A Cocoa Carrot Cake

Firstly, sorry for the woeful lack of posts this past week. I have an excuse though: some sort of throat virus that attacks anonymously but leaves its trace for several long, protracted days. Moving from the bed, much less blogging, was completely out of the question for the past few days but the good news is, apart from a nasty sinus headache (any tips for clearing that one up? I’ve tried every pill going and none of them seem to touch it) I’m back to 65/70% recovery and so I present to you a post that I started on Monday before I fell ill….(oh and I will get back to each one of you who commented or stumbled me…very soon!!).

I don’t know many people who dislike Carrot Cake. I prefer it everytime over chocolate cake. Perhaps it’s the always exciting spiciness of the cinnamon and cloves or is it the rich cream cheese icing (I always say I  love a bit of cake with my icing). Or is it the slightly perverse thrill at putting a vegetable into a cake?

I suppose it could be the fact that Carrot Cake was once lauded as healthy. For sure it is missing the butter element but that cream cheese topping is about as calorific as it comes although there must be healthier options for the icing. I just don’t want to know about them.

For me, I enjoy the relentless moistness of the cake, the fact that it lasts forever in the cake tin (providing you don’t eat it first) and that tang of cream cheese followed by the spiciness of the cake when you take your first bite.  Oh, and it is really easy to make. In fact, it was the first cake I ever made, in Domestic Science class (that’s cookery to you and me), when I was about 10 years old. It is my favourite type of cake mixture, pour and stir. No creaming necessary. There is that annoyingly prolonged time spent grating carrots but if you have a food processor that element is despatched post haste too.

This recipe is slightly different, because, what with this being a chocolate blog and all, it uses Cocoa Powder. The flavour is not overpowered by the cocoa but simply enhanced and given extra depth. The original recipe used (from the Divine Heavenly Chocolate Recipes cookbook) used Cocoa Powder in the Icing too but I omitted that because I love the white, fluffy purity of the original cream cheese icing. I have given both options here in case you want to go all out cocoa mad though.

They not real carrots- they're coconut!

For the Cake:

3 Large Free Range Eggs

175g Caster Sugar

200ml Sunflower Oil

250g Grated Carrot

200g Plain Flour

3 Tablespoons Good Quality Cocoa Powder

1 Tsp Cinnamon

1 Tsp Ground Ginger

1 Tbsp Baking Powder

125g Walnut Pieces (optional)

For the Icing

100g Soft Unsalted Butter

100g Cream Cheese

300g Sieved Icing Sugar

5 Tablespoons Sieved Cocoa Powder (optional)

METHOD:
Preheat oven to 180c.

Line and grease two 8″ Round Sandwich Tins.

Whisk the eggs and sugar together in a large bowl until light and frothy. Gradually beat in the oil. A hands free or electric hand whisk is by far the quickest method here.

Stir in the grated carrots.

In a separate bowl, sieve together the Flour, Baking Powder, Spices and Cocoa Powder and stir into the carrot/egg/sugar/oil mixture.

Fold in nuts if using.

Pour evenly into the two prepared sandwich tins and bake for about 25 minutes or until soft to the touch. A skewer may not come out completely clean as carrot cake is always supposed to be very moist.

Leave to cool in the tins and then turn out. Once completely cool, cover and fill with the following icing:

To make the icing, mix together all the ingredients until a thick but spreadable and very creamy icing emerges.

You can decorate with chopped walnuts if you like, or some coconut carrots that, implausibly, my Mum had in her bread bin!

Enjoy!

Stomach Pleasing Cookies!

