Some slice with some crunches

July 13, 2025 

   

On a mini weekend away in Castlemaine during July, I had the perfect piece of slice at Stak's Cafe. It was a bit biscuity but more chewy caramel, with big chocolate buttons melted into the top and lots of roasted peanuts. It made me want to bake something similarly chaotic and sweet and salty, so I pulled out a recipe for 'quadruple crunch bars' from Hungry & Frozen. It smashes together potato chips (ever heard of 'em?), rice bubbles, butterscotch lollies and chocolate into a biscuit slice base.

I have to admit up front that I let down this recipe before it let down me. I melted the butter instead of creaming it with the sugar because I'm lazy about using electric beaters, this is a slice, and I wasn't convinced that it was needed. Then I used a medium-large bowl that was way too small for all the dough and the gentle folding needed here. From there I think the recipe needs to take some responsibility: there was way too much mixture for a 25cm square baking tray, perhaps even too much for the 25 cm x 30 cm tray I tried after that. There was so much chocolate (complimentary) that it wasn't to be drizzled about playfully, but instead thickly spread across the entire slice.

Honestly, this was not quite the crunch-a-thon I was hoping for (although the height of the slice certainly did have it crashing into the roof of my mouth). I was surprised how much the potato chips, rice bubbles and butterscotch melded into the biscuit dough. The slice did get a bit crunchier after storage in the fridge. I think these were originally intended to be cookies and I'm tempted to backtrack to that version... rolling the biscuit dough into loose balls and shoving chunks of the crunchy ingredients (choc chips included) into it. This was a sweet, fun slice and yet I hold out hope that there is an even more brilliant recipe lurking within it. 

Some slice with some crunches

(slightly adapted from this recipe on Hungry & Frozen)

250g butter

300g brown sugar

2 teaspoons vanilla

1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

300g plain flour

2 tablespoons milk

150g plain salted, ruffled potato chips

60g rice bubbles

140g bag Werther's Originals butterscotch lollies

200g chocolate

Preheat an oven to 190°C. Line a walled baking tray with paper (at least 25 cm x 30 cm).

Melt the butter and place it in a very large bowl. Stir in the brown sugar, then the vanilla, then the bicarb soda and baking powder. Sift and stir in the flour and then the milk, mixing until well combined. 

Crush the potato chips and add 3/4 of them to the bowl, along with the rice bubbles. No need to stir them just yet!

Unwrap and roughly chop the Werther's butterscotch lollies and add them to the bowl. Now it's time to carefully fold the crunchy things through the dough, mixing until just combined.

Transfer the mixture to the baking tray and use the back of a spoon to spread it out as evenly as you can. Cut slices into the dough where you plan to portion it later. Bake the slice for 25-30 minutes, until golden on top. Allow the slice to cool.

Melt the chocolate using your preferred method and spread it over the slice - the original recipe suggested decorative drizzling but I had plenty for a full layer across the slice. Sprinkle over the remaining chips so that they're caught in the chocolate as it sets. Cut and serve the slice after the chocolate has set.

Potato chip Florentines

June 21, 2025

   

After the great success of my tomato potluck desserts, I enjoyed musing over the possibility of potato potluck desserts for several weeks. This idea came late and fast: substitute plain potato chips in for the usual flaked almonds in my favourite Florentine recipe. So simple to do, and still so tasty! The potato chips toasted to perfection under the syrupy binding mixture, and the dash of salt was welcome. If anything I would have liked more potato flavour here. There's definitely room to play around with different potato chip brands and thicknesses, as well as the quantity added to the recipe. What a fun, tasty process of refinement that would be.

Potato chip Florentines

(adapted from this recipe by Meera Sodha)

60g pistachios, finely chopped 

90g thick/ruffled plain salted potato chips, crushed

50g hazelnuts, chopped 

100g dried cranberries (or other sour berries) 

2 tablespoons plain flour (can be gluten-free)

1/2 teaspoon salt 

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon 

75g margarine 

50g brown sugar 

2 1/2 tablespoons golden syrup

200g dark chocolate

Heat an oven to 200°C. Line a large baking tray with paper.

Chop and crush all the ingredients that need it. Stir together all the nuts, chips and dried fruits in a large bowl. Stir through the flour, salt and cinnamon until combined.

Place the margarine, sugar and golden syrup in a saucepan and set it over medium heat. Cook the mixture, stirring, until everything has melted together and become smooth. (You can also heat in the microwave and stir together.) Take it off the heat and pour it over the nut mixture in the bowl. Stir it all together to combine, then pour the mixture out onto the baking tray. Form a large rectangle about 1 cm thick; mine was about 30 cm x 22 cm.

Bake the Florentine slab for 10-15 minutes, until golden brown - keep a close eye on it to avoid burning! Allow it to cool completely.

Melt the chocolate using your favourite method and pour it over the flattest side of the Florentine rectangle. Allow the chocolate to set completely at room temperature. Slice the Florentine slab into rectangles or diamonds to serve.  

Vegan chocolate cupcakes with peanut butter buttercream

April 5, 2025

   

After a couple of underwhelming bakes with my decades-old metal cupcake tray, I put "silicon cupcake tray" on my op-shopping wishlist. I easily tracked one down for a couple of dollars within weeks and then, of course, I had to test it out. I browsed my old recipe bookmarks and picked out a Burned Butter post for chocolate-peanut butter cupcakes.

The tray had only six cups, so I halved the recipe... and still ended up with 10 cupcakes. (If I'd read the source recipe properly, I'd have known that the original was supposed to make 24. I've written out my 10-cupcake version below.) The cake itself is a lovely, simple pantry-friendly vegan chocolate. The only potential pitfall is getting the batter mixed properly - I sifted the dry ingredients directly into the wet ones and ended up with a few powdery lumps in the cakes. I pulled the cakes out at the 20 minute mark to keep them moist, but found that their bottoms dragged on every surface they touched, leaving cakey smears on the baking tray, the cooling rack and the lunchbox I stored them in. The latter four had more time to rest in the tray and fared better.

