Category Archives: Sweet things

Spiced Maple Cashew Bark

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Filed under chocolate, Dark chocolate, Easy recipes, Edible Christmas gifts, egg free, Gluten free, Milk chocolate, Sweet things, tea time treats, white chocolate

chocolat bark 2

This is an absolutely knock out edible chocolate gift. I’ve given a few away already this Christmas and everyone says it’s delicious. The recipe came from Olive Magazine; it looks and tastes impressive but it’s a doddle to make and the recipe is very flexible  – you can adapt it to suit any tastes or dietary requirements (I include a non nut version below for allergy sufferers..). Utterly yum!

Ingredients:

  • 100g unsalted cashew nuts
  • 25g unsalted butter
  • a generous pinch of ground allspice
  • a large pinch of sea salt flakes (actually you’ll need a few large pinches as you go along)
  • 1 tablespoon of maple syrup
  • 200g milk chocolate (I use Green and Blacks; don’t use Cadburys it doesn’t work in baking)
  • 200g dark chocolate (with high cocoa content; again I use G+B
  • 30g white chocolate (I use G+B again but any good supermarket cooking brand will do, just don’t use Nestle)

Method:

  1. Put the cashews and unsalted butter along with the allspice, salt and maple syrup into a non-stick frying pan over a medium heat.
  2. Cook until all the cashews are golden then tip out onto baking parchment, scatter over some more sea salt flakes and cool. (You’ll need to stir them from time to time, or do that cheffy pan flip thing to move them about. I like the pan flip thing).
  3. Melt the milk and dark chocolate separately in bain maries (ie glass bowls over pans of barely simmering water).
  4. Let the chocolates cool a little. Pour them out separately but making one large rectangle altogether, into a small baking tray lined with parchment.
  5. Mix them together carefully with a fork to make a nice swirly pattern. Leave to cool for a bit.
  6. Roughly chop the hardened cashews and scatter over the chocolate. Add some more salt (this may seem like a lot but you need to be able to taste it and it’s not too much of a sodium overload if you use sea salt flakes). Chill until set.
  7. Melt the white chocolate (in a bain marie) and drizzle over the top in very thin squiggly lines using a metal spoon. (Be careful with white chocolate; it has such a low/non existent cocoa content that if you let it get too hot it seizes really easily; keep it cool and keep an eye on it).
  8. Chill again until set then cut into shards. I put it into clear cellophane bags, tie with ribbon and label with a luggage tag to make it look fancy. [Store in the fridge as it softens very quickly].
  9. To make this suitable for nut allergy sufferers: substitute chopped up Crunchie bar or Green and Blacks butterscotch flavour chocolate for the cashews (I made some like this and used a combination of both, which was delicious).

The Ultimate Flapjack

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Filed under Baking, chocolate, dessert, Easy recipes, Flapjacks, high tea, pudding, Sweet things, tea time treats, white chocolate

flapjack8

Delilah had another end of term music concert today and we’re always asked to make a contribution to the tea afterwards so I made some flapjacks as I didn’t have much time yesterday. I stupidly forgot to press start on the timer when I put the mixture into the oven so it got rather over-cooked and I thought it was a disaster; Mr Arabella Cooks pulled a face and said “the top is too crunchy”.  So I went along intending to put the plate of flapjack slices anonymously onto the catering table and pretend they weren’t mine. I was amazed and delighted therefore when people started asking who’d made them and could they have another one because they were delicious? I (obvs) quickly claimed them as mine and when a very sweet lady said they were the best flapjacks she’d ever tasted I promised to post the recipe. So here we are. The best flapjacks in the world (maybe; they’re also a bit Christmassy as they have cranberries in them).

Ingredients:

  • 400g oats (I used regular porridge oats)
  • 200g golden syrup
  • 200g light muscovado sugar
  • 200g unsalted butter
  • Grated zest of 1/2 a lemon
  • 3 tablespoons of dessicated coconut
  • 100g dried cranberries
  • 100g raisins
  • 80g white chocolate, melted
  • 80g dark chocolate, melted (or some of the chocolate sauce from my pumpkin pie recipe)

Method:

  1. Preheat the oven to 160 degrees (fan); grease and line a baking tin (I used a 7 inch square tin but I think it was a bit too small; either an 8 or 9 inch square or something rectangular would work well)
  2. Melt the butter, golden syrup and sugar together in a large saucepan.
  3. Take off the heat and stir in the oats, coconut, lemon zest, cranberries and raisins. Mix it all together well and make sure all the oats are coated with the melted butter and sugars.
  4. Pour into the prepared tin and pat it down (I started with a metal spoon but in the end just used my hands).
  5. Bake – you have two options here. If you like your flapjacks squidgy and soft, cook it for 25 minutes. If you like them crunchy, cook it for 40 minutes.
  6. When cooked, remove from the oven, allow to cool in the tin for 20 minutes then turn out onto a wire rack.
  7. Again you have two options here. You can either wait until the flapjack is completely cool and drizzle the white and dark chocolate (or chocolate sauce) over the top as per my picture above, and then cut it into squares, OR cut the flapjacks into squares before it cools completely (as it’s easier to cut then), push the squares together to form one big square, drizzle the chocolate over and then separate them while the chocolate cools and hardens. Dead yummy!

