Cranberry and Hazelnut Frangipane Tart

Just before Christmas, I bought a jar of Christmas Cranberry Curd; just after Christmas I bought another - 'reduced to clear' so that the supermarket could get rid of unsold Christmas stock. I didn't have a clear idea of what to do with them at the time, but the idea of using some in a Bakewell tart type of thing slowly took shape. So, in my first baking session since Christmas, that's what I made.

I didn't have enough ground almonds, but I did have ground hazelnuts which needed using. I thought the hazelnut flavour might be better with cranberry, as it's much stronger than the flavour of almonds (in fact, you really need to add almond extract if you want a strong almond flavour in anything).

I also had some Trex cooking fat in the fridge, which needed using up too. I've never used Trex in baking (it was bought to make a lining paste for bundt tins) but it was past it's BBE date, so needed to be used. I did taste it to make sure it wasn't rancid, and it was fine. I substituted 1/4 of the butter in the pastry with Trex and just that amount was enough to make the pastry shorter than usual. The pastry dough seemed a little more difficult to work with, but it was worth it for the result, and didn't seem to affect the flavour greatly.

Ingredients

• Shallow 24cm tart/flan tin lined with chilled raw shortcrust pastry - no need to bake blind.*
• 200g of cranberry curd (lemon curd or a jam of your choice can be used instead)
• Frangipane - 100g softened butter, 100g caster sugar, 2 large eggs, 50g ground roasted hazelnuts, 25g ground almonds, 25g flour (I used SR flour, but think plain flour, or more nuts would be better **).
• 2 tablespoon of chopped roasted hazelnuts.

Method

Spread the cranberry curd over the base of the pastry case and return to the fridge while the frangipane is made.

Pre-heat oven to 200C/180C fan-assisted. Put a baking sheet in to heat up.

Make the frangipane by putting all the ingredients, except the chopped hazelnuts, into a bowl and beating until the mixture is light and fluffy and no specks of butter can be seen. Spread carefully over into the pastry case - I spoon small amounts of batter around the edge of the case then spread it inwards, so as not to move the curd or jam towards the edges of the pastry case, where it might erupt out of  any gaps between the frangipane and pastry. 

Use a teaspoon or a damp finger to try and seal the frangipane batter against the pastry sides, level the surface, then sprinkle over the chopped hazelnuts.

Transfer the tart to the heated baking sheet and bake at 200C for 10 minutes. Reduce the heat to 170C and bake for roughly another 25 minutes, until the frangipane isn't wobbling, and is golden brown in colour.

* I made shortcrust pastry using 300g flour, 150g butter and Trex and water to mix to a dough. I wanted some pastry for something else, so made more than necessary for one tart case. I'm guessing starting with 200g flour would be enough for just the tart case, and you could make a sweet shortcrust (adding sugar and egg) if preferred.

** The tart puffed up while baking, which I expected, as I'd added some SR flour, but it didn't sink evenly when it cooled, leaving a puffy rim around the edge of the tart and a fragile crust on the frangipane. This hasn't happened to me before, but I'm now rethinking the use of SR flour in frangipane. I'll try plain flour next time, but all ground nuts can be used too; I like a little flour as it makes the frangipane lighter and more cakey than when just nuts are used, but that's a personal preference.

This tart was absolutely delicious. The tartness of the cranberry curd stood up well to the flavour of the hazelnuts. My only disappointment was that the curd seemed to be absorbed into the bottom of the frangipane mixture, so that there wasn't a well defined layer of curd left after baking, as there usually is with jam. When I checked the curd ingredients, I noticed that it contained agar as a gelling agent, which gave it a strange gloopy consistency, but may also explain the way it behaved in the tart, when heated. Fortunately, this didn't affect the flavour, only the looks.

'Hodge Podge' Shortbread Squares......

 ...... or, clearing the store cupboard!

One of the reasons I keep returning to this recipe, besides how delicious it is, is that it is so quick to make, and doesn't require any fresh ingredients such as eggs or milk. The filling is very adaptable, as witnessed by the filling I used this time, in an attempt to use some of the remnants of my baking supplies, lingering in jars and packets. 

I followed the recipe here, including adding chopped toasted hazelnuts to the topping. This time the filling was:

the last of a jar of mincemeat - 200g

the scrapings from a jar of ginger curd* - 50g

currants - 50g

two balls of stem ginger, finely chopped

2 tablespoons of syrup from the stem ginger jar

*the ginger curd was lemon curd with added fresh ginger, but it didn't taste strongly of either lemon or ginger, although it was tart. It was a disappointment, flavourwise, but I wasn't going to waste it if I could find a use for it.

Adding the other ingredients to the mincemeat toned down it's spiciness and sweetness, but I still didn't get as much of the ginger flavour as I'd hoped for. That didn't stop the shortbread squares being as good as usual though! The crumbly shortbread, subtly spiced filling and crunchy hazelnuts in the topping all blended together well. 