My veganised buttercream went off without a hitch, and I slathered on a modest amount with a knife - I have a minimal-frills attitude to cupcakes, and these were bang on my preference. The silicon pan showed much promise, and I scavenged a second six-cupper from another op-shop a month or so later.

Vegan chocolate cupcakes with peanut butter buttercream

(recipe adapted from Burned Butter,

where it's credited to Joy the Baker and Ina Garten) 

chocolate cake

1 1/8 cups plain flour

1 cup caster sugar

1/2 cup cocoa powder

1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/3 cup neutral vegetable oil

2 teaspoons vanilla

1 teaspoon white vinegar

1 cup water

peanut butter buttercream

1/2 cup smooth peanut butter

1/3 cup margarine

1/2 teaspoon vanilla

1/2 cup icing sugar

Preheat an oven to 180°C. Prepare a cupcake tray as you wish, with papers and/or oil.

In a medium bowl, sift together and flour, sugar, cocoa, bicarb soda and salt, then stir to combine.

In a small bowl, whisk together oil, vanilla, vinegar and water. Gradually pour the wet mixture into the dry mixture, stirring thoroughly to combine; the batter will be quite liquid. Gently pour the batter into the cupcake tray until two-thirds full. Bake for 20-25 minutes, until the cakes pass the skewer test. Allow them to cool before icing.

Beat together the peanut butter, margarine and vanilla. Sift over the icing sugar and beat until well combined and fluffy. Spread the buttercream over the cooled cupcakes.

Florentine slice

January 4-5, 2025 

   

Michael did some baking for work that left us with half a box of cornflakes. Once some spare time opened up on our summer break I was ready to do some baking of my own, and recalled that my mum had one or two cornflake-based recipes from the Beautiful Biscuits cookbook on regular rotation. When I opened up my op-shopped copy I learned that, in fact, cornflakes are one of the feature ingredients that the book is indexed by and there were six options to browse. I chose the Florentine slice - having had great success with a modernised, vegan version in the past couple of years I was ready to briefly revert to an older style.

As I often do, I made substitutions to suit what was already in my pantry - dried currants instead of sultanas, and salted roasted peanuts when unsalted were specified. I scaled the recipe to neatly use up the cornflakes on hand but have written up the original quantities below. I think I spread my reduced quantity over approximately the same-sized baking tray and as a consequence my slice was rather thin - the original intention is probably a slice 1.5-2 cm thick while mine was half that.  

Then there's the chocolate - even allowing for my quantity adjustment, I think there should be more of it and I've noted that below. The recipe has this slice constructed upside-down, with the melted chocolate being spread thinly across the papered tray and then the cornflake mixture pressed on top of it and baked! I suppose it might yield a smooth chocolate side, but the spreading seemed fraught and I was very unsure about baking the chocolate. I had good results baking the slice right-way-up, chocolate spread after baking, and that's the method I describe below.

Baking Florentines to just the right texture can be a challenge but this recipe worked well, with condensed milk acting as an easy binder and the cornflakes caramelising gorgeously under its glaze. I didn't much like glace cherries as a kid but I've unexpectedly developed a nostalgic fondness for them and I'm glad I used them here.

   

Florentine slice

(slightly adapted from a recipe in
The Australian Women's Weekly The Big Book of Beautiful Biscuits)

3/4 cup sultanas or currants

2 cups (160g) crushed cornflakes

1/2 cup roasted peanuts

1/4 cup chopped glace cherries

2/3 cup sweetened condensed milk

185g dark chocolate, melted (consider increasing this)

Line a 19cm x 29cm walled baking tray with baking paper. Preheat an oven to 180°C.

In a medium bowl, mix together all the ingredients except for the chocolate. Press the mixture into the baking tray, using the back of a spoon to even it out and smooth it over as best you can. Bake for about 15 minutes, until the cornflakes have started to brown and smell great.

Melt the chocolate using your preferred method, then spread it evenly over the top of the slice. Allow the slice to cool and the chocolate to set before slicing and serving. 

Chocolate tahini caramels

December 31, 2024

   

We saw in the new year with friends close by. The hosts were vegetarian and excellent cooks so we knew we'd be well fed and, as I often do, I thought I could best contribute by bringing something sweet. The guest list included dairy-free and gluten-free eaters and my mind swiftly turned to a chocolate tahini caramel recipe I'd bookmarked just a few weeks earlier.

The active preparation time looked pretty quick and I was so relaxed about it all that I took an afternoon nap and just barely allowed enough time for these sweets to set! The tahini caramel looks soft and smooth when poured into the loaf pan but it needs freezing to solidify and once that's achieved, it doesn't necessarily slice into neat little squares. I didn't mind odd little caramel shapes and trusted that my friends wouldn't, either. It's worth keeping the caramels in the freezer right until the last moment before coating them in chocolate, because they will melt - quick work is needed and then it's back into the freezer for a final set.

This is the one drawback of this treat - it's not stable at room temperature. These bites need to be carefully stored, ideally not touching each other, in the fridge or freezer until it's time to serve them. If you can manage that, there's much enjoyment to be had: a fudgy centre with a sweet, nutty flavour; a thin, silky layer of chocolate; and a bonus burst of texture from the sesame seeds on top. 

