Hot Fudge Sauce

I like to think I take compliments quite well. Not that I get many, but when I do I usually find something gracious to say in return with minimal blushing. This doesn't apply to what I call ‘negative compliments’.

Whilst out earlier this week, someone who I hadn’t seen in about a year spotted me, came over and said “You’ve lost some weight!” Now how exactly am I meant to react to that? I stumbled over something like “Oh, really? I don’t think I have...” Then my ‘friend’ backed up the statement by saying “Oh yes, you’ve definitely lost some around your face.”

Now this might sound strange, but I’m super-paranoid that I have a larger and rounder than normal face and head in general. So to be told that my face used to be even bigger than it is now wasn’t the kind of compliment I was looking for.

So I showed them – by eating spoonful after spoonful of this oh-my-gosh-yum Hot Fudge Sauce. As an unspoken rule, women never run over to say “You’ve put on some weight!” so I think I’ll be safe next time. This is ridiculously good. The Spanish don't really go in for chocolate sauces - I've only ever come across two different types that both taste more like plastic than chocolate. If you can't get a decent chocolate or fudge sauce where you live, make this!

Hot Fudge Sauce

Slightly adapted from All Recipes

Ingredients

1 cup butter

1/3 cup cocoa powder

2 ½ cups sugar

1 ½ cups evaporated milk

1 teaspoon vanilla

Recipe

Pour all of the ingredients into a saucepan and mix together. Bring to the boil and boil for 7 minutes. Remove from the heat and leave to cool to room temperature. Store in a jar in the refrigerator.

If you ever meet me, just say something mean. It's much easier that way.  

Disclaimer: I'm not responsible for any weight gain or "You've put on some weight!" comments if you eat the full jar. 

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Homemade Taco Seasoning

Fridays – don’t you just love them? Yeah, Saturdays are great, too, but by Saturday you’re already well into the weekend, whereas Friday is just on the edge of two whole days of freedom and fun. Friday is the anticipation and excitement you feel walking up to the gates at Disneyland for the first time, whereas Saturday is somewhere between your 4^th and 5^th ride, when you’re already well aware of how amazing Disneyland is, but there’s a little bit of sadness creeping in because you know you’re not going to have the same exciting lead up again. Well – not until the next Friday/trip to Disneyland.

Do you know how tough it is to photograph herbs and spices well?!

Maybe I’m over-analyzing. What am I saying? There’s no maybe about it! I think you can forgive me though because there are only 40 days left until my vacation in Paris (I’ve been counting down from 107!) – with 4 days at Disneyland thrown in for good measure – and I’ve just begun working on a super-exciting collaborative writing project which is like nothing I’ve ever even attempted before.

You can use it to make Chicken Taco Chili

So amongst all this Friday/vacation/writing excitement, I thought I’d try and calm myself down with a simple recipe – when all I’ve actually managed to do is get myself all rallied up thinking about holidays and fun projects and packing and croissants and Paris in the fall and Halloween and Christmas – it’s never too early for Christmas!

Or 30-Minute Pork Fajitas

Okay – deep breaths… This is my go-to taco seasoning recipe. It tastes so much better than the stuff out of a packet and works out cheaper in the long-run. The recipe below makes enough to season about 8-10 portions of meat/fish/vegetables, so you can easily adapt it to your needs.

Homemade Taco Seasoning

Ingredients

2 tablespoons chili powder

3 teaspoons ground cumin

2 teaspoons coarse salt

1/2 teaspoon black pepper

1 teaspoon paprika

1 teaspoon oregano

½ teaspoon garlic powder

½ teaspoon onion powder

¼ teaspoon cinnamon

Recipe

This recipe must be the shortest I’ve ever written – mix everything together!

Use it to season or marinate meat and vegetables.

Store in an air-tight container in the fridge or at room temperature.

Don't even get me started on Sundays...

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Homemade Aioli

Want to alienate yourself from the rest of the human race? Then oh boy, do I have a recipe for you. This weekend I took on the challenge of attempting homemade aioli. I did a little research online and read about the kind of problems most people come up against when making the garlicky creamy sauce.

The problems arise when the oil is added to the yolks. If the mixture separates and emulsifies, you end up with a funny-coloured bowl of yacky ick. Fortunately, all of this can be avoided if you add the oil a tiny bit at a time. You need heaps of garlic, too, or the special aioli compounds (I’m a whizz with the terminology, I know) with separate and your texture will just be wrong.

Aioli is super-simple to make, it just takes a lot of time. So remember to use loads of garlic – the result will be strong, but you can tone it down with lemon juice and salt – and only add the oil a couple of drops at a time at the beginning. If you’re doing this by hand, your arm will be killing you – but don’t give in!

Don’t be put off by the fluorescent yellow colour when you’re beating the yolks and the oil. Depending on how bright your yolks are – mine are neon-orange – you could end up with anything from a slight hint of yellow to a sauce that resembles a road-safety jacket. Strangely enough, the lemon juice helps tone the brightness down and leaves you with a softer paler hue.

Homemade Aioli

Ingredients

2 egg yolks

6-8 medium-sized cloves of garlic

4-6 tablespoons oil

Fine salt (to taste)

Parsley (to taste)

Lemon juice (to taste)

Recipe

1. Finely mince the garlic cloves and beat them with the egg yolks and a pinch of salt.

2. Add 2 small drops of oil and beat the mixture for around 30 seconds. Continue doing this until you’ve used up half of the oil.

3. Gradually increase the amount of oil you add in between whisking. Never add more than ½ teaspoon at a time.

4. When all the oil has been used up, sprinkle some more salt (start with ½ teaspoon), parsley (start with 1 teaspoon) and lemon juice (start with 1 teaspoon)and beat again. Taste and add more salt, parsley or lemon juice to your preference. 