Garibaldi Biscuits, with a flavour twist

I don't often fiddle about with biscuits, although I have become a fan of tray-bake cookies, where the dough is baked in a tray and cut into bars after baking. However, this recipe,  for Garibaldi biscuits, from last year's GBBO winner, David Atherton, intrigued me because of the flavours used - barberries, hazelnuts and fennel seeds, in addition to the usual currants.

I followed the recipe exactly, but as I didn't need any extra milk for the dough, I brushed the biscuits with water before sprinkling on the final dusting of caster sugar. Saved me opening a carton of milk just to use a splash of it.

Overall the recipe, and the results, were disappointing. I found it really difficult to handle the dough once it had been rolled to a rectangle of the correct size - it was almost paper thin at that point. Once the filling ingredients had been added, it was impossible to roll out the rectangle to the correct size a second time, because the amount of the filling just wouldn't allow the dough to be rolled out far enough. I managed to get it large enough to cut out 12 biscuits, but they didn't look anywhere near as neat as in the photo accompanying the recipe, as I couldn't cut through the filling layer cleanly.

After baking, the biscuits proved a huge let down, apart from the flavour - I really loved the combination of the tart barberries, the crunchy hazelnuts and the aniseed warmth from the fennel seeds. However, the biscuit dough was brittle, and again, the amount of filling created a problem in that, in places, the layers separated because there was too much filling for the top and bottom layers of dough to make contact when rolled out. This was necessary to hold everything together.

After this disappointment I checked other recipes online. The ever reliable Delia Smith uses a very similar dough - a bit more sugar and more milk instead of egg - but less than half the filling. I think this would enable all the currants/filling ingredients to become properly embedded in the dough. 

David Atherton seems to specialise in 'healthy' recipes, judging by those published in The Guardian newspaper, so I can see why he reduced the sugar in the dough, added the egg and increased the amount of filling, but for me the change in proportions between the filling and the biscuit dough spoiled the recipe instead of enhancing it.

I won't be trying this recipe again, but now that I've tried barberries for the first time, I'll be using them again in my baking. I think they'd make a lovely addition to Christmas mincemeat.

Shortbread Squares (Again!) with Mincemeat and Hazelnuts

I make these shortbread squares so often these days that I feel guilty about writing a blog post about them again!

However they are so delicious and so quick to make that reminding you about them in the run-up to Christmas is probably doing you a favour. Don't bother with pastry and individual mince pies, especially if you're feeding a crowd - make these instead!

The basic shortbread recipe, and general idea, comes from Sue Lawrence's book 'On Baking'. Over time I have experimented with many fillings based on jam, mincemeat and dried fruits.  This time the filling was mincemeat mixed with apricot jam, and I also added chopped toasted hazelnuts to the portion of dough put aside for the topping.

Dough Ingredients:
170g SR flour
170g semolina
170g butter
85g caster sugar
30g finely chopped toasted hazelnuts

Filling:
250g mincemeat and 100g apricot jam, mixed together well (or use all mincemeat).

Method
Preheat the oven to 190C and line a 20cm (8") square baking tin with parchment.
Mix the flour and semolina in a large mixing bowl.
Melt the butter and sugar together gently, until the sugar has dissolved, and add to the flour mixture. Stir until well combined.
Take 2/3 of the dough and press firmly and evenly into the base of the baking tin.
Spread the filling over the base, leaving a small margin around the edges.
Mix the chopped hazelnuts into the remaining dough and crumble the mixture over the filling layer. Press down lightly with the palm of the hand.
Bake for 25 minutes, by which time the shortbread should be a light golden brown in colour.

Cut into pieces of the desired size (I make 16 squares) as soon as the tray is removed from the oven, but don't try to take the pieces out of the baking tin until they are completely cold - they are too fragile while warm, and will break up.

The shortbread layers of these squares are perfect - crisp but a little crumbly, and they just melt in the mouth. Curiously,  adding apricot jam seemed to reduce the sweetness of the mincemeat - it must just be down to the natural tartness of apricots because the sugar content of jam and mincemeat are very similar.

Chocolate Chip Loaf Cake, with Hazelnuts, Raspberries and Lime

Although chocolate, raspberries, hazelnuts and lime sounded a very tasty combination of ingredients, this was a case where the sum total was less than its parts. I think the problem was that none of the ingredients stood out, so that, although these were pleasant cakes, overall the flavour was too non-descript. This could probably be easily remedied by more lime zest, more raspberries, a chocolate with more cocoa solids, or some chopped hazelnuts as well as the ground nuts, depending on which added ingredient you wanted to accentuate.

It was a double disappointment as these two cakes were to mark my and my son's birthdays in the middle of July, and I would have liked to make something a bit more memorable.

