Milk Chocolate and (runny) Caramel Tart

Now obviously you can spend hours making a cake look good and make it turn out properly.

But that's just boring, I've used this excuse said this before: I need something more! If you want cake perfection you're frankly in the wrong place (try here).

How I measure cakes:
Was it all eaten: Check.
Number of proposals: One.
Number of people who laugh at my efforts: 1,824 and counting (I was number 2, after God butted in with a few wise cracks!)

Obviously, this being mid "summer" in England the temperature was an unbelievable tepid 14C. So you can understand why the caramel was running.

And another thing, I think people who decorate their cakes are insecure. Seriously! I mean covering it in half moons of icing sugar... what are you looking for? Marriage proposals or something??!!

Yep, that is yet more milk chocolate bits in the mousse. I know how to please an audience.

So there it is. No need to pretend to be polite and inquire about the recipe.

Yes, I have spoons... oi! Put the spatula down, there enough for everyone!
Form a QUEUE!

tut... animals...

Mushroom and Beef Pie

You gotta love a good pie. There's a nice bar near us that serves pie with beers from across the globe. the beer was nice, my pies are better :-)

This one is chestnut mushrooms and porcini mushrooms, fried together and then added to the minced, organic beef. I think there's some dried chilli and garlic in there too. No onions since I didn't have any :-) The topping is puff pastry. As you can see the base/gravy came over the top at one point; it all adds to the whole thing in my biased opinion!

It's Cheescake O'Clock

I was given my first dessert cookbook for my birthday recently, all the recipe have chocolate in them!

It's the first weekend and I made two things from it. Shortbread, which takes minutes and is well easy. Anyone could do it...


And this double chocolate cheesecake. Again, easy if you have a spare two hours... and you melt the chocolate for the filling before you let the gelatin in the cream base start to set!!!

Thus the top got a little messy as I tried to even it all out...




There are crushed hazelnuts in the bottom which really added a whole new dimension to the cake. It was supposed to be an toasted oat bottom but I substituted digestive biscuits... and should have used more butter (which was measured in tablespoons in the book??) and of course a little chocolate to help it all bind nicely :-)

The filling was comprised of yoghurt, whipped double cream, a bit of gelatin and some cream cheese. It was split and 175g of white chocolate was added to one half and 175g of dark chocolate to the other half...

Which give a wall of creamy chocolatey goodness at the end!