   

Chocolate tahini caramels

(slightly adapted from a recipe on Minimalist Baker)

2 tablespoons margarine

1/3 cup sweet syrup (e.g. maple, golden; I used brown sugar syrup)

1 teaspoon vanilla

1/2 teaspoon salt

2/3 cup tahini

1 cup dark chocolate chips

sesame seeds, for garnishing

Line a loaf pan with baking paper. Place the margarine, syrup, vanilla and salt in a small saucepan and set it over medium heat. Whisk the mixture as you bring it to the boil. Turn off the heat and whisk in the tahini. Pour the mixture into the loaf pan and freeze for 1-2 hours, until solid.

When the caramel is solid, line a tray that will fit into your freezer with baking paper. Melt the chocolate using your preferred method. Retrieve the caramel from the freezer and slice it into bite-sized squares (as you can see from the photos above, my bite-sized chunks weren't always square). Use a teaspoon and a fork to swiftly drop one caramel at a time into the melted chocolate, coat it on all sides, and transfer it to the tray. Repeat with all the caramel bites. Sprinkle sesame seeds over the caramels and lightly press them into the top of the chocolate. Pop the chocolates back into the freezer for 30-45 minutes.

After serving, store any uneaten caramels in the fridge or freezer.

Spiced chocolate cake

September 3-4, 2024

   

I prefer collaboration over competition every time. There's a baking event within my work environment each year, and my local team choose to work on a project together rather than individually submitting entries. It's symptomatic of why I like working here so much! This year fourteen of us prepared cake with various shades of icing and sliced them into squares to form a pixelated image. I was lucky to be assigned 'almost black' - easily achieved with a dark chocolate ganache and a touch of black food colouring.

I volunteered to make something vegan, and turned to the classic Vegan Cupcakes Take Over The World to try a new cake. I was tempted by the peanut butter cake and the chai-spiced cake but ultimately went for the Mexican Hot Chocolate cake, which looked like a crowd-pleaser. It aims for a slightly grainy texture and complex flavour with coconut milk, flax seeds, almond meal, cinnamon, cayenne, vanilla and almond essence all in the mix. The recipe is designed to make a dozen cupcakes sprinkled with sugar, cinnamon and cocoa but a square cake with a ganache topping better suited my purpose.

This cake achieves that excellent complexity but - I chuckled to myself as I ate a small leftover piece last night - more than anything it evokes the softness of a Coles chocolate mud cake. It's the flavour of cinnamon and cayenne that set this cake apart.

   

Spiced chocolate cake

(slightly adapted from a recipe in Isa Chandra Moskowitz & Terry Hope Romero's

Vegan Cupcakes Take Over The World)

cake batter

1 cup coconut milk

1 tablespoon ground flax seeds

3/4 cup plain flour

2 tablespoons cornflour

1/4 cup almond meal

1/2 cup cocoa 

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda

3/4 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

generous pinch of cayenne pepper

1 cup caster sugar

1/3 cup vegetable oil

1 teaspoon vanilla

1 teaspoon almond essence

chocolate ganache

4 tablespoons coconut milk

75g dark chocolate chips

3 tablespoons golden or maple syrup

Preheat an oven to 180°C. Line a 22cm square cake tin with paper, or line a muffin tray with cupcake papers.

In a large bowl, whisk together the coconut milk and flax seeds. Allow them to sit for 10 minutes so that the seeds thicken the milk.

In a medium bowl, sift together the flour, cornflour, almond meal, cocoa, baking powder, bicarb soda, salt, cinnamon and cayenne.

When the coconut milk-seed mixture is ready, whisk in the sugar, oil, vanilla and almond essence. Gradually add the flour mixture and mix well. Pour the cake batter into the baking tin(s) and bake for 20-25 minutes, until the cake passes the skewer test. Allow the cake to cool before applying the ganache.

When the cake has cooled, make the ganache. Place the coconut milk in a small saucepan and heat until almost boiling. Turn off the heat and add the chocolate, stirring until the chocolate is entirely melted. Whisk in the syrup. The ganache might look quite runny; if that's the case you can let it sit a while to thicken slightly. Gently pour the ganache over the cake(s) and allow it to set a while (although it will still be soft) before serving.

Raspberry cheesecake brownies

June 10, 2024

   

Our friend Natalie decided to have a little 'brownies and biscuits' gathering to celebrate her birthday this year. I've got a lot of brownie recipes under my belt but even more bookmarked to try so I went searching the latter set. In particular, I knew I had a vegan cheesecake brownie recipe tucked away. It uses cashews, one of my favourite dairy substitutes, and also aquafaba, which I'm inexperienced with. I thought a brownie might be a gentler way in to aquafaba than, say, a meringue.

I was in the mood for baking and optimistic about this recipe, so I went ahead and doubled it (though I've posted the original single quantity below). I included the optional orange zest because I'd received some homegrown ones from Natalie herself, and I thought it'd taste nice with the raspberries.

   

Whipping up the aquafaba went really well, and I managed to retain a decent amount of air as I folded in the other brownie ingredients. Nevertheless, the brownie mixture ended up quite thick. It definitely needed coaxing to spread evenly across the baking tray and the portion I held in reserve absolutely did not marble prettily with the cheesecake. Thank goodness for the raspberries to distract from those ungainly blobs!

I wasn't surprised that my double-sized brownie needed extra time to bake, and I didn't mind that that caused it to go extra-brown on top. Ultimately, the texture was excellent! Chewy around the edges, densely cakey in the middle, velvetty on top. I really liked the sour bursts from the raspberries cutting through the brownie's richness. There were no issues finishing off this extra-large batch.

