Tag: chocolate

Im in heaven – Fusion Sweets Artisan Confections

I’m a big believer that most things happen for a reason.

Which is why, after a very disappointing and frustrating day of nothing going right, this package that I had purchased from Fusion Sweets Artisan Confections arrived to cheer me up. The universe had timed it perfectly. Not only was it the perfect package to brighten my day, but it arrived at a time when I had completely forgotten that I had even ordered it. Of course, this package had to be food related, but to give you a hint regarding the enormous joy that was to be found within its cardboard exterior, I must furnish you with a photograph.

Sweet, salty, supple and soft, these caramels are hands down, the best caramels I have ever tasted.

And honey, i’ve tasted many caramels.

I first came across these babies whilst trawling through etsy and was wooed by the delicious photographs, exotic flavours and sheer creativity of the sweets available. Mango, Rose and Lime Berlingots? Sure! Raspberry Lemonade Marshmallows? Yes please! French Sea Salt Butter Caramels? Oh god, I think I can die happy right now. For my first order it took me days to make up my mind but I finally settled on the French Sea Salt Butter Caramels.

Beautifully packaged, these come in an 8oz box for US$13.50

Each caramel comes studded with chunks of sea salt, smooshes of vanilla bean seeds and the most divine soft, sweet, smooth texture i’ve ever had.

So can you blame me when I went  back for more? Only to find that there was (perhaps) an even more amazing sweet on offer. Now, if you imagine that I was in uncontrollable raptures before, just think how insane I became after receiving these…

caramallows

yes, that’s right

home made marshmallows wrapped in caramel

insane in the brain.

These too are ridiculously soft with a deliciously yielding marshmallow centre as well as smooth, velvety caramel outer layer.

The Vanilla Caramallows come in a box of 10 pieces for US$13.00

And you thought I was done there didn’t you? But surely you know me well enough by now to know that that could not possibly be true. And if you were astute enough to assume that then you would be correct. But again, how could you blame me? When I was faced with this…

Spanish Hot Chocolate Mix with a range of home made marshmallows (US$10.99)

Oh. My. God.

Deliciously rich hot chocolate with chunks of dark chocolate scattered through to give it that extra chocolate kick

This is not for the faint hearted

but the addition of some cutely named ‘not so boring vanilla bean marshmallows’ will surely warm the cockles of your heart

I would say that pink pyjamas are optional, but really, who am I kidding?

I can’t wait to try all the different flavours of these marshmallows!

Kay is an attentive and communicative seller, always answering my questions quickly and kindly. After hearing my dismay at the high shipping cost, she was very willing to suggest options which would allow for a reduced price, although I still shake my fist at the US postal service for imposing such ridiculous shipping charges. Overall, purchasing from Kay is an extremely pleasant experience and, having ordered and received several packages from her now I can say that her sweets are consistently top notch quality.

So, my lovelies, what is your all time favourite sweet? And can you think of something as amazing as a caramel wrapped marshmallow? I’m dying to hear!

All products were paid for by me and this review was unsolicited by the seller.

What to do with all those Easter Eggs – Easter Egg Brownie Bites

So the bunny has been, the long weekend has ended and I still have easter eggs left on my kitchen table. I think there might be something wrong with me. I did get sick over easter, so perhaps the sickness entered my brain and altered my chocolate lobe? Are there any doctors out there that can recommend treatment? Particularly as I feel like I cannot scavenge for half price eggs this year as they might just end up going to waste. Although if YOU, my lovely reader, have been able to scrounge some super cheap eggs or have any left over and are wondering what to do with them, read on. I have some suggestions. Either way, here is the story of my easter and the terrible affliction that I seem to have been left with.

It started with a strange anomaly with the bourke st bakery flourless chocolate cake.

I only had one piece. Yes, you read that right. One.

No matter, no worries, all things must pass. Right?

Wrong.

Out of all these easter goodies from my beautiful students, I just didn’t feel like eating much.

Even my favourite Lindt bunnies seemed to have lost their jingly allure.

so I put these cute bunnies on top of some cupcakes to take to the S family for easter.

