Today is about the story of two slices which we made recently. If I post about them it is also because we liked them! Both recipes are easy to make. Give them a go!
The roasted almond and chocolate slice
I was looking on the internet for a quick recipe for dessert and I opened a french Facebook group on cooking. There was a post on quick dessert fixes and I found this recipe in the comments. By placing the slice to cool and set with its chocolate topping in the freezer (must be horizontal!), you can have this for dessert! What really makes this recipe work is roasting the almond meal. It brings in so much flavour!
This is a caramel slice with a more complex toping. The recipe is adapted from one in the Magazine Delicious. The toping is dark chocolate with roasted walnuts (that makes them extra-crunchy) and small flakes of salt here and there which explode in your mouth when you don’t expect it! The recipe is HERE.
And while I was preparing those pages today I almost forgot my Gateau Battu which rose and rose and is now baked and cooling down!
These chocolate crackle tops are easy chocolate biscuits to make. They suit all ages, can be used for parties, lunch boxes, morning or afternoon tea or with a simple dessert like yoghurt or stewed apples. This is a recipe perfect for involving the children: mixing, adding ingredients including breaking the eggs, measuring ingredients, forming balls, coating the balls,…
I tried the original version and a version where I removed the cocoa because I was using a strong chocolate and did not see necessary to add the cocoa. Below is the original version and how to apply the variation.
Round 2, icing sugar finely sieved
Makes 35-40
Ingredients
200 g dark cooking chocolate
90 g of butter
115 g of caster sugar
5 ml of vanilla essence
200 g of plain flour
½ tsp of baking powder
Pinch of salt (omit if using salted butter)
25 g cocoa powder
100 – 150 g of icing sugar for coating (see recipe)Tip: Using or not cocoa powder. if you use a chocolate with a high level of cocoa, adding the cocoa will make the biscuits too strong in chocolate. Either use a 50 % cocoa cooking chocolate and the cocoa or if using a 70% chocolate, do not add the cocoa and add one tablespoon of flour (or the dough will be too wet).
Method
Melt chocolate and butter until smooth
Add eggs one at the time, mixing in between each egg
Add sugar
Stir in vanilla essence
Add in at once the flour, baking powder and cocoa powder.
Your dough would be quite soft. Place a plastic film on top and place in the fridge for at least an hour (or a day!). If you have used couverture chocolate, you dough would be fine to use straight away (couverture chocolate crystallise quite quick when cooling down).
Once the dough is hard enough, remove from the fridge. Heat up the oven to 180 deg C. Use an ice-cream spoon or any strong spoon to form walnut size pieces. Roll in a ball. Place a couple tablespoons of icing sugar in a larger bowl and dust the balls all over. Remove any excess by shaking it off.
Place on a baking sheet covered with a baking paper or buttered. Insert in the oven for no more than 10 minutes (between 7 and 10 minutes). The top should be lightly firm. Transfer to a cooling rack. You will need two rounds or two baking sheet to bake all the biscuits. Keep well for a week in a box.
Tip: Ensure the icing sugar is fully free of lumps for an even result.
Rolling to a walnut size ball
Coating in icing sugar , ready, steady, roll!
Placing on baking sheet
Version 1- original (as you can see I had not sieved the icing sugar to full dust)Version 2 – very thin coat of icing sugar , this batch omitted the cocoa
Here is a raspberry and ricotta muffin recipe which is another great way to use excess ricotta, something different to making ricotta pancakes (which is really good too!). I made up another ricotta muffin recipe the same day, they are pretty good too: Walnut, honey, orange and ricotta muffins (CLICK HERE).
Makes 15
Ingredients:
1 ½ cup of ricotta
250 g of plain flour
2 tsp of raising powder
130 g of melted butter
200 g of white sugar
3 eggs
1 cup of milk
2 cups of frozen raspberries (do not thaw them)
Some coarse granular sugar for the top
Method:
Pre-heat oven to 180°C
Mix the ricotta, milk, sugar and eggs until the mix is completely smooth (no ricotta lumps left)
Add the flour and raising powder, mix well
Add the raspberries gently.
Using a large spoon, spoon mixture in muffin cases. Sprinkle with granulated sugar. Bake until well golden.
This is a caramel slice with a more complex toping. The recipe is adapted from one in the Magazine Delicious. The toping is dark chocolate with roasted walnuts (that makes them extra-crunchy) and small flakes of salt here and there which explode in your mouth when you don’t expect it! The recipe is HERE.
