Author: Emma Hawkins
Mocha Torte

Mocha Torte

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It’s coming to the end of term, the end of an era and a bit of a change in mind on my part. I started this blog mainly as a project for myself – I wanted to create recipes and have a place to put them, a catalogue if you will. Then, last summer I decided to also use this as a platform to explore the topic of mental health and mental health awareness. These are areas I’m still interested in exploring and writing about, however I’ve now decided to let it come more naturally. I’m one of those people who when they set their mind to something will do whatever it takes to make it happen, even if it isn’t the best thing for themselves. In this case I was determined to turn out two recipes a week, every week. However, as I’m restricted to cooking in my holidays, because I don’t have the space or time here at uni, I essentially binge-cook in my vac and then post later on. I also eat ALL the cakes, pastries and general sweet things I make during those times, (roughly 2 recipes a day), leading to me having a really bad diet and so on. Needless to say that isn’t a healthy way of living.

Therefore I’ve decided to keep on going, but to just be more relaxed and varied with my posts. Rather than sticking to a strict twice a week schedule I’ll post as and when I feel inspired to do so. I’ll keep blogging my own recipes, but will also write about mental health, my culinary travels and whatever else feels particularly inspiring. In essence this will continue to be The Mindfulness Kitchen, I’ll just be looking after myself a little more which at this point in my life is something I need to be doing. It’s slightly worrying that it’s taken me this long to realise this – but just because you can doesn’t mean you should. Just because you want to do something, feel like you should do something or feel like you can do something it doesn’t mean you should. Take a second to really think about what you’re doing. Take a minute to think about your life choices and ask yourself is this what’s best for me? Of course, beyond that you should think about others and what’s best for them, but you can’t help anyone if you’re in an emotional pothole, so you should first make sure you don’t end up in one!

(On a side note, anyone else made massively peckish by this wonder of a mocha torte?)

Recipe

Serves 16

Time: 1 hour, plus chilling time

Ingredients

For the base

  • 150g Digestive biscuits
  • 75g Unsalted butter, melted

For the filling

  • 260g Dark chocolate
  • 2 tbsp Golden syrup
  • 600ml Double cream
  • 4 tsp Instant coffee granules

To decorate

  • 300ml Double cream
  • 1 tsp Vanilla bean paste
  • A sprinkling of cocoa powder

Method

  1. Grease and line a 20cm round cake tin with butter and baking paper. Now make the base. Crush the biscuits with the back of a rolling pin to make a rough crumb. Then add the melted butter and stir to make a mixture that resembles damp sand.
  2. Spoon the mixture into the lined tin and level it out with the back of a spoon. Leave in the fridge until needed.
  3. Put the chocolate, syrup and ¼ of the cream into a heatproof bowl and place over a pan of gently simmering water. Leave for 15-20 minutes to allow the chocolate to melt. Stir to make the mixture smooth, remove from the heat and leave to cool until just warm.
  4. Pour the rest of the cream into a bowl and add the coffee. Leave to dissolve and then whisk until just starting to thicken but not yet holding peaks.
  5. Fold the cream into the cooled chocolate with a stiff spatula or large metal spoon until the mixture is smooth and completely combined.
  6. Pour the mixture over the biscuit base and leave to set in the fridge for 1-2 hours.
  7. Pour the cream and vanilla for the topping into a large bowl and whisk until soft peaks form. When the base is set dollop this cream on top. Un-mould the dessert and place it on a plate. Then finish with a sprinkling of cocoa powder and serve!

Thanks for reading!

Emma x
Easy Spaghetti Bolognese

Easy Spaghetti Bolognese

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Hello I’m back! It’s been a little while since I last posted anything as I’ve just been through exam season – but now I’m on the other side and ready to start bringing back the recipes. I thought I’d start this new season not with something particularly summer-y (have you seen the weather this past week!) but rather with a full-proof comfort food staple that everyone should know how to make.  A bolognese is such a versatile warming sauce – you can have it with baked potatoes, rice, or pasta, spicy or not spicy, and with any extra veg you want. It’s also easy to make in batches and freeze so it’s the perfect student food for busy times like exam season.

Another reason why I wanted to bring out pasta in this post is because at the end of the month I’ll be off to Italy for several weeks with some friends (yey!) and so I’m gearing myself up for mountains of pasta, pizza, tiramisu and gelato! When over there I’ll be soaking up the culture and art, but first and foremost I’ll be trying to sample as much of the local cuisines as possible so if you have any recommendations for places to go in Rome, Florence and Venice please drop it in the comment box at the end of this post!