I made a double batch of what has become my 'go to' recipe for small loaf cakes, and divided it between two tins. This time, instead of chopping a bar of chocolate I bought dark chocolate chips as I thought the regularity would look better - perhaps it did, but I think the flavour would have been better with a bar of chocolate, as I usually use one with higher cocoa solids than in the bought chips.

Ingredients
220g caster sugar
220g softened butter
4 eggs
230g SR flour
50g ground hazelnuts
zest of 2 limes (reserve juice for icing)
10g dried raspberry pieces
100g dark chocolate chips
a little milk if necessary

Topping -  50g icing sugar, lime juice

Method
Put all the cake ingredients except the raspberry pieces and chocolate chips into a large bowl and beat until smooth and fluffy, adding a little milk if necessary to give a dropping consistency. Fold in the raspberries and chocolate. Divide the mixture between two small (1lb) loaf tins, lined with parchment or a pre-formed liner, and bake at 180C (160C fan) for about 60 minutes, or until a test probe comes out clean and dry.

When cool, make the icing by sifting the sugar and adding the lime juice a teaspoon at a time to give a thick, just-pourable consistency. I find it easiest to drizzle this over a cake by putting the icing into a small freezer bag, and snipping off one corner.

When the first slice was cut from the cake I thought the chocolate chips had sunk, but this was just the bad luck of random distribution - I took this photo of a slice further into the cake, just to prove they hadn't!

Lemon Curd and Hazelnut Tart

This was one of my Christmas desserts - not very festive, but I'd just made 2 large jars of lemon curd with some excess lemons, and needed to find ways of using it. I used this recipe for my curd, but this time added the zest of all 5 lemons. Lemon curd makes a tasty dessert, swirled into natural yogurt and topped with a sprinkle of plain granola, but it takes a long time to get through a whole jar that way, let alone two. This recipe used around 200g - I didn't weigh it, just spooned out about half a jar.

I made a sweet shortcrust pastry, using 200g plain flour, 1/4 teaspoon baking powder, a pinch of salt, 100g of butter, 50g of icing sugar, an egg and enough water to make a soft dough. After resting in the fridge I lined a shallow fluted flan tin with the pastry (the recipe won't use all the pastry, if you can roll it out really thinly - I made mince pies with the leftovers). I spooned 200g lemon curd onto the raw pastry, spread it evenly and refrigerated again while I made the hazelnut frangipane. I did this by putting 100g softened butter,

100g caster sugar, 50g SR flour, 50g ground roasted hazelnuts, half a teaspoon of vanilla extract and two eggs into a bowl and beating until well combined. The frangipane was spread gently over the lemon curd, working from the edges inwards, and being careful to get the batter to seal against the pastry edges, to minimise the chance of any lemon curd bubbling out. I sprinkled a handful of finely chopped roasted hazelnuts over the frangipane, then decorated the top with a few pastry shapes cut out from the excess pastry - they're supposed to be snowflakes but look more like stars. The tart was baked, on a pre-heated baking sheet, at 200C for 15 minutes, then the heat was lowered to 170C and baking continued until the frangipane was golden and firm - about another 20 minutes. The frangipane rose quite a lot while cooking, but thankfully sank back to give a level surface as it cooled - I think perhaps SR flour was unnecessary, but it does give a lighter texture to the tart.

The combination of lemon and hazelnuts was delicious, and the frangipane had the lightness of a sponge rather than being stodgy, as is sometimes the case when no raising agent, or all nuts, rather than a mixture of nuts and flour is used. I chose to use hazelnuts as they have a much stronger flavour than almonds, and because I thought they would work better with the tanginess of the lemon curd. I think the lemon curd would have overwhelmed the nut flavour if almonds were used, but this way the hazelnut flavour won.

Cookie Bars

I've been really busy lately, helping my son clean and redecorate his new flat before he moved in. I made these cookie bars in a quiet moment - probably waiting for paint to dry before I could do anything else. I found this recipe, which originally came from Fig Jam and Lime Cordial blog, a while back, and it's really useful for cookies in a hurry.

Because I didn't want to add to my store cupboard of cooking ingredients, I bought a 120g pack of ready-mixed 'add-in' morsels marketed by Whitworth's. It was a mix of 35%  cranberries infused with cherry juice, 25% dark chocolate, 20% cherry infused apple and 20% raisins, called Dark Choc Cherry mix 'n' bake. I added 30g chopped roasted hazelnuts to add a bit more flavour and crunch. I used these in place of the chocolate and the orange zest in the recipe.

Although it was quick and easy to use a pre-packed mix of chocolate and fruit, infusing cranberries and apple pieces with cherry juice didn't give the same intense flavour that using dried cherries would have done, and there wasn't really enough chocolate in the cookie bars to satisfy a chocoholic! Not a bad idea for a speedy bake, though, particularly if you don't want to accumulate lots of opened bags of dried fruit and nuts.

