Hazelnut Chocolate Bars

Typical scenario on  the day that I am planning to bake something:

Get up in the morning, take the butter & eggs out of the fridge. You never know when I can sneak in a chance to bake & I dont want to have cold & hard butter staring at me then. Besides its a tip I have picked up regarding baking – unless otherwise mentioned, all the ingredients should be at room temperature for you to have a chance at the desired end result.

Once I see that I might have some time on hand, I switch on the oven to ‘pre heat’ to the specified temperature, then go about my other chores along with getting together the ingredients for the bake. I start taking the flour out & if S happens to be in the kitchen at that time, I have to postpone it because she always likes to stick her hand in the flour and make a mess, however hard I try to prevent it! Then I have to either wait for her to go out again or make an excuse to send her out to her toys because if I tell her to go so that Mum can work on something she is sure to stick around in the kitchen to ‘see’ what Mum is up to so that she can replicate the same in her toy kitchen the next day & impress everyone!

I somehow manage to get the dry ingredients at one place & keep everything ready for the wet ones. Then I take a quick look to check if S is duly occupied & not up to any mischief, if I find that she is indeed doing something she is not supposed to, the ingredients have to wait some more till I resolve that. So after I have scolded S for whatever she was doing, reading a story to her just to pacify her, playing with her & getting her to play on her own, I return to the kitchen to the well ‘pre heated’ oven & the forever waiting ingredients.

By the time I finally manage to put everything together & slide it into the oven, the oven has been in the ‘pre – heated’ state for at least 2-3 hours. Thats the minimum by the way and I realised it last time I baked something. So this time I put on a timer just to determine how much time it takes

I almost always bake in the afternoon, either after S has settled into her high chair with the lunch or after she has gone to sleep. If its something complicated like a layered cake or a new recipe I wait for GM to be at home to ensure there are no interruptions.

I always wanted to try out something with oats. Imagine baking some cookies & enjoying them knowing that they dont have any plain flour to threaten your health, although I admit, this recipe almost makes up for it with the amount of butter involved! Remember my very modest first investment in a cook book? This recipe comes from the same book.

Hazelnut Chocolate Bars

Makes about

Ingredients

• 2.5 cups rolled oats
• 5 tblsp Hazelnuts, lightly roasted & chopped
• 1/2 cup Plain flour
• 8 tblsp Butter (extra for greasing)
• 7 tblsp light brown sugar
• 2 tblsp Golden syrup
• 5 tblsp Chocolate chips (I used plain chocolate)

Method: Pre heat the oven to 180 deg C. Grease a 9” shallow square tin or any other equivalent tin.

Mix together the oats, hazelnuts & flour in a bowl and keep aside.

Combine the butter, sugar and golden syrup in a saucepan and heat gently on a low flame until all the sugar has dissolved.

Pour this into the oats mixture and mix well. Add in the chocolate chips and combine.

Put this mixture into the prepared tin, level as much as possible and then bake in the pre heated oven for 20-25 minutes until firm to touch.

Once you take it out of the oven, mark the surface using a sharp knife into pieces as you like. The recipe called for triangles but I made them into rectangles. Once you have marked them, leave to cool in the tin.

Once cooled, cut into pieces and remove from the tin and store in an air tight container.

My Notes: This was super easy! How simpler can it get? The bars were very tasty and got over in no time.

The original recipe called for chocolate chips which would have resulted in something like chocolate chip cookies. But I did not have the chocolate chips so I used plain chocolate instead. This gave the bars a chocolate flavour but the chocolate was uniform throughout and we couldnt really bite into the chocolate. We didn't mind it though.

These bars are off to Versatile Vegetarian Kitchen for the Bake-off event.

Devil’s food cupcakes

There is nothing devilish about them apart from the calories perhaps, but at least they dont pretend unlike some other food items which look quite innocent but pack loads of calories. Now thats what I would call devilish! These cupcakes can only be called delicious, yummy, superb and other such adjectives.

