Chocolate and Date Brownies

Lazy Sunday means baking.  But what to make? I have a huge packet of dates that I bought on offer in Holland and Barrett some time ago, so my first thought was sticky toffee pudding.  However, I would have had to eat it all as Thom doesn't really have a sweet tooth, and they're not really portable to work.
My second thought was some brownies, as I've never made them before.   But what to do about the dates?  I decided to try and incorporate them into the brownies, as I thought they'd add a fudgy texture.  I looked at a few recipes online but as nothing was quite right I made up my own.


Ingredients:
180g margarine
120g dates, chopped
250g demerara sugar
1tsp vanilla extract
250ml soya milk or water
250g flour
1 tsp baking powder
70g cocoa powder
1/2 tsp salt


Method:
Preheat your oven to 180 degrees celsius/350 degrees Fahrenheit, or gas mark 4.
Put the margarine in a small pan on a low heat.  Once it's melted, add the chopped dates and sugar.  Mix well and set aside.

Sift the flour, baking powder, cocoa and salt into a large bowl.

Add the soya milk (or water) to the wet mixture, and combine thoroughly.  Then add the wet ingredients to the dry, bit by bit, mixing well until you have a smooth batter (apart from the dates).

Pour into a greased pan and bake for 25-30 minutes.  

The earlier you take it out, the gooier it will be.

Once cool, cut into cuboids.

Result: I took my brownies out at about 25 minutes or so, and the texture was reasonably chewy/gooey, which apparently is how brownies are supposed to be.  They were good, chocolatey, and very sweet.  I reckon the sugar content could be reduced, and a greater quantity of dates could be used.  They add a sticky texture and a treacly flavour which makes the brownies less homogeneous and more interesting.  I am thinking next time I may try making mocha brownies.

Home-made Blackberry and Apple Jam

Last weekend I went cycling with a friend of mine along the coast to Shoreham and then along a riverbank.  On the way there were loads of brambles and we bemoaned our lack of any collection equipment.

On the way home from work yesterday I stopped off at a farm shop to check out what vegetables they had, coming home with some fresh beetroot, rainbow chard (for which I shall have to look up some recipes), leeks, mangetout, courgette, and a couple of bramley apples.

I got back in the car and was thinking of what I could make with the apples, deciding on a pie.  However, I also remembered all the blackberries that were ripe and for the taking along that riverbank.  As the riverbank was handily on my way home I decided to stop and take a walk.

I ended up with way too many berries for a pie and decided to make jam.  I've not done this since I was about 10, supervised by my mum.  I was worried that it wouldn't set.  Luckily it turns out it's really easy and I am now thinking of branching out into other types of preserve...

Raspberry Swirl Marble Cake

Following the chocolate/vanilla marble cake I decided to pursue the idea of a raspberry marble cake, using fresh raspberries ,which are currently in season in the UK.

I adapted a recipe from VCTOTW: here's what I did:

Ingredients:

1tsp  apple cider vinegar
1 cup soy milk
1/2 cup margarine
1 cup granulated sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 tsp almond extract
1 tbsp cornflour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp fine salt
80g raspberries
1/2 tsp raspberry flavouring
1/2 tsp pink food colouring (optional)

Method:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees fahrenheit, and put 12 pretty cupcake liners into a tin.  I prefer to use a muffin tin rather than the shallower cupcake trays, as that way the cakes don't splay out at all.

Mix the soy milk and vinegar together in a bowl or jug and leave to one side to curdle.
Next, sift the flour and baking powder together into a bowl and mix thoroughly.
In a larger bowl, cream the margarine and sugar until light and fluffy.  It's easiest to use an electric hand whisk here.  Once well-beaten, add the vanilla and almond flavouring, and the cornflour.  Once these are fully mixed in, you need to add the flour and milk.  I did this by first putting a bit of the milk in, mixing, then adding a bit of the flour, mixing, before repeating until all the flour and milk was used up.  This way I minimised the amount of flour and batter that got sprayed around my kitchen.

When everything is fully combined you need to put half of the mixture into a separate bowl so you can make it into raspberry batter.

Press the raspberries into a fine sieve, to get rid of juice (you can drink this later) and stop the batter from becoming too runny.  Once you've pressed as much liquid out as you can, put the seeds and pulp into one half of your batter, along with the raspberry flavourings and colourings.  Mix well to create a baby-pink goo.

Now to fill the liners.  It's best if you have a friend or willing accomplice to help you here.  You need to try and put the vanilla and raspberry mixtures into the liners at the same time, vanilla on one side and raspberry on the other, half and half.

  
Once you've filled the liners, use a skewer or cocktail stick to create a marble effect.  The best way to do this is to insert your skewer towards the edge and then move it clockwise in decreasing circles until you have a nice swirl.

Once you're happy that they're pretty enough, put them in the oven for approximately 24 minutes.

Verdict:  much lighter than the chocolate version - really tasty and possibly one of your five-a-day?

Marble Cake

I have been both lazy and busy of late and have not done any cooking to speak of.  Dinners round ours are too often of the premade variety.  However, a recent expedition to Morocco and a 5-day hospital stay there resulted in my losing some weight. There was only one thing for it: cake.

So I decided to try a new recipe from the VCTOTW book: Marble cakes.  The recipe calls for you to make some vanilla batter, then add some cocoa to half of it.  You then have to spoon both chocolate and vanilla batter into the cupcake cases in the same time, half and half.  Luckily I recruited a cake-eating friend to help with this bit.  You then use a cocktail stick to swirl the batters together a bit.

Result:  pretty cakes.  The vanilla component had a delicious flavour and a light fluffy texture.  However, the chocolate bits were weighed down by the cocoa and were too dense for my liking.







They were still damn tasty and disappeared very quickly....  

...and as a result I've gained back a couple of those pounds...

I am now thinking about coming up with a raspberry swirl variety....watch this space.