In the US, or at least in my little pocket of Indiana, Cadbury chocolate only comes out once per year – at Easter.  While I spent the vast majority of my life in the US, I didn’t even know Cadbury made anything else but Creme Eggs.  The realization that Cadbury makes other chocolates came during a class trip to Europe, where I saw Cadbury-everything.  Wow!

Now living in Australia, it is obvious that Cadbury is one of the most popular – if not the most popular – brand of chocolate.  Cadbury chocolate comes in all different varieties, from the good old Dairy Milk milk chocolate block, to Turkish Delight, to Mousse chocolate blocks.

Recently, Cadbury Australia offered to send me products from their new range of baking chocolate to try at home, of which I was super excited about.  It didn’t take long to choose some recipes to make with the chocolate; I took one look at the milk chocolate cheesecake on the front of one of the packages and knew I’d be making it!  Another recipe I chose came from Cadbury Kitchen, where each recipe has been tested to ensure your success at home.

There is nothing like a big box of chocolate to make you happy!  In the box was each product from Cadbury Australia’s new baking chocolate range.  I think the packaging looks fantastic – I just love that dark purple!  They also included a beautiful large tea-towel, which is pictured underneath the chocolate, above.

First, I made the milk chocolate cheesecake, which is pictured on the front of the big milk chocolate baking block.  If you’re a little timid about baking cheesecakes, you can relax with this one – it doesn’t need to be baked!  The list of ingredients is easy and simple, and the preparation is a breeze.  I did have one relatively minor issue with the recipe, however.  The base of the cheesecake is a chocolate biscuit/cookie-crumb base (I used Arnott’s Ripple biscuits).  The recipe says to grease the springform pan, and I did that.  I briefly considered placing some baking paper on the bottom though in case the base would stick, but in the end, I just followed the recipe.  When it came time to slice the cake, I found that the base stuck solidly to the pan.  I nearly had to transfer the slice of cheesecake to the plate, then pick the biscuit base off the bottom of the pan with a fork and place it on the plate next to the cheesecake!  Next time, I will definitely use that baking paper, and I recommend that you do as well.

So how did the no-bake cheesecake taste?  Amazing!  It was a hot day that I made the cake, and I thought it was perfect to cool off with for dessert.  The texture was smooth and velvety, almost mousse-like.  It’s a very impressive cake that would work for dinner parties as well, and because it’s so quick and easy it’s no problem to make at the last minute (but mind the 2-hour setting time in the refrigerator).

Inspired by the picture on the front of the packaging, I also made some (rather large) chocolate curls to decorate the slices.

Luckily, I was able to get most of the biscuit base on this slice for the photo!

You can find the recipe for this Milk Chocolate Cheesecake at Cadbury Kitchen, as well as on the package of the milk chocolate baking block.

The second recipe I chose was for peanut butter fudge.  Only 3 ingredients to this recipe!  It probably can’t be considered real “fudge” because of these ingredients, but it does have a smooth, creamy texture that definitely resembles fudge.  I’m actually very excited about this recipe and can’t wait to share it with you!

You’ll need two products from Cadbury Australia’s baking chocolate range:

And one other ingredient that is probably in your pantry right now – peanut butter (unless you’re allergic, and if so, why not try another type of nut butter?).  Okay, listen to this.  All you need to do to make this fudge, is melt the melts separately in the microwave (or double-boiler, if you prefer), mix peanut butter into both the dark and white melts, pour them into the pan, swirl with a knife and let it set in the refrigerator.  A very short time later, you’ll have something that looks like this:

Well, if you use the right size pan, you will probably have a thicker fudge, but how pretty is that?  I don’t have the size of pan used in the recipe, so I used the closest I had, which was longer and made the fudge very skinny!

The swirling is easy.  I just spooned alternate chocolates into the pan, so I ended up with a sort-of checkerboard pattern.  For the next layer, I just reversed the checkerboard pattern.  When all the chocolate was used up, I banged the pan on the countertop to level it, then took a butter knife and gently swirled the chocolates together.  You only need to swirl once – don’t keep swirling, or you’ll just end up mixing the chocolates together and it won’t look so pretty.

This fudge is delicious, and tastes even better on the next day.  And here’s the best part – if you love Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, then hold onto your hats, because the taste of this fudge is very similar to Reese’s.  It is so delicious!

