Chocolate Crackles

This is my second attempt at writing this post. The first one just sucked. I'm not sure why. Something to do with pre-breakfast morning grouchiness. So to avoid that, I'm writing this now at half past midnight.

Chocolate crackles are the quintessential Australian confection. You will almost surely find these at an Aussie kid's birthday party. They're sort of restricted to kids though (no idea why). The last time I had one of these must have been at least ten years ago. Being an Asian migrant, my mother had no idea about these ugly looking chocolate thingys, so I only got to eat them at other peoples birthday parties. Which is fine, because if it were any other way, I'd probably weigh twice as much as I do now.

I made these ones last week for a friend from Canada to try. I've only made these myself once before in my life. That was probably about fourteen years ago. I made these with a teacher at school with two bowls and a microwave (yes, I remember). So yes, a six year old can make these (with supervision of course) and I promise you they are very yummy.

Chocolate Crackles


4 cups rice bubbles (or any other rice puff cereal I suppose)
1 1/2 - 2 cups icing sugar, depending on how sweet you want it
1 cup desiccated coconut
1/4 cup cocoa powder
250g copha*

Mix together the rice bubbles, icing sugar, coconut and cocoa in a large bowl. Melt the copha in a heatproof bowl in the microwave (or on the stove if you prefer). This won't take long, but probably a little longer than butter would take.

When it's all melted, pour it straight into the bowl containing everything else and mix together thoroughly, taking care not to crush all the rice puffs, if possible. If you find that it's all looking a bit gloopy and feels hard to move around, your copha may be starting to set, so just pop into the microwave for 30 seconds or so and it should loosen up.

Spoon into cupcake liners and refrigerate until set. That's all!

*Copha is an Australian brand of vegetable shortening. It is solidified coconut oil and is special in that it is solid at room temperature. For this reason, I'm not sure if you can substitute just any brand of vegetable shortening, as it's pretty important that it sets at room temp. I've heard of using melted chocolate to make chocolate crackles, so that may be the way to go, but the flavour won't be truly authentic.

Chocolate Pavlovas and Mascarpone Mousse > Daring Bakers June 2010

The June 2010 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Dawn of Doable and Delicious. Dawn challenged the Daring Bakers’ to make Chocolate Pavlovas and Chocolate Mascarpone Mousse. The challenge recipe is based on a recipe from the book Chocolate Epiphany by Francois Payard.

I did it! It is up :). 


I know it's late, but it is here. My first Daring Bakers challenge. Chocolate pavlova with mascarpone mousse. It was supposed to have mascarpone cream on top as well, but I thought that it kinda looked like something naughty... I also didn't want to have to buy a whole extra tub of macarpone just for that, especially seeing as I don't actually like pavlova. I know. I live in Australia and I don't like pavlova. The travesty. While we're on the subject, you should know that I also dislike Vegemite...


I blanched when I read "pavlova" in the Daring Bakers forums, and seriously thought about not doing this one. I mean, why make a dessert that no one's going to eat? BUT! I did it anyway. Aren't you proud? I reasoned that the chocolate may cover up the inherent sweetness of a pavlova a little. And I also planned to make the mousse the star of the show, which is how I ended up with these mini pavlova nests with a massive pile of mousse of top.


However, despite the mousse being lovely and dark-chocolatey, the stupid thing was still too sweet. Damn you, pavlova! 

So here is the recipe, taken straight from the Daring Kitchen website. Unadulterated and unchanged. I made 2/3rds of the recipe, so if you also dislike pavlova (in which case you probably wouldn't be making this) feel free to do the same. It works fine.