There is nothing that aggrieves me more than being out of biscuits (or cookies, if you will), particularly on a holiday. Instead of having my usual tea and biscuits for breakfast, I have to revert to (gasp!) toast or cereal!
I know it sounds unhealthy but I have an agreement with my stomach: he won’t hurt, if I feed him high cocoa chocolate based foods at various points throughout the day. Sometimes he shirks on his agreement and hurts anyway but I continue to eat chocolate regardless.
So, what’s a girl to do without biscuits and/or chocolate? Make chocolate biscuits of course! And for one of the best cookie recipes I have ever cooked, I turned to Great Cookies by the wonderful Carole Walter. This is is a fantastic book, beautifully photographed with every type of cookie recipe imaginable, from drop cookies to speculaas, pinwheels to biscotti and everything else in between. Of course, I have only ever cooked one recipe from this book: Walter’s unbeatable Oatmeal Cookies.
I used to hate anything with oatmeal because it would always provoke an outbreak of stomach ache, so I avoided this wholesome tasting cereal like the plague. However, since I now have the aforementioned agreement with said stomach, I like to experiment with foods that I previously couldn’t eat. And fortunately, I have discovered there is quite a lot now that I can eat without too much discomfort.
IBS is a really unpleasant disorder. In my case, it causes severe bloating, headaches, cramping and nausea if I eat too much wheat or dairy produce. I take medication before each meal which does greatly reduce the symptoms but fellow sufferers will know that this isn’t always the answer. I have suffered from it since I was old enough to suffer from the stresses of the real world, sixteen or seventeen years old and when I first approached the doctors with my complaint about persistent stomach aches, they put it down to poor diet. IBS didn’t really exist (in the UK at least) back then.
Thankfully, reasonably effective anti-spasmodics have been introduced and some people (like my work colleague who finds that beer causes his outbreaks) can control theirs purely by cutting out ‘trigger’ foods.
I, on the other hand, rely purely on the tablets because I refuse to let the illness spoil my culinary life. The only foods I have strictly cut back on are dairy based foods like yoghurt, milk (and milkshakes), coffee with milk, and ice cream. Also, chocolate with a high milk content has to be eaten with care. Fortunately we have 70% cocoa which I can eat. Nuts are usually a big no-no if they are of the harder variety (for example, peanuts, brazil nuts or hazelnuts).
“But, enough about your stomach!” I hear you cry, “what about those cookies?”
Ah yes. The Cookies. Oatmeal cookies, studded generously with large chunks of dark chocolate and mahogany hunks of pecan. The original recipe calls for walnuts but I find that Pecans have a sweeter taste but generous bite.
The wonderful thing about cookie recipes is that you can alter the flavourings to suit your palate (or in my case, stomach) or store cupboard. These would taste just as good without the chocolate or nuts, just plain old fantastic oatmeal cookies.
Going against most recommendations, I halved the recipe, straight down the middle, for the simple reason that whilst I could eat 3 dozen of this oatie beauties, my stomach and I would come to serious blows. And despite this, the recipe turned out perfectly: these cookies/biscuits are crisp on the bottom, chewy in the middle. If you eat them still hot, the chocolate chunks still run fluidly throughout and there is nothing nicer than eating melted chocolate. When cold, they are just as good.
Being the true American that he is, Paul ate his with a glass of milk. I simply ate mine whilst watching the Road to Perdition, crumbs falling all over as the film reached its tense crescendo.

Other variations of this cookie could involve swapping chocolate for raisins or dried cranberries, various nuts or seeds, if you want a slightly healthier version.

OATMEAL COOKIES adapted from Carole Walter’s Great Cookies
Makes about 20 cookies that are 2.5″ wide, roughly
Ingredients:
1/3 Cup Dark Brown Sugar
1 1/4 Cup Oatmeal (not instant)
1/6 Cup Caster (or granulated) Sugar
3/4 Cup Plain Flour
1/2 Teaspoon Salt
1/4 Teaspoon Baking Powder
1/2 Cup Unsalted Butter (not really soft)
1 Tablespoon Corn Syrup or Golden Syrup
1 Small Egg
1 Teaspoon Vanilla Extract
1 Cup Chocolate Chips (I hit a bar of Lindt 70% chocolate repeatedly against a work surface to break them into decent size chunks)
1 Cup Chopped Pecans, or nut of your choice
METHOD:
Preheat oven to 180c. Line two baking sheets with baking paper or lightly oil them.
In a food processor fitted with the metal blade, process the brown and white sugar and a third of the oatmeal until sand-like. This will take about 3 minutes.
Sift together the flour, salt and baking powder together. Stir in the rest of the oatmeal. Set aside.
Using your stand alone mixer or electric hand whisk, blend the butter with corn syrup on low speed until light.
Beat in the processed oatmeal/sugar mixture in three additions. Add the egg and vanilla extract.
Turning the speed up to medium, add the sifted flour in three more additions, mixing until only just combined.
Finally, fold in the nuts and chocolate chips.
Using either a couple of teaspoons or a small ice cream scoop (which I highly recommend!), drop spoonfuls onto the baking sheets, leaving about 2 inches between each scoopful. They will spread out during cooking but not horrendously.
Bake for 10-12 minutes or until starting to turn golden around the edges.
Leave to cool for a couple of minutes on the baking sheets then remove to a cooling rack.
According to Walter, these cookies will last 2 weeks in an airtight tin. I doubt that they will last that long!