It keeps very well in the refrigerator.  I made this fudge 4 days ago and I still have some left, which tastes as good as the day I made it.  I’d say it’ll keep for at least a week in the refrigerator.

You can find the recipe for Easy Peanut Butter Fudge at Cadbury Kitchen.

Overall, the new baking chocolate range is fabulous and I can’t wait to use the rest of the chocolate.  I love how smooth the chocolate is when it’s melted and it’s got that lovely glossy look to it.  Regarding the chocolate melts, I have never liked the taste of any particular brand’s melts on their own, but I will honestly say that Cadbury’s melts taste better than any previous melts I have tasted.  What is great about the baking chocolate is that it’s all real, delicious chocolate – even the white chocolate contains at least 23% cocoa butter.  If the white chocolate you use does not contain cocoa butter, then it is not real white chocolate (this is one of my biggest pet peeves!).

So there you have it, a glowing, positive review on Cadbury Australia’s new baking chocolate range!  I would, without a doubt, recommend the products to you to try yourself.  And if you can’t decide on what to make with it, check out Cadbury Kitchen and I’m sure you’ll find something delicious there (this chocolate mud cake with baked pears is what I’m making next!)!

Like this one that I came across on FoodGawker from The Girl Who Ate Everything.  The cookies looked so thick and delicious that I had to make them!

Okay, so my cookies didn’t turn out anywhere near as thick as Christy’s, but they were very delicious.  Also, as the butter in this recipe is required to be melted, I decided to brown the butter a bit, but that’s the only change I made to the ingredients.  Well, I also didn’t add all of the chocolate chips because there were just way too many after I started pouring them into the dough to mix in!

The original recipe for these cookies comes from Allrecipes, where you can read over 5000 reviews for these cookies!  Following some advice in the reviews, I decided to refrigerate the cookies (for 2 hours) before I baked them.  I didn’t bake all the dough at once, however.  I baked about 6 and put the rest of the dough balls in the freezer.

Here is where the magic comes in… the first 6 cookies were delicious, of course, but one week later, when I decided to bake the frozen dough, I discovered that these cookies that had been frozen tasted much better!  I guess it goes along the same lines as refrigerating cookie dough for 36 hours before baking to allow the flavors to develop.

These cookies are called “The Best, Big, Fat, Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies” and they don’t disappoint.  However, I did think that the cookies were a little overly sweet.  Yes, I know they’re supposed to be sweet, but I think next time I’d cut down on the sugar a bit.

My only real disappointment was that the outsides of the cookies were crisp – they crunched when you bit into them.  The insides were well and truly chewy though.  I’m not very keen on crisp chocolate chip cookies, but they tasted good enough to overlook it just this once.

How do you prefer your chocolate chip cookies – crispy? cakey? chewy?  Do you have a favorite recipe?

       Print This!    

Inspiration for these came from the 2010 Donna Hay Magazine kid’s issue.  Yes, I’ve had these cupcakes in my head for over one year!  Finally the opportunity came to make them for myself.

I did not use Donna Hay’s cake and frosting recipes.  I will never use a Donna Hay recipe for cakes or frostings as in the past I have repeatedly had issues and failures with them.  The recipes I used for my cupcakes were ones that I love and know will turn out properly and delicious.  The chocolate cupcakes are vegan, and the vanilla buttercream, while not vegan, is my favorite vanilla frosting recipe.  The recipes are below, although feel free to use your own favorite flavor combination.

A quick note about the vegan chocolate cupcakes: these cupcakes are very soft and moist and delicious. They are my favorite cupcake to bake. But I repeat, they are very soft and do fall apart easily. They would not be suitable for a heavy layer of frosting or lots of decorations.

Decorating these is extremely simple.  Use Smarties or M&M’s to place around the outside edges of the cupcakes (I used Smarties, but M&M’s would be smaller and probably would look slightly better).  The “alien” inside is a Starburst Sucks lollipop, in apple flavor.  I had to trim the plastic lollipop stick to fit down into the cupcake.  Finally, top the “alien” off with a tiny shot glass-sized clear plastic cup.  Be sure to also use foil cupcake liners for the full UFO effect!

