Showing posts with label chocolate. Show all posts
Showing posts with label chocolate. Show all posts

Monday, 20 October 2014

Harvest Monday - better than expected

Yep. Autumn is here now. Not much chance of getting on the plot after work anymore as its getting cold and dark sooner and we've got lots of busy weekends in a row (and for the past few weekends). It's all fun stuff but means the plot is a bit neglected (and the house is a tip). I did get nearly 3 hours on the plot yesterday and made a start at clearing the bed I'm going to sow broad beans. Of course I got side tracked many times and didn't seem to finish one job off. I had wanted to clear the bed for garlic too but didn't even make a start on that. Never mind!

And on to the pickings this week:

Thanks to the warm daytimes I've still got some courgettes limping along. The chard is doing ok too.
We were doing some baking for a hen weekend and there was some leftover melted chocolate, so I cracked open a few of my hazelnuts, toasted them and coated in the choc, yum!
Also toasted some flaked almonds and added some sultanas (not home grown!). Brandy snaps in the background made by Jan. I also made cheese and courgette muffins (using my courgette) but forgot to take a pic.
Toms ripening in a paper bag in the kitchen, basil from the lean-to and rocket from the garden.
A lonely pepper from the lean-to.
Headed down to the plot yesterday (Sunday) after coming back from the hen-do. These carrots were a nice surprise. And a couple more courgettes, one was a big 'un! Not sure how I missed this one before the weekend. A happy courgette-face too, although one of the little squashes was brown inside so it ended up in the compost
I had some neglected perpetual spinach that had got out of hand, so cut it right back and picked out the best leaves. Discovered a few missed potatoes when weeding the leeks (that I planted out where the pots had been). Brought back a few onions from the allot shed and cut a teeny bit of broccoli. Also found a small butternut squash and brought it home to ripen. I've now taken up all my winter squash plants as they were all looking very sorry for themselves. It's ironic that the courgettes have out-lived the winter squashes!

And finally, a few more toms ripening slowly in the kitchen. These went into a curry with the big courgette, a couple of carrots and the spinach. Very nice :) If I was being clever I'd have picked one of the chillis from the lean-to and added that as well. What can I say, I'm not clever!

Linking in with Harvest Monday on Daphne's dandelions. Also must apologise for not being very social on people's blogs at the moment, October and early November this year are v busy for me, which is quite unusual!

 

Sunday, 24 August 2014

Chocolate raspberry brownies...

Courtesy of Shaheen at Allotment2Kitchen

This is recipe enticed me as firstly it looked yummy, secondly, we had guests coming round and thirdly, I have lots of raspberries. I didn't have a full bar of dark chocolate so used up some ends of different bars, 85%, 70% and dark chocolate with espresso that gave it an interesting extra twist.
Choc and frozen rasps

I did accidentally use the wrong sugar (granulated instead of caster) and also used frozen raspberries that I didn't have the patience to defrost properly. This meant that the top took longer to cook and so the bottom was a bit over cooked.
Before cooking
Seemed to go down well with our guests anyway and we had second helpings with ice cream (which was handy as I needed freezer space for homemade tomato sauce base).
After cooking! You can see the granules of sugar...this wouldn't have happened if I'd used caster
So maybe if I do it again I'll either defrost the rasps properly or mix them in throughout? I'm not very good at experimenting with sweets, better to follow the excellent recipe! Savoury food I'm a bit better at going off-piste. Anyway thank you Shaheen for a great recipe. We went out for a trip into the countryside today and the last couple of bits went down a treat.

Linking to August's bookmarked recipes at Tinned Tomatoes


Saturday, 2 August 2014

Kalhua and courgette brownie bars

I was having a look at Shaheen's excellent food blog http://allotment2kitchen.blogspot.co.uk the other day and spotted this recipe from 2010 that she's highlighted on her homepage -  http://allotment2kitchen.blogspot.co.uk/2010/07/kahlua-courgette-brownie-bars.html, I just happened to have all the ingredients including an old bottle of Kalhua that had been knocking around for years so decided to give it a go last night....yum!

Kalhua and courgette brownie bars

I haven't got a tray bake tray so did it in a glass oblong dish instead which worked out fine. One slice wasn't enough as a taster and we munched our way through a couple each. Still lots left for the weekend though, phew.

Kalhua and courgette brownie bars
I forgot to give it a Kalhua wash before baking but still turned out quite shiny. Also I don't normally have much caffeine (except for in choc) so probably best not to give it too much Kalhua for me. I did experiment with a bit of a mixture of sugar as we had some odds and ends of packets left, so the sugar was mainly soft light brown, with a bit of muscavado and white granulated and I made sure it was all mixed in as evenly as possible.

So I was quite pleased as don't do much baking usually :)