   

Raspberry cheesecake brownies

(a recipe from lazy cat kitchen)

cheesecake layer

1 cup raw unsalted cashews

2 tablespoons margarine

1/3 cup caster sugar

1/3 cup vegan milk (I used almond)

1/4 cup lemon juice + zest of 1/2 lemon

zest of 1/2 orange (optional)

2 teaspoons vanilla

frozen raspberries, to decorate (optional)

brownie layer

150g dark chocolate

100g margarine

1/4 cup brown sugar

1 cup plain flour

1 tablespoon cornflour

50g cocoa powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda

1/2 cup aquafaba (canning liquid from chickpeas)

1 cup caster sugar

Place the cashews in a small heatproof bowl and cover them with boiling water. Allow them to soak for at least 20 minutes.

In a medium-large saucepan, gently melt together the chocolate, margarine and brown sugar for the brownie layer. Stir them together to combine well, then turn off the heat and allow the mixture to cool.

Drain the cashews. Place all of the cheesecake ingredients, except for the raspberries, into a blender and blend until smooth.

Preheat an oven to 180°C. Line a 20cm square high-walled baking tray with paper. In a medium-sized bowl, sift together the flour, cornflour, cocoa, salt and bicarb soda. Stir them all together to combine.

In a separate medium-sized bowl, pour in the aquafaba and beat at high power for several minutes to form a foam that resembles whipped egg whites with soft peaks. Gradually beat in the caster sugar. Use a rubber spatula to gently fold the melted chocolate mixture into the foam. Gradually fold in the flour mixture until it's fully combined into the batter. 

If you want to attempt the marbling, set aside 1/2 cup of brownie batter and pour the rest into the baking tray, gently spreading it into an even layer. Pour the cheesecake mixture over the top. If marbling, drop spoonfuls of the remaining brownie batter across the cheesecake. Use a chopstick to swirl the brownie batter decoratively through the cheesecake. Drop raspberries across the top if you're using them.

Bake the brownies for 30 minutes. Cover the top with kitchen foil and bake for a further 13-15 minutes (I think mine actually took a further 20-30 minutes). The cheesecake should look cooked but it's OK if it fails the skewer test. Allow the brownies to cool completely and store them in the refrigerator, initially for 1-2 hours before slicing and serving.

Nib & peel biscuits

 April 27, 2024

   

I've barely been baking this year, but autumn often gets me in the mood for it. My inspiration to take on this recipe was a very marked-down packet of cocoa nibs I picked up from Terra Madre. My one strong memory of baking with nibs before was in this biscuit recipe where they're paired with candied citrus peel - I blogged about it back in 2007 (!) but didn't publish the recipe so I'm here to redress that oversight today.

The biscuits have very simple, classic ingredients - they come out quite crisp and toasty, with a bit of chewiness at the centre. They're not a thick, pillowy cookie. I like that the cocoa nibs are flinty and barely sweet as a contrast to the soft and sugary peel.

Nib & peel biscuits

(very slightly adapted from a recipe from Cook (almost) Anything)

125g butter, softened

200g caster sugar

1 egg

1 teaspoon vanilla

200g plain flour

40g sweetened citrus peel, finely diced

1 teaspoon baking powder

40g roasted cocoa nibs

Preheat an oven to 180°C. Line 1-2 baking trays with paper.

Thoroughly beat together the butter and sugar in a large bowl. Add the egg and vanilla, and beat until combined. In a separate small bowl, stir a tablespoon of the flour together with the citrus peel to manage its stickiness and prevent it from clumping. Sift the remaining flour and baking powder into the butter mixture and mix until almost combined. Add the cocoa nibs and citrus peel, stirring until just combined.

Place generous, well-spaced tablespoons of the mixture onto the baking tray(s) and bake for around 10 minutes, until just browning around the edges. Allow them to cool on the tray for 5 minutes before transferring them elsewhere.

Ginger caramel slice

October 16, 2021

   

I bought a back-up jar of coconut condensed milk when I was shopping for the lime pie, and it only took a week before I decided to work it into some caramel slice. I always use a decade-long favourite recipe from Steph and Johanna, and this time around I made three adjustments to the caramel layer:

1. I used a can of coconut condensed milk instead of soy condensed milk,
2. I used treacle instead of golden syrup, and
3. I added 1 1/2 tablespoons of ground ginger to the mixture.

There were a few flecks of ground ginger that I couldn't stir smooth in the caramel, and I wondered if I should have strained the mixture before pouring it onto the base. 

Everything seemed to sort itself out during the bake... this slice was magnificent. The caramel was a bit runnier than usual - due either to the coconut/soy switch or to undercooking - but it had the consistency and colour of the caramel you'd find in a Mars bar or Twix. The flavour was much stronger, like gingerbread! For some (including me as a kid), this is probably sullying a classic, but Michael and I are instant fans of this easy-to-make spin-off flavour. 

Wattleseed & macadamia brownies

June 12, 2021

   

I'm not sure how many brownie recipes one food blog needs, but this food blog is all the better for including the one appearing in Warndu Mai (Good Food) Cookbook. I received this cookbook as a very thoughtful gift for my last birthday, from a group of friends I met through blogging. The book is centred around native ingredients, and how we can introduce them into our cooking. There are simple, daily foods like wattleseed coffee and native tea, damper, and wild raspberry jam, through to celebration desserts such as Illawarra plum and lemon myrtle limoncello trifle, and strawberry gum pavlova. There's plenty of bush meat recipes (kangaroo, seafood, emu and crocodile) and even a green ant citronello for the non-veg*ns.

A brownie isn't quite so daring, but it's the winter pandemic-lockdown comfort food I was drawn to make and eat. I was low on wattleseed, so I topped up at Gewürzhaus, and I'll try to plan ahead and buy from Mabu Mabu in future. Then there were a couple of substitutions for convenience: golden syrup instead of carob syrup, and walnut oil instead of macadamia oil. I can see a couple more that would earn this vegan status: margarine instead of butter, and perhaps aquafaba instead of the egg whites.