We placed two candles on our favorite UFO and our little guy blew them out!  Happy Birthday!

These UFO cupcakes would be a hit at any children’s party and being so easy to decorate, anyone at all could do it!  If you make them for yourself or someone else, please share a photo with me – I’d love to see them!

       Print This!    

I actually made two different types of cupcakes this week, believe it or not.  You haven’t seen any photographic evidence on Flickr or Twitter because I considered them both failures.  The first one was a lavender cupcake with honey Swiss meringue buttercream.  Sounds nice, right?  Well, the cake, while it tasted alright, was way too dense.  The buttercream, while it also had a nice taste, had a strange texture to it, almost sort of… elastic?  Yeah, it was a little weird.

My second batch of cupcakes were vanilla on vanilla, a classic combination using real vanilla beans.  But the cakes started splitting on top (I *might* be a bit particular about how the tops of my cupcakes look) while baking and turned too brown too quickly.  They also tasted slightly eggy.  And the buttercream?  It was way too sweet.

After both of those failures, I had no butter left.  And yes, also, my son came home from preschool with conjunctivitis (A.K.A. “pink eye”).  And my daughter acquired a stomach bug.  This winter has been horrible for viruses; I don’t think the kids have been not sick for any length of time for the past few months.  It’s so terribly annoying!

But just hours before I realized that both of my kids would be coming home sick, I was searching the internet to find a recipe that I could bake that also did not have butter.  I didn’t have my hopes up.  Someone suggested hummingbird cake to me, but I didn’t have any carrots either.

Eventually, I started singling out cookies.  And I came across this one – peanut butter and chocolate chip cookies.  They looked easy and delicious.  But having a read over the comments and reviews of the recipe, I knew I had to change the original if I wanted to end up with something edible.

And end up with something edible I definitely did.  These were extremely indulgent and out-of-this-world delicious.

I don’t even need to continue this post with words; I could just show you more pictures of these incredible cookies and that would be enough.

But I do want to tell you what I did different with the recipe.  It is a butterless and flourless recipe.  But, after reading over the comments on the recipe page, so many people had problems with it and said it was sickly to eat.  Too much peanut butter, too much sugar.  So following the advice of others, I reduced the peanut butter (I used smooth and not chunky) and brown sugar down from 1 cup to 3/4 cup.  Others added 1/2 cup of self-raising flour, but I didn’t have any, so I added 1/2 cup of plain flour + 1 teaspoon of baking powder.  Finally, I reduce the amount of chocolate down from 1 cup to about 3/4 cup + 1 tablespoon or so.  Oh, and I also used chocolate chunks instead of chocolate chips.

The dough was stiff and difficult to mix by hand.  The chunks were difficult to stir in and I ended up chucking the spoon and using my hands to incorporate the chunks.  I used about a tablespoon of dough per cookie, and flatten them slightly before baking.

Again differing from the original recipe, I reduced the oven temperature from 200C to 180C and my cookies were done in 9-10 minutes.

I’ll note as well that the recipe I am including below is the exact recipe that I, myself, used.

As with most cookies, I want to remind you that it is very important not to overbake these.  You’ll only need a slightly golden outside to keep them soft and chewy.   Straight from the oven, they are very soft, so let them cool on the tray for a bit before removing them.

There is no crunch to these cookies, they are just all over soft and chewy (and remain so on the next day).  And they stick to the roof of your mouth, just like peanut butter does.  You will need a glass of milk with these, no doubt about it.

I never expected to end up with such a delicious cookie without any butter.  I am highly impressed and proud to say that these are now one of my most favorite ever cookies!  If you love the combination of peanut butter and chocolate, I guarantee you will love these as well!

       Print This!    

I told them what ingredients I wanted to bake with and asked for their suggestions.  Some suggestions were friands, double chocolate mud cupcakes and macarons.  While they all sounded delicious, one suggestion really intrigued me – Queen of Sheba cake, which was recommended by Jessica.  I had no idea what it was so had to google it.

The Queen of Sheba cake, or Reine De Saba, is a recipe from Julia Child.  Apparently it comes from her first book, The French Chef, but it appears that it can also be found, with slightly different versions, in a few other of Julia’s cookbooks.  In The French Chef, Julia says that it is the first French cake she had ever eaten, prepared by co-author Simon Beck, and she had never forgotten it.