Chocolate Hazelnut Tart

- for the final We Should Cocoa

We Should Cocoa, a monthly link-up for chocolate recipes started 8 years ago, when Tin & Thyme was still Chocolate Log Blog, and Choclette shared her hosting duties with Chele at Chocolate Teapot. Amazingly, I have been participating since the first link-up, although not very regularly recently. According to my records, I've contributed to 65 out of a possible 95 events. This month will be the 96th We Should Cocoa - and Choclette has decided to call a halt.

For many years the link-up had a theme, so I decided to check on the first, in August 2010. It turned out to be raspberries. I made Chocolate Frangipane Tartlettes with chocolate pastry and raspberry jam in the base - a kind of chocolate bakewell tart. At the same time, I made some similar tartlettes, with Nutella in the base, which we preferred. I thought it would be a fitting end to these events to base my entry on the first thing I made, so decided to go with a tart with Nutella in the base and a hazelnut frangipane on top. I also added more chocolate to the filling, so that the final tart had both the chocolate and hazelnut flavours of the Nutella ramped up.

Ingredients
Pastry
150g plain flour
100g butter
25g icing sugar
25g cocoa
1 egg yolk
cold water to mix

Filling
110g softened butter
110g caster sugar
1 egg + 1 egg white
1 tablespoon plain flour
110g ground hazelnuts
150g chocolate hazelnut spread
25g plain chocolate (I used 100% cacao) grated*

to finish - 40g plain chocolate (about 70%)

* 100% cacao is very hard, and when grated on a fine microplane grater, 25g goes a long way. If you are using  70% plain chocolate, or a coarse grater, you might need as much as 50g to get enough grated chocolate to cover the base.

Method

Make the pastry by sifting the icing sugar and cocoa into the flour, then rub in the butter until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs. Add the egg yolk and enough cold water to make a soft but not sticky dough, kneading briefly. Shape the dough into a disc, wrap in clingfilm and refrigerate for 15 minutes. Roll out the dough thinly and  line a 20cm (8") tart tin. Refrigerate again while you make the filling.

Pre-heat the oven to 200C. Put a baking sheet into the oven while it is heating.

Cream the butter and caster sugar until light and fluffy, then slowly beat in the egg, egg white and flour. Fold in the ground hazelnuts.

Warm the chocolate spread slightly (just a few seconds in the microwave, or in a bowl over hot water) and spread over the base of the pastry case, then sprinkle over the grated chocolate. Spoon the hazelnut frangipane filling into the pastry case and spread evenly.

Put the tart onto the preheated baking sheet and bake for 10 minutes, then lower the heat to 180C and bake for a further 25 minutes until the frangipane is set and golden in colour. Cool in the tin.

Finish the tart by melting the 40g of plain chocolate and drizzling it over the cool tart - I put the chocolate into a small plastic bag, then put that into a mug of hot water (seal the bag first, of course). When the chocolate has melted, snip off one corner of the bag to allow the chocolate to dribble out.

This tart was delicious! The extra dark chocolate in the base cut through the sweetness of the chocolate hazelnut spread, and the hazelnut flavour of the frangipane came through strongly. The only thing wrong was that the frangipane appeared to have separated a little as it cooked, leaving a pale set custard-y layer at the bottom. Although this didn't affect the flavour, it did affect the appearance; I have no idea what went wrong.

So, it's the end of an era! I'm sending this recipe to the very last We Should Cocoa link-up. Although I don't bake as much now as I did 8 years ago, I can thank WSC for stretching both my skills and my imagination. Over the years I've used ingredients that I would never have thought to pair with chocolate (some more successfully than others, I must admit) and tackled more complex recipes than I would usually handle. I believe Chocolette intends to keep the WSC archive, and has a Pinterest board, so we can still look there for inspiration.

Thank you for 8 years of fun, Choclette!

Salted Caramel, Chocolate and Hazelnut Shortbread Squares

With the demise of the Clandestine Cake Club - which I think is continuing as just a Facebook page - a few of the local members decided to try and keep a group going on our own. For our first meeting I decided to stick to a familiar recipe rather than experiment. Now that we are no longer bound by CCC rules of large cakes only, and as the attendance wasn't going to be huge, I decided to make a traybake of shortbread squares filled with a fudgy layer of salted caramel and chocolate, following  this recipe which I have used before. Using this recipe also meant that any leftovers would keep for longer than a cake would - I already have too much cake in the freezer!

I followed the recipe exactly as written in the link above, so no need to write it out again. In the end, there were only a few pieces left for me to bring home, but they were as delicious as the first time round!

Edited to add that this recipe went to June's We Should Cocoa link-up, at Tin and Thyme.

Hazelnut, Lemon and Elderflower Cake

Although I didn't pay much attention to the recent Royal Wedding, I must have been subconsciously influenced by the talk of a lemon and elderflower wedding cake, as I suddenly felt that that was the cake I really I wanted to eat.

