Cookie Bites

So being that the blog is called the Cookie Tray I am slowly getting closer to making some actually cookies! I have taken a big interest in Pinterest lately and I have found some really great cookie idea and recipes. Today I decided to go for the cookie dough truffles. The end results looks fantastic and tastes AMAZING! The only thing I would have done differently is, I would have made the dough balls smalls, more one bites size as they are super sweet.

Ingredients:

Butter softened           - 1/3 cup or 75g
Brown Sugar              - 1/3 cup or 55g
Vanilla Extract           - 1 Tbsp
All - Purpose flour     - 1 cup or 140g
Milk chocolate chips - 1 cup or 100g

Decoration:

Semi sweet dark chocolate chips  - 1 cup or 100g
White Chocolate chips                  - 1/2 cup or 50g

Method:

1. Cover a plate or tray that you can fit into your freezer with tin foil (aluminium)
2. In a medium sized bowl combine the softened butter, the sugar and the vanilla, next add the flour and mix until everything is smooth.
3. Mix in the chocolate chips. You may find it easier to do this with your hands as the mix is quite dry. 
4. Now roll the dough into bite size balls and place them onto the tray and but it into the freezer for 30 minutes or until they are nice and firm.
5. Melt the chocolate in separate bowls. It is your choice if you only want to use the dark chocolate or use a mixture. To roll the dough balls use a fork to help and then shake off any excess and place them back onto the foil covered tray. 
6. Place the covered balls into the freezer again until all the chocolate is set and then you can store them in an airtight container in the fridge until you are ready to eat them.

Some other ideas for these truffles, you can sprinkle a little salt over the top of them to bring out the chocolate flavour. Also you can melt some toffee and drizzle over the top, sprinkle some lime or orange rinds or chilli powder over the top of the chocolate before they go into the freezer for the final set. It is entirely up to you what flavour you feel like creating in your truffles. They are super tasty and really don't take very long at all to create! 

Enjoy

Tara 

 

Break your Fast

So Leah Kelly requested some healthy additions to the blog in the form of a health bar. I have trailed around online looking at many and many different recipes for health bars, protein bars and breakfast bars. I prefer the idea of doing a breakfast bar as all of the health bars or at least the majority seem to include protein powder in them. I am not one for working out so I really didn't like the idea of including that sort of a recipe.
I have adapted pretty much a big group of recipes to create a Very Berry Crunch breakfast bar. You can adapt this recipe completely to make it more healthy for you or to include different flavours and tastes to make it just as you want.
Here is my adaption but I will include some exchanges for your own try down the end.

Ingredients:

2 1/4 cups  -  315g Cornflakes
2 1/4  cups  -   315g Flour
1 1/2 cups  -  255g brown sugar
1 cup        -  225g butter
3 cups       -  450g frozen mixed berries
1/4 cup       -  50g sugar
1 cup        -  175g semi sweet dark chocolate (optional)
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
1 1/2 tsp salt
1 tbsp corn starch/arrowroot or any other type of thickening agent.

Method:

• Preheat your oven to 350ºF or 175ºC
• Combine in a mixing bowl the cornflakes, flour, brown sugar, baking soda and the salt in a bowl. 
• Melt the butter down and mix into the mixture until it is completely combined and looks like crumbs.
• Now take a square tin and press 3/4 of the mixture down to about 1/2 - 3/4 of an inch thick.
• In a pan over a medium heat combine the berries and the sugar and thickening agent until it begins to look like a nice thick lumpy syrup, this will take a little long when using berries that are still partially frozen.
• Pour the berry mixture over the base mixture and then crumble the remaining dry mixture over the fruit.
• Bake in the over for 20-25 minutes or until golden brown.
• Leave to cool completely in the tin before cutting into nice sized bars.
• Melt the chocolate in an oven proof dish over a simmer pan of water and then drizzle over the bars in a fashion that suits your taste.

So basically you can swap out of of these ingredients or anything else. 

The cornflakes can be changes to any other breakfast cereal, oats granola, bran ect. 

Instead of using butter you can use maple syrup which is actually fairly good for you. If any of you have tried the awful lemon detox diet, you will know that maple syrup is put in that. Reason being it contains all the nutrients your body needs in a day which is necessary since you don't eat during the lemon detox. I lasted like 2-3 days and that was the best I could do with it! Use golden syrup if thats the taste you like to go for, you can also just change the type of butter you use. Almond butter and peanut butter are a going to give you a nice taste difference. 

Change to different types of fruit or berries. For apples or solid fruits I would defiantly recommend stewing them a lot to soften them. Also what would be delicious is apple and toffee. So you can use small toffee pieces with the apples or you can make a full on toffee layer, maybe throw in some cinnamon too! Oh and your fruit doesn't have to be frozen it can be fresh. I just decided to go with what ever I had in the kitchen today.

And obviously you can change the chocolate to milk or white chocolate or omit it completely. But remember dark chocolate is full of anti oxidants, so in small doses it is good for you!