Recipe 1: Chocolate Meringue (for the chocolate Pavlova):

3 large egg whites
½ cup plus 1 tbsp (110 grams) white granulated sugar
¼ cup (30 grams) confectioner’s (icing) sugar
1/3 cup (30 grams) cocoa powder

Directions:

1. Place a rack in the center of the oven and preheat to 200º F (95º C) degrees. Line two baking sheets with silpat or parchment and set aside.
2. Put the egg whites in a bowl and whip until soft peaks form. Increase speed to high and gradually add granulated sugar about 1 tbsp at a time until stiff peaks form. (The whites should be firm but moist.)
3. Sift the confectioner’s sugar and cocoa powder over the egg whites and fold the dry ingredients into the white. (This looks like it will not happen. Fold gently and it will eventually come together.)
4. Fill a pastry bag with the meringue. Pipe the meringue into whatever shapes you desire. Alternatively, you could just free form your shapes and level them a bit with the back of a spoon. (Class made rounds, hearts, diamonds and an attempt at a clover was made!)
5. Bake for 2-3 hours until the meringues become dry and crisp. Cool and store in an airtight container for up to 3 days.

Recipe 2: Chocolate Mascarpone Mousse (for the top of the Pavlova base):

1 ½ cups (355 mls) heavy cream (cream with a milk fat content of between 36 and 40 percent)
grated zest of 1 average sized lemon
9 ounces (255 grams) 72% chocolate, chopped
1 2/3 cups (390 mls) mascarpone (don't forget we made this a few months ago - get the printable .pdf HERE)
pinch of nutmeg
2 tbsp (30 mls) Grand Marnier (or orange juice)

Directions:

1. Put ½ cup (120 mls) of the heavy cream and the lemon zest in a saucepan over medium high heat. Once warm, add the chocolate and whisk until melted and smooth. Transfer the mixture to a bowl and let sit at room temperature until cool.
2. Place the mascarpone, the remaining cup of cream and nutmeg in a bowl. Whip on low for a minute until the mascarpone is loose. Add the Grand Marnier and whip on medium speed until it holds soft peaks. (DO NOT OVERBEAT AS THE MASCARPONE WILL BREAK.)
3. Mix about ¼ of the mascarpone mixture into the chocolate to lighten. Fold in the remaining mascarpone until well incorporated. Fill a pastry bag with the mousse. Again, you could just free form mousse on top of the pavlova.

Chocolate Macadamia Brownies

I was a teenager before I discovered brownies, there being no brownies in our home before then. My parents, my Dad especially, were not big fans of sweets. Eventually though, they met and befriended a baker, who began to bring all sorts of pastry to their mah-jong sessions. There were butterfly pastries, almond stick thingys, uncooked croissants to bake at home, and there were brownies. His brownies were dark, dark chocolate, with crunchy, rich macadamia nuts dotted throughout. Slightly cakey, with a crusty top. And oh so sweet.

It has now been at least a year since I last had a brownie, and that last one wasn't very good. It was uber-dense, which is not a bad thing, but it was also hard as rock... They might as well have called it a cookie.

So, faced with brownie cravings, and a largish gap in the blog, I decided to bake brownies. Chocolate ones with macadamia nuts, just like the ones I remember oh so fondly. The recipe is one I came up with after about an hour of pouring over many, many brownie recipes, and is a happy medium between them. It is mostly done in one bowl (except for measuring), so makes for easy cleanup as well.

Chocolate Macadamia Brownies

150g butter
170g dark chocolate
150g brown sugar
50g caster sugar (optional, if you want it sweeter)
2tsp vanilla extract
3 large eggs
90g flour
30g cocoa powder
150g macadamia nuts, halved
Sifted icing sugar, to dust

Pre-heat oven to 160°C. Lightly grease and line a 20cm square tin.

Melt the butter and chocolate together in a heatproof bowl over a pot of simmering water, making sure that the water does not touch the bottom of the bowl. When it is smooth and shiny, remove from heat and let cool slightly before adding the sugar and vanilla extract, mixing well with a wooden spoon. Beat in the eggs, one at a time, mixing well between additions.

Sift in the flour and cocoa powder. Fold in with the wooden spoon. Add the macadamia nuts and fold through. Pour the mixture into the prepared tin and smooth the top, pushing the batter into the corners of the pan. Bake for 30-40 minutes, or until cooked when tested with a skewers (there may be some moist crumbs still sticking to the skewer, but no liquidy batter). Dust lightly with icing sugar and cut into 16 squares.

Note: I used 72% dark, bittersweet chocolate, but feel free to substitute milk chocolate if you prefer.