Cocoa Pasta – Experimental Recipe No.1

Cocoa (Pasta) Nibs

Paul and I went Christmas shopping at the weekend to our local shopping “mall”. We figured it would be sensible to go early and avoid large crowds but we forgot that there’s one thing that malls attract at any time of the year and that’s large crowds.  No matter. We had lunch at Yo! Sushi, a rather overrated fast food Sushi Bar that promises far more than it can offer, particularly on a Sunday lunchtime.  Our fast sushi was followed rather curiously by some Krispy Kreme donuts which do not taste the same over here as they do in the US. Why is that?

Anyway, to cut a long, tedious story slightly shorter, we popped into Hotel Chocolat. I am already a member of their tasting club and often spend many a lustful lunch hour drooling over their expensive looking chocolates, which are actually quite reasonably priced, considering their admirable ethical policies, which can often price other chocolate brands out of the “normal” buyers market.

After 10 minutes spent running around like a child in a candy store (that would be an oversized grown up in a posh chocolate store then), we purchased a gift for one of Paul’s employees, an advent calendar for me and several of their mini slabs of chocolate. At this point, Paul is trying frantically to usher me over to the cashier when I spot a selection of rather unusual cooking ingredients. Chocolate Balsamic Vinegar? Cocoa Pasta? Cocoa Bean and Chilli Olive oil? These guys really are putting their neck out selling this kind of artisinal (read: slow selling) ingredient.Never did this seem truer than when the cashier asked me to let him know how the pasta tastes as they “don’t seem to sell a lot of it”.

So, I picked up a packet of the cocoa pasta, intruiged by its rich colour and £5.00 price tag (possibly what puts other customers off). Would it really taste of cocoa or just dye all my other food brown? I couldn’t wait to try it and find out.

I was tempted with a savoury sauce but Paul wanted Macaroni Cheese for tea. OK, so we’ll have Macaroni Cheese followed by Cocoa Pasta Pudding for dessert.

He set to work on the Mac and Cheese and I pondered the Chocolate Pasta sitting in front of me. I have always had a soft spot for my mum’s baked Macaroni Pudding which is a derivition of Rice Pudding, which is to say, rice (or pasta) baked in milk with sugar in the oven over a low heat. Sounds plain and I suppose it is, but it’s good plain. Comforting, nursery food.

So, to keep things simple (and dodge the flying pans and flecks of grated cheese as Paul prepared his meal), I simply poured the dried Cocoa Pasta into a baking dish and covered it with a mixture of cream and milk, then sprinkled it with some soft brown sugar. I cooked it in the oven at a low temperature (150c) and checked after 30 minutes to see if it needed any more milk. It did.

After a little while in the oven, the kitchen was filled with a rich aroma of chocolate. Imagine if you were baking a chocolate cake – this is exactly how the pasta smells. Intruiged at how deeply chocolately it promised to be, I managed to eat a large plateful of Mac N Cheese and then wondered at how I could possibly eat yet another pasta dish that night.

But in the spirit of the experiment, I managed to dish some up and try it. As you can see from the picture below, it looks a little gruesome, a little gungy and a lot unappetising (and this was one of the better shots of it), and I felt that it needed an extra chocolatey hit to make it “pop!” flavourwise, so I added a sprinkling of choco-caramel chips and these melted quite delectably over the pasta, adding a further dimension to the dish.

My opinion of the pasta served as a pudding is somewhat mixed. The pasta didn’t taste strongly enough of the cocoa to flavour the dish discernably and this was my reasoning behind using a fairly bland, creamy sauce. I wanted to taste the pasta and to be knocked out by it. Unfortunately this didn’t happen. However, I suspect that it may work better with a spicy tomato sauce, something that the cocoa can enhance rather than be the main ingredient.

So, stay tuned for Part 2 of our Cocoa Pasta Experiment – The Savoury Course and, if you’ve tried Cocoa Pasta, I’d love to know what you thought of it and how you prepared it!

Cocoa Pasta is available via Mail Order or instore from Hotel Chocolat.

