The name's Blond - Caramel Blond {Salted Caramel Chocolate Blondies}

Why am I attempting silly Bond-jokes and (seemingly) infatuated with light hair colour? I don't mean blond(e) in the hair sense, but in the confection sense. In case you haven't encountered it before, blondie is a dense slice similar to brownie except without cocoa and instead with a vanilla or butterscotch flavour. 

Yeah, I've obviously been trying hard to think of a clever story about this recipe, but I don't have much to work with... However it is my own recipe, so I do feel clever about that, having combined and refined my fave choc brownie recipe (Whittakers) plus Donna Hay's salted caramel and choc brownie (which really seems like a blondie to me).

I wanted the denseness of choc brownie along with the sweet-and-salty flavour of the caramel brownie. Did I succeed? My workmates were certainly very complimentary when I brought some to work for a farewell morning tea. But I'll let you decide... hopefully you'll be pleasantly surprised!

Salted Caramel Chocolate Blondies

250g butter (regular is fine - if you have butter salted with sea salt that's perfect, but I rarely do!)

3/4 cup caramel (I buy canned caramel as I'm hopeless at making it, but if you prefer to make it yourself then I won't stop you...)

2 cups brown sugar, packed

4 eggs

2 tsp vanilla essence

1 & 1/2 cups plain flour

1/4 tsp baking powder (if you want a slightly more cakey and less dense blondie)

1 block of chocolate with caramel filling (e.g. Cadbury's Caramello, Whittaker's Milk Chocolate Caramel)
sea salt to top it off

Preheat your oven to 180 degrees C (160 degrees fan bake). Line a 7" x 11" (approx) tin with baking paper. Here's an easy way to do this: cut a rectangle of baking paper wider than the tin... 

Push the paper into the corners of the tray. 

Take out the paper and cut from its corners to the indented corners on diagonals. 

Fit the paper back into the tray and bend the corner flaps so they overlap and fit the corners. You can spray a bit of oil into the tray before lining to help keep the baking paper in place.

For the blondie, place the butter, caramel and brown sugar in saucepan over a moderate heat. 

Only the best butter in the world.

Stir the mixture occasionally until all the butter has melted then remove from the heat.

Sift the flour and baking powder (if using) into a bowl. Crack the eggs into a separate small bowl or jug. Add the flour and eggs to the sugary butter mixture alternately, ending with the flour, and mix using a whisk or spatula.

Pour the batter into your lined tin. Chop up the block of chocolate and space the pieces across the batter, pushing them down gently. Sprinkle sea salt across the top of the batter.

Ideally you will have more self-control and more caramel chocolate to use... :-|

Bake for 30 mins then test the cookedness of the blondie with a skewer - if it comes out with liquid still on it then check 10 minutes later. For a dense, fudgey blondie you will want to see moist crumbs on your skewer. 

Personally I prefer to let blondie cool - and even refrigerate overnight - before digging in to ensure that fudgey texture, but this would be nice served warm for dessert also!

{A Summer of Decadent Desserts} Cheesecake Chocolate Cake with Salted Caramel

Ah summer and its long sunny days. What could be better than dining late during those warmer nights? Ending them with a delicious sweet treat, that's what! 

This month I've been trying out some gorgeous recipes that have been floating around the blogsphere; recipes where salted caramel, thick chocolate brownie and rich cheesecake layers interlace with flowing ganache or flavoured buttercream. The sort of desserts that fully deserve being described as 'decadent'. 

These recipes tend to involve a number of steps spread over several hours (or days!) but all the effort is... Totally. Worth. It.

So for the next couple of posts I'm going to do some promos of other baker's great ideas by trial and taste test. Hopefully you'll find you're a fan of their work and support the many inspirational (and irrepressible!) bakers who spend so much time developing recipes for anyone to try for free! 

First up: Salted Caramel Chocolate Cheesecake Cake from Shugary Sweets.

You might notice that I've called it something different in the title of my post. I'm a little bit of a grammar cop - the adjectives (eg. chocolate) in English need to come before the nouns (e.g. cake). 

It's not like I care or anything... but this dessert is difficult to grammarise(sp?!), because there are really two cakes: chocolate cake and cheesecake. But the cheesecake is not chocolate flavoured, it's plain/vanilla-ish. 

See the problem? By calling it a chocolate cheesecake cake you could misunderstand and expect the cheesecake to be chocolate flavoured. 

And you would be bitterly disappointed (well, maybe).

Also, by starting the description with 'salted caramel' you could expect the cake to infused with that flavour, rather than topped with it. 

And you would also be disappointed (although not really, because there's still lots of lovely caramel in the icing!). 

I'm not writing this in criticism - I just feel like I need to clarify why I've called it by different name (a rose, anyone?!). 

So that no-one would be disappointed. 

If it makes it better, I've used the original name in my computer file name for the photos I took of it...

Ok, ok, let's just have pictures instead of words.