Double Chocolate Cookies

My parents, as many of you may have gathered, have a lot of friends. Maybe more than me... One of them is obsessed with my white chocolate macadamia cookies. In fact any time that I bake any cookie, she wants to take a big stack home. Which is fine. I don't mind. Except that they cost me to make! Anything with nuts in it will cost me at about $8-10 to produce (I'm generous with my nuts you see). Anything involving chocolate, and the price shoots up as well. Macarons cost a small fortune to make what with almond meal being so expensive (I've taken to ordering kilo bags of the stuff to cut down the cost).

It turns out that baking is an expensive hobby. Who knew?

So, naturally, I don't like to waste things. Which in turn leads to the creation of these double chocolate cookies.

I had a large bowl of melted chocolate and butter left over from dipping my eclairs into. I thought chocolate cookies might be a good way to use it up. And I was not disappointed. Now excuse me as I go enjoy a cookie with a nutty sort of smile on my face.

Double Chocolate Cookies (adapted from the Donna Hay Chocolate book)
Makes about 35 cookies or so, depending on the size of each.

150g dark chocolate
100g butter
3/4cup brown sugar (tightly packed)
1 egg
1tsp vanilla extract
1cup (150g) plain/all-purpose flour, sifted
1/4cup (30g) cocoa powder, sifted
1tsp baking soda
1 1/2cups dark chocolate chips, or plain dark chocolate, roughly chopped

Melt together the butter and the dark chocolate, until smooth and glossy.

Mix together the sugar, egg and vanilla extract. Add the chocolate and butter mixture, mixing well. Stir in the flour, cocoa and baking soda. Add the chocolate chips and stir to combine.

Roll tablespoons of the mixture into balls. Place on baking sheets and flatten slightly, spacing them out to allow for spreading. Bake at 160°C for 10-12 minutes, or until cracks begin to appear on the surface of the cookie. 

Chocolate Eclairs > à la Masterchef

 

Remember the coffee eclairs Gary and George made in series 1 of Masterchef Australia? Here they are! My attempt, except with chocolate instead of coffee fondant. I've been thinking about making these eclairs ever since they appeared on TV about a year ago. I don't really know why it's taken me so long, seeing as their actually pretty simple to make. The fiddly bit is putting them together I think.


I did have a couple of issues though. I wanted to have that really glossy dipped fondant topping, but tried to achieve this using marshmallow fondant, which was ok, but wasn't glossy, and tasted overwhelmingly of marshmallow (which Nooboy assured me was still delicious). I quickly switched to chocolate. Also, the first batch I baked came out rather tiny, so I then proceeded to pipe the remaining choux batter without a tip, using the coupler by itself. All in all, not a bad attempt, if I may say so myself.

Chocolate Eclairs (adapted from the Masterchef kitchen)

Choux Pastry

265ml milk

210ml water

1 tbsp sugar

1 tbsp salt

150g butter

265g flour (plain/allpurpose, sifted)

8 large eggs (59g)

For the choux pastry, place the milk, water, sugar, salt and butter into a medium-large saucepan. Bring this mixture to the boil. When the milk is boiling, butter is melted and salt and sugar has dissolved, add the flour. No need to be delicate here, just dump the whole lot in and beat the heck out of it with a wooden spoon. You need to cook this mixture until it is a cohesive, springy 'dough'. You need to wait until the mixture is coming together and away from the sides of the pan when as you mix. The 'dough' will take on a slight gleam on the smooth surfaces as well. 

At this stage, tip it all into a bowl and beat it a little to knock out some of the heat. This step isn't included in all choux recipes, but it makes it less frantic when you start to add the eggs. If you beat some of the heat out of the batter before adding the eggs, they are far less likely to scramble. 

Add the eggs two at a time, beating to incorporate completely before the next addition (here's some arm exercise for you, perfect for working off a little of the calories soon to be consumed). Once all the eggs have been added, piped onto lined baking trays, spacing them out as they will puff up to at least twice their size. I used a non-stick cookie sheet and didn't even bother to line it - they turned out fine. 

