Tag Archives: chocolate

Creme Egg Croissants

Happy Easter everyone!

Whether you celebrate today for religious reasons, celebrate it as a chocoholic or just use the 4 day weekend as a chance to catch up with life a little bit, this recipe is absolutely for you (sorry non-dairy folk, this isn’t for you!)

The best part about this recipe is that it is super quick and easy, and even if it comes out looking like a total mess, it definitely won’t taste like one, so you can’t really lose, and you don’t even have to make anything from scratch. You just need:

  • a roll of croissant dough – y’know, the kind that comes in a cardboard tube that makes that little *poof* noise when you open it
  • one Creme Egg (or Caramel Egg) per croissant – I don’t wanna tell you to suck eggs or anything, but remove all the foil..

Preheat your oven to 180C. Unroll your croissant dough, and if yours is the kind that has the ideal little perforations, just tear it into the marked pieces, and if not, cut triangles from your dough. Don’t worry if you rip the dough a little while tearing it up, it won’t show too much once its rolled!

Place your triangles onto a baking tray – either a non-stick tray or give it a little spray of cooking oil first – and at the wider end of your triangles, place your unwrapped egg.

The trickiest part is rolling the croissant, but this isn’t even that difficult, it just looks a little bulky. Start at the wider end where you placed the egg, and roll up the egg, squishing the dough down a little bit round each side, until you end up looking a bit like this:

You can coat your croissant in a bit of whisked egg or milk, but personally I prefer not to because I like my croissants super crumbly, then pop them in the oven for 10-12 mins. PS. This will feel like the longest 10-12 mins of your life.

Once they’re done, serve immediately while the gooeyness is at its best!

Oh, and here’s one I did with a Caramel Egg, which was super delicious too!

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Ferrero Rocher Brownies

It has felt like FOREVER since I’ve done a baking post, or any recipe post at all to be honest, so I dedicated a whole day last week to baking yummy stuff so I can share a few of my favourites sweet treats over the coming weeks, yay!

Today, I’m gonna be sharing a variation on my famous brownie recipe (and when I say famous, I mean among the few people in my life who have eaten my brownies, haha), featuring my boyfriend’s favourite chocolates: Ferrero Rochers.

You will need:

  • 115g butter
  • 115g milk chocolate
  • 300g caster sugar
  • 2 eggs
  • 2 tbsp cocoa powder
  • 115g plain flour
  • 8 Ferrero Rocher
  • 4 tbsp Nutella (optional)
  • 4 tbsp hazelnuts, finely chopped (optional)

Preheat your oven to 180C

First, melt together the chocolate and butter. I do this in a pan over boiling water, but you can also do this in the microwave! While this is melting down, line an 8 inch square pan with greaseproof paper, and chop the Ferrero Rochers in half.

Once the chocolate mix is fully melted (don’t worry if the butter and chocolate is a little bit separated!), pour it into a large mixing bowl, add the caster sugar and stir together, then beat in the eggs until smooth. Sift in the cocoa powder and flour, and mix together. You can add the hazelnuts now if you want!

Pour half of the brownie mix into the pan and let it settle evenly. In a microwave safe bowl, microwave the Nutella in 10-20 second intervals until its runny enough to pour, and drizzle it over the first layer of brownie mix, then pour the remaining mix on top.

Arrange your Ferrero Rocher halfs on the top of the brownie, pushing them down into the mix slightly, then bake for 30-35 mins. Allow the brownie to cool in the pan for 5-10 mins, then transfer to a cooling rack.

Slice and enjoy!

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Chocolate Orange and Baobab Dip with PandaVita*

If you think that Baobab is the weirdest part of this recipe, just you wait.. It is as yummy as it looks though, promise!

Chocolate orange baobab dip

Ok, so you’re wondering what baobab is though, right?

PandaVita Baobab Recipe

Baobab is a tree native to Africa, and the Disney fans among you would recognise it as the tree that Rafiki hangs out in during The Lion King, and its also what Animal Kingdom’s Tree of Life is based on. Its an extraordinary looking tree, often describe as being upside-down, as when its not covered in leaves, the branches resemble roots, spanning out from the enormous trunk, so it looks like someone’s just flipped it in the ground!

Baobab is one of the latest superfoods, full of Vitamin C, fibre and anti-oxidants, and the guys at PandaVita challenged me to come up with a yummy recipe using their new organic baobab powder.

I wanted to make it healthy-ish, and the citrus taste of the powder lead me to a decision that it had to be chocolate orange, but the secret – and strange! – ingredient? Chickpeas.