I can’t figure out why this cake is called Queen of Sheba.  Does anyone know?

The cake itself is a soft, moist, gooey chocolate cake.  The preparation was fun and slightly different than I’m used to.  It starts out normal, by creaming butter and sugar, but then you beat in egg yolks, followed by folding in a mixture of melted chocolate and brewed coffee, then adding almond meal and almond extract (this is where my only variation came in, by adding my Beanilla Madagascar Bourbon vanilla extract instead because, although I like the smell of almond extract, I do not like the taste).

In another bowl, you will need to whisk egg whites with a pinch of salt and some sugar, then fold them in alternately with cake flour.  You’re then ready to go.

My cake didn’t rise very much, although in the pictures I’ve seen on the internets, it doesn’t appear to be a very high cake.  The top of the cake became shiny and a little crackly, sort of like a brownie.  The inside of the cake is very soft and moist and the taste is just beautiful.  I’m glad I used vanilla extract instead of almond.

What you absolutely need to note about this cake is that you must not overbake it. If you overbake it, you will lose that gooey texture that this cake is known for.

Originally, a recipe for a soft chocolate frosting accompanies this cake, but I chose not to use this.  Instead, I used some leftover dulce de leche to drizzle on each individual slice and sprinkled over a few pink sea salt flakes.  When served warm, this combination was absolutely to die for, so heavenly.

I am so thankful to Jessica for recommending the Queen of Sheba cake to me.  This recipe was such a great way to break my bout of baker’s block!

On a separate note, this post sees the launch of my new watermark for my photos.  After experiencing the trouble of someone using my photos to advertise their own “products” on Etsy, I have finally decided to take the time to watermark each photo.  I have tried and will try to keep them in an area of the photo that will not be so annoying, and I apologize if you don’t like them, but if you have experienced someone stealing your photos, then I’m sure you would take appropriate action as well.

       Print This!    

With these warmer days (in the middle of winter), we’ve found that we need a way to cool down after our walk back from school.  What better way to do that than to take the Zoku Quick Pop Maker out of the freezer and make popsicles!

The latest recipe on the Zoku blog is for cherry popsicles with a homemade magic shell drizzle.  This is the one I set out to make.  I love cherries and while I’ve never been keen on Magic Shell, the idea of making it home intrigued me more than I can even express in words.

The recipe is called “cherries and cream”.  This is a Greek yoghurt-based popsicle so by all means you could probably consider this a healthy popsicle.  The yoghurt gives the popsicle an instant tang to your tastebuds and next time I’d probably use a little more sugar than the recipe calls for to try to tame down that tang.  I think I accidentally used plain Greek yoghurt though, instead of the vanilla-flavored! The popsicles on their own (without the quick shell) are definitely delicious.

Add the homemade quick shell though and they are brilliant!  Can you believe that you can make “Magic Shell” at home with only two ingredients?  Chocolate and refined coconut oil.  That’s all.  Use any flavor of chocolate you like, melt it with the coconut oil, cool it to room temperature, then pour it on your ice cream or popsicles and right before eyes it freezes solid.

I used Green & Black’s milk chocolate for my homemade “Magic Shell” (which is why it’s so light in color), but you could choose to use a darker chocolate.

In the future, I plan to make enough quick shell to entirely dip the popsicle in to give it a wonderful crunchy outer layer of chocolate.  How awesome would that be!

If you can’t tell already, I am totally hooked on this quick shell!  I highly recommend making it for yourself, rather than buying the commercially prepared version, which is packed full of nasties that you probably shouldn’t be eating anyway.  And the homemade version tastes so much better.  I guarantee you’ll be blown away as much as I am!  :)

       Print This!    

Recently, Kristy at KSayerphotography had a giveaway on her blog.  The prize was 14 blocks of Alter Eco Pacific chocolate.  First of all, I saw “14 blocks of chocolate”!  Awesome prize!  Then I realized I had never heard of Alter Eco Pacific chocolate before.  I went to their website to have a look.

Alter Eco Pacific is based in Australia.  Their products are Fair Trade, organic, and contain nothing artificial.  They use sustainable farming methods and natural fertilizers.  Just reading this on their website made me feel really great about consuming their chocolate.