This is a really great brownie! Probably more cakey than fudgy, but with the right chewiness around the edges. I picked up the wattleseed in my first mouthful, but became desensitised to it as I continued eating. The macadamia chunks stand out from the batter more than the usual, softer walnuts and pecans. I'm not generally all that interested in icing on a brownie but this one is unforgettable, a rich buttercream that contains more chocolate than icing sugar - I can see myself transferring it to other cakes in future too.

This is a sweet but subtly-spiced start to my cooking with Warndu Mai. I'm excited to track down many of its other less familiar-to-me ingredients and get to know them better. 

 

   

Wattleseed & macadamia brownies

(very slightly adapted from Damien Coulthard & Rebecca Sullivan's 

Warndu Mai (Good Food) Cookbook)

brownie batter

65g butter

250g sugar

2 egg whites

3 tablespoons cocoa

1 cup plain flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoon golden syrup

1 tablespoon ground wattleseed

3 tablespoons macadamia or walnut oil

pinch of salt

100g toasted macadamias, roughly chopped

icing 

120g dark chocolate

125g butter, at room temperature

70g icing sugar

1 teaspoon ground wattleseed

Preheat an oven to 180°C. Line a 20cm square cake tin with baking paper and spray it with oil.

Cream together the butter and sugar with an electric beater. Gradually add the egg whites. Sift in the cocoa, flour and baking powder, and beat gently until just combined. Slowly beat in the syrup, wattleseed, oil and salt. Fold in the macadamias. Pour the mixture into the cake tin, smooth over the top, and bake for 25 minutes. This should allow for soft centre and a chewy edge. Allow the brownie to cool.

To make the icing, gently melt the chocolate using your preferred method and allow it to cool a little. In a medium bowl, cream the butter with an electric beater. Sift in the icing sugar and beat until well mixed and fluffy. Slowly beat the melted chocolate and wattleseed into the butter. Spread the icing over the brownies, and slice to serve.

Tahini & halva brownies

January 5, 2021

   

   

I had one of my very occasional urges to make sweet stuff this week. We wanted something portable, and Cindy suggested these brownies from Yotam Ottolenghi and Helen Goh's Sweet. We'd been lucky enough to eat them before but we'd never actually made them. They're fancy, but super easy - there's no separating egg yolks and whites, no complex techniques, just pretty basic baking.

They're incredibly rich, stuffed with halva on top of all the chocolate, butter and sugar, but they're really, really good. 

Tahini & halva brownies
(very slightly adapted from Yotam Ottolenghi and Helen Goh's Sweet)

250g butter, cut into small cubes
250g dark chocolate, broken into pieces
4 eggs
1 1/4 cups of caster sugar
1 cup plain flour
1/4 cup cocoa powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
200g halva, crumbled into 2cm pieces
4-5 tablespoons tahini


Preheat the oven to 200°C. Grease a 30 x 20cm baking tin and set aside (you can line with paper too if you're cautious, but mine came out fine).

Gently melt the butter and chocolate in a saucepan until you've got a thick, shiny sauce. Set aside to cool down to room temperature.

Whisk the eggs and caster sugar in a large bowl until creamy, about 3-5 minutes with electric beaters. Gently fold in the chocolate mix.

Sift the flour, cocoa and salt into a small bowl and stir them together. Fold this dry mix into the chocolate mix and combine. Gently mix in the halva pieces.

Pour the mixture into your baking tin, smoothing it out with a spatula if necessary. Dollop the tahini onto the mix in 10-12 places and swirl them with a skewer to make a marbled pattern.

Bake for 20-25 minutes - it will come out looking like it needs more time, but will set as it cools. Leave for at least half an hour before cutting it into brownie sized pieces. 

Raspberry Ripe cups

 December 30-31, 2020

   

We saw out 2020 in a low-key but pleasing way - sharing food with a few friends in a local park for as long as the light lasted and the mosquitoes held off. There was no pressure to cook anything fancy or even cook at all, but after falling back on old favourite recipes all month I was ready to try making something new.

These chocolate cups fit the lowest common dietary denominator at the picnic, being both vegan and gluten-free. They're a close cousin to the Cherry Ripe, and all the better for contrasting the sourness of fresh raspberries against the creaminess of the coconut. The original recipe on My Darling Lemon Thyme includes its own formulation for 'raw' chocolate, but I was happy to simply use regular dark chocolate. I converted the volume of ingredients, came up with about a cup of chocolate chips, and found that this fell well short of what I needed to cover the filling. The double chocolate quantity listed below was a better match for me.

I expected the chocolate cups to be too large and rich for most people at the picnic, and I made sure to offer a knife for halving them. They were actually a huge hit, with people only reluctantly sharing a couple cups to make sure there were enough to go around. They're one small burst of joy that I'll be glad to bring with me into 2021.

   

Raspberry Ripe cups

(slightly adapted from My Darling Lemon Thyme)

2 cups dark chocolate
1/3 cup raspberries, fresh or frozen (don't defrost)

1/2 cup shredded coconut
1 tablespoon maple syrup
1 tablespoon vegan milk
2 teaspoons coconut oil

Line a muffin tray with 10 cupcake papers.

Melt the chocolate using your preferred method. Spoon just enough into each paper to cover the base, aiming to use no more than half of the chocolate. Set the chocolate in the freezer.

Set aside five of the least-squished raspberries. Place the remaining raspberries, coconut, maple syrup, milk and coconut oil in a food processor and pulse briefly to mix the ingredients together. Retrieve the muffin tray from the freezer and drop 1-2 teaspoons of the raspberry-coconut mixture into the centre of each chocolate. Gently slice the five remaining raspberries in half and place a half on top of each chocolate cup.