Try it and see, its super easy!

  • In a food processor, blitz together 200g cooked chickpeas, 4 tbsp cocoa powder, 3 tbsp honey (or maple syrup), and 2 tbsp orange juice, with a teaspoon of baobab powder
  • You may need to add a little water, depending on the consistency, and you might also want to add a little more honey to sweeten it to your taste. Also, if you don’t want chocolate orange, you can substitute the orange juice for 1/2 teaspoon of vanilla extract and 2 tbsp water!

Store it in the fridge, and you’ve got a yummy dip that’s perfect for rice cakes or apple slices!

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Treat Yourself – Leftover Easter Chocolate Brownies

I make the best brownies, if I do say so myself..

Its not just me, I’ve been told by a lot of people 😉

And after last weekend, I’m sure I can’t be the only person still swimming in chocolate, so I thought I’d share my brownie recipe, adapted to use up some of your Easter chocolate! What’s great about this is that you can use any chocolate: milk, dark, white, Lindt, Cadburys etc, and any mix of them to make unique brownies every time.

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1. Put 115g of your chocolate into a bowl with 115g butter and melt it down, either in a microwave or over hot water. At this point, try to use only ‘plain chocolate’; ones without biscuity bits or caramel or fillings etc – you can use them later! While this is melting, line an 8 inch square baking tin with greaseproof paper and heat your oven to 180C

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2. Pour your melted mix into a bowl with 300g caster sugar and mix together

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3. Beat in two eggs, followed by 2 tbsp cocoa powder and 115g plain flour. This is your basic brownie mix

4. Ok, all that other chocolate? Break/chop/mash it all up and add it to the mix. If you’ve got Creme Eggs, save them for the next step! Pour the chocolatey mix into your tray, and bake for 30 minutes, or 25 if you’ve got Creme Eggs.

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5. Creme Egg step: while the mix is baking, carefully chop your eggs in half. If you don’t have the patience for this, just smash them up a little bit! When the oven beeps, take the brownie out, arrange your eggs on the top and press them into the brownie before popping it back into the oven for another 5-6 minutes.

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6. Let the brownies cool on a cooling rack, then chop them up and devour!

You can thank me later..

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Baking Magic – Butterfinger Cupcakes

I’m just gonna prefix this post by saying that this is definitely more of a lazy person’s guide to the butterfinger cupcake due to the fact that my kitchen currently has a giant hole in the ceiling, so I’ve had to make do with the ingredients and space that I had!

Disney park cupcakes are the best, right? Apart from the fact that they’re often too big to finish in one go, YES. Today I’m taking on a Disney World classic, the Butterfinger cupcake.

Now Butterfingers are an American candy bar, and although you can get them in some UK retailers, I’ve made these as totally butterfinger-free butterfinger cupcakes. I feel like I’m totally cheating today, but I’m gonna pretend that I’m just making this recipe accessible for novice bakers.. BUT LOOK AT THEM YUM

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Right, here we go!

1. Start off with a batch of your favourite chocolate cupcake recipe, and to get a proper WDW experience, fill the cases a little more than you normally would! If you don’t have one, cream 125g butter and 125g caster sugar, add a dash of vanilla extract and 2 eggs, then mix in 20g cocoa powder and 105g self-raising flour and bake at 190C for 15-17 minutes. Ta-dah!

2. Once cooled, take a sharp knife and cut a hole into the centre of the cake, like a classic butterfly cake, and pop this to one side for the time being. It doesn’t matter if they get mixed up and you can’t remember which centre belongs to which cake.

3. (Cheat 1, coming your way). Well now you’ve got a hole in the middle of your cupcake that needs filling, so find either your favourite chocolate and peanut butter spread, or just a regular chocolate spread or frosting, and fill that hole all the way up. I recommend spread or frosting for this because its a little gooier than buttercream!

4. Those little cake centres, sit those back onto the cakes on top of the pool of chocolatey goodness to make a little peak.

5. Now grab some vanilla buttercream, or make some using a 2:1 icing sugar to butter ratio and a splash of vanilla extract. To replicate WDW buttercream, thicken it up with a bit more icing sugar – this will help it hold better when we load it onto the cake in a minute. Pop it into the fridge for a minute while we get a few more things ready.

6. Has anyone else noticed that basically every recipe I share involves crushing something at some point? Yep, we’re doing it again.. If you’re one of my American readers, grab yourself a butterfinger and crush it up nicely. UK friends, find yourself a peanut butter KitKat and a few cookies and stick them in a food processor to crumb them down nicely.