Having decided which recipe to use, I realised that I didn't have any ground almonds, so used hazelnuts instead. I love using ground hazelnuts in cakes, as they actually add flavour, as well as keeping the cake moist - so often the flavour of almonds is lost, unless you are using a lot, or add almond extract too.

I chose to adapt this BBC Good Food recipe for a Lighter Lemon Drizzle Cake, as it is a reduced fat recipe, and uses oil instead of butter. I've always found it reliable, producing a light, moist cake with a good crumb texture. As I've mentioned, I used ground hazelnuts instead of almonds, and also used sunflower oil instead of rapeseed, as that's what I always have available. Instead of a lemon drizzle, I reduced 150mls of elderflower cordial by half, and drizzled that over the cooked cake, while still hot, then sprinkled the cake lightly with caster sugar.

This was a subtly flavoured cake - none of the three flavours dominated, although I would have liked to taste more of the elderflower; I think I was just unlucky that the brand of elderflower cordial that I bought was very delicate. Despite that, it was a very good cake for a warm spring weekend.

Salted Caramel Flapjacks, with Chocolate and Hazelnuts

If I'm going to carry on baking regularly, I'm going to have to find recipes for smaller cakes, or experiment with halving some of the recipes I use regularly. Flapjack recipes are easy to divide, because there are no fractions of eggs involved, and the quantities of ingredients aren't critical to the nearest gram - a bit more or less of any of the main ingredients and you end up with a slightly crunchier, or chewier flapjack. Not a disaster, and a lesson for revised quantities next time.

This recipe was inspired by this Annie Bell recipe, which I've used once before, and was chosen to use up an open jar of salted caramel - mainly to stop me just dipping in with a spoon and eating it on its own. I used half quantities of all the ingredients, but rather than drizzle melted chocolate over the baked flapjacks, I added 40g of chopped dark chocolate and 30g of coarsely chopped hazelnuts to the oat mixture.

As I expected, the chocolate melted in the heat of the flapjack mixture, but I was careful to add the chocolate as the last ingredient, and fold it in quickly. This meant that most of the chocolate stayed in discrete areas, giving the flapjacks a marbled appearance. The chopped nuts added an extra texture of crunch to the very chewy flapjacks, as well as flavour.

I baked the oat mixture in a tin measuring 20cm x 12.5cm (8" x 5") - I used a deep adjustable cake tin - but finding the right size baking trays for brownies and other traybakes is proving difficult. Everything I look at is either too big or too small for half-sized recipes, but I'm not sure fiddling around with more complicated calculations is worth the effort!

Ingredients: 120g salted butter; 90g light muscovado sugar; 112g salted caramel*; pinch sea-salt crystals; 175g oats; 30g chopped hazelnuts; 40g chopped 70% chocolate.

*If you only have basic caramel, add a little extra sea-salt

It's the usual flapjack method - melt together the butter, sugar and caramel. Stir in the oats, salt and nuts, then lastly, quickly fold in the chocolate. Spread into a baking tray lined with baking parchment and press down well. Bake for 25 minutes at 180C. Mark into portions while still hot, but cool completely before removing from the tin.

There was a lot of butter bubbling on the surface of the flapjack when it was removed from the oven, but it was all absorbed back in as the mixture cooled. It does make me think that the amount of butter in the recipe could be cut back a little, though.

Hazelnut and Chocolate Chip Loaf

I think hazelnuts are my favourite nut to use in cakes, especially when paired with chocolate.They have a much deeper flavour than almonds, which often need almond extract added to get a really nutty taste. Chopped nuts are a good addition to cake batters, but replacing a small proportion of the flour with ground nuts adds both flavour and moistness. For many years I bought ready ground hazelnuts while on holiday in France, as they weren't readily available in the supermarkets here. The alternative, grinding your own nuts, can pose problems, as hazelnuts can become a greasy paste if overworked. So you can imagine that I was really pleased to see ground hazelnuts in Sainsbury's a few weeks ago.

This cake was made to have something fairly simple, and not too rich, on hand during the week between Christmas and New Year, for the mid-morning coffee breaks, when dipping into the leftover desserts or the chocolate boxes didn't seem quite appropriate. There's always the mince pie haters to consider, too!

Ingredients
100g softened butter
100g caster sugar
2 eggs (+ a little milk, if needed)
120g SR flour
30g ground hazelnuts
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
75g chopped plain chocolate (or chocolate chips)
30g chopped hazelnuts
1 tablespoon demerara sugar (optional)

Method
Preheat the oven to 180C, fan 160C. Line a small (1lb) loaf tin.
This is an all-in-one mix, so put everything except the chopped chocolate and hazelnuts and the demerara sugar, into a mixing bowl and beat with an electric mix until the batter is smooth and evenly blended, adding a little milk if necessary, to give a dropping consistency.
Fold in the chopped chocolate and hazelnuts, then transfer the batter to the prepared loaf tin.
Smooth the top and sprinkle with the demerara sugar, if using.
Bake for 60-70 minutes, until a test probe comes out clean.

