Product review: Littlesweet Brownies

Dark Belgian Chocolate - hoorah!

I have never had to go looking for Littlesweet Baking’s brownies – they have always come to me.

The first time, a dear friend brought some to my house for morning tea. “Try these,” she said, pushing a boxful of sweet brown deliciousness across the table, “They’re amazing.”

They were, and it was as a result of this that I decided to back a sure winner by putting some dollars into Littlesweet’s crowdfunding project.

Then through the magic of Twitter, I made a suggestion that Littlesweet Baking and the guys at the awesome Urbanlocavore company really needed to talk to each other. My second batch of Littlesweet brownies came to me in an Urbanlocavore box a couple of months later.

And a week or so ago, when Littlesweet asked, “Who wants to try our brownie mix?” the answer was a resounding, “Me! Me!” and sure enough, a packet of brownie mix appeared on my doorstep soon after.

Of course, the difference this time was that I was going to have to do the mixing and baking myself.

Luckily, this is as straightforward a recipe as anyone could wish for. A couple of eggs and a 75g wedge of butter are all that you need to pull from your fridge to make these brownies happen. You can add vanilla extract as well, if you like, and that is what I did.

 

On-hand ingredients make this a very easy recipe.

The instructions are on the back of the label (mine got a bit smudged with butter)...

As soon as you add the wet ingredients to the dry, the mixture darkens to a brown so deep it verges on black. I hadn’t noticed that there were chocolate chips but these surfaced as I stirred. The smell was glorious and it was all I could do not to eat the mix straight from the bowl. (Well, maybe I just had a tiny taste – to make sure that I was doing it right...)

 

I had put my square cake tin into use for another project, so I greased and lined a circular pan, reasoning that no one that I know has ever turned down brownies on the basis of shape.

Round brownies! I'm such a maverick...

 

Then it was into the oven for about 40 minutes. There is always a critical stage with brownies – they should never be cooked through the middle, nor can they be too raw – ‘just set with the potential for gooeyness’ is what I was aiming for and 40 minutes worked for me.

 

"Just-set" goodness.

 

We were having guests over for afternoon tea, so I sliced my brownie cake into wedges. Every single piece was eaten.  Yes, they tasted just as I remembered, even though they had been produced in my kitchen rather than Littlesweet’s. Next time, I would definitely consider adding nuts or cranberries or coffee essence to the mix, just to personalise the brownies to my taste (or my guests’). I could also imagine these warm with icecream, or chocolate syrup, or caramel sauce. I think I’d better stop there before I get all excited.

I put my money into Littlesweet's Pozible fund because I honestly believe that they will ‘deliver the goods’ in every sense. The one time that I tried to buy Littlesweet products when I was out at Perth Upmarket, I got there too late and almost everything had sold out.  The trajectory of this Fremantle-based business (I love the fact that they are true locals!) seems to know no limits and I am enjoying waiting to see what happens to them next.

And whatever happens next, I hope it involves more brownies for me!

***I received the packet of brownie mix with Littlesweet Baking's compliments. However, I have not been asked to write this product review by Littlesweet Baking. I do have some interest in the company, having donated to their Pozible crowd-funding project in the past – as described above***

Kitchen Drama: the Gingerbread Theatre

Achievements should be celebrated - on that, I think, we can all agree. When you are only just 11 years old and you have been through a long and trying process to reach a particular goal, and you have succeeded, then the celebration should be all the bigger.

My younger son had recently received the long-awaited letter telling him that he had been successful in gaining a place in the high school course of his dreams. Since the beginning of the year, he had been required to participate in workshops and auditions, write essays, do a major test and at long last we had written proof that his hard work and persistance had not been in vain. He had been selected for a place in a Gifted and Talented Drama Programme.

This is why we decided on a tea-party and this is why I decided to attempt gingerbread once again.

If you know me, you will know that I go down the gingerbread route once a year, and once only for good reason. I usually over-task myself with a project on a mighty scale and everyone has to live with the angst and the frustration as I make it happen. My previous edifices have been houses, churches and the very memorable TARDIS.

This time, in keeping with the drama theme, I decided I was going to make a theatre - a little gingerbread theatre which would be simple and low-key and fun to do. I would be a happy baker and a happy mother and everyone around me would be happy too.

It didn't happen this way.

The first thing I was determined to do was to find a gingerbread recipe that was not too heavy. In previous years, I have had tried recipes that use SR flour and baking soda - the dough has risen too much and softens too easily after building and the walls come tumbling down. This time I found this recipe from the ABC and it worked really well. I actually halved the quantity of baking soda and rolled the dough very thinly. This gave me more 'well-behaved' gingerbread for my construction. I used the other quantities exactly and it gave me enough gingerbread for the whole theatre plus enough left-over for emergencies (and in the end, I needed it!)

