Gratuitous melted chocolate picture for you …

My sister bought me some cool things for Christmas. Amongst which were a packet of culinary lavender flowers, a bottle of culinary lavender oil and a chocolate mould.

The possibilities were endless and mouthwatering but in the end I decided to make little milk and dark chocolates flavoured with the oil and a few flowers for crunch, and decorated with flowers.

They turned out really nicely and tasted divine, but I really wanted a challenge so decided to experiment with filled chocolates as well. I had made hard ganache before, but never soft ganache for fillings.

To make soft ganache you use twice as much cream as chocolate and boil the cream before stirring in the chocolate to melt it. After that you have to leave it in the fridge overnight until it has thickened and then whip it up so it becomes light and airy. I used milk chocolate for my ganache and added about 8 drops of lavender essence to the cream before I stirred in the chocolate. Here is the finished ganache.

I then oiled the tin and poured chocolate in to make the cases. You have to swirl the tin around to make sure the sides are evenly covered and then pour out the excess chocolate.

After that you can fill the cases with ganache, making sure you do not fill them fuller than the level of the tin, and then pipe over the chocolate to finish. It is a very messy business as you can see!

I have to admit that this was not the easiest of things to make, and I made a few mistakes along the way. The first time I made the cases, I left them to set overnight before filling them, which meant they were too brittle to come out of the tins. I also buttered the tins instead of oiling them which wouldnt have helped either. On the second attempt they came out of the tins beautifully and this was the result. Not perfect, but not bad either, and they tasted (past tense) great. More adventures in chocolate to follow soon.

Watch this space!

I have been such a lazy bloggeress, I cant believe I have not written since before my new oven arrived, was installed and loved, then used and abused over the holiday period. It is not quite as shiny as it was a few months ago, despite the TLC it is getting, but it still does the job and is much loved.

My only excuse for being a lazy bloggeress is that I have also been a lazy cook recently. I promised myself that I would try to experiment with more savoury dishes but alas, my sweet tooth wins over every time and the only new things I have tried recently are a fairly successful Christmas Yule Log and a yummy Banoffee Pie.

Oh well, why fight it?

I am very excited as I have a new oven on order.

It will have

• 4 burners (that work, I only have 3 at the moment), with clickers to light them
• a thermostatically controlled oven, and …. …
• it will actually have numbers on the temperature gauge.

Yes I know it is very sad to be so excited about such a poxy oven, especially compared to all the beautiful domestic ones that everyone else has, but I have been cooking for 18 months on the this oven, which has no temperature control except ‘on’ and ‘off’, and which cannot cook puff pastry, oven chips or bread.  All I need now is a freezer that freezes…

I’m back in the BVIs after a lovely long holiday in England. I have found loads of new recipes that I really want to try, but some of them will have to wait until we charter next, as the ingredients are so expensive here, particularly fish and vegetables for some reason.

I bought a book in England called Caribbean Cooking, the women in the shop (and my mum) were laughing at me for having to go all the way to England to buy a Caribbean cookbook, but the truth is, the cookbooks I have bought here have not impressed me much. Loads of them have ingredients that are really hard to buy here, or they lean more towards US/Caribbean fusion food rather than true Caribbean flavours and ingredients. The book I have bought is from the Australian Women’s Weekly series which means, they say, that all the recipes have been tried and tested. I want to work my way through some of the recipes in the book – hopefully making me try some savoury recipes for once!

The first recipe I chose from the book was a ‘Green Banana and Coconut Soup’ . Woo-hoo – savoury!! We had friends over for dinner last night so I made it for them. I have cooked with plantains and bananas before, but never green bananas. It was an interesting experience as the result looked, and even tasted much more like a mushroom soup than anything else! It wasnt a great taste, and unfortunately, contrary to the recipe (which had a photo of a lovely white soup) it was a rather un-appetising grey colour. My dinner guests were very polite about it, but I certainly won’t be making it again – hence why I don’t feel the need to share the recipe.Here are some of the photos I took, though.

