Banoffee muffins

After seeing these delicious looking sticky toffee banoffee muffins on Tinned Tomatoes, it was really only a matter of time before I had a go at making them myself.

That time came around quickly, as I needed something I could bake that would survive an hour’s drive to a meeting and feed an office full of hungry people, and muffins seemed like the ideal solution.

I had a bit of a baking dilemma as the recipe doesn’t use any sugar, just a tin of caramel – I wasn’t sure if this was right and couldn’t decide whether to guess and add sugar or not – in the end I cautiously added 20g dark brown sugar just to ease my mind, although it really wasn’t necessary.

I think I mixed the caramel in a bit too well, as I didn’t really get melty pools of caramel as I was hoping, but I did get moist, sweet banana muffins that smelt AMAZING every time I opened the tin!

These muffins have also taught me the difference between muffins and cupcakes – the cases I used were most definitely cupcake cases, as I discovered when the recipe which was supposed to make 12 made 16 with quite a bit of overflowing batter, which led the friendly pony to call some of the less fortunate looking cakes “elephant man cupcakes”…

Thanks to Jacqueline at Tinned Tomatoes for posting the recipe – apart from the sugar  I followed it exactly so you can see the original here.

Flour, sugar and dairy free chocolate fudge bites

My next door neighbour Jo has, for some reason I will never understand, given up flour, sugar and butter for lent. Insanity!

I didn’t really like the idea of going 40 days without taking her any baked goods, so when I saw these German chocolate fudge bites on Chocolate Covered Katie I knew instantly they would have to be made for Jo.

As well as being free of pretty much everything bad for you, they’re also incredible quick and easy to make, and use just four ingredients (possibly four of my favourite ingredients) AND are only 50 calories each!

Sounds too good to be true, but they really do work!

Flour, sugar and dairy free chocolate fudge bites (recipe adapted from Chocolate Covered Katie)

Makes 15 small bites

• 120g pitted dates
• 50g pecan nuts
• 2 tbsp cocoa powder, plus extra to coat
• 2tbsp desiccated coconut

Put all the ingredients into a food processor and blitz until everything is well-chopped and well-mixed. Transfer the mixture into a bowl and knead until it comes together. Roll out 15 small truffle-sized balls, and chill in the fridge for half an hour. Roll each bite in more cocoa powder before serving.

Chocolate and pecan crusted goat’s cheese

This post is a bit of an anomaly for the Hungry Hinny – an actual meal as opposed to a baked good!

But as the challenge set by Choclette for this month’s We Should Cocoa was to create something savoury and vegetarian using chocolate,  I was happy to branch out.

The only savoury cooking I’ve done with chocolate in the past is using it in chilli, but I thought that was too obvious and set out to find something a bit different.

I stumbled across this recipe for warm encrusted goat’s cheese which used cacao nibs, which I figured would at least be interesting, if not actually nice, so I set about recreating it.

After a bit of reconnassaince on Twitter, I found a local shop which sold cacao nibs, but when I visited they only had 200g bags costing over £8, which I couldn’t really justify spending on an experiement, so the final version of this is definitely more ‘inspired by’ than an actual replication of the original…

I served the goat’s cheese on seeded panini breads with caramelised onions, a rocket salad and balsamic dressing, and I have to say I actually really liked it!

The pony wasn’t so keen on the crust, but then he doesn’t like pecans anyway so I wasn’t too surprised – it’s definitely worth giving it a go for something slightly different to do with chocolate!

Chocolate and pecan crusted goat’s cheese (adapted from All Chocolate):

(Serves 2 as a lunch)

• 2 x 65g packs of Gevrik Goat’s Cheese (other goat’s cheeses will work fine, but if you’re a strict veggie double check as some French ones aren’t suitable)
• 1 egg, beaten
• 50g pecan nuts
• 1tsp cocoa powder
• 1/2 tsp black pepper

Use a food processor to quite finely chop the nuts, then add in the cocoa powder and black pepper. Cut each mini-log of cheese in half width-ways, so you have four rounds, then dip each in the beaten egg before coating with the nut mixture, then place on a baking tray. Bake at 180 degrees for 5-10 minutes, or until the coating is crisp and the cheese is just starting to ooze out.