Baked in a hot oven preheated to 210-220°C for about ten minutes to puff up then turn the oven down to 180°C to dry a little. This is not really exact, just wait until the eclairs are puffed before turning down the oven. They should have a total oven time of about 20-25 minutes. Try not to open the oven while they are in there, as this can affect the puffing.

Cool completely on wire racks before filling.

Vanilla Cream Filling

600ml whipping cream (35-40% milk fat)

1/3cup icing sugar

1tsp vanilla paste, or the seeds scraped from one vanilla pod (add the leftover pod to a jar of caster sugar to make vanilla sugar)

Whipped the cream with the sugar and vanilla until firm peaks. 

Poke a hole in the end of each cooled eclair with a pastry tip (I, Asian that I am, used a chopstick for this). Pipe the cream into it. You can feel the weight of the cream go through the eclair as you pipe. I found that for a couple of them I had to poke a hole in both ends of the eclair, or use my chopstick or finger to make sure that there were no obstructions in the center cavity in order for the cream to fill the entire eclair. Use whichever method you are comfortable with.

Chocolate Topping

100g chocolate

50g butter

Melt the chocolate and butter together in a double boiler until smooth and glossy. Alternatively just give it short bursts in the microwave, stirring each time it comes out, until it reached that smooth consistency. Dip each filled eclair into the chocolate and let set. If you want, pipe something pretty onto it with some melted white chocolate.

Note:

The recipe is not actually published in the recipe section of the Masterchef website. However, the video of the making of them can still be found in the video section (Videos > Relive Masterchef Series 1 > Recipes Series 1). I found the video to be quite helpful, especially with showing how much you need to cook the choux before it comes off the stove. The video also shows you how to create the original coffee fondant topping. 

Chocolate Cup Cakes!

I really love cupcakes. I don't really care about the taste (not much different from normal sized cakes), but they're just so cute! And they're easy to decorate too. You can make them all fancy with buttercream roses, dip them in fondant, add cute little flags, or, if you're not really bothered, they can look incredibly charming with just a dollop of plain old buttercream on top. Also, if you don't want to eat them all (heaven knows why), they're easy to push onto friends and family, especially when kids are involved.

Recently, baking has become my go-to method of procrastination (uni work...pfft), and since I had a big bowl of Swiss meringue buttercream left over from a chocolate cake a couple days ago, I decided to make cupcakes. Chocolate cupcakes :D.

The recipe for the buttercream can be found within the chocolate cake link above. The recipe for the cake itself come from Donna Hay's chocolate book. I love Donna Hay, and this is a great chocolate book. I am, however reluctant to post the recipes here on the blog (copyright and such and such). I apologize, but am sure you understand.

Nooblet's Macarons > Choc-Mint Macarons

I made more macarons! Of course, you say, what else?

I made beautiful little choc-mint macarons. This is their story:

I wanted to try the French meringue method again after hearing that it shouldn't be much harder than the Italian, and that the macarons it turns out are tastier and less sweet. So I did. Twice. And both times were disasters. Let me elaborate.

1. Disaster number one happened because I desperately wanted to make pretty little pink rosewater macarons. I went out and bought rosewater. I dug around and found some red food colouring. I painstakingly measured all my ingredients out to the gram and spent almost an hour pushing almond meal through my ridiculously fine sieve. I whipped my egg whites and added sugar. And the the trouble starts. I add the red colouring halfway during whipping and, genius that I am, I decide to add a little drop of blue, reasoning that it would make a prettier pink. Wrong. I forgot to check the red and the blue for colour tone and it must have been warm blue because my "pink" look rather ugly and forlorn. Darn high school art and their warm blues and cool blues. But I baked them anyway, seeing as I am a stoic and stubborn baker. They rose up beautifully and had the cutest, tallest little feet. It was bliss looking at them. Until I bit into one. GIANT air pocket under the shell. How disappointing. They were also unforgivably crunchy. Urgh! They were not deemed worthy of photography.
2. Disaster two happened because I was stubborn. I still wanted to make the French meringue method work. Also I wanted to try out some new green powder food colouring I bought. Choc-mint sounded like a lovely macaron flavour. Long story short, they turned out much like the ugly pink ones. I knew powder food colouring was potent. So I used a little bit. Not even 1/8th of a teaspoon and look how they turned out. Stupid green monstrosities. With giant air pockets. At least they weren't as crunchy as the pink ones. Sigh. Nooblet strikes again.