Didn’t actually eat any. Despite them being super cute.

I rallied a little with some delicious easter afternoon tea at the Observatory Hotel

Which was, as always, fantastic.

Brilliant service, lovely food, a vast array of tea and great ambiance, I cannot recommend them highly enough.

I also gave myself an easter mani with Bloom ‘Corfu’ and OPI ‘Teenage Dream’. I thought it made them reminiscent of the shimmery easter egg foil and might induce some chocolate appetite.

But I still had many eggs left over. So I decided that I had to get baking and sort myself out.

Which led me to these Easter Egg Brownie Bites. Perhaps one of the easiest recipes ever.

And it’s therapeutic! Sorry Mr Bunny, but you had to go.

After all, perhaps all I needed to do to appease the chocolate gods and restore me to health was a sacrifice?

It is a one bowl recipe and doesn’t even require a mixer of any sort! Easy!

Hide your eggs in the brownie batter (and relieve your lovely weekend memories of easter eggs hunts!)

then bake, bake, bake, my pretties!

Just 12 minutes is all it takes

And then enjoy the warm, gooey, melty centre.

Good lord, these are tasty and last for days as all they need to restore gooey-ness is to be nuked for 30 seconds in the microwave. And, even better, they used up two packets of small easter eggs and make great gifts for morning/afternoon teas.

So, my lovelies, now that I have helped you with your easter egg excess, are you able to help me with my predicament? Do I just need to bite the bullet and eat all the chocolate in order to re-store my factory settings? This blog has documented my love of chocolate over the last two years and I refuse to believe that this is a permanent state of nonchalance re: chocolate. Send me your solutions!

Easter Egg Brownie Bites – Adapted from this recipe from taste.com

Ingredients

150g unsalted butter

100g dark choc easter eggs

100g Lindt milk chocolate easter bunny, chopped.

1 packet mars bar easter eggs

1 packet malteser easter eggs

1/2 cup caster sugar

1 cup plain flour

2 eggs, lightly beaten

Method

1. lightly grease your mini muffin pan (1 1/2 tbsp capacity) and heat your oven to 160 degrees celsius (fan forced)

2. place butter, dark chocolate eggs and chopped up bunny into a microwave safe bowl and nuke them all on 50% power for 2 mins. Make sure that you pause every 30 seconds to stir your chocolate around, you don’t want to burn it!

3. Stir in sugar and leave to cool slightly

4. mix in the flour then eggs making sure that you incorporate each ingredient properly

5. spoon the mix into your muffin pan. As there is no rising agent in this mix you can safely fill them almost to the top of the hole, just remember that some of the batter will be displaced by the egg when you insert it

6. unwrap your easter eggs and push them into the centre of each hole making sure to cover the top of the egg with batter

7. bake for 12 mins

8. eat while still warm!

Note: these will store for a few days if left in an airtight container. If you want to heat them up again (which I highly recommend) you just need to pop them under the grill for a few mins or put them in the microwave for 30 seconds

Sweet Adventures Death By Chocolate Blog Hop: Mars Bar Crepes with Chocolate Gelato

Oh god. I first had this dessert at a wonderful gelato bar in Crows Nest called Bravo. I admit that it is not the most elegant dessert on the face of the earth but It was so delicious that an evening trip to Bravo for some gelato has become a semi regular occurrence. But alas, sometimes I am just too tired or too plain lazy to make the drive. Therefore, it has become necessary for me to be able to recreate this dessert at home.

While Bravo make their own amazing gelato, it was more convenient to get my gelato from the another amazing store: Pure Gelato which have their factory in Croydon Park. As I was in the area, I picked up a tub of chocolate gelato. It took all my willpower not to demolish it on the drive home!

Delicious! This gelato is consistently creamy, fresh and full of flavour. I highly recommend it!

I hit a few snags when making the crepes. I’m more of a pancakes kinda girl so I don’t think i’ve ever actually made crepes before. After finding a simple recipe on taste.com I cracked the frying pan out and got to it.

mmmmmm batter…

co ordinated I am not.

No one will argue with that.