I entered Kristy’s giveaway and hoped for the best!

A little while later, I received word that I had won the giveaway!  Awesome!  About a week later, I was opening the parcel containing over 1 kilogram of chocolate.  Here is what I had won:

Delicious!

Some of this chocolate I could bake with, and some I was going to just simply eat.  In this post, I’ll give a brief review of each of the blocks, and also give you a Donna Hay recipe that I made with the chocolate.

The first block I tried was the Crystallized Orange Peel chocolate.  I do love chocolate and orange!  The chocolate was exceptionally smooth and the orange peel, although while slightly annoyingly chewy, lent a hint of orange.  The orange was not strong or overpowering, just gentle and soft.  I didn’t bake with this chocolate; I just ate it straight from the block!

Next, I tried the Quinoa, which is another block I did not bake with, but just simply ate.  This chocolate was much darker in flavor than the orange.  I think the quinoa is a nice textural addition to the chocolate, giving it a bit of a crunch.  I had never eaten quinoa before tasting this.  I feel I still don’t have a good idea of what quinoa tastes like, as I mainly just tasted the dark chocolate in this block.

I had to try to bake something with this chocolate, so I used a bit of the Dark Velvet (which contains organic milk) in some chocolate chunk cookies.  They were very delicious, but I actually loved eating this chocolate straight from the block more than the cookies.  It was very, very velvety and so smooth.  It wasn’t as hard as the other blocks.  I loved it!

Another one I decided to use in a batch of chocolate chunk cookies was the Cocao Nib.  This one I was really looking forward to try, as I had never eaten cocao nibs.  I loved the crunch and I loved the taste of this block.  In the cookies, the crunch was more subtle after baking.  Again though, I wish I wouldn’t have baked with this block as I wanted to eat more of it on its own!

The Almond one was delicious as well, much better than any almond chocolate bar you’d by in the candy aisle at the grocery store!

I used both whole blocks of the Blackout chocolate, containing 85% cocoa, to make Donna Hay’s dark chocolate and caramel pudding.  This recipe is on the cover of her most recent winter magazine.  The pudding is basically made up of a layer of dulce de leche on the bottom, and gooey chocolate cake on top – in other words, heaven!

This recipe was so heavenly I made it twice in two weeks!  For the first go, I used Alter Eco’s Pacific Blackout.  The block melted down so smoothly and smelled great as they melted.  The end result was super delicious and super chocolaty.  The recipe for this is at the end of this post.

I’m saving the best chocolate for last… the Mint Chocolate.  I have tasted a lot of mint chocolate, and although I like the combination, I normally wouldn’t name it as one of my favorites.  But this block of mint chocolate was the best ever mint chocolate I have tasted in my entire life.  It contains tiny pieces of peppermint which are crunchy and release bursts of mint that are just to die for.  This was without a doubt my most favorite of Alter Eco Pacific’s chocolate.

My second favorite was the Dark Velvet.  My least favorite was the orange.

I’ve got to find where these blocks are sold and buy some more to add to my stash.  My last mint chocolate is half gone, and I feel I absolutely need to have more!

 

       Print This!    

Dark Chocolate And Caramel Pudding
Adapted from Donna Hay magazine, issue 57
Makes 4* (see my note below)

Ingredients
1 x 380g can store-bought caramel filling*
1/3 cup (80ml) double (thick) cream
200g dark chocolate, chopped
60g unsalted butter
3 eggs
½ cup (90g) brown sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
½ cup (60g) almond meal
Cocoa, for dusting

Method
Preheat oven to 200 degrees Celsius. Place the caramel in a bowl and whisk until smooth. Add the cream and mix well to combine. Place 1/3 cup (80ml) of the caramel mixture in the base of a 4 x 1 ½ cup-capacity (375ml) ovenproof dishes.

Place the chocolate and butter in a heatproof bowl over a saucepan of simmering water and stir until the chocolate is melted and smooth.

Place the eggs, sugar and vanilla in the bowl of an electric mixer and beat for 8-10 minutes or until doubled in size. Fold the chocolate mixture and almond meal through the egg mixture and divide between the dishes.

Place on a baking tray and bake for 18-20 minutes or until risen and the centres are soft. Stand for 5 minutes. Dust with cocoa to serve.

