Raspberry chocolate mousse

I love chocolate mousse. It’s probably my favourite dessert in the whole world.

I love it even more because it’s just so easy to make and so versatile. You can add fruit or alcohol or a whipped cream topping, and make it with any type of chocolate you fancy.

And this is my favourite recipe for chocolate mousse, which I’ve adapted from one I got from Riverford, my regular source of inspiration these days. As you’ll see from the photo, I last made it for our Valentine supper and I’ll be making it again at the weekend when friends come to stay.

Raspberry chocolate mousse

Serves 4

180g dark chocolate
2 tbsp milk
6 large eggs, whites and yolks separated
2 handfuls of raspberries (you can use fresh or frozen)
Icing sugar to serve

First of all, melt the chocolate. I tend to do this in the microwave – if it’s good enough for Nigella, then it’s good enough for me. Break the chocolate into small pieces and place in a bowl with the milk. Microwave on a low setting for a couple of minutes and then give it a stir. Put it back in again for another minute or so if it needs a little longer.

Alternatively use the ‘double boiler’ method. Put the chocolate and milk in a heatproof bowl over a pan of very gently simmering water. Make sure to choose the right sized bowl which doesn’t touch the water. Gently melt the chocolate and take care not to leave it on the heat too long.

Allow the melted chocolate to cool for a few minutes, while you whisk up the egg whites until they form soft peaks.

Beat the egg yolks and then stir these into the chocolate. Then gently fold a few spoonfuls of the egg whites into the chocolate until no traces of white remain. Continue folding in a little egg white at a time until it’s all combined into the mousse mixture.

Place a few raspberries at the bottom of four ramekins or or small dishes or glasses, before spooning over the mousse. Chill for at least two hours (or overnight) and top with a couple more raspberries and a little icing sugar before serving.

Review: Hotel Chocolat Easter Goodies

I haven’t been writing a food blog for all that long, so when I was recently asked if I would do a review for the first time I almost fell off my chair. Especially since it was Hotel Chocolat doing the asking.

I’ve been a fan of Hotel Chocolat for quite some time. Whenever I walk past their shop in Bath I have to pick up speed and put my head down, as I know if I glance in, well that’s it. I’m a gonner. I’ll be in there spending the next week’s food budget on chocolate.

Hotel Chocolat invited me to review something from their Easter selection. Now, when I think of Hotel Chocolat, I think grown up chocolate. Dark, serious chocolate you need to take your time over and savour. Problem is, my blog is very much about family food. So I had to go against my instincts and choose something the whole clan could share, including my two girls age four and six.

Our family-friendly choice was You Crack Me Up, which Hotel Chocolat describe as

“an irrepressibly upbeat egg cast in 40% milk chocolate and bursting with our cheeriest chocolates, from smiley face pralines and happy chicks to classic Easter bunnies.”

We were all very excited when the package arrived in the post. Jessie’s jaw literally dropped. Straight off they knew this was going to be a little bit more special than their usual Buttons or Smarties eggs. And when the extra thick chocolate egg was opened up to reveal an assortment of fun treats, the girls wanted to dive straight in.

The googly-eyed funny faces in particular appealed to the girls: two chocolate brownies and two crunchy pralines.

And the fried eggs and white soldiers were rather popular.

The girls were also rather partial to the extra thick chocolate shell. I love Hotel Chocolat’s story behind this…

“When we first started making eggs 12 years ago, we were advised by industry experts to use the least amount of chocolate by making them as thin as possible and to arrange the chocolates around the outside of the egg to make it look as big as possible. We did the opposite and made ridiculously thick shells with all of the chocolates hidden inside for extra Easter excitement.”

It works. Opening up the egg to discover what lies within takes me back to my own excitement as a child at Easter time.

So my daughters were duly impressed. Although when asked if they preferred the Hotel Chocolat egg to their usual Easter eggs, Mia’s response was that she’d rather have Buttons “because they taste better.” She is only four of course.

And what about me and my husband? I think it probably goes without saying that we enjoyed the chocolate array. It’s bloody good chocolate after all. But the earth didn’t move. And it usually does for me when I eat Hotel Chocolat.

I think the problem lay in me trying to choose an egg that I thought the kids would enjoy too. Of course the children liked it but then, they would happily sit and eat the contents of a jar of Nutella if you let them. We thought it was a nice egg but nothing amazing. We preferred the shell to the cheery contents. But it just wasn’t intense enough. And we’d have been a bit disappointed if we’d paid £26 for it.

So lesson learned. If I had the choice again, I’d go for Your Eggscellency. One half of the shell is milk chocolate, the other half is dark. With 12 truffles filled with soft cream ganaches with Champagne, Amaretto, vodka, mojito and more. Much more grown up, and I imagine much more my kind of chocolate. When it comes to chocolate, it seems, you need to be selfish. Mother love has no place here. Ah well, we all live and learn.

You’ll find the full range of Hotel Chocolat’s Easter creations here.

Chocolate orange cupcakes

I am finally growing in confidence as a baker. For a long time I have thought of myself as a good cook but not a good baker. But slowly that is beginning to change.

Until recently I would never experiment with a cake recipe because baking just didn’t come naturally to me.

The world seems to fall into two camps: those who were born to bake and those who weren’t. I’ve always fallen into the second camp. But I’m gradually discovering  that baking can actually be learned. It’s as much about confidence in the kitchen as anything, a bit of practice and not giving up the first time things go pear-shaped.

In recent weeks I’ve come up with my own recipe for pistachio scones and tried my hand at hot cross buns (recipe coming soon). And I’ve also come up with this recipe for chocolate orange cupcakes, which I’m really rather proud of. They’re sticky and gooey and indulgent and satisfying. My little girls asked for seconds. What more can you ask for?