Our First Meme!

We have been tagged for our first Meme, entitled The Commenters Meme. Gemma at Dressing for Dinner tagged us, being one of her last 10 commenters. This is a great idea for a Meme as it connects us to the people that keep us going – that is to say YOU, dear readers!!

We Don't Drink This Kind of Meme Anymore!

Anyway, without further ado, here’s the lowdown.

10 Blogs, 15 Questions.

The Blogs:

1. Joey at 80 Breakfasts

2. Foong at the Food Site

3. Nazarina at Giddy Gastronome

4. Reeni and Cinnamon, Spice and Everything

5. Jessie at the Hungry Mouse

6. Gera at Sweets Foods

7. Lydia at the Perfect Pantry

8. TW Barritt at Culinary Types

9. Megan at Megans Munchies

10. Barbara at Barbara Bakes

The Questions:

1: What is your favourite post from number 3’s blog?

Without a doubt the post that got me hooked was Nazarina’s Hallowe’en post. Check out her Chocolate Martini Glasses – they have to be seen to be believed!

2. Has number 10 taken any pictures that have moved you?

Barbara’s lovely photos and post from her daughter’s wedding day was a very touching post!

3. Does number 6 reply to comments on their blog?

Except the Spam ones!

4. Which part of blogland is number 2 from?

Foong is from Penang, Malaysia and is constantly making me hungry with her delicious posts on the local specialities!

5. If you could give one piece of advice to number 7 what would it be?

I wouldn’t be so presumptious, although Lydia has given me much helpful advice on setting up a blog.

6. Have you ever tried something from number 9’s blog?

Not yet although her Espresso Choc-Chip Scones look very tempting!

7. Has number 1 blogged something that inspired you?

Joey is constantly inspiring with her beautiful photography and her organic food drive!

8. How often do you comment on number 4’s blog?

Probably the same as everyone elses, which is to say not enough!

9. Do you wait for number 8 to post excitedly?

I do! Have you checked out their Watermelon Cake? It was life changing!

10. How did number 5’s blog change your life?

She was one of the Cocoa Lounge’s first Stumble “friends!”

11. Do you know any of the 10 bloggers in person?

Nope. We’re all on different continents!

12. Do any of your 10 bloggers know each other in person?

Not sure?

13. Out of the 10, which updates more frequently?

It’s a close thing between Jessie and Foong I think. Both are avid bloggers!

14. Which of the 10 keep you laughing?

TW Barritt often makes me chuckle with his witty posts.

15. Which of the 10 has made you cry (good or bad tears)?

I had a tear in my eye when Joey from 80 Breakfasts left a sweet comment about finding out about our new blog!

OK, so it’s now over to the above mentioned 10 to carry on the meme! Good Luck!

And Is There Such a Thing as a Healthy Chocolate Cake?

“What’s that? A healthy Chocolate Cake?” I hear you gasp. Well, yes and no. It has no butter in it, so you’re already losing the fat element. It has banana, of course, which we all know is really good for you (high in potassium which is great for regulating blood pressure and the function of the heart, not to mention they’re incredibly soothing if you suffer from mouth ulcers), and it has Malt Extract. Whilst this may seem like an extravagance, Malt Extract not only tastes fantastic but it is a useful daily supplement due to it’s abundance of Vitamin B. And it has the most amazing affinity with chocolate (It is also a slow digesting sweetner which is better for people with issues with sugar. But mostly, it just tastes fantastic. Fans of Maltesers/Malt Balls will be nodding in vociferous encouragment). A further incentive for buying some Malt Extract: if added to bread dough, it gives a wonderful flavour.

Furthermore, the cake uses unrefined Demerara Sugar which is a slightly more natural sugar and gives a wonderful caramel-like taste to anything it touches. The chocolate element is a low-sugar cocoa. I used Green and Blacks Organic Cocoa Powder which has a richer taste than say Cadburys Cocoa Powder (although Cadburys powder has a milk chocolate taste which some people may prefer). This dark as coal dust Cocoa has rich, almost smoky taste, deeply chocolately and definitely for the grown ups.
The icing is also a healthier option, just water, icing sugar and more cocoa powder. None of that sticky, unctuous butter icing for this cake. Water Icing always reminds me of my Grandmother who used to ice her Fairy Cakes with it. Most bakeries over here still use it on their iced buns, Belgian Buns etc. It is a much more economical option too.

