Chocolate Drops for Tea Time Treats

As the Treacle Bites were such a success, I thought I'd try one of the other recipes on the same page.  The Chocolate Drops were not in the same league as the Treacle Bites but they are also very good and incredibly easy to make.  They taste a bit like a chocolate Viennese finger or shortbread, very short in texture.  I'm not sure they were supposed to come out quite so lumpy as mine did, perhaps if I were more delicate in blobbing them onto the tray they might have looked better!  My answer to that was to melt about 100g of white chocolate and dip the dark Chocolate Drops into it so they were half coated, that certainly improved the look of them and, I have to say, added to the general pleasure of eating them.


Chocolate Drops (makes 18 -20)
100g.4oz softened butter
50g/2oz caster sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla essence
90g/3 1/2 oz plain flour
15g/1/2oz cocoa powder

1. Cream butter with sugar and essence until light and fluffy.
2. Stir in flour sifted with cocoa
3. Drop 18 to 20 teaspoons of mixture, well apart, on to butter baking tray.
4. Bake just above centre of moderately hot oven (1190C/375F or Gas 5) for 17 minutes.
5. Leave on tray 1 or 2 minutes before transferring to wire cooling rack.
6. Once the Chocolate Drops are completely cold, melt the chocolate in a bowl over a pan of hot water and dip each biscuit into the melted chocolate to half coat it.  Place on rack until the chocolate has set.
6. Store in airtight tin.

Printable Recipe

The theme for Tea Time Treats this month is 'Biscuits and Cookies' so I am entering these Chocolate Drops.  Tea Time Treats is organised and hosted alternately by Karen at Lavender and Lovage and Kate at What Kate Baked.

Labels: biscuits, Chocolate Drops, cookies, Lavender and Lovage, Tea Time Treats, What Kate Baked

posted by Janice @ 12:00 7 Comments

Rice Pudding with Butterscotch Apples

Random Recipes is now going into it's third year and to celebrate Dom at Belleau Kitchen is kindly allowing us to choose our book our own way.  We still have to pick a random recipe from it to celebrate our love of recipe books and those wonderfully talented people who write them (with apologies to Dom for paraphrasing!).


The book I chose for my Random Recipe was The River Cottage Year by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall.  I picked this up  recently for £2.99 in a discount book shop.  The randomness of my recipe choice is relative since I decided to go with the chapter for February, on the basis that the recipe was likely to be suitable for this chilly time of year, but I promise that I did choose the recipe in the February chapter quite randomly, just by identifying the beginning and end of the February chapter and then opening the book randomly to find...

Rice Pudding with Butterscotch Apples 

Serves 6
For the rice pudding
50g unsalted butter
100g pudding rice
500ml whole milk
500ml double cream
50g caster sugar
Fresh nutmeg (optional)
For the butterscotch apples
4-5 firm, tart, eating apples (about 400-500g)
50g unsalted butter
50g light brown sugar

Heat the oven to 140C/gas mark 1 and butter a deep ovenproof dish. Melt the butter in a saucepan over a low heat and add the rice, stirring until coated with butter (it shouldn't fry or even sizzle).
Mix the milk and cream together and add to the saucepan. Stir in the sugar until dissolved.
Transfer to the ovenproof dish, grate a little nutmeg over the surface (if using) and cook for 3-3½ hours. Every 30 minutes, stir gently from bottom to top to separate the grains and work the surface skin back into the pudding, until the rice has expanded to fill the dish and is quite tender (2½-3 hours should do it). For the last 30 minutes, leave to cook without stirring so a golden-brown skin forms, turning the oven up to 170C/gas mark 3 for the last 10 minutes.
Peel and core the apples and cut them into 1-2cm dice. Melt the butter in a large frying pan and fry the apples very gently. After 2 minutes, sprinkle with the sugar then gently toss and fry for 12-15 minutes, until tender and glazed. Serve immediately with a  generous dollop of the hot rice pudding.

 I'm sure my regular readers will not be surprised to learn that I made a few changes!  I buttered the dish, put all the rice pudding ingredients into the dish including the knob of butter  and baked the pudding in the oven for the required time.  I also used a little more milk and a bit less cream.  

This was undoubtedly a treat, the butterscotch apples were gorgeous and a perfect foil to the rich creamy rice.

I am also entering this recipe for Tea Time Treats as the theme for Feburary is 'pudding' and it's being hosted this month by Kate at What Kate Baked as I think Karen at Lavender & Lovage is lying down in a darkened room to recover from the massive round up of Tea Time Treats from January!

Labels: Belleau Kitchen, Lavender and Lovage, Random Recipes, Rice Pudding with Butterscotch Apples, River Cottage Year, Tea Time Treats, What Kate Baked

posted by Janice @ 08:30 14 Comments

Win an Eric Lanlard Hamper with Silver Spoon and Macmillan Cancer Support

There are sure to be some amazing stories from our local little heroes all over the country, but in the meantime don’t forget to register to hold your own coffee morning on the 28^th September, just follow this link and you can help to raise money for people with lives affected by cancer. http://coffeeregister.macmillan.org.uk/2012/register.asp

We have a Macmillan coffee morning at work every year which I am singularly bad at finding time to bake for, mainly because it is generally at the end of the week and I do my baking at the weekend. However I do go along and EAT the cakes and make my donation.  If you would like some inspiration for what to bake for The World's Biggest Coffee Morning, then pop over to the Round up of the Cake Stall Cakes and Bakes for Tea Time Treats at Lavender and Lovage.  There were 68 entries, so there is bound to be something to suit your baking taste and ability.



Part One - Cake Stall Cakes and Bakes

Part Two - Cake Stall Cakes and Bakes

Tea Time Treats is run by Karen at Lavender and Lovage and Kate at What Kate Baked

Labels: competition, Eric Lanlard, Lavender and Lovage, Macmillan Cancer Support, Silver Spoon Sugar, Tea Time Treats, What Kate Baked, win, World's Biggest Coffee Morning

posted by Janice @ 19:55 1 Comments