Love and Fudge

My dear Valentine,

I made you some fudge. It tastes good.

Love,

Stay

Every year I try to make/bake an edible valentine that I'm able to post out to girlfirends. This year I also gave some to some boys - my housemate and my boyfriend. So, I give out a lot of valentines... everyone deserves a little love, right? I had a couple of packets of Love Hearts and knew I wanted to make something with those, and a colleague had recently told me about making fudge with marshmallows. So I did a bit of research, and decided to give it a go. My fudge is based on the recipes here and here, but in the end I left both my phone and my laptop in my bedroom so just ended up winging it. I think it worked!!

Photo by the wonderful Ms Zoe O.

Ingredients:
25g margarine
300g dark brown muscovado sugar
150ml evaporated milk
180g mini marshmallows
300g white chocolate, broken into chunks
Heart shaped sprinkles and love heart sweets, to decorate

Prep time: 10 minutes
Cool time: at least 3 hours
Makes 25 pieces

1. Line a square cake tin with cling film, and put to one side.
2. Place your margarine, sugar and evaporated milk into a large saucepan and stir over a low heat until the margarine has melted and the sugar dissolved. Stop stirring and allow the mixture to come to the boil for 5 minutes.
3. Remove from the heat and add half of the marshmallows to the pan. Fold these into the hot mixture until they have completely melted, then repeat with the remaining marshmallows. Stir in the chocolate until this has melted and the ingredients come together as a smooth, yummy, gloopy mixture. Pour this into the lined brownie tin.
4. Sprinkle on your sprinkles (ha!) then place the love heart sweets message up into the mixture. It doesn't take long for a film to develop on the top of the fudge, so work quickly and just press your sweets onto the fudge lightly so that they stick, but don't sink. Pop your fudge into the fridge for at least 3 hours, but preferably overnight.
5. Using the clingfilm to help you, lift the fudge from the tin and place onto a chopping board. Use a long knife to slice the fudge into squares, using the love heart sweets as a guide. Pro tip when it comes to fudge slicing (seriously, I was taught to slice fudge by the guys at Cambridge Fudge Kitchen) - place your knife against the fudge where you'd like to slice, and press down in a smooth movement. Then, gently slide the knife out of the fudge towards your body. Hey presto, smooth sided fudge!
6. Taste one before sharing with you friends and loved ones. This is a very important step - you need to show yourself some love, too!

Happy Thoughts
x

Sweet Potato Cake

A little while ago whilst browsing recipes online, I came across this recipe for a gluten-free lemon drizzle cake which was made using mashed potato. Yep, mashed potato. I thought it was interesting, so naturally had to give it a go!

My version of the cake used sweet potato and fewer lemons, so the cake ended up with a lovely subtly sweet flavour.  I cheated and used gluten-free flour instead of almonds, but it still worked. I thought the cake was a little dense, but it was very moist and the marshmallow fluff topping just, well, topped it! :-) Needless to say, this one didn’t last long!

Ingredients:
350g sweet potato
200g margarine
200g caster sugar
4 medium eggs
1 lemon
225g self raising flour
1 tub of marshmallow fluff


Prep time: 35-40 minutes
Cook time: 40-45 minutes
Serves: 10-12

1. Peel and dice the sweet potato, then boil it in water for around 10-15 minutes, until soft. Drain and put to one side to cool slightly.
2. Preheat the oven to gas mark 3 (160 degrees) and grease and line a cake tin.
3. Once cooled, tip the potatoes into a large bowl and beat with an electric mixer until smooth.
4. Beat in the margarine and sugar until the mixture is light and fluffy. Add the eggs one at a time, beating between each addition.
5. Zest the lemon, and mix this into the cake batter along with the juice of half of the lemon.
6. Sift and fold in the flour, until the mixture has combined. Pour into the prepare cake tin and level the top. Bake for 40-45 minute, until golden brown and firm to touch. If unsure, just poke a skewer into the centre of the cake - if it comes out clean and dry, you're done!
7. Allow the cake to cool in it's tin for 5-10 minutes before turning out onto a wire rack to cool completely.
8. Once cooled, spread or pipe marshmallow fluff on to the top of the cake.
9. Serve and enjoy!

Happy Thoughts
x

Slimy, Yet Satisfying

Disney Classic # 32 - The Lion King

I've got to be honest... this one wasn't my idea (or creation). Way back in July 2010 when I was first admitted to hospital, Zoe and Mike came to visit me one day, with flowers and a plan. The Disney Night idea was still only a couple of months old, and I hadn't yet thought of ideas for many of the later films, and had been asking my friends to share any ideas they had. Well, on this day in hospital in July, Mike came to me and said he'd been think about his favourite Disney film, The Lion King, and trying to remember scenes in which they eat something. The most memorable scene for Mike was during the Hakuna Matata song, where Timon and Pumba start looking around for grubs to feed Simba.