Warm gingerbread dough

My plan. I am the first to admit that I am no architect.

I based my measurements on an A4 piece of paper. The idea was to make a base and on the base place a back wall and a proscenium. The proscenium would be set back slightly to allow an stage apron at the front. The back wall would have a scene drawn on marzipan. There would be 'red velvet' curtains and flats made to look like trees and bushes. I was aiming for a scene out of Macbeth as my son had had to recite a soliloquy from Macbeth for his final audition.

The base and back wall pieces.

Proscenium and supports.

 I had got up early in the morning (about 6.30am) and so by about 9am, I was ready to build. All the sections were baked and cooled. I had my 'cement' ready. Before I had always used royal icing to stick the gingerbread sections together, but my experience with the Danish wedding cake had shown me that chocolate was an easier way to go. It is also less messy if you pop your chocolate pieces into a disposable piping bag and melt the chocolate in the microwave.

Chocolate 'cement'

Building the base

While I was waiting for the base to set, I got into the fun part. I rolled a very thin sheet of marzipan and stuck it to the back wall section using melted raspberry jam. Then I got busy with melted chocolate, edible sparkles and edible ink...

It's a blasted heath or Birnham Wood or something of which Shakespare would have approved.

This was then affixed to the base.

It took a lot of chocolate and a lot of propping up but eventually it was standing.

Then it was time to put the rest of it together. The proscenium was propped up with little triangles of gingerbread. I made the curtains out of pre-coloured red fondant. I also made a playbill with my son's name on it as well as the Masks of Comedy and Tragedy to decorate the front of the stage. This was ironic as a kitchen tragedy was only hours away...

It's either one or the other in this house.

I couldn't believe it! I was finished. A mere 7 hours and it was all done. Everyone was summoned to admire my work and the boys were cautioned 'not to touch' several times.

Lead on, MacDuff!

The view from above.

 So I washed up and tidied the kitchen and washed all the chocolate and sparkles off my hands. Then it was time for a cup of tea and an afternoon nap.

While I was sleeping, my older son decided to get up close to the proscenium. Up close as in touching it until it came away from the base. He is 15, has autism and his impulse control is usually better. He was fascinated by the theatre though and I guess that it was too much for him to resist. He loves cooking and cookbooks and food. Most of the time I involve him in any cooking that I do - perhaps I would have been wise to let him help?

There were tears - his and mine. I had no excuse except exhaustion and the disappointment of seeing my day's work literally in pieces.

The ruins

I tried to fix it with extra chocolate and hold it up with satay sticks but it had been weakened where it had snapped and there was nothing for it but to rebuilt the whole proscenium section. This included remaking the curtains which had also been crushed and snapped. I couldn't face anymore baking and put the renovations on hold until Sunday morning.

Proscenium Mark II - it was moved forward where the foundation was stronger.

 So, up early on Sunday morning (another 6.30am start!) and I did it all again. I was so glad to have kept the extra dough in the fridge - at least that was one thing that I didn't have to make again. New proscenium, new curtains, more melted chocolate. All of this knowing that by 3pm that same afternoon, the whole structure was going to be ripped to pieces and eaten anyway.

But the most important thing is a happy child, right?

11 year old and his special theatre

The next stage I want to see is a real one - with 11 year old on it.

Later that day, in front of friends, having been congratulated on his success and wished all the best for a happy high school experience, 11 year old brought down the house, literally.

And just in case you were wondering, yes, it tasted great! Especially the back wall with the marzipan and raspberry jam - that was a great combo. I know because even when we'd given gingerbread to our guests to take away and eaten some ourselves, we still had enough to last us for a week.

And that's enough about gingerbread for this year. Unless I can be tempted to create something else at Christmas - you never know...

 

TGIF! Lemon sour-cream syrup cake

I was reading an online article this morning entitled “Are your colleagues making you fat?” A mere three hours after reading said article, I was slapping down a Lemon Sour-Cream Syrup cake on the staff-room table.

I must say that we like our treats in our office and we are lucky enough to havea colleague who is a professional baker of cakes when she is not working with us.This means that we are regularly provided with amazing cup-cakes, macarons, cookies and cake-pops. It’s a given that if something edible is placed on the staff-room table that it’s a) first in, best dressed and b) it will get finished, oh yes, it will.