I may have used a little too much chocolate! 

Oh and one last thing on this recipe obviously if you are trying to be healthy you shouldn't be intending to eat all of these in one sitting. Therefore if you are going to eat them within 3 - 4 days then store them in the fridge in an airtight container. If not freeze them in the container and defrost a few at a time.

Enjoy the pictures and definitely give this a try yourself. 

If anyway has any other requests just comment on the blog or on the Facebook page and I will let you know if it is in the realms of possibility.

Tara 

Death my Chocolate

So moving continents and bringing completely no furniture with us we spent a lot of time in Ikea creating our home. One of the things we found to really enjoy about Ikea was the restaurant. In specific the lovely lovely chocolate overload cake! It is incredible! Really moist and then has like a mousse of some sort filling and topping! Amazing!!

So since then I have been scouring online for something that would be the same or at least close in the Ikea cake.

I ended up making this cake in stages and I never actually took the time to take pictures of the whole process but I have included a slice of the delicious cake or too.

Cake ingredients:

Sugar                                        2 cups

All Purpose Flour                    13/4 cup

Cocoa Powder                          3/4 cups

Vegetable Oil                           1/2 cup

Milk                                         1 cup

Boiling Coffee                         1 cup

Eggs                                         2

Baking Powder                        11/2 tsp

Baking Soda                            11/2 tsp

Salt                                          1 tsp

Vanilla Extract                         2 tsp

Method for the cake:

• Preheat the oven the 350F or   C.
• Grease a small/medium sized springform pan.
• In a large bowl mix in the flour, cocoa powder, sugar, baking powder, baking soda and salt until it all combined.
• Add all the rest of the ingredients into the dry mixture and mix on a medium speed until you have a very liquid mix. You can now pour this into the springform pan and place in the centre of the oven for about 40 minutes or until a cake stick can come away clean.
• Once the cake is cooked let it sit in the form for about 15/20 minutes and then turn it out onto a wire rack and let cool completely.

Chocolate Mousse Ingredients:

Separated Eggs                 3

Semi-sweet chocolate       6oz

Cold Heavy Cream           1/2 cup

Sugar                                1/4 cup 2 tbsp

unsalted butter                  3 tbsp

Vanilla essence                 1/2 tsp

Cream of Tartar                1/2 tsp

Method for the Mousse:

• Put a heatproof bowl over a pot of simmering water and place the chocolate and butter into the pan and let it melt slowly mixing it with a whisk. 
• Once complete remove it from the heat and whisk in 1 egg yoke at a time and set aside.
• In a separate bowl whisk the egg whites until light and fluffy and slowly add the cream of tartar and the 1/4 cup of sugar while whisking until they form stiff peaks like with a meringue. Set this aside also.
• So now you will need a bowl that has been kept cold in the fridge and also the whisk. If you are running short of time just add them into the freezer for about 15 minutes and they will be good to. Whisk the cold cream now until they start to foam up and then all the rest of the sugar and the vanilla essence until the cream holds nice soft peaks.
• Hopefully at this point the chocolate mix will have cooled some if not you may want to put the complete mixture into the fridge for like 30 minutes or so. 
• First fold the egg white mixture into your the chocolate mixture and then fold the whipped cream into it. Try your best not to overwork the mixture but it does need completely combined.

Method to create the Cake:

• Once everything is ready and cooled you need to slice the cake into 2 or 4 layers depending on what you are looking to achieve. 
• Cover each slice with a thick layer of mousse and layer the cake on top until it is complete. cover the cake in the rest of the mousse and refrigerate until you are ready to eat it! 

Honestly this is probably one of the tastiest chocolate cakes I have ever made! And I am seriously contemplating on going for another slice right about now!

Pane al Cioccolato

There are not enough ways or words for me to explain how completely excited and happy I am about how this bread has turned out! I literally don't want to leave it alone! 

Between staring and the beautiful look of the three loaves, smelling the decadent chocolate smell wafting out of the kitchen and cutting slices layering butter on top and chowing down, I cannot think of anything better!

I am so excited to cook this again. Bread can sometimes feel like way too much work because of the waiting for it to rise/proof/rest ect, but there are no results like perfectly baked fresh loaves of bread, especially when chocolate is included.

So which this recipe your Sour Dough Starter from the "Hunting for Wild Yeast" comes in handy.

Firstly beginning the Sour Dough Starter sometimes referred to as the Big a Naturale.

Ingredients:

Starter of (50% hydration)                               - 1oz

Bread Flour                                                      - 1.2oz

Room temp Water                                            - 0.7oz

Method:

• Mix all of the ingredients together until a nice thick batter.
• Cover the bowl with plastic wrap lightly and let the yeast sit for 8 hours a constant room temperature to ferment. 

The Biga Naturale

So once your Yeast has had time to ferment you can begin the rest of the process with the bread. I generally suggest you get the yeast started the evening before you want to make your bread otherwise your whole day will be consumed by bread, which some times is more frustrating instead of fun.