Check that the remaining chocolate is still melted and smooth; reheat it if needed. Spoon the chocolate over each chocolate cup to completely cover the raspberry and coconut fillings. Return the tray to the freezer to completely set the cups and store them until serving time.

Gluten-free butterless pecan turtle bars

December 5-6, 2020

   

I've been back adjusting my butter pecan turtle bar recipe again! This time round it was to share with our book club, who were meeting up for an end-of-year celebration - in person for the first time since last February. I wanted to improve on the vegan caramel I attempted a month ago, and try introducing gluten-free flour to the base.

First, the easy bit: Orgran gluten-free flour was a simple substitution. If anything, the base came together more easily than with plain flour. The slice had that tell-tale sandiness that can give away gluten-free baked goods, and didn't quite support the toppings with the same strength. I'll continue to use plain flour when I can, and go ahead with this swap if it'll benefit the group I'm sharing with.

Second, the caramel. To replace the thin liquid of my last batch, I transferred across the thicker formulation from this caramel slice, using a can of Pandaroo coconut condensed milk. It was abundant and oozy! Mildly flavoured, holding together better when refrigerated, an improvement on my last batch but still not developing the chewiness I like best.

I guess a hybrid caramel is in order. If I try half a can of condensed milk and throw in some brown sugar, I'm hoping I'll be on my way to a more deeply coloured and flavoured, chewy-set caramel to match the original non-vegan recipe.

   

Butterless pecan turtle bars

 October 31, 2020

   

Just a couple of weeks after making butter pecan turtle bars for a Zoom hang-out, we're back in a position to make and share such treats with others. This week I had cause to try a vegan version - it was a simple substitute of margarine for butter, and careful selection of dairy-free chocolate chips.

I was well prepared for the powdery texture of the biscuit base that so worried me before, but hit a new obstacle with the caramel. There seemed to be less of it in general, and when I poured it across the slice, it seemed to vanish! As you can see from the cross-sectional view above, much of the caramel soaked into the biscuit base. All the sweetness stays, of course, but the chewy caramel texture I loved so much last time around is really lacking here.

I'm really quite puzzled. I wonder if I might try using a different vegan fat and have better results - a simple vegetable oil, or perhaps some coconut cream. Is it possible that I didn't bring the sugar to the right temperature? Hmm. I'll have to bring this slice back into semi-regular rotation to figure it out.

Butter pecan turtle bars

October 10, 2020

   

This is a rerun of a recipe that I first baked in 2006, but didn't record in full here. Butter pecan turtle bars were a household favourite for several years before eventually fading from our recipe rotation. We revived them this month when our pandemic-times weekly online Quiz Club marked its six-month anniversary with a chocolate theme. 

It looks like the source website has had a transformation from Southern Food to The Spruce Eats in that time, and to their credit they've effectively set up URL redirection and updated their photos. The recipe remains pretty simple: blend a biscuit base in a food processor and press it into a dish, spread over pecans, caramel and bake, then layer on chocolate chips while it's still warm. We've not yet made this slice vegan or gluten-free, but the necessary substitutes are clear and seem likely to produce a good result. 

The biscuit base was more powdery than I remembered, but it melded into a cohesive, crisp layer during its bake. The combination of pecans and caramel was even better then I remembered - gooey in that first quiz-time slice, and chewy-fudgy when properly set later in the week. I liked this slice best when paired with a glass of milk, and I've vowed not to leave it unbaked for so many years again.

Butter pecan turtle bars

(slightly adapted from a recipe on The Spruce Eats)

base

2 cups plain flour

3/4 cup brown sugar

1/2 cup butter

topping

1 1/2 cups pecans

2/3 cup butter

1/2 cup brown sugar

1 1/2 cups chocolate chips

Preheat an oven to 180°C. Line a medium-large tray with baking paper.

Place all the base ingredients in a food processor, and blend until well mixed. (For me, the mixture was still very powdery - it turned out OK!) Turn the mixture out into the tray, and use the back of a dessert spoon to spread it out evenly and press it down firmly. Spread the pecans out across the base.

Melt the butter for the topping in a small saucepan, and add the brown sugar. Cook over medium heat, stirring regularly, until bubbling. Allow this caramel to boil for a minute, then take it off the heat and pour it across the pecans. 

Bake for 18-20 minutes, until the caramel is bubbling and the base edges are light brown. Sprinkle the chocolate chips over the slice as soon as it comes out of the oven. Allow the slice to cool to room temperature before slicing and serving.

Flourless chocolate layer cake with walnuts & rosewater cream

May 28, 2020

It's just as well Michael had a big birthday bash last year, because our options were a bit more restricted this time around. We did pretty well: there were presents and fancy crumpets in the morning, Smith & Deli in a park for lunch, followed by a bike ride and afternoon game of Wingspan. He requested black pepper tofu for dinner. In my free moments around the edges, I baked a birthday cake.

Michael picked this one out of Goh and Ottolenghi's Sweet. It looked a little intimidating, but all my lockdown baking had prepared me perfectly for the egg separating, white beating, and cake layering that's needed.

The cake component is an unusual one: it's made mostly from eggs, sugar and chocolate, forming something with the texture of a sponge cake without any of the flour. There's an anxious moment of mixing watery coffee into melted chocolate which creates a very strange, almost rubbery, texture. Unfortunately we couldn't really taste the coffee in the finished cake, so it probably wasn't worth the drama. The best trick is that this layer cake doesn't require any lengthways slicing: it's all achieved by making a huge rectangular sheet of a cake, and dividing it into three stackable rectangles.

In between sponge layers, there's rosewater whipped cream and walnuts. I was wary of the large rosewater dose, but it was balanced out well by the other flavours, and not too perfumey or soapy. The walnuts are an essential counterbalance of crunch and subtle bitterness, but they also prevented the cake-and-cream layers from sticking to each other properly.