This working week has been long, difficult one for everyone and I thought it would be nice to finish on a high note so last night I baked. Baking at night takes on a very different quality to baking in the day. The kitchen is cooler in the evenings, cold even when it is winter, and you usually have it to yourself. The light is different – for me an orange glow bounces off the vintage wall-paper and gives the tiny room a cocoon-like feel. It’s so quiet that you can hear the gas roaring as you heat up the oven. I got flour all over my pyjamas but I was okay with that. It’s all part of the night-time baking fun.

The cake, fresh from the oven, looking a bit orange under the kitchen lights.

I like this Lemon Sour-Cream Syrup cake because it is a great ‘stand-by’ cake. The ingredients are basic and easily available; it’s quick (just over an hour); plus it is a tasty, traditional tea-time kind of cake that will go down well with hungry families or colleagues alike. It’s sweet and tangy, moist and sticky. The lemons are candied in the syrup and placed on top. I love it.

Making the syrup: lemons, sugar and water all cooked up together.

I use this recipe from taste.com.au , have used it many, many, times in fact, and I make no changes to it except, in this instance, to double the quantities, because the family would be most put out if I made cake for my work-mates but not for them, so there were actually two cakes in the end rather than the one that you are seeing.

TGIF!

On the staff-room table for Friday's morning tea.

Cake Club and Kransakaka

Kransakaka or Overflodigshorn

You could say that I have control issues. You'd probably be right. I'm am one of life's organisers. I live for detail and the ticking of boxes, the crossing of t's and the dotting of i's. Knowing that all is running smoothly, that the cogs are turning in a well-oiled machine (be it at home or at work) makes me really happy. 

Others might say I need to relax more. Whatevs...

I think that's why I really enjoy challenging cooking projects where structure and appearance are as important of the taste of the food. This has been reflected in my gingerbread making and most recently in my buche de noel cake, and here it is rearing its head again in my Scandinivian kransakaka.

The Clandestine Cake Club Perth (run by the two gorgeous gals behind wherethewindblowsme and Carolanne's Kitchen) is fast becoming popular in Perth. The idea is that once every 4 to 6 weeks, you bake a cake according to the theme that the hosts set, front up with your cake, talk about your cake, eat some of everyone else's cake and take boxes of cake home. Win win!

My busy schedule (of which I am completely in control) has meant that I was unable to attend a Cake Club meeting until yesterday when I went for the first time. The theme for this meeting was "Scandinavian and Eastern European Cakes" and when I saw this I knew I could not stay away and that I had a show-stopper of a cake to offer.

*Philological Interlude - feel free to skip*

The kransakaka is a traditional wedding cake from Scandinavia. It is called 'kransakaka' in Sweden and Iceland, 'kransekage' in Denmark and 'kransekake' in Norway. It is a tower of concentric baked marzipan rings decorated with chocolate swirls, candies or toffee. The variant to the kransakaka is the overflodigshorn ( or overflodigshedhorn) when the kransaka is shaped to form a cornucopia or horn of plenty.The idea of abundance is symbolised by candies or little cakes spilling from the mouth of the horn.

I wanted to have an overflodigshorn for my wedding many years ago. It wasn't to be (and I was delighted with the wedding cake that I did get) but I never forgot it. Now, in the time of the Internet and online recipes, I came across this video recipe and decided to give it a go.

It wasn't easy. I halved the quantities of the ingredients to give me a more manageable-sized cake. I think my poor maths abilities resulted in a dough that was a little too soft. As a result, some of the rings didn't hold their shape and the horn was not quite as perkily curved as it was meant to be, but it didn't matter. I got control over that marizpan pastry and shaped it to my will (I feel a sense of megalomania coming on...) It was the work of less than a day, it was a realistic (stumpy) horn, self-supporting on a base, and the decorations looked baroque and beautiful. 

One of the most intriguing parts of making the cake was cutting the dough and realising that I was cutting it in a Fibonacci sequence (my maths abilities might be poor but my inner geek is trying hard to compensate). As best demonstrated by the chambered nautilus, the growing spiral is developed by applying Fibonacci numbers to the dough. Professional pastry chefs can actually get their kransakakas curl right over, just like a ram's horn.

Oh, and it tasted amazing! Like a marzipan macaroon, firm on the outside but soft and squishy in the middle. If you love marzipan, you will love this cake.

Then I took the kransakaka to Cake Club where it got to sit on a table which was overflodigs with at least a dozen other cakes and there was abundance indeed.  

I've photographed some of the steps below, but for the best results, I recommend that you watch the video that I linked earlier if you too wish to battle marzipan and gravity and be victorious. The end result is completely worth it.