But I am a fast learner!

soon I had a nice stack of crepes

(ok the one on the top was really thick but as we have already established, I am pretty lazy and this was the last bit of batter)

then all you need to do is wrap the mars bars in the crepes

times two

snug as a bug in a rug!

Then you just need to nuke them in the microwave for about 40 seconds (make sure you put the heat on medium or 50%) to make the mars bars nice and melty

Then scoop yo icecream and cover in chocolate sauce!

I used Hersheys topping

mmmmmm gooey caramel

I have to admit that before settling on this dish, I had a bit of idea overload for his blog hop. Death By Chocolate should be so easy but everything I thought of was either not chocolatey enough, or so chocolatey that I would never be able to eat it without developing diabetes right there and then. But this baby is just on the right side of decadent to make it actually eatable. Although you may fall into a sugar coma. You have been warned!

Mars Bar Crepes with Chocolate Gelato Recipe

Ingredients

2 crepes

2 normal sized mars bars

1 scoop chocolate icecream/gelato

Chocolate Sauce

 

Crepe Recipe

Crepe recipe from taste.com can be found here you only need two good crepes for each serving, and they don’t need to be huge, just big enough to wrap your mars bars in

 

Assembly

1. Wrap each mars bar in a crepe making sure that they are fully wrapped

2. Nuke them in the microwave for roughly 40 seconds at medium heat (or 50%)

3. Scoop out one scoop of icecream and place on top

4. Cover liberally with chocolate sauce

 

This post was part of the Death By Chocolate Sweet Adventures Blog Hop kindly hosted by The Hungry Australian

 

 

 

Edible Christmas Gifts: Christmas Hot Chocolate

Dear Time,

Why do you move so quickly? Only yesterday it was weeks until Christmas and today I wake up to find that there are only three more sleeps! Slow down loser.

Love, Katie.

Anyone else wondering where all that time went? I like to think that i’m pretty organised when it comes to Christmas (laugh all you want people, but despite my lack of organisation throughout the year I do get my Christmas shopping done super early). But it’s not the shopping that has fazed me this year, rather its all the co ordination of the cooking, cleaning, seeing friends etc. At the moment i’m procrastinating before working up the energy to decorate my gingerbread house (post to come!) and cook my potato salad for a Christmas Party tomorrow. Of course, in the interim I thought I would have a crack at another quick and easy edible Christmas gift, you know, in case you aren’t quite as organised in the shopping department as I am. (Let me take this moment to gloat because, i’m clearly behind throughout the year. Give me this one!)

I saw this recipe for Hot Cocoa at My Baking Addiction (another find through Twitter. Loving that!) and thought that this would be a great way to use up some sweet little jars I bought, and it would make great Christmas gifts. PLUS it meant that I could buy marshmallows, because who doesn’t have marshmallows all the time with their hot chocolate? I thought I would make it a little more christmassy by adding in some cinnamon and I reduced the amount that I made, but otherwise the recipe was great as it was.

marshmallowwwwssssss…..

all you need to do is sift all the ingredients together. I sifted mine a few times to get the sugar really fine otherwise you’re left with white specks throughout your mix

then bottle!

then repeat!

p.s. how cute are these jars? $2.5o from a little reject shop style store. Make sure that you wash them thoroughly in hot soapy water though.

If you are totally stuck for ideas this Christmas, I would recommend this. Who doesn’t like hot chocolate? And why would you be friends with someone who doesn’t like hot chocolate? I’m pretty sure thats not normal.

If you want to view the original recipe you can find it here.

Otherwise,

Christmas Hot Chocolate Mix – yield is roughly 2 and 3/4 cups

Ingredients

1 cup icing sugar (powdered sugar or confectioners sugar)

1/2 cup cocoa powder (dutch processed is best)

1 1/4 cup powdered milk

1/2 tsp salt

1 tsp cornflour

1 tsp cinnamon (add more according to your taste)

Method

1. Mix all ingredients together and sift several times. The more times you sift, the finer your mix will be.

You could add more or different spices according to what you like or what your giftee would like. Be creative!

2. Pour into jars and seal

3. To make the hot chocolate, add to hot milk or water and stir thoroughly