*Find caramel filling in the baking aisle of the supermarket. If this isn’t available, use store-bought or homemade dulce de leche. Here in Australia, you can use Nestle Top ‘N Fill caramel, which is essentially dulce de leche.

*I divided the caramel and cake mixture between 6 1-cup ramekins, instead of only 4 1 1/2 cup ramekins.  After seeing the quantities of the mixtures, I felt that it could easily fit in 6 smaller ones.  In the end, I am glad I did this because the pudding is so rich and had it just been 4 ramekins, I don’t think we could have eaten the entire contents of the ramekin in one go!

 

I knew these cupcakes would specifically be for children, so I wanted to make something very cute and child-friendly.  Rainbow cupcakes would be perfect!  I don’t mean those cakes that are packed full of food coloring to create some psychedelic rainbow-like patterns, as I’m not a huge fan of those.  No, what I mean is….

A real rainbow cupcake!   This is a classic chocolate cake and vanilla buttercream combo.  I used my favorite chocolate cupcake recipe, which happens to be vegan, and is chocolaty, moist and fluffy.  The vanilla buttercream was, of course, tinted with a touch of food coloring (except for the clouds).  The rainbow part is a sour fruit rainbow strap.

The process to create this cute look is super easy, you don’t even need to have any knowledge of cake decorating.  In fact, you don’t even need to bake cupcakes from scratch – use a boxed mix if you prefer.  While you’re at it, you can even use a tub of pre-made frosting.  The only things you’ll need extra are blue food coloring, a small piping bag or Ziploc bag, and rainbow fruit staps.

The recipes for the chocolate cupcakes and vanilla buttercream can be found by clicking on the respective links, which will take you to previous posts from my blog – the recipes will make 12 cupcakes.  For instructions on putting together the rainbow cupcakes, keep reading!

Now really, the process of putting these cupcakes together is pretty self-explanatory.  After making the frosting, take out about 1/3 cup of it; this will form the clouds.  Set it aside.  For the rest of the frosting, drop in a few drops of blue food coloring and mix really well.  The color you end up with entirely depends on you – if you’re after pastel, only add a few drops; if you want a dark blue sky, add more drops.  Take the blue frosting and spread it on top of the cooled cupcakes.

Spoon the remaining white frosting into a pastry bag or Ziploc bag, snip off a small part of the tip or corner (or use a small-ish pastry tip), then pipe out a cloud-like wisp of frosting on either side of the cupcake.

Finally, take the rainbow straps and chop them in half if they are longer straps, bend into a rainbow shape, line up the ends of the rainbow with the clouds and firmly, but gently, push the ends down into the blue frosting.  Easy!

When I came back to school that day to collect my daughter and bring her home, the ladies told me that my cupcakes were the first to sell out!  Hooray!  I hope my little donation will help with the fundraiser.

If you’re after ideas for something to do on a rainy day or a super easy last-minute idea for a child’s birthday party, I totally recommend trying out these rainbow cupcakes.  They are sure to be a huge hit with the kids!

I’ve made them before and was surprised at how easy they were to make.  They didn’t match the exact taste of a Reese’s, but they were delicious, and they were homemade and that made them extra special.

It has been a few years since I made chocolate peanut butter cups, so I took the opportunity to do so last week.  I had been sick all week (thanks a lot to my daughter, who also got sick from a “bug” going around her kindergarten class) and I had wanted to make these little beauties all week but was too sick.  Finally, on Friday, I was feeling better and got to work first thing in the morning (which, for me, means about 1PM!).

Don’t they look so special?  Let me tell you about how special these little cups really are.  That’s not just average chocolate you see there; that chocolate is Lindt’s A Touch of Sea Salt dark chocolate bar.  This is my most favorite chocolate bar.  Ever.    There is also my own touch of sea salt in the creamy peanut butter filling.

And, these are mini chocolate peanut butter cups, which makes them especially cute!

I have a secret to get the perfect smooth top on your cups, as well.  I’ve already had questions about this, so I will share my tip with you guys too.  Most of the peanut butter cups I have seen on blogs have a dollop on top, or spreading marks from a knife or spoon.  This is fine, there’s nothing wrong with that as the taste will still be awesome, but I prefer smooth tops these days and I know exactly how to get them.