Anyway, a cake that tastes this moist, this chocolately and this banana-ry doesn’t need any other fripperies.
And because it is so simple to make – literally a pour and stir cake – children interested in cooking would also have lots of fun joining in, mashing the banana and getting all gooped up from the malt and syrup. You could even convert this into little cupcakes instead and if you’re feeling really artistic, make some marzipan bananas!

So, if you fancy making a healthy, slightly lower-fat than usual chocolate banana cake, here’s the recipe:

CHOCO-BANANA CAKE
Ingredients:
CAKE
2 Bananas, mashed well
225g Self-Raising Flour OR 225g Plain Flour with 1 teaspoon Baking Powder
3 Tablespoons Good Quality Cocoa Powder, preferably organic
115g Light Muscovado Sugar
2 Tablespoons Malt Extract
2 Tablespoons Golden Syrup (or Corn Syrup)
2 Eggs
4 Tablespoons Skimmed Milk
4 Tablespoons Sunflower Oil or similar non-flavoured vegetable oil
ICING:
6oz Icing Sugar, sifted
5 Teaspoons Cocoa Powder, sifted
Warm water to mix
METHOD:

Grease and line an 8″ Deep Cake Tin.
Preheat oven to 160c.
Sift the flour and cocoa into a large mixing bowl. Stir in the sugar, making sure they are well combined.
Make a well in the middle and add all the other cake ingredients. Stir well to combine and pour into your prepared cake tin.
Bake for between 50 minutes to 1 hour, depending on your oven. A palate knife should come out mostly clean but will still have a little sticky cake crumb sticking to it. This is a moist cake.
Leave to cool on a rack.
Once cool, you can make the icing.
Sieve together the icing sugar and cocoa then, using a fork, whisk in a tablespoon of water at a time, until it forms a thick, dark, glossy paste.
Spread over the top of the cake. Decorate as you wish, with some sliced bananas if you are planning to eat it all the same day or some marzipan fruits.

Healthy Chocolate Truffles?

To make chocolate healthy pretty much means to  lose what we love most about it: cream, full fat milk, sugar.  What this loosely translates as is chocolate in its most natural form: pods, nibs, cocoa butter, unprocessed cocoa. However, I am always up for a challenge, and having sourced some Cacao Nibs on an unnamed online auction site,  I set to work.

Raw. Like Cacao.