Ingredients:

All of the Wild Yeast you had left our to ferment, if it has gone slightly rubbery or hard just cut it up into small pieces and you are good to go.

Bread Flour          - 3 cups

Water                    - 1 1/8cups

Honey                   - 4 tbsp

Vanilla extract      - 1 tbsp

Cocoa Powder      - 4 tbsp

Salt                       - 1 tbsp

Instant Yeast        - 1/4 tsp

Chocolate Chips  - 3oz

Method:

• But all ingredients except the chocolate chips and the water into a bowl and slowly add the water and mix together until completely evenly incorporated. I use the dough hooks for this otherwise the dough gets caught up in the mixer. However if you don't have dough hooks you can still do this, it will just be a little more messy.

• Flour up a surface and knead the dough for about 5-8 minutes 

• Let the Dough Rest for about 5 minutes  and then add the chocolate chips while kneading for about a minute or until all are incorporated in the dough.

• Now just like before in the Baguette blog lightly oil a bowl and and place your dough in there to ferment for about 2 hours or so.

• Again lightly flour a clean surface and split your dough into 2/3/4 even pieces. It is completely up to you, but if you intend to share it with people not living in your home or to freeze it cause it won't be eaten split it more rather then less, this way you will have less food waste.             Lightly Ball the dough up and leave to rest for about 10/15 minutes. 

• Now you want to shape the dough balls into a nice smooth round ball or go for a more oval shape. Again this is completely your choice of what you fancy going for and I have decided on a nice oval! You can now place these on the tray and cover with a tea towel and leave to proof for about 3 hours. 

• About an hour before the bread will finish proofing preheat your oven to 400F/204C and place a oven tray filled with water in the bottom of the oven, this will help to keep the crust softer. 

• Score the top of the loaves 2/3 times each. Bake for 20 minutes and then rotate the loaves and bake for about 10/15 minutes. The smell will be completely divine while they are cooking and keep in mind that when you open the oven the steam will rush out at you so step back and don't get burnt!

• Once the Loaves are ready let them cool on a wire rack until completely cooled if you can resist it! I didn't manage to resist it! I ended up going in for the kill while it was hot and I just don't even regret it!! Delish!!!

Yum Yum Yum!!! Happy Baking People!!

Tara 

 

On the Hunt for Wild Yeast continued.......

So just to finish of this epic journey of the discovery to wild yeast(Sour Dough Starter), let me finish off the ingredients and day to day of the how to.

Day Two:

The mixture was looking good and bubbly already which is great, it also had a fairly sweet smell when you removed the lid. 

So I measured out in a large bowl

• 4 oz of all purpose flour
• 4oz of filtered water 

And the current mixture

I now mixed everything vigourosly into a good smooth paste, and then transferred it back into the mason jar. The jar at this point was only just past half full, however about 4 hours later I walked into the kitchen and the mixture had bubbled and expanded on mass and was completely over flowing and rolling down the side of the fridge. So now I have split the mixture between two mason jars now.....

Day Two Results

Day Three:

The mixture is more then doubled in size today. I ended up splitting the mixture between three jars as it actually started to overflow. It smells distinctly yeasty and sweet today.

Today like yesterday add

4oz flour
4oz water
current mixture

Mix vigurously and pour into three separate jars and place onto of the fridge to work it's magic.

Day Three

Day Four:

As it turns out I am completely underestimating the Starter. Every recipe I have found has said it will double in size....... More like quadruples in size! Seriously! the amount it has risen is ridiculous. I went to Victoria overnight and I had placed a plate under the jars just in case and a good thing I did! the Started was everywhere again!! The jars where jammed shut with starter after exploding out of them! To say the least the kitchen stank of yeast when we came home from Victoria!

Anyway moving on we do!

Same as everyday before combine the below in a bowl

4oz flour
4oz water
and the remaining starter
Mix it all up smooth and separate into four jars this time.

Day Four

Day Five:
So the starter raised plenty but thankfully did not go madly out of the jars today. While it expanded it became lovely and airiy and bubbly looking which is a brilliant result for the starter.
Today is the last consecutive day of having to feed the starter (hopefully)

So once again,

4oz flour
4oz water
Remaining Starter
Mix the same as previous days and split between all 4 jars again.

Day Five

Today once your starter has fermented well and is ripe, you can place it into the fridge after a few hours of sitting at room temperature until you are ready to use it. If your starter is not showing the signs of being ripe continue on day by day using the same technique until you have a ripe starter.

Once per week you will need to maintain the started by either using half or disposing half and then adding the 4 oz flour and water mixture.

If you are wanting to minimise the amount of starter you are using you can dispose of half and use only 2 oz of here. Or if you are going to be away or not intending to use the starter for a few weeks then use double the amount of flour and water.

So not that I have a healthy ripe starter I am ready to create some Italian Chocolate Bread!