This is my first Sweet Punch and we had to make Devil’s food cupcakes with a vanilla cream filling and the frosting was optional. I halved the given recipe and omitted the frosting. I thoroughly enjoyed making these cupcakes, although I did have my share of misfortune. I attempted to make them 2 weeks back and the end result was not what I wanted. They did taste absolutely fantastic but I could not get them out of the muffin tin and retain their shape. Those pieces were used in an impromptu pudding, drizzled with some custard and that was tasty! Having tasted them I could not help but try again and this time I was smart enough to use cupcake cases.

This recipe was from Baking Bites, a blog which I follow quite ardently.

Devil’s food cupcakes

 

Makes 12

Ingredients

For the cupcake

• 1/4 cup Butter, at room temperature
• 1 cup Sugar
• 1 cup All purpose flour
• 1 tsp Baking soda
• 1 Egg
• 1/2 tsp Vanilla extract
• 2-3 tblsp sour cream (I used Crème fraiche)
• 2-3 tblsp Cocoa powder
• 30 gm Dark Chocolate
• 1/2 cup boiling water

For the Vanilla Cream filling

• 1.5 tbsp All purpose flour
• 1/4 cup milk
• 1/4 cup butter
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 1/2 tsp Vanilla extract

Method:

For the cupcakes:

Pre heat the oven to 180 deg C. Grease & line (with cupcake cases) a 12 cup muffin pan.

Sieve together the flour, baking soda and salt and keep it aside.

Cream together the butter and the sugar until pale & fluffy. Beat in the egg and whisk some more.

Add half the flour mixture and mix properly. Add in the sour cream and vanilla extract and mix.

Add the remaining flour and combine thoroughly.

Add the cocoa powder and dark chocolate to the boiling water and stir well. Add this mixture to the batter and combine well.

Spoon the batter into the prepared tin. Bake in the pre heated oven for about 20 min until a toothpick inserted in the cupcake comes out clean.

Let the cupcakes cool in the tin for sometime and then transfer them to a wire rack to cool completely.

For the Vanilla cream filling:

Whisk together the milk and the all purpose flour and cook this in a non stick saucepan on low heat. Keep stirring to prevent the formation of lumps till the mixture thickens like custard. This will hardly take 4-5 minutes. At this point, transfer it to a bowl straining through a fine mesh, cover with Clingfilm and allow it cool completely.

Once the above has cooled, cream together the butter and sugar till fluffy. Add the milk & flour mixture and beat well for about 5-7 minutes. The end result should be very light & fluffy. Spoon this into a Icing bag or use a zip lock bag with the corner cut off.

To fill the cupcakes:

Take a cooled cupcake and using a small sharp knife, start scoring the top of the cake into a circle just inside of the edges. Cut off a cone shape in this manner giving you a cavity in the cupcake. Cut off the pointy edge of the cone to give you a disc shape, keep aside. Repeat this with all the cupcakes.

Now, fill in the cavities of the cupcakes with the vanilla cream filling and then top each of the cupcake with the disc of cake to keep the filling in place.

Chocolate Butter cream Frosting (I skipped this)
1/2 cup butter, room temperature
1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
2-3 cups powdered sugar
1/4 cup milk
1 tsp vanilla extract
Combine all ingredients in a large bowl and beat, with an electric mixer, until frosting is creamy, 3-5 minutes. Add additional powdered sugar as needed to achieve a thick, but not stiff, frosting that is easy to spread. Add additional milk, if necessary, to thin the frosting if it gets too thick.

Cover the cupcakes with the above frosting.

My Notes: This was a great experience. The cupcakes were very soft and chocolaty, just the way we like them. We didn't miss the frosting at all.

I had to bake the cakes for a longer time (20 min) than specified in the recipe (13-15 min). I have done all the whisking and beating by hand on this occasion as I was baking at night & didn't want to wake my daughter up, although even I made quite a racket. But the point is it turned out quite well even without the electric mixer.