Chocolate Refrigerator Cake

Can't believe how quickly time passes!  My last Blog Entry was almost 6 months ago?!?!  Naughty me!

I will have to learn to write short posts and I dunno, edit photos so they are a collage of pictures in one post?  I hate waiting for the upload time :p

Chunks of moreish Refrigerator Cake :)

OK, this chocolate confection goes by many names: No-Cook Cake, Chocolate Tiffin, Chocolate Biscuit Cake (Prince William's favourite apparently), Rocky Road and of course, Chocolate Refrigerator Cake.  Needless to say, many names means many recipes.  I was inspired to make this after seeing a Facebook post from this lady, Jo Wheatley, winner of Great British Bake Off 2.  She has a Facebook page which I have been following.  Her picture of these decadent goodies made me want to make this...

When I make something, I now have an annoying habit of googling the name of the item and reading different variations of the recipe before I make my mind up which to follow.  If it's measured in grams opposed to cups, then I'm more likely to try it - just because I put my bowl on the digital scales and throw things in as I need to. 

I used this Annabel Karmel recipe as my base and used Jo's ideas to create my refrigerator cake.  It is delicious with crunchy and gooey textures and quite rich!

The chocolate mix turned out into my swiss-roll tin ready for chilling

Chocolate Refrigerator Cake

Ingredients:

150g/5oz milk chocolate

150g/5oz dark chocolate

100g/3½oz unsalted butter

150g/5oz golden syrup

small bag of Malteasers (honeycombe balls covered in chocolate 37g bag)
small bag of Minstrels (chocolate buttons encased in a candy shell 42g)
small bag of White Chocolate Buttons (70g)
8 biscuits (rich tea, ginger snaps, digestives, oat biscuits ~ any would work)
50g rice pop cereal
10 marshmallow lumps - quartered (could use mini-marshmallows too)

I made this cake with one bowl, one spoon.  Minimal washing up!  I put my bowl (microwaveable) on my digital scales and added things as I went along - it saved getting separate bowls messy and having lots to wash up :)

Break chocolate into pieces into a microwaveable bowl.
Add the cubed butter and the golden syrup to the bowl.  

Microwave at 100%  (mine is 800watt) for 30 seconds.  Take out and stir the contents.  If there are any remaining lumps of chocolate, microwave again for 15 seconds.  The mixture does not need to be hot, just warm enough to melt the chocolate.  Stirring continuously will help.
When the mix has all turned to liquid, tip in your Malteasers, Buttons, Minstrels, rice cereal, marshmallows and snap the biscuits up as you add them in too.  You can put these in a bowl and bash lightly with the end of a rolling pin if you like - but do not turn it into crumbs - lumpy is fine.
When everything is thoroughly coated in chocolate, tip out onto a shallow tray (I used 20cm x 30cm) lined with cling film (make sure there is excess cling film off the edges to wrap the cake).

Level out as best you can with the back of a spoon. 
Fold the excess cling film over the cake and place in fridge to set (1-2 hours).  Cut into small pieces.  It is quite rich so you do not need a big piece :)

I decorated the top of my cake with drizzles of white and dark chocolate before cutting it up :)
Melt one bar of white chocolate (100g).
Melt remaining dark chocolate left over from making refrigerator cake (50g) - left over milk chocolate is for stress-related emergencies >.<
Drizzle, squiggle, splodge the melted chocolate over the cake as your creative talents allow :)  Replce in fridge for a few mins to harden before chopping into as large/small pieces as you like :)

The beauty of this cake is you can adjust the ingredients as you like.  Add chopped dried fruit (raisins, apricots, dates, stem ginger, sour cherries, cranberries, list is endless...) and nuts (hazlenut, brazil, pistachio) if you prefer.  Or soak the dried fruit in alcohol for 24 hrs prior to making this if you want it to be an adult-only treat!

See the soft, gooey marshmallow, crisp, crunchy Malteaser?