When you first start making the cups, you will be melting chocolate and peanut butter together.  You’ll spread the melted mixture into paper liners, then you’ll refrigerate them to set them.  In the meantime, you’ll be making the peanut butter filling.  When it is done, you’ll take out the chocolate cups from the ‘fridge, fill the cups with peanut butter, then spread the remaining melted chocolate on top.  Then you’ll be refrigerating them again to set.

Okay, so in between the time you first spread the chocolate into the liners, refrigerate them, make the filling, etc., the melted  chocolate will be cooling and hardening slightly.  It’ll still be liquid by the time you spread it on the top, sure it will.  But you won’t be able to get a smooth top unless you re-melt the chocolate.

What you’ll need to do is, after filling the cups with the peanut butter, place the cups in the refrigerator for a minute or two, then re-melt your chocolate.  Just until it’s warm and runny again.  Don’t make it hot though.  Just a minute or two of constant stirring over the stove on low heat until it’s warm and runny, that’s all.  Take it off the heat, then immediately spoon it on top of the cups.  After this, don’t touch the melted chocolate on top at all.  Instead, pick up the pan and tilt it gently this way and that until the melted chocolate covers the peanut butter entirely.  Repeat with the remaining cups.  You now have smooth chocolate tops!  And, of course, immediately refrigerate them until set.

I wouldn’t recommend pouring the chocolate on all of the cups, and then tilting the pan because the chocolate will start to harden due to the chilled cups and you might not to be able to get a smooth, even coverage on the first cups that you filled.

With all that said though, who really cares what the tops look like?  No matter if they’re a messy rustic pile of melted chocolate with a bit of peanut butter in the middle, they will taste spectacular!

The recipe for these is below, but they were based on my previous experience with the recipe from Have Cake, Will Travel.  I roughly halved that recipe and got exactly 10 mini-cupcake sized cups.

       Print This!    

Eventually I discovered what a “chocolate pot” actually was.  Lucky me!  Or not so lucky, depending on how you look at it!

Most of the recipes I saw for chocolate pots used raw eggs, so I put off making my own for a very long time.  Now that I’m more brave as I venture even further and further into the world of food (I’ve tried sardines now, I’ve made my own bread, I now eat my steak medium-rare instead of very-well-done, etc.) I put my fear of raw eggs aside (for the moment) because I found an amazing recipe for chocolate pots with salted caramel toffee.  It was the cover recipe for April’s delicious. magazine, and comes from one of my dessert-recipe heroes, Valli Little.

This is such an easy dessert to prepare, and it’s so elegant-looking.  Even better, it tastes incredible.  This is one for the serious chocolate-lover, and if you love salted desserts, this will be one of your favorites.

A couple of notes… the recipe included salted butter for the chocolate part of this dessert, but I didn’t have any salted butter, so I simply added a pinch or so of very finely ground sea salt in with my unsalted butter.

For the salted caramel toffee, the toffee should be a light golden color, not dark, so as soon as the sugar starts to color, watch it like a hawk, and perhaps take it off the heat just before it turns the color that you want.  I used Murray River pink sea salt flakes to sprinkle on the toffee.

The recipe also includes 1 tablespoon of brandy.  I don’t have brandy and didn’t want to buy brandy just for this; I used 1 teaspoon of my homemade vanilla extract instead.   You could use store-bought vanilla extract as well, just be sure it is the real extract and not the fake.  Also, be sure to only use 1 teaspoon of vanilla and not a tablespoon.

And of course, once again I must stress the importance of using the best quality chocolate that you can find and afford.  It truly makes a world of difference.  I used a Whittaker’s 50% chocolate bar for these.

Personally, I didn’t like the salted caramel toffee on its own, but when tasting it with a bite of the chocolate as well – WOW!  Words cannot describe it, it was just heavenly.

I originally made this last week, which is when I took these photos.  But I liked these chocolate pots so much that I made them again as a Mother’s Day dessert when I made lunch for my mother-in-law.  I did everything the same as before, except I crumbled the toffee up a bit more so that it resembled crumbs or small pebbles.  I preferred it that way, more so than the larger chunks of the toffee I used in the photos above!

So delicious!  This recipe is now one of my top favorites on my blog!

       Print This!