7. Grab your buttercream from the fridge, and using a knife or metal spatula, pile it onto your cupcake, then smooth it around the little peak you created earlier. Now grab your cupcake by its case and roll the buttercream mountain around in those crumbs until you get a nice covering.

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Is anyone else drooling?

Headed to the parks? You can get the original Butterfinger Cupcake from Starring Roles Cafe in Hollywood Studios!

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Baking Magic – Mickey Cake Balls

I was gonna start off this post by saying its a great way to use up leftover cake, but seriously, who ever has leftover cake? Like, is that even a thing?

So you might need to bake a cake in preparation for this; I think its a pretty good excuse. Personally, whenever I make a cake and I need to cut it down so its level, my offcuts are always destined for cake pop mix, saves waste! As well as pop mix, all you need is candy melts in black and red, and you’re good to go!

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Now you will find making these cute little Mickeys SO much easier to make if you use traditional cake pop mix, rather than just baking cakes using a ‘cake pop’ mould. Never made it before? Its the easiest thing: crumble up cake into a fine crumb, then mix with buttercream until it combines into a semi-sticky, mouldable dough of deliciousness.

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Ok, so get rolling the dough into little balls, place onto greaseproof paper and get them into the fridge to chill nicely while you start melting down your Candy Melts, starting with black. I recommend melting the buttons down with a splash of oil (I use a lump of Trex) to give it a better consistency and shine.

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Once you’re happy with the consistency, take the balls out of the fridge, and dip the top of the balls into the candy so it covers about half. Place the half dipped balls, dipped side up, back onto your greaseproof paper, then use two more candy buttons to create Mickey ears – do this one at a time, otherwise the candy could harden before you get the ears in!

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Back into the fridge with the balls, and onto melting the red candy. I always melt my candy on a double boiler rather than a microwave so that I can keep the mix warm while I’m working with it, but its probably 5x quicker to microwave them – just preference I guess! Once melted, grab onto those nicely hardened Mickey ears and dip the remaining half of the cake ball into the red to create Mickey’s trousers. At this point, you could pop the balls onto sticks and let them cool standing up, but I like to smush them back onto the greaseproof paper to make little feet!

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You could even go the extra mile and use a bit of white or yellow to add buttons or shoe details if you were really trying to impress!

Who’s the leader of the pack who’s made for you and me? M-I-C-K-E-Y-M-O-U-S-E

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Lottie Does Europe: Waffles and Chocolate

Well that title can only mean one place, right? Yep, I’m in Belgium!

Wasn’t part of the original plan, but made more sense than doing an extra day in Germany so here I am! Well, it took me the best part of 5 1/2 hours to get here, if not longer; for the first time this trip I actually took a little break while driving, mainly cos I needed the toilet and I needed petrol, but I stopped for a cheeky snack as well before getting back on the road.

Traffic getting into Brussels was also a nightmare. Not only were these roads possibly the trickiest to navigate yet, they were rammed, and it took at least half an hour just to get into the city centre, so by the time I had found a place to park, which was getting close to 3pm, I was pretty stressed out, and there was only one thing that was gonna fix that: WAFFLES.

I had spotted what looked like a shopping area on my way to the carpark, so I headed in that direction, and bingo! A square full of little cafes serving hot waffles and ice-cream, but one particular place called to me as the mother of them all.. Haagen Dazs, offering a Belgian Waffle Dream – and it was just that!

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Waffle devoured, and I was ready to explore. The shop was on the corner of a huge arcade of luxury shops of all kinds; probably the only place in the world you’ll find a Chanel next to a chocolate shop. And the chocolate shops were everywhere, and pastry shops and all sorts of wonderful Belgian sweet treats, and I was in my element. I followed the path of these incredible smelling shops with their gorgeous window displays, watching the chefs prepare the products behind the counters, and snapping away as I went.

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 My exploring also lead me to an enormous square, with the most incredible and intricately decorated buildings all around, all shining with golden embellishment. I gathered from other tourists that one was the old town hall, and a few others were museums, while the rest just housed shops and restaurants. I was happy to just continue walking around the streets though, and that I did.

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I wandered and wandered until my little heart was content, and by that time I was basically a walking icicle. Yep, its still cold where I am! Given that I was loosing the feeling in my hands, I figured it was time to head inside for the night, and knowing that finding my hotel would probably be just as tricky as getting into the city, I retreated to the warmth of my car, and after a slight mission finding the place, I’m now back to regular body temperature in my hotel room!

Tomorrow is my last full day of the trip, crazy right?!

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