That's better - well, not the best images (can't wait to get a new camera soon so I don't have to use my phone one!!!) but I hope it makes the grammar-point. And there shall be no disappointment.

Bring me the notes for this recipe! (Before Grammar Cop spoils this post any more...) 

• The recipe is really easy to follow but takes a bit of planning; I made the chocolate cake first because - unless you split the mixture between two cake tins - it needs to be thoroughly cooled and preferably refrigerated before attempting to cut it through the middle. Which brings me to the next point...
• Cook the chocolate cake well. I used the Sweetapolita recipe but thought that it needed to be a little bit gooey to go with the cheesecake layer, so I shortened the cooking time. And... I was the one who was disappointed - it was so gooey that I couldn't cut through the middle to split it into layers without making a huge mess. Lesson learned. 

Nothing risked, nothing gained...

• Well oil the tin and use baking paper on the base for the cheesecake layer. This is a base-less cheesecake (i.e. no biscuit crumb) - but it works really well! I was a little unsure if the cream and sour cream in the mixture would prevent it from solidifying in the oven, but nope, it set great! 

Cheesecake layer on its lonesome

• Add cooled caramel sauce to the buttercream. This may seem like common-sense... but yeah. By this point in the recipe, you probably wish the whole thing would end so that you can just EAT the cake, hence you might opt for a pre-made caramel sauce. If you're still telling yourself 'no pain, no gain', the recipe includes a link to a sauce-making process that requires a candy thermometer. You may not have one of these or, like me, you might not trust your thermometer as far as you can throw it (perhaps I should get a new one, you say? Perhaps you are right... or perhaps I just want an excuse to throw something around in the kitchen!). In this case, you could use the easy and super-delicious recipe below that I've developed by checking out other recipes and trialling them.

Applying caramel buttercream to the cake-cheesecake-cake stack

• Use a water bath to melt chocolate for the ganache. Burnt chocolate is lame and next-to-useless (unless you really are trying to make sure your guests don't come back again). Because I am prone to burning chocolate just by looking at it, I've given a safer method below for making ganache by heating the cream only.

Salted Caramel Sauce

1 cup white sugar
1/4 cup water
1/2 cup whipping cream
50g butter, roughly chopped (salted or unsalted, whichever you prefer)

1 tsp salt

Combine the sugar and water in a heavy-based saucepan over a medium heat and stir until sugar is dissolved.

Turn the heat up to medium-high and stir until the sugar water begins to boil. Now, put down your spoon somewhere that you won't be tempted to pick it up from for awhile. But don't go and sit down - you need to keep your eyes firmly trained on that sugar water! You're waiting for it to begin to change from clear into an amber colour. This takes approximately five minutes and during this time you MUST NOT STIR the water - it's the law. If the sugary build up around the edge of the water level starts to drive you crazy, I will permit you to take a pastry brush and gently sweep those bits into the bubbling liquid. But no more than that. 

When the sugar water starts to look golden-coloured, take the pan from the element quick-smart. You may be tempted to wait to see if all the liquid will turn amber, not just one part/half/quarter/smidgeon. Resist temptation - it's not worth the pain of burnt caramel. 

With the pan off the heat, you are now permitted to pick up your spoon. Add the cream slowly, stirring well and keeping your skin as far from the top of the pan as possible in case the liquid spits up. When all the cream is incorporated, add the butter and salt, and stir to melt and combine the butter. The more butter you add, the thicker the caramel will be when it sets.

At this point, some people would put the pan back on the heat and stir the mixture in an attempt to thicken it. I don't think this makes a difference - it will thicken just as well at room temperature. But if you've got time to kill, I won't stop you!

This recipe makes enough to add to the buttercream, garnish the cheesecake cake with, plus extra to spoon over individual slices. Mmmmmm....

Dark Chocolate Ganache

115g dark chocolate chips or finely chopped block chocolate
1/3 cup whipping cream

Place the cream in a heavy-based saucepan over a medium heat and stir until it starts to simmer. Just before the cream starts to bubble, snatch the pan (carefully!) off the heat and add the finely chopped chocolate. Stir the mixture until smooth. 

If any solid bits of chocolate remain, cover the pan with a lid and leave off the heat for 5 minutes, then stir again. If there are STILL solid bits, transfer the mixture to a microwave-safe container and nuke for bursts of 10 seconds, stirring after each until you have a lump-free, perfectly homogeneous chocolatey syrup.

You don't need to accompany this rich dessert with anything, but if the density and decadence are overwhelming, try some unsweetened yoghurt and fresh fruit!

Long Weekend Baking: Brownie Galore and Memorial Day Cupcakes

What better use for a long weekend than some time in the kitchen, baking up a storm. There are few things that make me happier! However a poorly-timed cold/flu took me down during the week so I've been trying not to go crazy with baking, let alone blogging about it. 

('Poorly-timed' because a) when is a cold ever welcome, and b) it was my BIRTHDAY, plus my parents were visiting from out of town. The cold sent my tastebuds AWOL and so I couldn't taste much of the two birthday dinners that I had :( ). 

