Caramel and Butterscotch
23 Apr 2012 Leave a Comment
in Desserts, Recipes Tags: dessert, ovenless, recipe, recipes, sugar, sweet
Butter and sugar, how I love thee. And combined with some (whisper it) condensed milk and that height of British marvels that is golden syrup… om, nom, and double nom. Of course, it does sometimes happen that you’ve not got any lait concentré sucré to hand (maybe you’ve used it all up making Tablet?), in which case the humble single or double cream may be substituted for a thinner result. And as all countries have not got Messrs Tate and Lyle to rely upon in times of need (or in the day to day), some runny honey will also give your caramel or butterscotch a taste which is definitely acceptable.
Herein presented are two recipes. The former is thicker, and slightly sweeter. Both are true to their Scottish VERY sweet tooth heritage and disgusted the Peruvian girl cooking pasta next to me. Both have quantities which can be taken with a pinch of salt… I tend to just shake in a bit of this and a bit of that, but the quantities provided seem about right. Both taste great after 5 minutes of heating but even better after 20.
And then, the question is: what to do with them? I went for caramel popcorn with the former (pour over freshly popped corn, stir or shake, then enjoy… wash hands after eating and before knitting), then good old-fashioned eating with a spoon, then included a caramel layer in a batch of brownies in order to stop myself from eating the whole pot. The butterscotch would have gone brilliantly with ice-cream, but alas that was not to be and so I substituted some fromage blanc (though I’m unfamiliar with UK yoghurt products, I think that would be equivalent to Greek yoghurt, perhaps)… and then returned with my spoon for the rest.
So, without further ado:
Caramel
100g butter
1 tin condensed milk
1/2 cup white sugar (100g)
1/2 cup brown sugar (100g)
4 tbsp golden syrup / 2 tbsp honey
- In a saucepan over the stove-top, melt the butter and sugars, then add the condensed milk and honey.
- Stir to avoid the appearance of brown bits (means you’ve burnt it), keeping it at medium-hot heat. You might even be best whisking it.
- Continue in this vein for about 20 minutes.
- Watch out for burning sugar.
- Take it off the heat and let it cool a bit then enjoy!
Butterscotch
50g butter
4 tbsp / 50g brown sugar
4 tbsp / 50g white sugar
150ml cream
2 tbsp honey
Couple of drops of vanilla
- Melt everything bar the vanilla and honey in a pan, then add the vanilla and honey.
- Keep stirring over a medium-hot heat for 15-20 minutes
Baking and Ratios
04 Jan 2012 Leave a Comment
in Cake, Desserts, Recipes Tags: baking, chocolate, dessert, eggless, ovenless, ratio cooking, ratios, recipe, require chilling
A love of maths is a supremely helpful quality for baking. Even if I mostly divide recipes by use of chrome’s toolbar rather than in my head these days, it’s my good old standard grade maths grounding that means I know to type in “300/3*2” to work out that 2/3 of 300 is 200. Ok, so I wouldn’t actually have to type that in to work out that particular sum. Honest. Apparently you’re not really meant to tweak recipes which specify a number of eggs, but I’ve never had any problems with doing so: if you don’t have a large enough baking tin or enough people to feed to do the whole batch of 20 brownies, I’ve found doing 2/3 of it in a smaller tin works perfectly.
Anyway, so one of the great things about baking is ratios. Though I’ve known for years that the basic sponge cake recipe has the perfect ratio of 1:1:1:1 for the weights of butter:sugar:eggs:self-raising flour (cream butter and sugar; beat in eggs 1 at a time; fold in half the flour then the other half then bake for about 20 minutes at gas mark 5*), and discovered recently that 1:1 for cream:chocolate makes the perfect ganache (or truffles), for some reason I’d not really thought of extending that to other recipes. But actually, it makes them so much easier to remember. And when I was given a recipe for
Chocolate Truffle Cake
By the lovely Sarah W, it was the perfect opportunity to test this ratio thing out further.