The coffee and the construction are well worth reworking, because this is a fabulous cake! It looks fancy without being finicky. We got eight thick slices out of it; each time we'd launch into the cake's light texture with gusto, and be thoroughly satisfied by the time we finished the thick buttery top with its candied walnuts.

Flourless chocolate layer cake with walnuts & rosewater cream
(from Yotam Ottolenghi & Helen Goh's Sweet)

cake
120g walnuts
6 eggs, yolks and whites separated
215g caster sugar
215g dark chocolate
2 1/2 teaspoons instant coffee granules
50mL hot water

topping
30g caster sugar
40g walnuts

rosewater cream
380mL double cream
2 1/2 tablespoons icing sugar
1 1/2 tablespoons rosewater

Preheat an oven to 180°C. Line a 35cm x 25cm Swiss roll tin (for me, this was just my regular baking tray) with baking paper, and spray it with oil.

In a small baking tray, spread out 120g walnuts and roast them until fragrant, about 8 minutes. Allow them to cool, roughly chop them, and then set them aside for the final assembly.

Turn the oven up to 200°C.

Gently melt the chocolate using your preferred method. Dissolve the coffee in the hot water. Very gently stir the coffee into the chocolate.

In a large bowl, beat together the egg yolks and caster sugar for several minutes until very pale and fluffy; Ottolenghi and Goh reckon it should triple in volume. In three batches, gently fold the chocolate mixture into these yolks.

Using clean equipment, whisk the egg whites to form stiff peaks. Gently fold the whites into the chocolate mixture. Spread the mixture out in the Swiss roll tin as evenly as you can. Bake for 20 minutes, until the cake is cooked through but not blackening at the edges (it was a close call with mine!). Allow the cake to cool completely.

Line a small baking tray with paper. Place the topping ingredients in a small saucepan over medium heat and cook them, stirring regularly. Gradually, the sugar will melt, coat the walnuts, and turn golden brown. Keep a close eye on the mixture to avoid burning! When all of the sugar is melted and brown, spread the nuts out across the baking tray to cool. When the nuts have cooled, roughly chop them and set them aside for the final assembly.

Whip together the rosewater cream ingredients to form soft peaks, and refrigerate until the final assembly.

To assemble the cake, slice the chocolate cake into three stout rectangles of the same size. Place one layer on a serving plate and spread it with one third of the rosewater cream. Sprinkle over half of the roasted walnuts. Repeat with a second layer each of cake, cream and roasted walnuts. Repeat with the third layer of cake, the remaining rosewater cream, and top with the candied walnuts.

Flourless chocolate cake

April 25, 2020

Yes, it's more cake from the Lab Farewell Cookbook! And it's another classic style of recipe that's worth having in one's repertoire: a gluten-free chocolate cake shared by Bron. 

The preparation and final product both reminded me of brownies as much as cake. The batter builds up from melted butter and chocolate in a saucepan, fills out with almond meal instead of flour, and develops a distinctive elasticity when the eggs get mixed in. The egg yolks, anyway... the spot where this differs from a brownie is when you skip the baking powder, separate the eggs, and fold in puffy whipped whites at the end. It's a neat way to deal with what's otherwise a very dense batter.

I most appreciated Bron's advice on baking time: 

undercooked = creamy mousse, overcooked = cakey. Can't go wrong!

Since I like my baked goods closer to fudgy than cakey, I picked the minimum cooking time of 55 minutes. By my assessment, this generated a texture right on the boundary between fudgy and cakey. I'll be tempted to try a 45-50 minute bake next time round to see just how fudgy this can get!

Bron's other excellent parting advice was to serve this cake with thick cream or yoghurt, and some strawberries. I did, and they set it off perfectly.

Flourless chocolate cake
(a recipe shared by Bron in the Lab Farewell Cookbook,
where it's credited to Sue Shepherd's Irresistibles for the Irritable)

1/3 cup cocoa powder
1/3 cup water
150g butter
150g dark chocolate
1 1/4 cups brown sugar
1 1/4 cups almond meal
4 eggs, separated

Preheat an oven to 150°C. Line a 22cm springform cake pan with baking paper, and grease it.

Set a medium saucepan over low heat, and add the cocoa, water, butter and chocolate. Continue cooking and occasionally stirring until everything is melted and smooth. Turn off the heat and whisk in the sugar, almond meal, and egg yolks. (I didn't get going with the egg separations until after I turned off the heat, which gave everything a little time to cool down.) Transfer the chocolate mixture to a large bowl. 

Place the egg whites in a small-medium bowl and beat them with an electric mixer until they form soft peaks. Gently fold half the egg whites into the chocolate mixture, then follow up with the second half. Pour the cake batter into the cake pan.

Bake the cake for 55-65 minutes, and allow it to cool in the pan for at least 20 minutes. Serve with plain yoghurt or thick cream, and strawberries.

Brunsli chocolate cookies

March 1, 2020

We went to a barbecue in the summer, and one of the other guests brought two plates of plain-looking vegan cookies that, once tasted, we all went wild for. It turned out that they were both Ottolenghi recipes that we could easily access ourselves, veganised with the use of powdered egg replacer. These Brunsli chocolate cookies, for example, appear in Ottolenghi's book Simple.

When I found the recipe I noticed that these chocolate cookies are not just vegan-friendly, they're also low-key gluten-free, made mostly of ground almonds and sugar. The original recipe calls for granulated sugar and icing sugar, but I used up some demerara sugar that had been in our pantry a while. I ground up my own almonds, and I think this led to me needing a bit more egg replacer to bind the dough than I would have if I'd bought almond meal.