It is no secret that I am a major chocolate fan (you have been reading this blog right?) so I was incredibly excited about trying the nibs. I had read such wonderful things about their health properties but more importantly (to me anyway), their taste!
When they did turn up, I opened the packaging and deeply inhaled the rich, earthy smell, more redolent of purest cocoa powder than chocolate bars. The nibs themselves resemble tiny wood chips and their texture is not far off wood either (not that I am a secret wood nibbler though). Taste wise they are much like a very high cocoa content chocolate: the flavour doesn’t come through straight away, but gets stronger as it melts and the taste lingers on your tongue. There is a slight smokiness to the nibs and they leave a not too unpleasant bitter taste in the mouth.
In this most purest of form, they are apparently a great aphrodisiac, one of the greatest sources of anti-oxidants and are supposedly good for boosting your mood. I can’t vouch too much for any of these claims but what I can wholeheartedly confirm is their intensely delicious taste when cooked or mixed with a natural sweetener.
In preparation for the experiment, I bought a book called Naked Chocolate written by superfood junkies, David Woolfe and Shazzie (no surname), who take every opportunity to extole the virtues of cacao nibs, blue sea algae and all manner of revolting sounding ‘foods’. Whilst I don’t buy into their hippy ethos of pure living through the consumption of raw foods, I am, if nothing else, always up for trying new and unusual ingredients. Generally I would not use the recipes listed in their book; for one, most of the ingredients are not your usual store cupboard staples (Optimum Source Chlorella, anyone?) and therefore they are extremely limiting, but I also enjoy trying to utilise unusual ingredients into ‘normal’ recipes such as cookies, or even chilli. I think it’s important as a cook to familiarise yourself with recherche ingredients, and to use them in everyday recipes is the best way of achieving this familiarity.
The truffles are an adaptation of a recipe taken from the Naked Chocolate book. In fact, an amalgamation of two recipes: their truffle recipe and their chocolate sauce recipe which forms the base of many other recipes.
I made the sauce several nights ago, being not entirely sure what I was going to do with it. I was planning on making a tart or maybe some muffins but eschewed those in favour of truffles. Also, truffles exude an air of luxury, something we could do with during these lean times!
As I mentioned, they are made using a simple combination of nibs, vanilla, dates (which add natural sweetness and moistness) and sesame seeds (which add texture and give longevity to the truffles) and take no longer than five minutes from start to finish, unlike dairy truffles, which are made with fresh cream and have to chill in the fridge before you can form them. Therefore, it is feasible that you can be sitting down, bowl of truffles on your lap, watching reruns of Millennium before the craving has barely kicked in. I like this kind of cooking!
I admit that I felt a pang of dubiousness when I read the ingredients; would these taste like some mealy-mouthed, flavourless vegan substitute for rich, dairy truffles? Far from it. Whilst the texture is unlike that of creamy truffles, these have a grainy bite that is not at all unpleasant. They feel and taste substantial, and the pure caffeine in the nibs gives you a great sense of well-being. They are an instant good mood hit. The sesame seeds add a nutty flavour that is particularly tasty, and, when rolled in some deep, dark cocoa powder, they really taste sensational.
Remember though that I still had some of the chocolate sauce leftover in the fridge (we scooped some of it out with our fingers every time we visited the fridge) and because I had deep concerns about the dry texture of the truffles, I added what was left of the sauce to the final mixture. I am not certain that the final recipe required this so I am just going to give you the basic four ingredient recipe. However, if you find that the truffle mixture is a little too dry, or not sweet enough, I would suggest adding a drizzle of Agave Syrup or honey and a few drops of unflavoured vegetable oil. Remember that the nibs have no additives so may well need some lubricant.
CACAO NIB TRUFFLES – makes 12-14 depending on size
Ingredients:
Half Cup Cacao Nibs
Half Cup Sesame Seeds
Half Cup Dates
1 Teaspoon Vanilla Extract
Some Agave Syrup or Honey to taste
Few drops of Vegetable Oil
Cocoa Powder, Sesame seeds, icing sugar for rolling
METHOD:
In a coffee grinder, blend the nibs and sesame seeds until they form a dry, crumbly mixture. It will not be smooth, rather it will be quite pleasantly textured.
In a blender, whizz up the dates until finely processed. Depending on the age of the dates (mine were old and dried out that they resembled boot leather), they may take longer to process.
Add the nib/sesame seed mixture and process until combined.
Taste for sweetness and add some agave or honey. Process and taste again. If the mixture is still very dry (which it shouldn’t be at this point), you can add a little of the vegetable oil.
Pour the mixture out into a dish and press down with the back of a wooden spoon to form a firm block.
You can now form the mixture into small balls, the size of walnuts, and roll them into some cocoa powder or sesame seeds, depending on your preference.
Options: You could add some rum or kirsch to mixture, omitting the Vanilla Extract, or swap the dates for dried figs or perhaps glace cherries. You could also add some chopped preserved ginger or roll the truffles in some chopped pistachios or hazelnuts.
This recipe comes with a warning: these truffles are seriously delicious!

Our First Award!

We must be doing something right! Foong over at The Food Site has awarded the Cocoa Lounge with the Arte y Pico award for our Chocolate Brownie Cake!

Thanks Foong!

Now, according to Foong’s post, we have to pass this award onto five more food bloggers who have inspired us with their beautiful food – easier said than done! There are so many great food blogs out there, all of them mouthwatering but here goes…

1) Marilyn at Simmer til Done for her gorgeous take on Banoffi Pie, You Say Banoffi, I say Banoffee

2) Jessie at the Hungry Mouse with her jaw-dropping Hallowe’en Bento Box

3) Kelly-Jane with Nigella’s Christmas Bon Bons over at Cooking the Books

4) TW Barritt at Culinary Types with his mouthwatering Paella

5) Kang at London Eater with his diet-busting posh-burger bar review

Now, I imagine that some of you five will have already had awards given to you as these things have a sort of chain-mail scenario going on wit them. However, the rules for accepting the award, should you wish to, are as follows:

• Pick 5 blogs that you consider deserve this award, creativity, design, interesting material, and also contributes to the blogger community, no matter of language.

• Advertise name of the author and also a link to his or her blog to be visited by everyone.