(apologies for photo quality, my camera was elsewhere so had to use a blackberry. Also, in the words of someone that wasn’t me: “It looks ok but tastes amazing!”)
The basic recipe serves about 8-12 depending on your portion-size, costs about £3.50 depending on the quality of your chocolate, and is:
225g digestive biscuits
450g dark chocolate
100g butter
1 pt double cream
cocoa powder/grated chocolate (for dusting/decoration).
- Relieve all your stress by bashing the digestives repeatedly over the head with a rolling pin until they are completely smooshed (my interpretation of ”smash biscuits to rough crumb form”) and melt the butter.
- Mix the crumbs and butter and press into a spring form cake tin (around 24cm). Place in the fridge.
- Melt the chocolate carefully, either in a bowl on top of some boiling water, or on a really gentle heat on the stovetop directly in a pot, or by turning the microwave power to low and stirring frequently.
- Whip the double cream until stiff.
- Pour in the melted chocolate and fold in gently – this may take a little time, but keep gently folding, making sure you don’t overmix.
- Pour chocolate cream mixture in over the base and leave to set in the fridge overnight.
- Dust with cocoa powder before serving.
But if you know that a pint is roughly 550 ml and it’s a sort of basic ganache topping (though the difference in method means it comes out completely differently), then you can take that ratio and make it 2:1:4:4 in terms of digestives:butter:chocolate:cream. And then make it for as many or as few people as you want. I had only 400g of chocolate so did 200g:100g:400g:400ml and that worked out fine (I also substituted the dark chocolate for 3 bars milk and 1 bar dark, and the double cream for single as the shop had run out, and that worked well – its recipients raved [somewhat to my surprise, in fact!], but I think it would be even better made with double or whipping cream as directed).
End summary: have fun, experiment, and look to see if your favourite recipes have an innate ratio that make them much easier to remember. And stay in school, kids, maths is the key to success…
*Interestingly when procrastinating by investigating for doing this blog, I found that using this method with plain flour should yield the denser pound cake. While for a different type of sponge cake, you can reclassify the ratio as egg:sugar:flour:melted butter (whisk eggs and sugar, fold in flour [plain or self raising], fold in melted butter)
Apple Crumble Pie
06 Dec 2011 2 Comments
in Desserts, Recipes Tags: baking, dessert, fruit, recipe, thanksgiving, vegan
Sometimes a pie is just too pastry-y, but you fancy a base for a crumble… or you need a base ‘cos it’s Thanksgiving and you don’t want to be toooo controversial with your apple pie offering! Or if you’re an erasmus student and don’t have an arsenal of deep cooking dishes at your disposal so have to make do with a 1-inch deep £1-shop dish…
If any of the above fit your situation, this mash-up of several recipes online seemed to work quite well if I say so myself 
(serves 6ish but depends on your dish – I doubled and the picture was the result)
Spice up your Ganache
22 Nov 2011 3 Comments
in Desserts, Recipes Tags: chocolate, cream, dessert, meal, ovenless, recipe, require chilling, student meal
I was in E Leclerc when I spotted Gu puds had 50c off. I was very sorely tempted by the thought of a nice pot of ganache… then realised that rather than paying 3€ with reduction for 3 tiny pots, I could get a carton of double cream for 40c and then use a couple of 40c bars of chocolates to make at least 4 of my own very generous portions!
The basic ganache recipe I use is heating a quantity of cream until it’s almost boiling (I’m told the word the French use for this is “singing”), and then taking it off the heat, adding the same quantity of broken chocolate in grams as cream in millilitres, leaving for a minute then stirring then whisking until it’s all melted. I thought it would be boring to have 4 massive pots of all chocolate ganache, so experimented:
In one, I put a sprinkle of ginger, in another a sprinkle of chilli powder, and in another a capful of raspberry liqueur (I left the fourth one plain). The glass bottom jars (Gu remnants in themselves) were useful because I could see where needed more scrapings. After each had been stirred, into the fridge to cool for a varying number of days.