Not happy with my efforts, I set out to re-make the choc-mint ones. I fall back on my trusty sucre-cuit method. And of course, slightly less green powder. And they turned out lovely. Yay! Finally. I could cry for joy.

Choc-Mint Macarons (adapted from Ms Humble's lemon mascarpone macarons)

150g almond meal

150g icing sugar 

120g egg whites

185g sugar 

50ml water

1tsp peppermint essence

Food colouring

Sift together the almond meal and icing sugar. I prefer to do the icing sugar first, as the almond meal tends to clog up my sieve, slowing down any further sifting I wish to do. 

Measure out 60 grams of egg whites and set aside. Place the remaining 60 grams in whichever bowl you plan to whip it in. 

Place the 185g of sugar into a saucepan and add water. Heat on medium until it starts to bubble and turn down to a simmer. You can stir initially to ensure all the sugar dissolves, but try not to do this to much or too vigorously as the sugar on the sides of the pan can begin to crystallize. 

While your sugar is heating up, begin beating your egg whites until it is frothy and forms soft peaks. When your syrup hits 230°F, slowly add to your egg whites, beating all the time. I don't have a candy thermometer so I test my sugar using the cold water method - you're after the firm ball stage (i.e. it forms a ball which does not flatten itself in your palm, but which is malleable and can be formed with your fingers). Once all the sugar is added continue beating until the meringue is thick, glossy and cooled. The Italian meringue should be thick, beautifully glossy, slightly sticky and clings to your beaters, forming a beak-like shape. 

Add your unwhipped egg whites to the dry ingredients. You can beat the heck out of this. Make sure everything is incorporated at this stage (it makes it easier to fold in the meringue later). Add peppermint essence and food colouring (keeping in mind that the colour will fade a little when you add your meringue). 

Gently fold in egg whites one third at a time until you reach macaronage - that "flows like magma" consistency. I do this by folding just until any peaks manage to slowly disappear. If you've whipped your meringue properly, it should take a bit of mixing, so don't be afraid. 

Pipe circles a little more than an inch in diameter onto lined baking sheets. You can of course make them a bit bigger or smaller, depending on your preferences. Try and get good heavy baking sheets as this gives a more consistent result (I like the insulated ones). Some recipes say to now let them rest until they are no longer tacky to touch, but I find that it's usually ok to bake them right away if you're pressed for time.

Bake for 20mins at 150°C. Ms Humble's original recipe calls for only 14mins of baking, but I found that in my kitchen, this browned the macarons too much. So I wrapped one of the racks from my oven in foil and placed it directly under the top heating element to protect my little cookies. This worked fine, but at 14mins many of them were still sticky on the bottom, so I gave them just a little longer in the oven.

Once out of the oven (you can test them by nudging them just a little, they're done when they reluctantly loosen from the baking paper), let cool then fill.

Choc-Mint Buttercream Filling

125g butter (softened)

4 cups icing sugar

3/4 cup cocoa powder

1/2 cup milk

Cream together butter and one cup of the icing sugar. Once fully incorporated, add cocoa powder, another cup of the icing sugar and a third of the milk. Once fully incorporated, add the remaining icing sugar. Beat well and add the remaining milk as required until you reach a pipable consistency. Be careful not to add too much milk, as the buttercream can become too soft (which makes for a macaron with a filling that squishes out when bitten into).

Fill a piping bag and pipe onto half the macaron shells. Squish down with another macaron shell and pop everything into the fridge to mature for a day or two (if you can wait that long). Enjoy!

Note: Nooboy brought home the icing sugar which is cut with a bit of cornflour. I didn't find that my macarons suffered too much from this...impurity. So, thank you Nooboy for running to the store for me :). Also, as I used powder food colouring to devastating effects the first time, I dissolved it little by little into the batter before adding the meringue until I was happy with the colour. This way, I didn't have to worry about overbeating if it wasn't green enough.