• Each award-winner, has to show the award and put the name and link to the blog that has given her or him the award itself.

• Award-winner and the one who has given the prize have to show the link of “Arte y pico” blog, so everyone will know the origin of this award.

• Share these rules

So, once again thanks for Foong for the award!!

Chocolate of the World – Finland

Finland - Surprising Contender for World's Best Tasting Milk Chocolate

For most of us, chocolate is a comforting food. We turn to it when we’re feeling low, we eat it during periods of celebration. A simple candy bar (as can any food. My husband is transported to Fridays in 1970s LaCrosse when he eats McDonalds Filet o’Fish) can transport us back to our childhood, a more simple time when we were so much more easily pleased and our expectations were much lower (and people expected less of us too!).

It is true though that as we grow older, our palate changes and we demand more of the foods we eat. We prefer steak to hamburger, savoury foods to sweet and salad to crisps. Likewise, the chocolate aficionado will choose a more exclusive brand of chocolate to the cheaper candy bars, often settling for a specific cocoa content and blend that is pleasurable on the tongue. Paradoxically, the chocolate lover will try bar after bar, always looking for the chocolate nirvana. Inevitably and perhaps most excitingly of all, we will never find that perfect bar but we will have a tonne of fun searching for it!

My own favourite type of chocolate to eat is a milk chocolate of around 40-50% cocoa content. It is probably frowned upon by professional chocolate eaters to enjoy milk chocolate but I enjoy its warming flavours, sometimes spicy, sometimes creamy, always delectable.

And because I’m always looking for the next great bar, I spend a lot of time surfing the net looking for unusual bars from around the world. Just this week alone I have eaten chocolate from South Africa, Switzerland, Germany, France, UK and Finland.

Sorry? Finland?

That’s right, our Nordic friends the Finnish seem to be keeping one of the best kept choco-secrets in the world: their chocolate is ace.

Karl Fazer has been producing Finland’s biggest selling range of chocolate since the 1920s, still using the same recipe for their famous blue label bar. Such is the popularity and power of Fazer chocolate that in 2001 they became Finland’s first registered colour trademark, meaning that no one else can sell chocolate products in blue packaging.

Fazer's Red Label Chocolate

This might all sound a little pompous but the Fazer take this honour with pride and with good reason. 7.5 million kilograms of Fazer chocolate is produced yearly and they hold 65% of the chocolate market. More than that though, their chocolate is just delicious.

It is produced using excellent cocoa beans and a finely tuned production process and, as they state on their website, they are the only Finnish chocolate manufacturers using fresh milk instead of milk powder. The finished product is a full bodied, rich chocolate that tastes deeply of cocoa. It is a true eating chocolate in every sense, a milk chocolate for the grown-ups.

To please the more discerning palate, Fazer are now branching out into the 70% cocoa range, and whilst they are not quite dabbling in Single-Origin bars, the flavour of these bars is enough to warrant a second (or third) tasting.

Unfortunately for us Brits, unless you visit Finland (certainly worth a thought) or have Finnish friends, the only place we can find Fazer chocolate is on online auction sites where it is quite expensive. However, for the true chocoholic, it is well worth sourcing if only for a special treat.

Chocolate Brownie Cake

So I’m cooking lunch for my mum and, at 10.30am the same morning she asks me what we’re having:

Mum: “Meat?”

Me: “No.”

Mum: {pleading voice} “Not vegetarian?!”

Me: “No.”

Mum: “So…it must be fish?”

Me: “Yes, yes it’s fish”

Mum: “Oh. So have you made a big dessert then?”

Me: “No. Did you want dessert?”

Mum: “Well, fish isn’t very filling and if it’s a fish dish I haven’t had before, I probably won’t like it.” Me: “So you want dessert so fill up on. Just in case?”

Mum: “Well, you do write for this chocolate blog now so it might make sense to give yourself something to write about. Pleeeeease?”

End of telephone conversation.

I suppose I should be offended really but I’m used to my family’s complete and utter fear of what they see as my maverick style of cooking. And all because I’ve cooked maybe 3 or 4 really dud dishes over the last 10 years. And I think that’s pretty good odds myself.

But, I like a challenge so I start rustling around my cookbooks. Paul suggests the 30 minutes chocolate puddings but I don’t want any extemporaneous faff when I get to my mums so I find this perfect recipe, ironically in a cookbook that my mother bought me for my birthday, called Good Food 101 Chocolate Treats: Chocolate Brownie Cake.