But..............................................................................................

...would I be an 'irrepressible' baker if I could be stopped?!?!? In addition I have been reminded by a certain faithful reader (my MIL :) that I am overdue for a new post. I've been working myself up to posting about Swiss Meringue Buttercream frosting/icing, but obviously I haven't reached the motivation threshold for that yet. So here's a 'filler' til then - albeit a delicious one!

While Monday (yesterday) was a holiday in NZ known as Queen's Birthday, I hear that those in the States are celebrating Memorial Day around about this time. The main reason I know this is because a friend of ours, an expat American married to a Kiwi lass, had his birthday party this weekend and it was M-Day themed. So we decked out in red, white and blue and I turned out these wee Red, White and Blue Berry Cupcakes.

I used Julie Le Clerc's delicious and super-easy Vanilla Cupcakes recipe from this post, adding about a cup and a half of mixed berries to the batter just before dividing it between cupcake cases. It gave a lovely red and blue tinge to the batter. 

The cupcake/patty pan cases were the closest I had to red, white and blue! The ones with babuska dolls I just couldn't say no to...

Although these cupcakes didn't rise as much as they would have without the addition of berries, they were beautiful and moist.

I iced them with a half-quantity of the regular buttercream (using my favourite margarine as I didn't have any butter softened at the time) from this post by filling a piping bag attached to a size #1M Wilton (large open star) piping tip, and topped with some sweets in suitable colours :)

~~~~~~~~~~ } ~ { ~~~~~~~~~~

Now for her Majesty the Queen, the very best must be presented. The obvious choice (to me) was brownie. What could be more cakey than cake, more chocolatey than chocolate, more decadent than decadence itself?!? Few things in the world can make me happier than a perfectly gooey, yet fully-cooked, fudgey bite finished with a crisp top and chewy underside. I can't imagine a heaven without brownie.

And brownie was also what I promised to make my colleagues at work for my (delayed) birthday morning tea 'shout'. I'm hoping they'll enjoy my efforts with these two amazing flavour combinations!

Bring on the brownie: Peanut Butter & Caramello Chocolate and Raspberry Dark Choc brownies

All I seem to get as gifts these days are recipe books (not that I'm complaining!), and for this birthday just gone my mum got me the fabulous Whittaker’s Passion for Chocolate recipe book. Both my sovereign-worthy brownie recipes were inspired by this fantastic publication.

NB: My conscience has recently been checked in the area of copyrighting. As a result, my general rule will be, if a recipe (that's not my own original - ha!) isn't available on the net/to the general populace by the author themselves, I shouldn't be taking the credit by putting it out there. However...if someone else has already put it there...ahem, may I present, incredibly scrumptious and drool-worthy Peanut Butter Chocolate and Caramel Brownie. 

The recipe is faithfully produced by those links belonging to the 'someone else's (not me!), but I have a few hints for making it:

1. Make sure you dissolve all the sugar in the butter and vanilla over the heat at the start, so that you don't find granules in the bottom of the cooked brownie. I did this before adding the peanut butter chocolate so that the chocolate only *just* melted and maintained its gooey peanut buttery nomminess... (sorry got carried away salivating)
2. Take the chocolate mix off the heat and let it cool for 5 to 10 minutes before adding the eggs. This is more a precautionary step that stems from a childhood nightmarish baking memory of mine, which involved eggs scrambling themselves inside cooked brownie...*shudder-worthy*
3. If you can't be bothered with (or are a little hesitant about) making your own caramel, you could do as I did and chop up a block of Caramello or other caramel-filled chocolate. I've had (other) bad baking experience where my caramel wouldn't set and my choc-caramel slice failed...so a block of Caramello gifted for my birthday by a thoughtful brother-in-law was the perfect alternative here!
4. If your oven tends to singe baked goods, make sure you put another tray or container underneath your brownie tray while it's baking to prevent the bottom from burning.

Cadbury and Whittakers, co-existing peacefully

Dark cocoa for seriously dark and decadent brownie

Someone should really stop that chocolate thief...not that I can blame her...er, them...!

All the ingredients (bar the caramel) mixed together.

Caramello dotted through the brownie batter

The delectable final product - fudgey, rich, decadent! Surely fit for a Queen :)

Brownie Number Two: Raspberry and Dark Chocolate. I've heard that this recipe is the 'best in NZ' but I shirked the 7 eggs it takes (although it probably feeds an army - let me know if you ever try it out!). So instead I tried the NZ Women's Weekly version (4 eggs) and it worked a treat :-) No shortcuts this time!

Raspberries dotted on top - attractive, healthy and oh-so-tasty!

The perfect dessert - brownie, brownie and more brownie (how could her Majesty not approve?!)

Hope you had a great long weekend and that you got some time to bake up some celebratory treats - or even to have a right royal rest! 

xo Claire