Salted Caramel and Chocolate Fudge Squares

I found myself with half a tin of caramelised condensed milk, and no idea what to make with it. One thing that kept coming up, however inventively I worded my internet searches, was Millionaires' Shortbread, and similar bakes. The problem with many ready-made caramel products is that they often aren't thick enough to work really well in things like Millionaires Shortbread - I hate cutting into something only to see the caramel squidge out all over the plate.

However, the recipes made me wonder if mixing the caramel with melted chocolate would mean that it set more solidly after baking, and decided that it couldn't hurt to try. I then decided to pair the chocolate-caramel mixture with my favourite, really easy, shortbread recipe - from Sue Lawrence's 'On Baking' - and ended up with the components of a Millionaires' Shortbread with much less work. I also added some salt flakes and some hazelnuts for extra flavour.

Ingredients
170g unsalted butter
85g caster sugar
170g SR flour
170g semolina
60g coarsely chopped hazelnuts
pinch salt flakes

filling - 200g caramelised condensed milk, at room temperature
100g of plain chocolate (the darker the better - I used Willie's Chef's Drops; although they are just 70% cocoa solids they are quite bitter when eaten on their own, so ideal for adding to caramel)
1/2 teaspoon salt flakes

Method
Pre-heat the oven to 190C and line a 20cm (8") square baking tin with baking parchment, using one piece of paper to come up the sides of the tin too.
Melt the chocolate in a bowl over a pan of simmering water and allow  to cool a little, if necessary, to around 40C (blood heat). Mix in the caramelised condensed milk and the salt.
Melt the butter and sugar together, either in a large bowl in the microwave, or a large pan on the hob. Add the flour and the semolina and mix everything together to give a crumbly rubble.
Put 2/3 of the mixture into the baking tin and spread evenly, pressing down firmly so that it looks like a sheet of dough rather than rubble.
Spread on the chocolate mixture, stopping just short of the edges.
Mix the hazelnuts into the remaining dough, and sprinkle this over the contents of the baking tin, this time only pressing down lightly.
Sprinkle over a pinch more salt, then bake for 30 minutes until the topping is firm and golden.
Leave for 30 minutes to give the chocolate layer time to set a bit, then mark into squares. Leave in the baking tin until completely cold, as the squares are too fragile to move while hot.

These were really tasty! The centre was rich and fudgy, but because it was a thin layer it didn't seem over-sweet. The shortbread layers were, as usual, crisp, but with a 'melt-in the mouth' delicacy. The added salt was just the right amount and the hazelnuts added to both the texture and flavour. 

These weren't quite successful as replacement for Millionaires' Shortbread, with it's separate layer of caramel, as the caramel flavour wasn't really strong when mixed with the chocolate, but what this means is that these could probably be made with basic condensed milk to give the same fudgy filling, without much loss of flavour.

I'm adding these to April's We Should Cocoa link-up, over at Tin and Thyme. Choclette doesn't set a theme for this link-up - any recipe, using any form of chocolate is welcome.

Chocolate Chip and Hazelnut Loaf Cake

This little loaf cake was baked for my son to take home with him after a visit - I didn't even get to see what it looked like inside, let alone taste it, but chocolate and hazelnut is a tried and tested combination, so I can't imagine anything going wrong. I would have liked to taste it as I used Willie's Chef's Drops  - 71% sambirano  (Madagascan) chocolate - which tasted quite bitter on their own. I can imagine them making a cake taste quite special. I'll have to make a cake for us using the drops, soon.

I used the all-in-one mixing method, usually used for sponge cakes, but increasing the amount of flour and adding a little milk to give a dropping consistency. This makes a cake which is slightly sturdier than a sponge, although still moist, with a close crumb texture.

This is what you do - in a large bowl, beat together 100g softened butter, 100g caster sugar, 2 large eggs, 150g SR flour, 1 tsp vanilla extract and 1/2 teaspoon baking powder. Add a little milk or water if necessary to give a dropping consistency, then fold in 50g chopped toasted hazelnuts and 50g dark chocolate chips, or chopped chocolate. Transfer the batter to a small (1lb/450g) loaf tin, level the top and bake at 180C for about 50 minutes, until a test probe comes out clean.

Nutty Rhubarb Cake

This was going to be a rhubarb and almond cake, but I couldn't find the flaked almonds I was sure I had, so it became a cake with mixed nuts - ground almonds in the cake batter and chopped toasted hazelnuts on top. It's a recipe I've used many times before - a shortbread/scone-like dough sandwiching a layer of cooked rhubarb  - and it's become a family favourite. The dough is lighter than pastry but not as soft as a cake.