Yes, it’s a Brownie baked in a cake tin but it’s more than that. It is fast. All the sugars, chocolate and butter and melted together in a saucepan and then your flour, cocoa and baking powders are stirred in. Almost like your American Dump Cake. Not only is it fast and easy, it is incredibly rich and delicious. I think this could be alluded to the additions of Golden Syrup and cocoa powder, not generally used in traditional brownies.

Anyway, I baked the Chocolate Brownie Cake and was thrilled to see it had the traditional ooey, gooey middle and rich, deep flavour.

We served it with some single cream and raspberries (Paul had vanilla ice cream but then, he is American). Mother was pleased. Oh, and she said the fish dish was filling too…

CHOCOLATE BROWNIE CAKE – serves 6-8

Ingredients:

100g Butter

175g Caster Sugar

75g Muscovado Sugar (light)

125g Good Quality Dark Chocolate, chopped

1 Tbsp Golden Syrup

2 Large Eggs, beaten

1 Tsp Vanilla Extract

100g Plain Flour

½ Tsp Baking Powder

2 Tbsp Cocoa Powder

METHOD:

Preheat oven to 180c.

Line an 8” Cake tin.

In a large saucepan, gently melt together the chocolate, butter, golden syrup and sugars until the mixture is amalgamated and quite smooth.

Remove from heat, beat in the eggs and vanilla and sift in the flour, baking powder and cocoa powder. Stir thoroughly and pour into your prepared cake tin.

Bake for 25-30 minutes (mine took 28 minutes).

Leave to cool in the tin for at least 15 minutes, then cut into slices and serve with cream, ice cream or crème fraiche and some fresh fruit.

Sweet Dreams Traditional Sweet Shop

It seems that the days of the corner shop are fading into obscurity. Supermarkets can supply the time-pushed shopper with everything, all under one roof.

However, is this a smart way to shop? The days of my childhood were mostly spent reading but I did look forward to a visit to the local sweet shop where I would buy a quarter of Butterscotch sweets and red shoelaces. As I got older, I, like so many other children, got sucked into collecting bubblegum cards. My favourite were Garbage Pail Kids and regular readers of this blog and our last one will probably find this of no great surprise.

But as the supermarkets grew bigger, these smaller shops became pushed out, made redundant. They couldn’t compete with the low prices being offered in larger stores.  This is a reflection of our faster, one-stop lifestyles, aptly implemented with fast food chains and internet shopping too.
The days of looking forward to visiting the local sweet shop seemed like they were over, but the tide is turning.

Only recently, whilst (I admit it) surfing a well-known internet auction site, I came across a shop selling all the penny sweets I had once loved as a child, but, of more interest to me now, a variety of chocolate bars that are difficult to source. The most startling discovery of all? This shop is not just a cyber-shop with a favicon as its shop front but is an actual living, breathing, functioning sweet shop by the sea-side in Great Yarmouth.

Sweet Dreams Traditional Sweet Shop is just that: old fashioned and sweet. Just how all sweet shops should be. So the external décor isn’t quite reminiscent of the sweet shops of Dickensian times but these days customers (notably children) are lured in by colourful signs and the promise of more colour and excitement inside. And besides, the myriad colours of the jars, filled to the brim of sweets, candys, sherberts and liquorice are enough to make the most anti-sugar person melt.

Sweet Dreams Traditional Sweet Shop was opened by Patricia, Nigel and Andrew on the 9^th March 2005 and have recently opened up their cybershop too, providing almost every sweet you can remember from your childhood (and some you can’t), they also cater for the diabetic or person watching their sugar which is thoughtful. And, if you wanted to bring back a gift from your trip to Great Yarmouth, they have a vast selection of Swiss Lindt and British Beeches chocolates, along with Britain’s other well kept chocolate secret, Caleys. In effect, what Patricia, Nigel and Andrew are doing is keeping other British industries going, as well as bolstering the smaller, specialists businesses.

So, next time you visit Great Yarmouth, make sure to pop into Sweet Dreams Traditional Sweet Shop, buy a bag of penny sweets for yourself and a box of chocolates to take home and find yourself revelling in a childhood dream brought to life. And if you can’t get to Great Yarmouth, maybe you can find a traditional sweet shop closer to home (and let me know where they are!!).