Traditionally, I think these cookies are cut into star shapes, but I chose a variety of circle sizes. The little ones had a higher proportion of crunchy border, while the large ones had more room for the soft chewiness of a brownie. They were all a bit sandy-textured from the demerara sugar. Chinese 5-spice and orange zest are the secret ingredients, bringing complexity to the chocolate flavour without being individually detectable. I took some of the cookies over to a friend for her birthday, and she was just as taken with them as we were at that barbecue.

Brunsli chocolate cookies
(slightly adapted from Yotam Ottolenghi's Simple)

270g ground almonds
250g caster sugar, plus extra for sprinkling
40g icing sugar
40g cocoa powder
1 teaspoon orange zest
1 1/2 teaspoons Chinese 5-spice
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons Orgran egg replacer mixed into 1 tablespoon water
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

In a large bowl, stir together the ground almonds and caster sugar. Sift over the icing sugar and cocoa powder, then stir in the orange zest, Chinese 5-spice and salt until well combined. Using an electric mixer, beat in the egg replacer and vanilla. You're aiming for a firm, slightly sticky dough that will just barely hold together; I added a bit of extra egg replacer to get there. Drop the dough onto a sheet of plastic wrap, form a big flat ball of it, and pop it in the fridge for at least an hour.

Preheat an oven to 170°C. Line two baking trays with paper.

Prepare a sparkling-clean bench or roll out some more baking paper. Unwrap the biscuit dough, drop it on your work surface, and roll it out to 1.5 cm thick. Use your choice of biscuit cutters to cut shapes from the dough and place them on the baking trays. Roll out the leftover over dough again to make more shapes. When all the dough is used up, you can sprinkle some extra sugar over the biscuits (I didn't bother).

Bake the biscuits for around 12 minutes, until their bottoms are crisp but their centres are still soft.

A festive low-FODMAP cake

December 10, 2019

The lowest common dietary denominator in our book club is a little restrictive: among us there are vegetarians, vegans, the gluten-intolerant and a FODMAP manager. We usually meet up at a pub or quiet restaurant, and ordering individual meals solves most issues. However, we held an extra-special in-house event for Christmas this year! There were tacos and book-swaps and a statistics slideshow (we've been collecting our book scores in a spreadsheet) and I made darn sure there was dessert.

Dessert was another miracle recipe from my Lab Farewell Cookbook. Pia really puts it all out there with this chocolate-berry cake: it's gluten-free and FODMAP-friendly, with vegan options. And I'll admit it's also a little intimidating: I've not made a bundt before, the gluten-free flour is actually 6 flours combined, and the vegan option on the topping is aquafaba. Gluten-free cakes are dicey at the best of times, and I wondered if this one would taste any better than a compromise. But Pia is a master cake baker, and I was ready to put my trust in her.

I was right to do so! I greased that bundt pan with a thoroughness I'll never replicate, and I gently formed a little ditch in the cake batter to house the berry filling. The cake cooked through, cooled for hours, and shyly emerged from its pan without cracks or bumps. The aquafaba was too light and foamy to hold up extra decorations (e.g. see the strawberries, mint leaves and silver cachous pictured below), but it formed a pretty, snowy cap on a handsome chocolate cake.

Most importantly, it tasted terrific. The cake isn't gummy or chalky or rubbery, as gluten-free cakes can be. The texture is a little fudgy, and the rich chocolate and berry flavours are guaranteed to distract you from that last wisp of suspicion that this isn't a 'normal' cake. We ate it with strawberry and pina colada gelati, and it was a hit. The only thing more popular was my slide of correlation networks (not even joking).

Pia's recipe is another long one that's well laid out, and she's given me permission to reproduce it in full below. Note that 350°F = 177°C.

Vegan, gluten-free self-saucing chocolate pudding

June 29, 2019

This is a dessert recipe crying out to be made mid-winter! It comes from Mick, who was my very first supervisor when I arrived in Melbourne, and of course it's part of the lab cookbook.

This self-saucing pudding uses a trick that I would've been very skeptical of if I hadn't seen it before: it has you placing a teeny portion of cake batter in a baking tray, and then pouring half a litre of boiling water over the top! Amazingly, it doesn't turn into a curdled mess of cake clumps floating in water; rather, the cake expands in the oven and the water settles underneath, picking up all the flavour it needs to form a thick sauce. 

The other appealing features of this pudding are how diet-inclusive and pantry-friendly it is. I didn't need to shop for a single ingredient before I set to work. I will admit that I didn't have the highest of hopes for a vegan, gluten-free pudding based on rice flour, no-egg powder and only a small amount of cocoa. More fool me! The cake was plenty fluffy with a lovely crumb, and there was abundant dark, chocolatey sauce to go around.

We had a little leftover salted caramel coconut-based vegan icecream brought over by our friend Nat, and it was the perfect thing to scoop on top.

Vegan, gluten-free self-saucing chocolate pudding
(a recipe shared by Mick,
who credits it to taste.com.au)

pudding
60g Nuttelex
1/2 cup caster sugar
1 cup rice flour (Mick recommends Coles' organic)
2 teaspoons baking powder
2 generous teaspoons cocoa
1 teaspoon Orgran no-egg
1/2 cup soy milk

sauce
3/4 cup brown sugar
2 tablespoons cocoa
2 cups boiling water

Preheat an oven to 170°C. Lightly grease a high-walled baking dish.

In a large bowl, cream together the Nuttelex and caster sugar.

In a separate bowl, sift together the flour, baking powder, cocoa and no-egg. In turns, gradually beat these dry ingredients and the soy milk into the butter mixture, to form a cake batter. Pour the batter into the baking dish.

Sprinkle the brown sugar and cocoa over the top of the pudding. Pour the boiling water over it all, and bake for 45 minutes.

Serve with a little vegan icecream.