Bagged and ready as a birthday gift to my neighbour :)

Peanut Butter Cookies

This is a cookie that I've tried making several times over the years and there must be 1001 recipes out there.  I like my cookie to be crisp, crumbly and nutty.  This cookie ticks two of my boxes but it's not quite got that nutty hit for me.  It's a good little cookie though - quick and easy and makes a decent sized batch so great for mass bakes where you want to split your goodies amongst friends and families.  I think after having made Chinese Peanut Cookies for Chinese New Year, nothing quite else hits that nutty spot!

I would make this again and would probably incorporate some ground roasted peanuts in for added fragrance and aroma and I would switch to using grams (I've gone finally gone metric now I have digital scales!) rather than faff with cups. 

The recipe (once again) isn't mine (do I really spend that much time blog-surfing?).  It's the excellent photography from here: Peanut Butter Cookies that motivated me to make these.  I have packaged a box to take with me to craft class, boxed some for my brother and also for my cousin who will be visiting from Hong Kong.  (Needless to say I have also put some away for hubbs - can't forget him now can I?)

New Year Goodies II

The next thing I made for new year was Pineapple Tarts.  Essentially, this is a cookie with a jam paste centre.  It's popular with Malaysian, Singaporean and Indonesians during the Chinese New Year.  I tried these last year after some blog-surfing as I like pineapple.  This year I made the pineapple jam myself from fresh pineapple as opposed to tinned which I did last year.  The flavour is much better.

There are many, many recipes for these out there on the internet and different shapes too.  Some are sausage roll like where the pineapple paste is encased in a rolled pastry which has been squeezed from a pastry press leaving lines over the pastry surface.  Indonesians call it Nastar.  Others are completely encased in pastry and perhaps shaped into oranges with a clove as the stalk or into animal shapes. 

I tried a piped version but it wasn't very successful as the dough is firm and my piping nozzle too fine.  The butter in the dough began to melt with the force of my squeezing and didn't look that good.  Plus, it was really hard work!  Eventually, I settled on rolling the dough out and cutting flower shapes out with a cookie cutter.  I made indentations with a spoon and filled the centres with a blob of pineapple paste. 

I have seen a recipe for melting moments which are piped into pretty rosettes.  I need to get a bigger star nozzle before I make them and I imagine they will be quite tasty with the sweet sharp gooeyness of pineapple paste!

New Year Goodies

As I said, I have been busy in the kitchen leading up to New Year.  I've decided I want to give new year food gifts to family and it's been a challenge to find the time after work.  Nevertheless, I have made peanut cookies, pineapple tarts and steamed radish cakes for my new year goody bag.  I am adding tangerines, japanese pears and some lai-see sweets to complete the ensemble.  I had wanted to present the gifts in a round basket but had trouble sourcing these.  Besides, I think it would have to be a large one too!  All I can come up with is a large gift bag.

Here's what I've made:

Peanut Cookies

They were shaped using a measuring spoon so each one is the same size.  They are quite simple to make once you've got everything prepared.  The time consuming bit is the peanut preparation.  It's well worth the effort as the result is a light and crispy, crumbly cookie with an aromatic roasted peanut aroma.  Very popular with my family!

The recipe is not mine but from another food blogger. 

Here is the link to her blog Chinese Peanut Cookies

Here is the peanut preparation. 

I roasted the peanuts in the oven til they were brown and fragrant.  You can do this in a dry wok/frying pan but have to be careful to toss peanuts constantly otherwise you will scorch the peanuts!  I often do that so I find the oven easier - the peanuts roast more uniformly too which makes skin-shelling easier. 

When peanuts are cool enough to handle, you just rub the skins off with your fingers.  My mum does this in handfuls.  When this is all done, she tosses the peanuts gently over the empty sink and blows on them simultaneously.  The papery skins fly off into the sink which you can clear up later.  This I find too messy, so I have the laborious task of rubbing each peanut in my fingers and putting the skins in a separate bag for disposal later.

I used my hand blender attachment to grind the peanuts.  I can't get it to a fine powder but my family like the course grainy texture of the peanuts.

The next bit is easy as you just mix the ground peanuts with flour and sugar and add some oil.  It comes out looking like wet sand but it's not a problem.

When you squeeze the sandy mix together it stays clumped.  So I used a measuring spoon to get my little cookie shapes.  I then placed these on a baking tray (no greasing required) to bake.  You can glaze with egg-wash.  I forgot.