 

Chocolate, Chai Spiced Pumpkin Pie with an Oreo cookie crust

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Filed under Chai spice, chocolate, Chocolate pumpkin pie, dessert, Dinner party pudding, No bake pumpkin pie, pudding, Pumpkin pie, Sweet things, Thanksgiving

pumpkin pie 4

Yesterday was Thanksgiving and I went to my first ever Thanksgiving dinner party, cooked and hosted by a lovely American friend. Apparently Thanksgiving is bigger than Christmas in the States and they make as much effort with this meal as we do our Christmas food. Traditional Thanksgiving dinner consists of roast turkey, sprouts with bacon, creamed sweetcorn, mashed sweet potato with lots of cinnamon in it, cranberry sauce, carrots, stuffing and gravy. It’s similar to our Christmas meal but much, much sweeter.  For dessert they have pumpkin pie. More orange puree. I had volunteered to make the dessert for last night’s dinner but I just couldn’t face a traditional pumpkin pie because I can’t stand the taste of pumpkin, so I created this riff on the original. I added chocolate and salt to the crust and filling and chai spices to the filling. The Americans add ginger, cinnamon and cloves to their pie so chai was a good fit (although I did leave out the cardamom). I used Nigella Lawson’s salted Oreo crust (from her new book) instead of pastry because I wanted something with more depth and texture as a foil for the blandness of the pumpkin. And because I was using a biscuit crust I didn’t want to have to cook it, so it’s actually really easy to make and no baking involved.

For maximum wow factor serve it, as I did, with the chocolate sauce (recipe below) and some caramel and chocolate chip ice cream (I’m posting the recipe for that in the near future, but in the meantime you could happily just soften some top quality vanilla ice cream, drizzle in some dulce de Leche or tinned Carnation Caramel and throw in some dark chocolate chopped up into very small pieces, run a fork through it to get a marbled effect from the caramel and freeze until ready to serve).

It was delicious and even my highly sceptical non pumpkin loving friend (not the American I hasten to add) said, in a very surprised voice “I like it!”

Ingredients

For the crust:

  • 2 packets of Oreo biscuits
  • 50g dark chocolate
  • 50g soft unsalted butter
  • 1/2 a teaspoon of smoked sea salt flakes (add them whole, not crumbled; you could happily use regular sea salt flakes, just don’t use table salt)

For the filling:

  • 1 can of Libby’s pumpkin puree (Waitrose stock it)
  • 100 grams dark chocolate  with min. 70% cocoa solids
  • 1 teaspoon of vanilla paste (I’ve recently discovered this. They all use it on Bake Off; you can just use vanilla extract but the paste has a deeper flavour)
  • 4 teaspoons of cocoa powder, sieved
  • 2 tablespoons of caramel (Dulce de Leche or Carnation is fine)
  •  70g dark brown muscovado sugar
  • 2 teaspoons of butter
  • ¾ teaspoon smoked (or regular) sea salt flakes
  • 3 teaspoons or 15g  cornflour
  •  40 ml full fat milk
  •  300 ml double cream
  • 1 chai teabag (I used Tea Pigs; their spices are whole so it was easy to take out the cardamom)
  • 1 sachet of  ‘Drink me chai’ Chai Latte powder

Method (for the crust):

  1. Break up the biscuits and put them into a food processor with the chocolate (also broken up) then blitz them together until you have crumbs.
  2. Add the butter and salt and blitz again until the mixture starts to clump together.
  3. Press the mixture into a large, round fluted tart tin and pat down on the bottom and up the sides of the tin with your hands and the back of a spoon (I used a bit of both), so that the base and sides are evenly lined and smooth. Put into the fridge to chill and harden for at least 1 hour (2 hours if your fridge is full).

For the filling:

  1. Melt the chocolate (broken up into small pieces) in a bain marie or in the microwave.
  2. In a food processor whizz together the pumpkin puree, muscovado sugar, caramel, butter, salt, cocoa powder and vanilla.
  3. Transfer the mixture to a large bowl and stir in the melted chocolate.
  4. Slake the cornflour – put it into into a cup and stir in the milk until smooth.
  5. Pour the cream into a heavy-based saucepan, open the chai teabag (take out the cardamom pod) and add the spices to the pan, along with 3 teaspoons of the Chai Latte powder. Heat the cream and spices gently for a few minutes.
  6. Add the cornflour and milk mixture to the cream and stir until the liquid is thick enough to coat the back of a spoon (if you run your finger down it, the two sides of the parting stay put).
  7. Take the thickened cream off the heat and sieve it directly into the pumpkin and chocolate mixture. Stir gently to combine. Taste it and add more Chai Latte or cocoa powder if desired.
  8. You want the mixture cool enough so it won’t melt the biscuit base when poured in so you could put a piece of damp baking parchment over the top of it to stop a skin forming and cool it down in the fridge if necessary. Otherwise just pour or spoon it into the set biscuit crust.
  9. Put pie into the fridge overnight to set.
  10. Take the pie out of the fridge about 5 minutes before you want to serve it – un-mould it by pushing the bottom up and out of the fluted ring (or stand it on something sturdy but smaller in circumference and gently push the fluted ring down and leave the base on).
  11. You can serve it as is, or with a dusting of sieved icing sugar, or as I did, with a squiggle of chocolate sauce over the top and lots more chocolate sauce over the ice cream. To make the chocolate sauce, melt 100g plain chocolate with 50ml whipping cream, add a very generous squeeze of golden syrup, a tablespoon of condensed milk, a scant tablespoon of butter and a pinch of salt and stir together. Taste and add more syrup/condensed milk if desired. To achieve the perfect consistency for drizzling/squeezing over your pie you may need to add some milk to thin it – use your judgement.

