctive citrus flavour, and I'm always wary of pairing citrus, other than orange, with chocolate.

I couldn't find a recipe for a cheesecake mixture which was exactly what I wanted, but in the end I used this recipe from Canadian Living as the basic inspiration. I had to reduce the quantities a little to accomodate the fact that I only had 400g cream cheese, and I cut back the honey even more - to 100g - as I didn't want it to be too sweet.

Ingredients
180g chocolate coated biscuits - I used IKEA Kakor Chocladflard (double chocolate crisps) but would have used chocolate coated hobnobs if these weren't sitting in my storecupboard approaching the use-by date!
90g melted butter
400g full fat cream cheese
100g Lime Blossom honey
2 medium eggs
60g sour cream
rind and zest of 1 small lemon
140ml tub sour cream
2 tablespoons caster sugar
25g finely grated 100% cacao block
Method
Use a 7" springform tin and cover the outside with several layers of aluminium foil, so that it can go into a bain-marie. Heat oven to 180C.
Crush the biscuits to fine crumbs, stir in the butter and use to make an even, compressed base in the springform tin. Bake for 10 minutes, then cool.
Beat the cream cheese with the honey, until smooth, then mix in the eggs, lemon and the 60g quantity of sour cream until well combined. Pour onto the crumb base and bake in a bain-marie for 45 minutes or until set but still wobbly. Remove from oven, but leave in bain-marie.
Combine the tub of sour cream with the sugar and grated cacao, spread over the cheesecake and return to the oven for 15 minutes. Turn off the heat, open the oven door slightly and leave the cheesecake for 30 minutes. Remove from oven, and run a knife between the cheesecake and the sides of the tin (may help prevent cracking).
When the cheesecake is cooled to room temperature, refrigerate for at least 6 hours before serving. Don't cover the cheesecake until it is fully chilled as you may get condensation on the surface!

As I said earlier, apart from a soggy bottom in the centre of the cheesecake, each of the three parts were very good. The base was well flavoured with chocolate and oats, the cheesecake mixture was smooth with a hint of citrus alongside the honey flavour, and the set sour cream topping with added chocolate was delicious. They just didn't work together.

So, not a great success, but I was really pleased with the chocolate sour cream topping, which I'm sure to use again.

We Should Cocoa is a baking challenge started by Chele from Chocolate Teapot, and Choclette from Chocolate Log Blog. Each month a different ingredient is chosen to be paired with some form of chocolate in our cooking. This month's choice of honey was made by Choclette, who will be posting a round-up at the end of the month.

Apricot, Marzipan and Cranberry Cake

It wasn't until I started to write about this recipe for an Apricot and Marzipan Cake that I realised the basic cake batter was almost identical to the generic 'quick' cake recipe I've been using for about 30 years.

The part of the cake which makes it quick and easy is that the butter is rubbed into the flour, then the rest of the ingredients are usually simply mixed in. This version was a little different, as the chopped marzipan was sprinkled onto layers of batter in the cake tin, to keep the pieces intact.

As usual, there were a few deviations from the recipe along the way; nothing that drastically changed the cake though. The main change was to substitute the sultanas with dried cranberries, and to add the cranberries into the cake's name  - I really love the combination of apricots and cranberries. The next change was to bake the cake in a round 8"(20cm) diameter tin, and to top with some flaked almonds. Then I glazed the cake with a little honey after baking, rather than apricot jam - simply because I had honey but no jam.

Because the marzipan was chopped into quite large pieces, there was a really intense almond hit when the cake was eaten - I think this is one of the best ways of getting a strong almond flavour into a cake, especially if you can get a marzipan with a high almond content, as this cuts down on the additional sweetness too.

I'm entering this cake into the AlphaBakes challenge this month, as the randomly chosen letter to use in our baking is 'A'. I could have doubled the 'A' ingredients by calling this an apricot and almond cake, but using marzipan gives a different flavour and texture to a cake, and there are some odd people who like almonds, but not marzipan, so I don't want to mislead anyone!

 Alphabakes (rules here) is co-hosted by Caroline from Caroline Makes and Ros from The More Than Occasional Baker. Ros is hosting this month, so she picked the letter 'A' and will be posting the round up at the end of the month.