To serve:

• 2 medium onions
• 2 tbsp balsamic vinegar
• 1tsp brown sugar
• 2 seeded paninis, or other breads
• 1 pack of rocket or other leafy salad

Heat a little oil in a frying pan then add the sliced onions. Cook slowly for about 15 minutes or until starting to turn golden, then add in 1tbsp balsamic vinegar and the brown sugar. Cook for another 10 minutes or so, until caramelised.

Heat the breads for about 5 minutes in the oven, then slice in half and top with the onions and goat’s cheese. Arrange on top of the salad and drizzle with the remaining balsamic vinegar.

Banoffee pie tarts

These banoffee pie tarts were a last minute addition to my barbecue cake line up, when I realised I would have double the amount of pastry I needed for the mini white chocolate and strawberry tarts.

I thought about what would go well with the pecans in the pastry, and although I’ve never tried it before decided that pecan, banana and caramel was bound to be a winner.

I totally made this the cheat way with a tin of caramel, but when you’ve got 5 sets of cakes to make in a day speed is important!

If these were any bigger I think they’d be a bit too sweet for my tastes, but in such little bite size portions they were just right!

Banoffee pie tarts (makes about 15):

• 1/2 quantity of pecan shortcrust pastry, recipe here
• 2 bananas
• 1 400g tin caramel (or dulce de leche if you want better quality!)
• 300ml double cream

Once the pastry is baked and cooled, add a heaped teaspoon of caramel into each case. Chop one of the bananas and place the pieces on top of the caramel. Lightly whip the cream then spoon a dollop onto the top of each tart, then top with another slice of banana. Ridiculously easy!

Chocolate Pecan Pie

I’ve eaten pecan pie once in my life, ever. It was when I was in my early teens, and I made the recipe for chocolate pecan pie from Joanna Farrow’s Chocolate cookbook.

Since then, it hasn’t been made, as my main cake eaters (first my dad, and then the aforementioned friendly pony) claimed to not like nuts, so it seemed a little greedy to make one that only I would eat.

I think the fact that I couldn’t make it made me build it up in my mind to be the nirvana of baking, the most delicious but unattainable dessert in existance.

Recently however, the friendly pony has started to come around on the nuts thing, and when asked to choose between chocolate pecan pie and nutella tart, surprisingly chose the pie.

However, after all these years of waiting, I have to say I was slightly disappointed. It had a perfectly good chocolate pastry, sticky chocolatey syrupy filling and crunchy pecans, but it was somehow just not quite as good as I remembered.

Still, at least my 10+ year craving for it has been satisfied and I can finally move on, to bigger and better baking!

Chocolate Pecan Pie, from Joanna Farrow’s ‘Chocolate’

Pastry Ingredients:

• 175g plain flour
• 25g cocoa powder
• 125g butter
• 50g caster sugar
• 2 egg yolks
• cold water

Method:

• Sift the flour and cocoa powder into a bowl with the butter, and rub together until it makes breadcrumbs. Add the sugar and egg yolks and mixx together, then slowly add water until it comes together as a dough
• Chill in the fridge for half an hour (or 10 mins in the freezer) then roll out large enough to line a 25cm. Trim off any excess pastry, then chill for another half hour. Blind bake for 10 minutes at 200 degrees, then for 5 minutes normally (I have a rather novel way of doing this as I don’t have baking beans, forgot to take photos this time but will next time I blind bake).

Filling Ingredients:

• 175g caster sugar
• 150ml maple syrup
• 50g unsalted butter
• 3 tbsp cocoa powder
• 3 eggs
• 200g pecan nuts, roughly chopped

Method:

• Put the sugar and syrup in a saucepan and heat until the sugar has dissolved. Remove from the heat and stir in the butter until melted. Leave to cool slightly thn stir in the cocoa powder and eggs.
• Scatter the pecans into the pastry base, the pour the filling on top.
• Bake at 160 degrees for about 50 mins, until slightly crispy on top but still gooey inside.
• Serve with whatever you like, I prefer ice cream, the friendly pony likes custard, would also be great with clotted cream or creme fraiche.