You bake the bananas for 25 minutes, then peel and skin them.

This is where I started to get a bit worried …

The stock, onion & coconut milk mixture simmered…

The finished soup!

Not one I’d recommend, but certainly worth a try. Hope the other recipes in the book turn out better!

Home at last! and now I am able to borrow my mother-in-law’s lovely normal well-equipped kitchen with a huge (comparatively) temperature-controlled oven and more surface space than I could dream of.

I have been searching for the perfect transatlantic fairycake/cupcake combination recipe for a long time. One that will make lovely perky little cakes for fairycake size paper cases but that will have a good strong flavour and be smooth enough to ice.

British fairy cakes tend to be quite bland in taste and light in texture while American cupcakes are strong in taste but heavier in texture. I have tried various recipes from both sides of the pond and at last I have come upon the perfect recipe. It is a Nigella Lawson recipe which surprised me as I am not normally a huge fan but these Chocolate Cherry Cupcakes are just gorgeous.

for the cupcakes:

125g Soft unsalted Butter
100g Dark Chocolate, broken into pieces
300g Morello Cherry Jam
150g Caster Sugar
Pinch of Salt
2 Large Eggs, beaten
150g Self Raising Flour
12 Bun Muffin tin and papers

For the Icing

100g Dark Chocolate
100ml Double Cream
12 Natural Coloured Glace Cherries

Preheat the oven to 180oC/Gas Mark 4

Put the butter in a heavy-bottomed pan on the heat to melt. When nearly completely melted stir in the chocolate. Leave for a moment to begin softening, then take the pan off the heat and stir with a wooden spoon until the butter and the chocolate are smooth and melted, now add the cherry jam, sugar salt and eggs. Stir with a wooden spoon and when all is pretty well amalgamated stir in the flour.

Scrape and pour into the muffin papers in their tin and bake for 25 pans. Cool in the pan on a rack for 10 minutes before turning out.

When the cupcakes are cool break the chocolate for the icing into little pieces and add them to the cream in the saucepan. Bring to the boil, remove from the heat and then whisk – by hand or electrically until thick and smooth. Ice the cupcakes, smoothing the tops with the back of a spoon and stand a cherry in each.

Makes 12

I actually found that it made 20 cakes because I was using british cake papers not muffin papers. The cakes are to die for, particularly as the cherries give them a slight chewyness, and using real chocolate in the cake mixture makes them very rich.

I didnt use the icing recipe listed here. I used one from a book I have just bought called ‘More from Magnolia’ from the Magnolia Bakery in New York coloured them with food colouring and decorated them with bits I found in Tesco’s. Da-da! American-style fairycakes

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I came up with the idea for these the other day while on charter. I was in the galley and was clearing out the cupboards in preparation for our holiday and I found some edible paper!

This led to a desperate craving for macaroons so I rushed through the dinner preparations so I could make some. I based these on a recipe by Christopher Kimball from his book ‘The Dessert Bible’ but I have changed it to suit the way I cook and to incorporate some deliciously sweet apricots.

The beauty of making macaroons is that the actual method takes hardly any time and ‘ involve any complicated techniques.

2 Cups Ground Almonds
2 Cups White Sugar
3-4 Large Egg Whites at room temperature
6 Dried ready to eat Apricots, chopped
1 Tsp Almond Extract

1. Line 2 baking sheets with parchment paper or edible paper in a single layer (dont overlap) Preheat the oven to 200oC.

2. Sit the almonds and sugar together, gradually stir in the egg whites until you have a stiff dough. You may not need all the egg whites.

3. Add the apricots and almond extract and mix well.

4. Take a medium round spoon and wet it. Spoon the mixture onto the baking trays and smooth down any uneven peaks with a wet spoon or wet finger.

5. Place in the oven and cook for about 20 minutes until brown round the edges and puffed.

5. Place in the oven and cook for about 20 minutes.