Category: Snack

Coffee and Caramelised White Chocolate Cookies

Coffee and Caramelised White Chocolate Cookies

So last week I did a post on how to make yourself some delicious caramelised white chocolate – now it’s time to know how to use this ingredient in your baking! These cookies are really easy to make and can be frozen as a dough, so you can make a huge batch and then just bake them as and when you want so you always have fresh cookies! (And who doesn’t always want fresh cookies?) If you’re a bit short on time you don’t have to use caramelised white chocolate, this also works really well with normal white chocolate. That said, I would recommend giving the caramelising process a go if you can because it brings a new flavour dynamic which is well worth the effort!

In other news I’ve just moved into my student house for the year which is really exciting because I now have a gorgeous kitchen to cook in all year round! It’s gonna take a little while to find my bearings and get everything sorted, but hopefully I’ll soon start getting out some content from there so keep an eye out for that – and as always any requests just throw them my way!

Recipe

Makes 12

Time: 2 hours (plus chilling time)

Ingredients

  • 170g White chocolate (30-32% cocoa solids), roughly chopped
  • 105g Unsalted butter
  • 1 ½ tbsp Instant coffee granules
  • 200g Plain flour
  • 1/2 tsp Salt
  • ½ tsp Baking powder
  • ¼ tsp Baking soda
  • 100g Light brown sugar
  • 75g Caster sugar
  • 1 Large egg
  • 1 Large egg yolk
  • 1 tsp Vanilla bean paste (or vanilla extract)
  • Flaked sea salt, for sprinkling

Method

  1. Begin by making the caramelised white chocolate. Pre-heat the oven to 120˚C. Spread the roughly chopped white chocolate on a shallow baking tray lined with baking paper and put it into the oven for around 10 minutes.
  2. Take the tray out, stir the white chocolate with a spatula until evenly mixed and then put it back into the oven. Repeat this mixing every 10 minutes for the next 30-50 minutes until golden and caramelised.
  3. Leave the caramelised chocolate to set on the baking paper. (It can then be wrapped in baking paper and stored like this for up to 2 months if you don’t want to use it straight away).
  4. Now start making the cookies. Put the butter into a small pan and melt it gently over a medium heat. Once melted add the coffee and stir until dissolved. Then leave this to one side until needed.
  5. Next mix the flour, salt, baking powder, and baking soda in a bowl.
  6. In a separate bowl whisk together the butter, sugars, egg, egg yolk and vanilla until fully combined. Add the flour mixture to these wet ingredients and stir with a wooden spoon until a smooth dough starts to form.
  7. Break the caramelised white chocolate into pieces and add it to the dough.  Then mix everything together until the dough is smooth and the chocolate is incorporated. Wrap the dough in cling film and then leave it to chill in the fridge for at least 4 hours.
  8. Pre-heat the oven to 180˚C and line a couple of baking trays with baking paper.
  9. Roll the dough into 60g balls and place them on the lined baking trays, making sure they’re spaced out by a couple of inches to prevent them from spreading into each other during baking.
  10. Sprinkle the cookies with a little sea salt and then bake in the oven for 15-18 minutes until golden brown and starting to crisp around the edges. Leave the cookies to cool for 10 minutes before transferring them to a wire rack to cool completely. These will keep in an air-tight container for up to 5 days. Enjoy!

Thanks for reading!

Emma x

 

Apple Pancakes

Apple Pancakes

Stress. Yup, stress is officially the key work of the week. Everything’s blowing up a bit atm but we’re getting through it with the help of some amazing friends and (as always) lots of food. This recipe takes me back to the chilled few days when I was down in Devon walking the south west coastal path last month. We didn’t have access to big shops with lots of ingredients so instead I made simple dishes like these sweet apple pancakes with Greek yogurt.

My opinion of healthy pancakes fluctuates regularly. Some days I think they’re the key to all healthy eating and God’s gift to sweet toothed brunchers, and on other days I really can’t see the point as they essentially just take the best bits out of the pancake and replace them with ingredients more closely resembling gravel. That said these do have the element of feeling a little healthy due to the apple floating through the batter and make a great semi-low-sugar brunch to get your day started.

Recipes

Serves 2

Time: 15 minutes

Ingredients

  • 40g Self raising flour
  • 1 Egg
  • 20ml Milk
  • 1 tsp Brown sugar
  • ½ tsp Ground cinnamon
  • 1 Green apple
  • 1 Red apple
  • 1 Cal oil spray (or 1/2 tsp Sunflower oil)
  • 2 tbsp Greek yogurt to serve
  • 2 tbsp Maple syrup to serve (optional)

Method

  1.  Put the self raising flour into a bowl and make a well in the middle. Break in the egg and mix together. Then pour in the milk a litttle at a time to get a runny batter.
  2. Add the sugar and cinnamon to the mixture and stir these in. Then grate the apples into the batter and stir to combine (you can leave the skin on the apples to grate them if you want).
  3. Put a little oil into a large pan and use it to grease it. Then place it over a medium heat and leave for about a minute to warm up.
  4. Spoon blobs of the batter onto the pan (I got about 3 at once in mine) and fry until you can see the underside starting to cook through. Flip the pancakes over with a fish slice and fry again until golden brown.
  5. Put the cooked pancakes on a plate to one side and repeat with the rest of the batter. Serve warm with Greek yogurt and a little maple syrup.

Thanks for reading!

