Salted Caramel Millionaires Shortbread

Hello again, it feels like I've been writing lots of posts over the last week (not that that's a bad thing!) but anyway here's another, Salted Caramel Millionaires Shortbread!

After being inspired by my recent creation (salted caramel chocolate chiffon cake) and new love of salted caramel, I really wanted to try something else using those flavours. Only problem, I wasn't sure what... Then I got a lovely comment from Obsessive Compulsive Baking Disorder about her love of salted caramel and how she had made some salted caramel brownies. These to me sounded like heaven and it got me thinking about salted caramel in tray bakes and the first one that struck me was to sound just yummy was Millionaires Shortbread. It already has the caramel in it so surely it would be easy to change: just add the salt? And I'm so gl;ad I did because the end bake is simply gorgeous, the salted caramel and dark chocolate go so well together. Not too sweet but not too bitter; a little slice of heaven.

I have to say they were quite time consuming but in a "little by little" kind of way(?) so you can do other things around them. Each layer in its self didn't take long to prepare, but you have to wait for the previous to cool before adding it so it does take a little longer than you would expect, or maybe I was just unrealistic; probably the latter...

All in all the result was how I'd wanted it although, if I'm being fussy I'll mention that I would have liked it if my caramel had been a little firmer so it didn't squidge out the sides when I sliced it up... but you cant have everything!

Much love Alex-Rose xxx

Salted Caramel and Chocolate Chiffon Cake

Dear Snow,

I admit, at first you were fun and we had a nice time. You caused chaos but that was fine because it felt like Christmas always! 

But now, oh no, you are cold and wet and windy and bloomin' freezing! Not enough for sledging but enough to make it feel like the Arctic! Except it's not the North Pole; it's England! I mean for god's sakes it's Spring, officially spring! 

So I am hoping you understand that it's now time for you to clear off, and clear of for good! I have summer/spring clothes that want wearing! Also it's my birthday in just over a weeks time, I dont want snow on my birthday; my birthday in April!

So, bye bye, ta-ta, au revoir, good day, guten tag, despidida!

Much appreciated,

A frozen English girl xx

Anyway, rant over. As you can probably see/have heard, the snow is back! Yay, (sarcasm)! But this does have one benefit, good excuse for cake! So, whilst outside it was awfully frozen I was toasty and warm baking the most delicious cake, ever, Salted Caramel Chocolate Chiffon Cake! It's just perfect. And this is coming from someone who doesn't usually like chocolate cakes. 

The recipe is from the most recent Good Food magazine and is an adaptation of John's final show-stopper bake (from the Great British Bake off 2012) the heaven or hell cake. After watching the episode (and drooling over his gorgeous cake) I was itching to bake my own one, so as you can imagine I was thrilled when Good Food released this simple-r version!

It is so good. The method isn't too difficult either, I was scared about making the caramel but that was fine! The biggest problem that I encountered was mixing the butter and the caramel to make salted caramel butter cream. I don't really know what i did wrong but it was much too runny and just would thicken, so in the end I whipped some double cream and then added the runny salted caramel butter cream to that, making a delicious butterscotch-y cream.

The bitter dark chocolate ganache on top, the light sponge and the sweet cream just make the most heavenly combination. Honestly, I could quite easily eat the entire cake (I didn't though, don't worry)!

I honestly don't think the photos do it justice because the spiked piping to decorate looks really dramatic and striking in real life; you can't really tell that well on the pictures hut you'll just have to take my word for it!

Much love Alex-Rose xxx

Milk Chocolate and Hazelnut Cookies

Well, sorry for being so unfaithful to you blog land but other things were on my mind and I was just totally stumped for ideas, but here I am back and fresh with ideas!

So today I decided to bake some cookies, using the recipe from Claudia Winkleman's Great Comic Relief Bake-off cookies. The only problem being that I didn't have all the chocolate that was required (what is my life coming to)! So had to substitute 450g of dark chocolate for that of Cadburys Whole Nut a decision that I actually am semi glad of as it did make the cookies a bit different but I don't think Milk chocolate works all that well in them as it isn't strong enough. But, my worst troubles were still to come... After following all the steps using the right amount of everything I began spooning the mixture onto my prepared trays, it did cross my mind that the mixture was very runny (just like brownie mix to be more precise?!) this not only meant that it was hard to make the cookies the same size but also when I was cooking them they didn't need anywhere near the time suggested so they stuck to the tray! Something was wrong... before lobbing in more flour I checked the episode on you-tube and sure enough Claudia's cookies looked nothing like my odd runny wafer thin biscuits. The first (tester tray) was binned and I decided to edit the mix, I added a shed load of flour (no joke, loads was needed) and then spooned heaps of the new mix onto a couple of trays and they went into the oven. The new thicker mixture seriously improved the cookies, they rose up and turned into beautiful (rather big) golden cookies, I left them to cool then dipped them half into melted milk chocolate; they are delicious! So, what started out as a terrible failure turned out to be a great success  xx

Much love Alex-Rose xxx

Ps. Anyone got any ideas as to why mine (before changing them) were so runny and unlike hers!? Could it have anything to do with the change in chocolate as that was the only thing that I change, seems unlikely, but I can't think of anything else? xx