Recipe

Serves 4

Time: 45 minutes

Ingredients

For the Bolognese

  • 1 White onion
  • 1 tbsp Olive oil
  • 1 Clove of garlic
  • 2 Carrots
  • 8 Chestnut mushrooms (optional)
  • 400g Minced beef
  • 500g Passata
  • 500ml Beef stock (1 stock cube dissolved in 500ml boiling water)
  • 1 tsp Mixed herbs

To serve

  • Pasta for 4 ( I went for fresh tagliatelle)
  • 100g Cheddar cheese
  • A few leaves of fresh Basil

Method

  1. Chop the top and bottom off the onion. Then peel off the skin and finely chop. Put the oil into a large pan and place it over a medium heat. Add the chopped onion and gently fry for 4-5 minutes until just starting to caramelise.
  2. Meanwhile prep the rest of the veg. Chop the ends off the garlic clove and the carrots. Then peel both. Crush the garlic and set to one side. Then quarter the carrots length-ways and chop into small chunks.
  3. Add the garlic and the carrots to the onions once they’re just starting to colour and fry for 2-3 minutes.
  4. Halve and then roughly chop the mushrooms and then add them to the pan. Fry for another minute and then tip everything into a bowl.
  5. Add the mince into the same pan as what you cooked the veg in. Fry over a medium heat until the meat is browned all over. Add the vegetables back into the pan and then add the passata, beef stock and mixed herbs. Reduce the heat and leave to gently simmer until reduced and rich in flavour (around 25 minutes).
  6. Meanwhile boil the pasta in a pan of boiling the water according to the packet’s instructions.
  7. Season the bolognese with salt and pepper to taste. Drain the pasta and distribute it between your serving dishes. Top with spoonfuls of the bolognese, some grated cheese and fresh basil!

Thanks for reading!

Emma x
Salted Caramel Brownies

Salted Caramel Brownies

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Oki so I have my first exam on Thursday (*insert panicked stress noise*). I’m sure it’ll be fine but I’m still  in a roller coaster state of ‘oh it’ll all work out’ and ‘oh man I have so much work to do!!!’. I guess this isn’t helped by the fact that my levels of motivation have hit rock bottom and I’m currently in a state of perpetual procrastination. So I’m going to leave this post short (again) and try to do some work – little and often right?

(Just as a heads up though – these are great revision snacks! They also work really well with jam or fresh berries in the middle instead of the caramel if you’d rather!)

Recipe

Makes 16 squares

Time: 45 minutes

Ingredients

  • 210ml Vegetable oil
  • 320g Light brown sugar
  • 1 tsp Vanilla extract
  • 4 Medium eggs
  • 80g Cocoa powder (not drinking chocolate, as it has added sugar and less cocoa, and so has much less flavour)
  • 130g Plain flour
  • 50g Milk chocolate, roughly chopped
  • 170g Caramel
  • ½ tsp Salt

Method

  1. Preheat the oven to 170˚C. Line a small, square tin (mine was 20×20 cm) with butter and baking paper.
  2. In a large bowl whisk together the oil, sugar and vanilla. Add the eggs and whisk until fully combined. Add the cocoa and whisk again (go slowly here as the cocoa will go everywhere if whisked too fast). Then add the flour and the chopped chocolate and whisk until fully mixed
  3. Pour half the mixture into the lined tin and smooth out with a spatula.
  4. Mix together the caramel and the salt in a bowl and then blob it over the brownies. Top with blobs of the remaining brownie mixture and then use a knife to swirl the two a little.
  5. Bake the brownies in the oven for 25-35 minutes. Be careful not to over bake here, as you want brownies to be slightly gooey in the middle. If you’re used to baking cakes I’d say take them out 5 minutes before you’d think it’d be ready if you were making a cake.
  6. Cut into 16 squares and serve! (They’re especially good with fresh berries and cream!)

Thanks for reading!

Emma x
Falafel Salad

Falafel Salad

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Oki so I have exams next week and needless to say I’m stressing like crazy so I’m going to keep things simple this week. Say hello to falafel salad…

Recipe

Serves 1

Time: 10 minutes

Ingredients

  • 3 Falafel
  • 1 tbsp Pine nuts
  • A handful of Cherry tomatoes
  • A handful of Mixed salad leaves
  • Hummus to serve

Method

  1. Pre-heat the oven to 180C. Put the falafel into a small roasting tin and warm in the oven for about 5 minutes (or to packet instructions). Add the pine nuts to the tin 1 minute before they come out.
  2. Cut the tomatoes into quarters. Arrange some salad leaves into a bowl and then scatter over the tomato quarters.
  3. Arrange the falafel around the plate, sprinkle over the pine nuts and then serve with hummus!

Thanks for reading!

Emma x
Strawberry Cube

Strawberry Cube

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I was planning on doing a series of strawberry recipes for Wimbledon season as who doesnt love a lil’ month of themed recipes, however as the strawbs are so delish right now I thought why not bring these out early and enjoy strawberry season for longer? First one up is this cute strawberry cube: strawberry bavarois filled with a cream cheese mixture and coated in a red mirror glaze. These look a little fancy, but they’re not that hard to put together, worst comes to worst they might look a little rough around the edges but they’ll still taste great!