Ingredients
150g butter
150g caster sugar
1 large egg
a few drops almond extract (optional)
250g SR flour
50g ground almonds
about 400g of rhubarb (cooked with 50g sugar and drained of juice)
25g chopped toasted hazelnuts

Method
Preheat the oven to 180C and grease and base-line a 20cm (8") springform tin.
Melt the butter in a large bowl, in the microwave (or in a saucepan on the hob).
Add the sugar and stir until evenly mixed, then beat in the egg and the almond extract, if using.
Stir in the flour and ground almonds to give a soft dough.
Spread 2/3 of the dough into the bottom of the prepared tin, working the dough up the edge of the tin to make a shallow wall.
Put the fruit onto the base, making an even layer level with the top of the wall of dough.
Using fingers, break the remaining dough into small pieces and scatter over the fruit, spreading the dough to cover as much of the filling as possible, There will be gaps in the dough but these fill up as the dough spreads and rises during baking.
Sprinkle over the chopped hazelnuts and press lightly into the dough.
Bake for around 50-60 minutes, until the dough is golden brown and feels firm; cool in the tin.

Chocolate, Rye and Hazelnut Brownies

It's chocolate season, in case you haven't noticed! There are even articles in such places as the Guardian, suggesting recipes to use up leftover Easter Eggs, as if chocolate was something that has to be used up quickly, while it's still fresh!

This Easter, I chose this Diana Henry recipe  which I'd seen in the Telegraph only recently, for brownies made with rye flour and studded with chocolate chunks and hazelnuts. It wasn't the main dessert, but it would have caused an uproar if there wasn't something containing chocolate available after our Easter dinner. As it happened, the brownies weren't eaten at the meal, but both children were happy to take some home with them.

The recipe differs slightly from the usual method of making brownies, where the butter and chocolate are melted together before stirring in the sugar and eggs, then the flour and any other ingredients. This recipe is more like a standard cake recipe - the butter and sugar are whisked together until light, then the eggs are beaten in before the melted chocolate is added, followed by the rest of the ingredients being folded in. The only change I made to the recipe was that I only used 50g of hazelnuts - forgot to check the storecupboard! I used a 20cm square tin, and wouldn't advise using anything larger, despite what the recipe says, unless you like really thin brownies.


Aide memoir, in case the recipe disappears:
200g plain chocolate, half melted, half chopped
150g softened butter
275g light muscovado sugar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 large eggs
100g rye flour, sifted with 2 tablespoons cocoa
75g toasted hazelnuts, halved or roughly chopped.
Bake - 180C for 30 minutes.

The whole batch of brownies only contained 100g of melted chocolate, but they were surprisingly dense and fudgy. The extra chocolate chips and coarsely chopped hazelnuts added texture, and the brownies had that nice papery crust that all good brownies should have! I'm not sure that I could taste the rye flour as a specific flavour, but I'm guessing it contributed to the dense texture! Definitely a recipe to use again.

Honey Nut Tart

I think this tart must be very similar to a Pecan Pie; it uses sugars, butter and eggs to make the filling, but here the pecans are replaced by hazelnuts and walnuts, and the syrup (corn or maple) used in most recipes is replaced by honey - you could call it an Anglicised version of the classic American dessert.

I saw the recipe in the latest National Trust newsletter, following an article about all that the National Trust is doing to help the plight of the honeybee, including supporting the National Pollinator Strategy. I can't find the recipe (Sissinghurst Honey, Walnut and Cobnut Tart) online, except as a .pdf file, but it's very simple  - the first thing you need is a 9" (22 - 23cm) shallow sweetened shortcrust pastry flan case, baked blind. For the filling, scatter 100g each of roughly chopped toasted hazelnuts (or fresh cobnuts. in season) and walnut pieces over the pastry case then pour over the sticky filling. This is made by melting 85g of butter, then stirring in

100g of set honey. This mixture is blended with 4 medium-sized beaten eggs and 175g of light brown sugar (the recipe used demerara, which I didn't have). When the mixture feels smooth and the sugar has dissolved, pour over the nuts to fill the pastry case as much as possible (I had a little of the filling left over). Bake for 30 - 40 minutes at 190C, until the filling is firm. I found the filling baked in 25 minutes, so it might be an idea to use a slightly lower temperature than that used to bake the pastry case - I suspect a misprint in the recipe! Serve at room temperature.

This was a gloriously indulgent, sweet and sticky tart, with the flavours of both nuts still identifiable. I was a little disappointed that the honey was lost amongst all the sweetness and nuttiness, but perhaps that was down to my choice of honey. A really strongly flavoured one might have stood up better, although I'm always wary of recipes which use a lot of sugar as well as honey - there's often not enough honey to give a strong flavour.