The verdict?
Chocolate-Ginger: I ate it before it had had time to properly set. But it was still really yummy, with just a hint of a kick to it. Next time, I’ll whisk it more, as there are a few lumpy bits.
Chocolate-Raspberry: As you might expect, this didn’t really set properly. It did have a normally hard top, but inside was more of a thick liquid than a solid. I hadn’t labelled them and ate this after 1 day of refrigeration; maybe if it had been left longer (or been frozen! Mmmmm, shall be experimenting when I have a freezer) it would have been more properly set/ganache-like. Despite having said all this, it was really nice. Neither the alcohol flavour nor the raspberry flavour were too overpowering (you could also probably do this with raspberry juice or coulis; being in France, liqueur was cheaper for me and needed using up )
Chocolate-Chilli: Ate this on the 3rd day. Thought it was the plain chocolate one until the last few spoonfuls, when I suddenly got quite a powerful punch of chilli. The aftertaste is delicious…
Moral of the story: you can’t go wrong with cream and chocolate. Though make sure all the chocolate is melted in the premiere instance.
Crumble
23 Aug 2011 Leave a Comment
in Desserts, Recipes Tags: baking, dessert, fruit, pudding, recipe
I tend to make this with apples, but if you’ve pears, raspberries or strawberries going spare then chuck them in too! You can experiment with lots of different fruit combinations, and also with sloshing in some apple juice, or apple-and-raspberry juice if you happen to have some about. With about 7 big apples (peeled and cored, of course), this makes enough for about 8 people – or some can be frozen or just kept in the fridge for having the rest of the week.
Fudgy Chocolate Cake.2
12 Aug 2011 1 Comment
in Cake, Desserts, Recipes Tags: baking, birthday, cake, chocolate, decorative, dessert, recipe, special
A definite contender for my favourite chocolate cake ever awards… Though I think the Dark Fudgy Chocolate cake just has the edge on this. The original recipe just called for double the filling and spread butter icing on top as well, but I had double cream going spare, so thought I’d do a ganache over the top; worked really well, if I say so myself!
Apple Cake
09 Aug 2011 Leave a Comment
in Cake, Desserts, Recipes Tags: baking, cake, dessert, fruit, recipe
If life throws you apples… make apple cake! Fed up of apple crumble all the time and had a few eggs to spare, so thought I’d try this recipe, adding some cinnamon and mixed spice to give it a little extra oomph. Tastes best just out of the oven, though can be eaten cold and/or heated up in the microwave. Lovely with a bit of double cream.
Truffles
29 Jul 2011 1 Comment
in Desserts, Miscellaneous, Recipes Tags: chocolate, cream, dark, dessert, ovenless, recipe
Basically, this is ganache icing which has been left to completely solidify. An easy dessert… just not one for anyone counting their calories!
My, my, Apple Pie!
24 Jun 2011 Leave a Comment
in Desserts, Recipes Tags: baking, dessert, fruit, pastry
If you become bored of making crumble all the time with your apples, a change: apple pie. This is quite a savoury recipe, but feel free to add as much sugar and spice as you want! 
Original called for pastry all the way over the top, but (1) student cooking meant the dish used for the pie wasn’t ideal, and (2) I thought that would make it a bit pastry-heavy.
White Chocolate Cheesecake with Raspberries
16 Jun 2011 1 Comment
in Desserts, Recipes Tags: dessert, fruit, ovenless, recipe, require chilling
As requested by Gail, the white chocolate cheesecake that brought me round to the ways of the cheesecake after years of avoiding it based on the inclusion of the word “cheese” in the title! This has so much chocolate that the cream cheese is barely discernible, and the raspberries’ tartness sets off the sweet stodgyness of the cake wonderfully Bewarned, though: this is very filling, so when I say it serves 12, that’s not really an understatement! Apologies for the photo-quality, but I didn’t have a nice cheesecake dish and figured most students won’t either 