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Lemon Curd Awards

Spring is now in full swing and everyone seems to be celebrating this bright season with a variety of yummy citrus-based recipes. The most popular citrus flavour floating about the baking community seems to be lemon – Lemon Blueberry Cupcakes, Lemon Pull-Apart Cake, Lemon Cookie Cheesecake Bars, Lemon Sugar Cookies, Lemon Meringue Pies... It’s pretty hard to miss!

Most of the lemon recipes call for lemon curd. Up until writing this blog post, I had only tried lemon curd once last year and completely fell in love with it. I remember standing at the kitchen countertops with the jar and a spoon, completely omitting the toast. Who needs toast when it tastes so great on its own? (I feel the same way about Nutella – ditch the toaster and grab a spoon!)

There is always a divide when it comes to lemon curd – egg-free or egg-full? Egg-free is always chosen as the safer option because there are no raw eggs in the recipe, but the traditional egg-full method is still going strong today. Which do you prefer?

To help you decide, I present to you The Lemon Curd Awards!

(Recipes for both variations can be found at the bottom of the post)

Texture

The egg-full version is really thick, fluffy and creamy – almost like smooth peanut butter frosting, whereas the egg-free curd is more like a thick glaze or syrup.

And the winner is: Egg-Full

Appearance

The main difference I noticed about these two curds is the colour. The egg-full one is orange, almost peanut butter-coloured – this is due to the egg yolks in the recipe. The egg-free curd is a bright yellow colour and looks much more like lemon curd.

And the winner is: Egg-Less

Storage Ability

After a couple of days in sealed jars stored in the fridge, the egg-full curd had thickened to a great spreading consistency, whereas the egg-free version has separated (there was a sugary water solution settled on the top).

And the winner is: Egg-Full

Ease of Making

The egg-less version of the curd calls for less ingredients and the whisking process was fairly easy and pain-free. The egg-full curd calls for more ingredients, more steps, more time and made my arm really ache with all the whisking.

And the winner is: Egg-Less

Taste

So far it’s 2-2 – this is the tie breaker! 

I preferred the taste of the egg-free lemon curd. It was so much more citrus-y and zingy than the other, which was a little two buttery for me.

And the winner is: Egg-Less

The overall winner – Egg-Less Lemon Curd!

Cue roars of cheer and applause.

[However, I do have to point out that my Official Treat Taster put his foot down and completely disagreed with me. He preferred the buttery, almost pie-like, taste of the egg-full lemon curd.]

Recipes

Egg-Free Lemon Curd

Recipe from Shaken Together

Ingredients

½ cup sugar

¼ cup water

3 tablespoons cornstarch

¼ cup lemon juice (about 1 ½ lemons’ worth)

2 teaspoons lemon zest

Recipe

1. In a saucepan on a medium heat, mix together the sugar, water and cornstarch. Slowly bring to a boil, whisking constantly.

2. When the mixture boils, reduce the heat and keep on stirring until the mixture gets really thick.

3. Remove from the heat and add the lemon juice and zest. At this point my curd thinned out, so I put it back on the heat and carried on whisking until it was thick again.

4. Allow to cool to room temperature then store in the fridge in a sealed jar or container.

Egg-Full Lemon Curd

Recipe from Food Network

Ingredients

5 egg yolks

1 cup sugar

4 lemons, zested and juiced

1 stick of butter, cut into cubes

Recipe

1. Whisk together the egg yolks and sugar in a metal bowl then add the lemon juice and zest. Beat together until smooth.

2. Place the bowl on top of a saucepan of simmering water and whisk constantly until the mixture is really thick – this should take about 10 minutes.

3. Remove from the heat and stir in the butter 1 cube at a time, allowing each to melt before adding the next.

4. Leave to cool to room temperature then store in a sealed container or jar in the fridge.

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Healthy Cookie Dough Dip

You may remember my previous attempt at making a healthy dessert with garbanzos – Healthy Deep Dish Cookie Pie. That was pretty much a disaster because the hard-to-miss garbanzo flavour was embedded in that pie and my Official Treat Taster wouldn’t touch it. Even I wasn’t too keen and thought it tasted much more like a health bar than dessert.

Luckily, things worked out better this time. Much better. I blended and blended and blended this until I thought my food processor was going to give out, just so I could gorge on cookie dough and tell myself I was being healthy. I offered a scoop of this on a cookie to my Official Treat Taster (without telling him it was made with garbanzos, but that goes without saying). He absent-mindedly ate it then looked at my funny and politely said “It’s unusual, isn’t it?” I told him the main ingredient and he threw me his favourite I-can’t-believe-you-tried-to-poison-me-with-something-remotely-healthy look and went back to playing games on his phone.

I loved this recipe and was literally eating it by the spoonful. For several days it was my lunch at work. That’s it – just cookie dough eaten out of a plastic container with a spoon. I advise you to run out to the store and stock up on garbanzos because once you try this, you’ll want to be making it again and again!

Healthy Cookie Dough Dip adapted from Chocolate-Covered Katie

Ingredients

250g garbanzos

Pinch of salt

Pinch of baking soda

4 teaspoons vanilla extract

2 tablespoons peanut butter

2 tablespoons milk

10 tablespoons oats

2/3 cup sugar

1/3 cup chocolate chips

Recipe

Add all the ingredients except the chocolate chips to food processor and blend until completely smooth. Stir in the chocolate chips and serve with cookies, crackers or fruit.

This also makes a great healthy topping for chocolate cupcakes – don't take my word for it, try it yourself!



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