Apple and Mincemeat Cake

This is just the right sort of cake to make in the run up to the festive season. Although it's not the sort of rich or fancy cake that will be eaten around Christmas and New Year, the flavours are good enough to put you in the festive mood, without feeling you are over-indulging too early. It's also a really simple cake to make and one I often fall back on when I'm lacking in imagination or time, especially as my husband always comments on how good it is.

The filling in the middle can be adapted to suit the seasons and the recipe also works really well with fresh fruit, as long as it doesn't exude too much juice during cooking (although even that can be overcome by cooking and draining the fruit first). For a taste of Christmas I used a mixture of mincemeat, dried pears and fresh apples - adding apples cuts through the sweetness of the mincemeat. Using the dried pears was a waste of good ingredients, however, as their flavour was overwhelmed by the mincemeat.

Ingredients
200g mincemeat
2-3 eating apples (peeled cored and diced into pieces about the size of sultanas)
4 dried pear halves (snipped into similar sized pieces with scissors)
150g butter
150g caster sugar
1 large egg, beaten
300g SR flour
2 tablespoons chopped toasted hazelnuts
icing sugar for dusting

Method
Grease and base line a 20cm(8") springform tin. Preheat oven to 180C.

Mix the diced apples and dried pears into the mincemeat and set aside - the acidity of the mincemeat should stop the apples from discolouring.

Melt the butter (I find it easiest to do this in a large mixing bowl, in the microwave, then the dough can be mixed in the same bowl). The butter doesn't need to be hot, just completely liquid. Stir in the  caster sugar, then the beaten egg, then mix in the flour to make a soft spreadable dough.

Take roughly 2/3 of the dough and spread it evenly over the base of the cake tin. Push the dough up the sides of the cake tin a little way (about 2cm), to make a wall to contain the filling. This wall doesn't need to be any thicker than rolled out pastry for a pie - it just holds in any fruit juices.
Spread the mincemeat mixture evenly over the dough base.

Use the remaining dough to top the cake. (The easiest way is to flatten small pieces of dough with your fingers and put them on top of the cake filling, fitting them together as closely as possible but getting an even covering too. It doesn't matter about small gaps as the dough spreads and fills in the holes during baking. I usually start at the edge of the cake and work inwards - the dough is pliable enough to spread easily.)

Sprinkle over the chopped hazelnuts, then bake for 50-60 minutes until firm and golden brown.
Cool in the tin, then dust with a little icing sugar before serving.

This was my last baking session before starting on the Christmas desserts tomorrow, so I'll wish you all

MERRY CHRISTMAS

and

A HAPPY AND HEALTHY 2016!

Marmalade and Hazelnut Cake

I'm trying to keep my baking light in the lead up to the festive 'eating season', and this subtly flavoured cake was made using the odds and ends of store-cupboard ingredients which inevitably accumulate during the year. The marmalade and candied peel gave just a hint of citrus flavour and the nuts added texture. The batter is a little heavier than a traditional sponge cake, but not as dense as a Madeira cake.

Ingredients
175g softened butter
150g caster sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
3 eggs
5 tablespoons coarse-cut orange marmalade
200g SR flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
50g toasted chopped hazelnuts
50g candied citrus peel, finely chopped (optional)

optional - extra tablespoon of chopped hazelnuts for topping

Method
Preheat oven to 160C and prepare a round 20cm(8") cake tin. Sift the flour and baking powder together.
In a large bowl, beat butter and sugar together until pale and well mixed.
Beat in the eggs, one at a time, with a spoonful of the flour. Add the vanilla extract with the first egg.
With the electric mixer (if using) on minimum, mix in the marmalade, then fold in the rest of the flour.
Fold in the nuts and citrus peel, if using.
Transfer the batter to the cake tin, level the top and sprinkle on the extra chopped nuts, if desired (sugar nibs or demerara sugar would make a good alternative topping). Bake for 50-60 minutes, until a test probe comes out clean.
Cool in the tin for 15 minutes, then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely

Pear, Chocolate and Hazelnut Cake

The recipe for this seasonal cake was inspired by this one from Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's River Cottage. I left out the orange zest (because I didn't have an orange handy), used hazelnuts instead of almonds and added 100g coarsely chopped dark chocolate. At this time of year we are foraging for hazelnuts and also had some pears from our neighbour's tree, so this cake really was a reflection of Autumn flavours.


Inevitably, the batter shrank away from the pears as the cake cooled after baking. This detracted a bit from the looks, but not the taste of the cake. I'm glad I added the extra chocolate chunks - it really boosted the chocolate content (25g of cocoa in this amount of cake batter is not a lot) and flavour.

The cooking juices from the pears must be cooked down to only a few tablespoons; any more and I think it would have created problems with too much liquid on top of the cake - as it was, it made me worry that the cake wasn't going to set properly, as the top looked very gloopy right up to the end of the cooking time. Using the juice didn't seem to much to the flavour - I guess that's where using the orange zest would have made a difference. Noted for next time!