Cookies and brownies

Several of you picked up on how appetising the cookies and brownies looked in a post a couple of weeks ago. Well today I’m feeling generous and I’m going to direct you to the recipes for those beauties. They were so good I made a second batch of both within a day of the first one. I’m not even joking. My running has slowed down dramatically since then. It may or may not be related.

Both recipes are super easy, and it’s all basically about mixing ingredients together, no special potions or anything. And actually, I suggest making both on the same day because as your cookie dough chills in the fridge, you’ve got just the right amount of time to make the brownie. If that’s not a match made in heaven then I don’t know what is.

I’ll let you decide whether it’s worth it.

(Answer: it totally is.)

Recipe for the chocolate shortbread: find it here. The only thing I'd say about this recipe is that the cookies benefit from a brief stay in the fridge before you gobble them down. Even better the next day actually if you can lay your hands off them for that long.

Recipe for the peanut butter and chocolate brownie: find it here. Nothing to change here, it's perfect!

Easter treat

Yeah I know, Easter was ages ago now, but I wrote this post before going away on holiday and never got round to uploading the photos, so it stayed unpublished. Until today. Because I haven't started looking at my holiday pics yet and I figured everyone loves chocolate. Even if it's a bit delayed and we're in May already.

Everybody knows Easter's all about chocolate. As for Christmas, Easter for me was never about religion. It was all about getting chocolate eggs/chicken/ bunnies. People don't tend to buy their Easter treats from the supermarkets in France, you can usually get some pretty amazing stuff from bakeries and chocolatiers. And year after year, the fridge was full of chocolate. Oh how I remember those egg hunts in my grandparents' flat, and the magnificent treats they would get me...

These days are long gone, but Easter should still be a sweet season. Last year, Boyfriend sent me off to Dubai with the most gorgeous dark chocolate egg. Even though temperatures were upwards of 30 degrees, that egg meant a lot.

This year, it was my turn to surprise him. I didn't have anything substantial, as I don't want my lactose intolerance malarkey flaring up, but that doesn't mean he couldn't have anything. And since I forgot to get him something last year, the guilt pushed me into action...

I wanted something original, something unique, but not something that was going to cost me the earth either. I find eggs that you can buy in supermarket usually quite disappointing, not only does the chocolate not taste of real chocolate (well that's my opinion!), but the eggs are usually empty. I can't think of a biggest let down. So there, I made him my very own treat this year. With things that he likes. I here present to you the Easter white chocolate bar!!!! Alright alright, it doesn't sound very exciting, but wait till you see the finished article.

I started by chopping some fudge bars and got some seasonally coloured m&ms. Next I melted some white chocolate and some milk chocolate in separate bowls.

I then put a double thickness of baking parchment down and thickly spread the white chocolate on top.

Then I put blobs of milk chocolate on top and used a toothpick to make little twirls. That was great, great fun I tell you.

I then added the fudge bits and m&ms and pushed them slightly in. Left it all to cool down for a couple of hours, then it spent the night in the fridge to harden.

In the morning, I wrapped it all up and put it in a gift bag I had lying around. How lovely is that?! Totally cheap (well at least you can choose the appropriate quality of chocolate to suit your taste), and you can use whatever topping you fancy!

The best bit? All the leftover topping that wouldn't fit on the bar. I didn't want to overload it you see. So I munched it all. Yum :-)

Friday food!!!

It's Friday!! Woop woop!!!! I hope you've had a good week and have exciting plans for the weekend. Or even exciting plans to do NOTHING at the weekend. That can be very enjoyable too!! I'm not sure yet what I'll be getting up to. Boyfriend is off to see some friends so I'll have the place to myself for a bit. I might try making some of this bread by Domestic Goddess in Training  because it looks really tasty.

Talking about food, I've been meaning to tell you about what I made last weekend. Why it was that I was soooooo busy!! But I obviously got distracted during the week - anyhow! Well a couple of years ago, Boyfriend's mum gave me a wonderful book for Christmas: Madhur Jaffrey's Ultimate Curry Bible. It is so beautiful to look at, I thing I might have been slightly put off by it because of that reason. It just looked so perfect, I didn't feel I could achieve any of it. But I changed my mind recently and decided it was about time I tried some of the recipes in there. So last week, I went through the whole book and stuck post it notes on recipes that should be given a go. I think I picked some of the easiest ones, or at least some which take the least amount of time/ effort to get ready. You have to start somewhere!!! So anyway, as we had a whole chicken in the freezer, I decided to make a whole roast chicken curry. And boy was it good. I feel so proud of it, it was utterly delicious. DE-LI-CIOUS. I'm not joking. You have to try this!!!! I mean look at it, doesn't this make you want to???

It certainly makes me want to do it all over again! All there was to it was making a sauce to marinate the chicken in. That was made up of lemon juice, tamarind paste, chopped garlic, chopped ginger, chopped chilli (I used some of our home grown habaneros to give it a good kick), some ground coriander, ground cumin, a pinch of salt and a couple of tablespoons of olive oil. I put it all in a pestle and mortar, gave it a good bashing and spread it on the skinned whole chicken (yes you have to remove the skin, not exactly the most pleasant thing to do but oh so worth it - and make large slits in the breast and thighs). Wrap it in foil, leave to marinate for 30min, then put in the oven at 200 degrees C for an hour, after which you need to open the foil and baste the chicken with the juices. Close the foil and put it back in the oven for another 20-30min (depending on the size of your chicken). It comes out really wonderful, and so very moist! Yum!

To accompany the chicken, I cooked some plain basmati rice and a veg dish. The veg dish was tweeked to fit what I had: potatoes, mushrooms and frozen peas. It turned out delicious as well, even if I do say so myself! I pretty much followed another recipe from the book, and discovered this amazing spice: asafoetida. Has anyone else heard of this before? It was really interesting, and definitely gave an oniony taste to the dish. This was really simple to get ready as well. Basically start off by heating up some oil in a frying pan. When hot add cumin seeds and some asafoetida, followed by your potatoes cut in cubes. Brown off the potatoes, add the frozen peas and mushroom, barely cover with water, mix everything and bring to a boil. Turn the temperate down, cover with a lid/ foil and leave to cook for 15min. After that time, take the lid/ foil off and cook for a further 10min until the water has evaporated. Five minutes before the end, add some chopped fresh tomatoes and dried curry leaves if you have any. So there. I seem to have written lots about this, but honestly, it was easy. Try it, you won't be disappointed!

And now to leave you with something sweet for the weekend! I made little chocolate cookies for Boyfriend's family last weekend. I used a Nigella recipe but instead of making 12 (she is so greedy!!!!), I made about 20 bitesize ones, and I still had about 2 thirds of the dough left over. So it's now in the freezer, waiting to cheer us up on a cold day!

Sorry about the photo, I forgot to take one when the box was actually full! Have a nice weekend all!!! xx