Mike's idea to transform this into cake was to make a chocolate log, and make a few creepy crawlies to go on/in/under it, which I thought sounded fantastic. So that's what we went with. Mike took the lead on this one, making the chocolate log and adding a few of the crawlies, and I contributed by making a couple of crawlies myself.

My jelly worms were based on an idea I found on this Halloween website back in October, and I got the recipe for marshmallow here. And now I'm going to hand over to Mike...

Chocolate Log

Chocolate Log: I originally came across Delia's recipe for Buche de Noel, which attracted me by its flourless creation and the promise of nutty depth of flavour. Creme de Marrons was unavailable, however, so I resigned myself to making her less special chocolate log, until I realised that a) I didn't have enough chocolate for the recipe and b) there was a jar of nutella right by my hand. So this is a Delia recipe adapated heavily by me to make use of what limited ingredients I had.

Prep Time: 20 mins [60 mins if you lack a whisk]
Cooking Time: 20 mins
Serves: 6, as part of a whole
Ingredients -

For the cake:
6 large eggs, separated
150g caster sugar
75g cocoa powder

For the filling:
100g dark chocolate
2 eggs, separated
200g nutella
50g unsalted butter

First melt the chocolate in a bain marie to avoid over heating. Then add the 2 beaten egg yolks and combine until glossy.

Add nutella at some stage, along with the melted butter. Beat the egg white until stiff and fold into your slightly *cooled* chocolate mixture. Chill.

In the mean time, whisk the eggs yolks in a bowl and then add the caster sugar, whisking until the mixture begins to thicken slightly. Sift in the cocoa powder, and gently but thoroughly fold in the egg whites, having whisked them to soft peaks. Place in a baking tray lined with baking parchment and bake at 180 for 20 minutes. The cake will rise quite a lot, but will fall back, as designed.

After it has cooled, turn it out onto a new square of baking parchment and remove the original baking parchment [note - using foil cause serious issues at this point, I do not recommend]. Spread cooled filling evenly over the surface, then use the parchment to roll the cake into a log shape. Finished! Garnish with various grubs, and use chocolate clusters to suggest leaves, detritus etc around the base.

Marshmallow Grubs

Prep time: 45 mins       Cook time: at least 2 hours to set              Serves: 8
Ingredients:
1 tbsp icing sugar
1 tbsp cornflour
125ml boiling water
pink and yellow food colouring

1tsp vanilla extract
25g gelatine powder
250ml cold water
500g granulated sugar
2 egg whites

1. Mix the icing sugar and cornflour together in a small bowl and put to one side.
2. Add the food colouring to the boiling water as required, and mix in the vanilla extract. Sprinkle the gelatine powder on top and stir until all of the gelatine has dissolved.
3. Put the sugar and 250ml water in a medium sized saucepan over a low heat, stirring until all of the sugar has dissolved. Bring to the boil without stirring until the temperature reaches 122°C. Remove from the heat and stir in the gelatine mixture.
4. 
   Pour the egg whites into a large bowl and beat until stiff. Using an electric mixer on a low speed, carefully pour the sugar syrup into the egg whites. Continue to beat for around 5 minutes, until the mixture becomes thick and pillowy.
5. Dust a sheet of greaseproof paper with the icing sugar/cornflour mixture. Pour roughly 1/4 of the marshmallow mixture along one edge of the greaseproof paper and quickly roll the paper over itself to create a sausage like shape. Tie off both ends with string, and tie string at various intervals along the middle, to create the segments. Repeat with the remaining mixture.
6. Leave to set in a cool place for at least 2 hours (do not refrigerate)
7. Once set, cut the strings and discard them. Rub a little of the icing sugar and cornflour mixture onto your hands, and carefully unroll the greaseproof paper and remove the marshmallow. The marshmallow will be quite sticky in places, so it is a good idea to sprinkle a little of the icing sugar/cornflour mixture over it.
8. To serve, tear chunks off the grubs and enjoy ^_^

Jelly Worms

Prep time: 5 minutes      Cook time: none, but needs to set in the fridge overnight       Serves: 15

Ingredients:
One pack of strawberry jelly
6oz boiling water
2oz milk
green food colouring

1. First thing you will need to do is cut the straws down to match the size of your glass. I used jumbo straws for this, so that my worms were fatter, but any plastic straws work just as well. Cut the straws to be slightly longer than the glass you are using, then stand the straws in the glass. Tip - make sure the straws are really compact as this will help to stop the jelly falling out the bottom of them!
2. Break the jelly into cubes in a jug. Add 6oz of boiling water and stir well until all of the jelly cubes have dissolved. Add the milk and stir well.
3. Stir in a drop of green food colouring, to achieve an earth-wormy type of colour.
4. Carefully pour the jelly mixture into the straws, and place in the fridge to set for at least 3 hours, but preferably overnight.
5. To remove the jelly worms from the straws, hold each straw under the hot tap for a few seconds to loosen the jelly, then squeeze the end of the straw gently to push the jelly out.
6. Place on a plate and serve!

Next time we're watching Pocahontas, and I'll be making a Pumpkin Pie.

Happy Thoughts

x