750gms marzipan and 250gms sugar mixed with one egg white

Fibonnaci marzipan dough

Little 'cigars'

Sitting by the oven, waiting. The dough needs to be just toasted golden. Don't let it burn!

The pieces come out of the oven. The small ones have held their shape, The large ones have not.

The iced pieces are stuck together with melted chocolate. The back section needed some support while the chocolate dried.

Overflowing with sugar flowers

My horn-shape was rather stumpy but still a self-supporting structure!

Baroque chocolate swirls feature on traditional kransakakas.

In a box, being transported to Cake Club. Longest car journey of my life!

Finally on the table surrounded by other Scandinavian and Eastern European goodies

Tisn't the season: Buche de Noel

 Christmas in July. Only in Australia. And why not?

The mornings as cold and the days are cooler. Cooking a full roast dinner in an un-airconditioned kitchen is not the trial that it is in December.

So today we decided to go ahead and take the festive plunge. I'd never done a real Christmas in July meal before and I wanted to make it really special so, beyond the roast beef, Yorkshire puddings, chipolatas in bacon and roast vegetables, I decided to try making a traditional French buche de noel or Yule log and that way, no one would be in any doubt about the nature of our celebration.

The recipe I decided to adapt came from BBC Good Food and I chose it because it was flourless. I liked the idea of a softer, less cake-y, dessert. The reason that I decided to adapt it was that I thought the double cream would be a bit rich, especially when there was 250g of chocolate and 6 eggs in the mix. I wanted something a bit more tangy to offset the richness, so I bought a tub of mascarpone and a tin of black cherries and I was ultimately glad that I did.

Ingredients

For the base:
150g golden castor sugar
6 large eggs, separated
250g good quality dark chocolate 

For the filling:
250g mascarpone cheese
1 tin of pitted black cherries drained
a few drops vanilla extract

For the buttercream
125g unsalted butter, softened
225 g icing sugar, sieved
25g good quality cocoa powder
2 tbsps milk

• Pre-heat the oven to 200C (gas) or 220C (electric), then grease and line a 23 x 33cm Swiss roll tin. Whisk castor sugar and egg yolks until pale. Melt the chocolate either over a bowl of hot water or in the microwave. Add the egg and sugar mix to the chocolate.

• Whisk the egg whites until stiff peaks form. Slowly fold into the chocolate mix. Pour the mixture into the prepared tin and bake for about 12 - 15 minutes. Allow to cool in tin.

• Place a sheet of baking paper on the counter. Flip the base onto the baking paper and peel off the lining.
• In a bowl, beat the mascarpone with the vanilla extract. Spread all over the base. Scatter the drained cherries evenly over the mascarpone.
• Hold onto the long side of the baking paper and turn the base over, rolling it until you have got a log shape. Mine broke - right across the middle and in several other places. Do not worry about this. Keep rolling! It will hold together and it will look more convincingly log-like this way!
• Leave rolled in the paper and place in the fridge to cool for 20 minutes.
• Beat the butter then add the cocoa and the icing sugar. Add milk and stir until you have a smooth consistency.
• Remove the cake from the fridge. Working at an angle, cut off about a quarter and place alongside the main long, so it resembles a two-pronged branch.
• Cover with butter cream, use a fork to give texture.
• Dust with icing sugar to give a snowy effect.

To make chocolate leaves:
100 g white chocolate

1 tssp cocoa

10  - 12 small leaves, washed and dried (I used rose and lemon leaves) 

• Place the clean leaves on a baking tray lined with baking paper
• Melt the chocolate in the microwave until runny
• Use a spoon or pastry brush to coat the back of the leaves (the back of the leaves will make a stronger impression in the chocolate)
• Leave to dry for 20 minutes then peel the leaves off
• Use a pastry brush to dust the leaves with cocoa so that the impression is clear.
• Use to decorate log

This is an utterly delicious cake. The base is more like a mousse and so very, very rich and chocolate-y. The mascarpone is creamy and tangy, the cherries are sweet and also have a little bite. I can imagine this with a little kirsch or rum. I had some fresh cherries so I threw these onto the serving platter to add a little colour to the sepia-toned yumminess.

It was a wonderful finale to our Christmas in July feast.  We did go all out to make things traditional as you will see from the pictures below. I was particularly pleased with the Yorkshire puddings!

You'll be glad to know that we took a walk between the main course and the dessert. After all, the sun was out, the skies were a true, clear blue and the temperature was a mellow 23C. That's the great thing about winter in Perth - we often have the best of both worlds, and it is on days like this that it really hits home how lucky we are.