When I was little my mum, sister and I would go to this local farm in the summer and do the ‘pick your own’ where you pick up a punnet and fill it with as many strawberries as possible. We’d then live off strawberries for the week, trying to get through them all before they went mouldy. One of my fave treats from back then was my mum’s strawberry ice cream which she’d make from the abundance of fresh strawberries we’d pick. It was always so fresh, zingy and bursting with a really authentic strawberry taste – completely different to the stuff you get in supermarkets. We stopped picking strawberries a few years ago and I haven’t tasted anything like that ice cream until I made these delish cubes. The bavarois is made with real strawberries, so whether you use fresh of frozen ones you end up with a really pure strawberry flavour!

Recipe

Serves 8

Time: 3 hours, plus chilling time

Ingredients

For the Bavarois

  • 250g Frozen strawberries (or fresh if available)
  • 50g Caster sugar
  • 10ml Lemon juice
  • 4 Leaves of gelatin (around 8g)
  • 2 Egg whites
  • 160ml Double cream

For the Cheesecake filling

  • 65g Cream cheese
  • 1 tbsp Smooth strawberry jam (around 15g)

For the Crumble

  • 100g Digestive biscuits
  • 50g Butter

To Decorate

  • 100g White chocolate
  • Green food colouring
  • A few Sesame seeds

For the Mirror glaze

  • 150ml Water
  • 150g Caster sugar
  • 200g Condensed milk
  • 6 Leaves of gelatin
  • 370g White chocolate
  • A few drops of red food colouring

Method

  1. Begin by making the bavarois. Put the strawberries and sugar into a food processor and pulse until smooth.
  2. Fill a small bowl with cold water and soak the gelatin in it for around 5 minutes until soft. Warm the lemon juice in a small pan until just below the boil. Then squeeze the gelatin to remove excess water and put it into the lemon juice to dissolve.
  3. Take a whisk a gently whisk the egg whites and then the cream into soft peaks.
  4. Fold the lemon juice mixture into the strawberry puree. Then fold in the cream, followed by the egg whites until the mixture is smooth.
  5. Pour the mixture into some silicon cube-shaped moulds to fill it up half way. Leave these to set in the fridge for 2 hours.
  6. Now make the cream cheese filling. Mix the cream cheese and jam in a bowl until smooth. Then pipe the mixture into the centre of the set bavarois in a little blob.
  7. Pour the rest of the bavarois over the top of the filling and leave to set for at least 3 hours, or better overnight.
  8. Meanwhile make the crumble. Crush the biscuits in a large bowl with the end of a rolling pin to make a fine crumb. Then melt the butter in a small pan and pour it onto the biscuits. Mix to combine, then set aside until needed.
  9. Now make the chocolate leaves. Gently melt the white chocolate in a glass bowl over a pan of simmering water. Add the green food colouring. Then dip a knife in the chocolate and press it onto a sheet of baking paper to make a leaf shape.
  10. Repeat to make a line of leaves across the sheet of baking paper. Then place the baking paper between two props on either side to make the paper sag in the middle. Leave to set until needed.
  11. When everything is ready make the mirror glaze. Put the water, sugar and condensed milk into a small pan and heat for around 1 minute, until the sugar has dissolved.
  12. Soak the gelatin in a bowl of cold water for around 5 minutes until soft. Then squeeze out the excess water and add the gelatin to the condensed milk mixture and stir to dissolve.
  13. Finely chop the white chocolate and put it into a glass bowl. Then pour the condensed milk mixture over this chocolate. Stir to help the chocolate melt for 3-4 minutes.
  14. Take a hand blender and carefully blend the chocolate into the liquid until smooth. Try to not take the blender too high in the mixture or it will create air bubbles.
  15. Sieve the glaze into a large jug to remove as many bubbles as possible. If there are still bubbles continue to sieve until the mixture is completely smooth.
  16. Add the red colouring to the glaze and then pulse again with the hand blender until smooth and uniform in colour. Set aside, covered in clingfilm, until needed.
  17. When ready turn the bavarois out onto a wire rack with a large tray or baking tin underneath to catch any excess glaze. Make sure the glaze is around 30-35˚C in temperature and then pour it over the bavarois to coat them evenly. Leave to set for 10-15 minutes.
  18. Carefully transfer the bavarois onto your plates. Then sprinkle a little of the biscuit crumb around the base of the bavarois. Carefully place some of the sesame seeds around the edge of the cubes to look like strawberry seeds.
  19. Finally, carefully peel the chocolate leaves off the baking sheet and then place them on the top of the cubes to look like leaves. Enjoy!

Thanks for reading!

Emma x