Emma x

Almond, Apricot and Ginger Bars

Almond, Apricot and Ginger Bars

There’s something beautifully ironic about writers block becoming the key topic I seem to be writing about on here. For the past 3 weeks my tongue’s been as tied as my headphones after a day of being in the bottom of my bag and there’s no sign of that changing. Maybe it’s because life has taken over a bit recently, but there are very few things I can think of to say about snack bars.  It actually feels pretty inane to talk about a recipe through a long, sensual description in order to encourage you guys to make it anyway. Of course I can see the general point of it all, but when ice caps are melting, plastic is flooding the ocean, and God knows what is going on in my brain right now I’m just going to leave it at the classic: these are pretty tasty and pretty easy to make – so I’d recommend making them!

(Also small side point: since leaving veganuary I’ve decided to return to the land of vegetarianism and refined sugar-free-ness. That’s one of the reasons I love these so much – if you make them without the icing they’re 100% refined sugar free, and so even though they’re really sweet (and probably aren’t that good for you) they make a great treat whilst on this diet!)

Recipe

Serves 16

Time: 10 minutes, plus cooking time

Ingredients

  • 7 tbsp Unsalted butter
  • 155g Ground almonds
  • 200g Flaked almonds
  • 3 tsp Ground ginger
  • 130g Runny honey
  • 75g Dried apricots, roughly chopped
  • 1 Large egg
  • A large pinch of salt
  • 100g Icing sugar

Method

  1. Pre-heat the oven to 180˚C. Line a 25cm square tin with butter and baking paper.
  2. Melt the butter in a small pan. Put the almonds into a bowl with the ginger, honey, chopped dried apricots and egg, and then pour in the butter.
  3. Mix until everything is combined and then pour into the tin and smooth over to make an even layer. Bake in the oven for 15-20 minutes until starting to go golden brown. Leave to cool whilst you make the icing.
  4. Put the icing sugar and ½ tsp water into a bowl and mix together to make a pourable icing. If you need more water add a little bit at a time until perfect.
  5. Drizzle the icing over the tray bake, slice into 16 squares and serve!

Thanks for reading!

Emma x

Hangover Breakfast

Hangover Breakfast

Pretty much everyone who knows me knows that I’m really not a heavy drinker. I’m that person who’ll maybe have a cider at the start of a party but that’s about it, and completely forget about clubbing when it comes to me. So it might seem a bit weird that I’ve got a go-to hangover breakfast, but alas there is a reason. I’ve just started Uni (as of yesterday!) so it’s fresher’s week for me and as most of my friends are now uni-based I thought a hangover breakfast might be useful for all you guys who are planning on turning into the walking dead this week. I hope this helps with any upcoming hangovers, but it can’t solve everything so please drink responsibly!

Recipe

Serves 1

Time: 10 minutes

Ingredients

  • 2 Rashers of bacon
  • 2 Slices white bread
  • 1 Large egg
  • 35g Cheddar cheese, grated
  • 1/2 Beef tomato
  • A handful of salad leaves (I went for baby spinach)

Method

  1. Put a frying pan over a medium heat and fry the bacon until crispy all over. Take the bacon out of the pan and set to one side for later.
  2. Next take one of the slices of bread and fry it in the pan with the bacon grease for a couple of minutes until it’s toasted.
  3. Take a 7cm round cookie cutter (or just cut a hole with a knife) and punch out a circle in the other slice of bread. (You can eat or discard the circle you’ve just cut out).
  4. Put this slice of bread into the pan and crack the egg into the hole you cut out. Fry for 3-4 minutes, until the egg white has cooked all the way through and is opaque.
  5. Sprinkle the cheese around the edge of the bread and fry for another 1-2 minutes until the cheese starts to melt.
  6. Meanwhile slice the beef tomato and arrange it over the bottom slice of bread (the one without the egg on it). Then scatter the salad leaves over the tomato and top with the slices of crispy bacon. Finish by putting the slice of bread with the egg in it on top and enjoy!

Thanks for reading!

Emma x

Frozen Smoothie Bowl

Frozen Smoothie Bowl

There’s this new food trend (new in the sense I’ve only known about it for a couple of months, but it’s probably been around for centuries) called ‘smoothie bowls’. These are basically smoothies, often made with frozen fruit, then topped off with all kinds of healthy nuts, seeds and fruit to make them look really pretty. For a long time now I’ve been looking for ways to make my diet healthier as I’ve been living off my bakes and comfort food for way too long, so here’s the new nutritious side of my food.

These bowls are great because you can get all kinds of frozen fruit all year round and it’s way cheaper than fresh fruit so you can have vitamin-packed fruity bowls for breakfast whenever you want! Like with all smoothies this would also be a great way of using up leftover fruit, so if you’ve got it bung it in. This is also probably the simplest thing I’ve ever made on here, it’s literally two steps and two easy steps at that, so if you’re looking at it and thinking ooo that’s effort, trust me it’s easier than it looks!

Recipe

Serves 2

Time: 15 minutes

Ingredients

For the smoothie

  • 170g Frozen cherries
  • 130g Frozen raspberries
  • 50g Frozen blueberries
  • 3 tbsp Greek yoghurt
  • 1 tbsp Maple syrup (or honey)
  • 1 Banana, peeled

To top (all optional)

  • Handful of Cashew nuts
  • Handful of Ground almonds
  • Handful of Flaked almonds
  • 1 Banana, sliced
  • 50g Dark chocolate, chopped finely

Method

  1. Put all the ingredients for the smoothie into a blender or food processor and whizz together until smooth. You might need to let the fruit defrost a little first so it’ll actually crush up.
  2. Spoon the smoothie into two bowls. Top with the sliced banana, nuts and chocolate. Enjoy!

Thanks for reading!

Emma x