Now don’t get me wrong. I’m not inventing recipes from scratch. Far from it. But I’m having fun playing around with other people’s recipes.

My experiments don’t always work out. A few weeks ago I tried making my version of a lemon tart using polenta and caraway. It was truly disgusting. I wasn’t too impressed with my Cheerio crunchies either – my attempt at using up a bulk purchase of a breakfast cereal my kids once loved then decided they no longer like.

Anyway, back to the chocolate orange cupcakes. The idea for these came from the good old Terry’s Chocolate Orange. Well, where else? I’ve used Nigella Lawson’s recipe for chocolate-cherry cupcakes as my starting point and then quite simply swapped the cherry ingredients for orange ones. Perhaps I’m being too honest here? That sounds too easy now I’ve typed it. But it did honestly feel quite inspired to me at the time…

Chocolate orange cupcakes

Makes 12

125g butter
200g plain chocolate
280g orange marmalade
1 orange, zest and juice
150g caster sugar
Pinch of salt
2 eggs, beaten
150g self-raising flour
100ml double cream
25g mixed peel

Preheat the oven to 180ºC/gas mark 4.

Melt the butter in a pan over a low heat and then add 100g of the chocolate. When the chocolate starts to melt, remove from the heat and stir in the marmalade, orange zest and juice, sugar, salt and eggs.

When it’s all mixed together well, stir in the flour.

Place 12 muffin paper cases into your muffin tin and spoon in the cupcake mixture. Bake in the oven for 25 minutes until the cakes have risen and are springy to the touch.

Cool in the muffin tray for 10 minutes or so, and then transfer to a wire rack until they are completely cool.

To make the icing, break up the remaining 100g chocolate into a saucepan and add the double cream. Bring to a gentle boil and then remove from the heat. Stir with a wooden spoon for a few minutes until the icing is smooth and thick. Use a tablespoon to ice the cakes and pop a few pieces of mixed peel in the middle of each one.

I just had a bit of a wobble and almost changed my mind about posting this recipe. Another blogger, a proper baking blogger with tonnes of followers, has just posted their recipe for chocolate orange cake. My confidence in my own food was zapped in a matter of seconds. But do you know what, I am going to press that ‘publish’ button. This isn’t a competition, after all. Is it?

Beetroot and chocolate brownies

For a while in the autumn we seemed to be getting beetroot in our veggie box pretty much every week.  Now I adore beetroot so I was quite happy with this situation. Unfortunately the rest of my family do not share my passion for this colourful root.

So while I was rather enjoying eating roast beetroot to accompany a joint of lamb or baked beetroot in a salad with nectarines, I felt compelled to come up with new ways to serve beets in a slightly less prominent way. That’s how I came up with this gorgeous brownie recipe.

They really are surprisingly good. Much lighter than your average brownie and ever so moist. Everyone I’ve served them to, including my anti-beetroot family members, has wanted more.

And I love the way they are tinged with a subtle pink hue.

I’ve tried this recipe with both plain and milk chocolate. Plain is definitely best here.

Beetroot and chocolate brownies

4 medium beetroot
250g plain chocolate
200g butter
3 eggs
½ tsp vanilla extract
200g caster sugar
50g cocoa powder
50g plain flour
1 tsp baking powder
100g ground almonds

Wash and trim the beetroot, place in a baking dish with half a centimetre of water, and cover with foil. Place in an oven preheated to 200° C /Gas Mark 6 and roast for around 45 minutes until tender. Leave to cool and then skin.

Turn the oven down to 180°C/Gas Mark 4.

Put the chocolate and butter in a large bowl and microwave on a medium heat for two to three minutes, until melted. Stir together well.

Finely chop / mush the beetroot in a food processor. Then mix in the eggs one at a time, followed by the vanilla and sugar. Keep mixing until smooth.

Stir the beetroot mix into the melted chocolate, and then sift in the cocoa powder, plain flour and baking powder and fold in carefully until the ingredients are combined.

Line a tin, roughly 28cm x 18cm, with baking paper. Pour in the mixture and bake in the oven for 30 to 35 minutes, until just firm to the touch. Don’t over-cook your brownies! When they’re ready, a skewer should come out ever so slightly sticky.

Leave to cool in the tin and then cut into squares. Keep in an airtight container and eat within two to three days. If they’re around that long.

Banana and chocolate cupcakes

If you ever need to rustle up some cakes for a school cake sale, these should do the trick.

Totally unsophisticated, completely garish and obscenely sweet. Just what little children are looking for in a cupcake.

I made these last week for the Christmas Fair and they disappeared in minutes of doors opening.

And they can’t be that unhealthy; they do contain banana after all.

Banana and chocolate cupcakes

Makes 8 cakes

1 large ripe banana
110g soft butter
110g caster sugar
2 eggs
½ tsp vanilla extract
110g self-raising flour

For the icing
60g plain chocolate
25g butter
2 tbsp milk
2 tbsp golden syrup
Sweets of your choice for decoration – Smarties, jelly beans, dolly mixture – go crazy!

Preheat the oven to 180°C / 350°F / gas mark 4. Line a muffin tin with eight paper muffin cases.

Beat the butter and sugar until pale and fluffy. Whisk the eggs and vanilla in a separate bowl, then gradually add the eggs to the butter mixture, beating well.

Peel and mash the banana and stir into the butter mixture. Sift and fold in the flour.

Fill the muffin cases with the mixture and bake for 20 minutes, until risen and golden. Leave to cool.

To make the icing, put all the ingredients in a bowl and microwave on a medium heat for a minute or two, and mix well.

When the cupcakes are cool, spoon over the chocolate icing and decorate with your chosen sweeties.