As mentioned above, it goes exceedingly well with choc chip caramel ice cream too and makes for an utterly divine pud! Very yummy indeed.

slice of pie 1

Gluten free mocha chocolate ice box cake

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Filed under cake, chocolate, dessert, Gluten free, mocha, pudding, Sweet things

cake 3

A friend of mine is poorly so I made her a cake. This is a spectacularly easy way of making an impressive and delicious gluten free dessert, but it can be gluten free or gluten containing in the blink of an eye. It just depends what kind of biscuits you use. It’s based on the principle of an Italian tiramisu – flavoured whipped cream layered with biscuits. You put it in the fridge overnight and it hardens the cream and softens the biscuits (into ‘sponge’) et voila: cake/pudding/breakfast/whatever. Top it with something delicious and yum to the max, frankly.

Ingredients:

  • 4 packets of Maryland double choc chip cookies (if you don’t need to go down the gluten free route) or 5 packets of gluten free double chocolate chip biscuits (Kent of Fraser or Doves are good) to make it gluten free.
  • 600ml double cream
  • 100g caster sugar
  • 50/60ml of cold espresso coffee
  • 1 teaspoon of good vanilla essence
  • 350g mascarpone
  • 2 tablespoons of cocoa or cacao powder
  • Optional extra if not making for children: (60 mls Kahlua)

Method:

  1. In a large bowl, whisk together the cream, mascarpone, sugar, cocoa/cacao, cold espresso and vanilla (and Kahlua if using), until it forms firm peaks.
  2. Take a high sided, loose bottom cake tin (you don’t need it to be springform) and put a layer of biscuits on the bottom. You’ll need to break some to make the jigsaw of biscuits fit with as few gaps as possible (it takes practice; by the last layer I was brilliant at it).
  3. Spread a thin layer of the cream mixture over the biscuits. Put another layer of biscuits on top (again assembling it like a jigsaw) followed by another layer of cream and so on until you have run out of biscuits and cream/come to the top of the tin. You should end up with around 5 layers, with the top layer being cream.
  4. Cover with clingfilm and refrigerate overnight (or all day if making in the morning to serve at night. It needs at least 6 hours).
  5. When ready, take it out of the fridge and run a small sharp knife around the outside of the cake and push the bottom up and out (I used Mr AC to help me with this). On the top I put some caramel and Belgian chocolate popcorn (for texture and flavour) and then shaved some Lindt Swiss Classic Double Milk chocolate bar (which is my current favourite cake decorating secret) with a vegetable peeler on top of that. I should mention though that the Lindt chocolate is not gluten free (my friend didn’t need a gf option) so if you can’t have gluten use something else to decorate).
  6. Serve cold, in wedges.
  7. Store it in the fridge and eat quickly as it won’t keep for very long (no matter though as you’ll want to eat it all immediately anyway because it’s Y U M!).

cake 4   cake 5

Salted caramel chocolate tart

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Filed under Baking, chocolate tart, desserts, pastry, salted caramel, Sweet things

tart 2  tart on table

As promised, the salted caramel chocolate tart I made for last week’s party. It’s a recipe very dear to my heart as it got me onto Masterchef. I made a trio of chocolate puds for my filmed audition – salted caramel dark chocolate tart, milk chocolate mousse layered with mascarpone cream and a basil infused raspberry and white chocolate cheesecake (the cheesecake didn’t set so I served it upside down in an espresso cup):

qualifing dishes

I’ll post the recipe for all three at a later date, but in the meantime here is the salted caramel chocolate tart. The recipe comes from Rachel Allen (famous Irish TV cook; think blond, Irish Nigella) and is difficulty level ‘high’. But so, SO worth it. Hell it’s a Masterchef level dish so if you really want to impress anyone, this is definitely worth doing. (I’ve yet to come across anyone who didn’t swoon with delight upon eating it).

Ingredients:

For the sweet shortcrust pastry

  • 200g plain flour
  • 100g chilled butter (cubed, plus extra for greasing)
  • 1 tablespoon of icing sugar
  • a lightly beaten (large) egg

For the caramel:

  • 225 g caster sugar
  • 100 g chilled butter (cubed)
  • 100ml double cream
  • 1 heaped teaspoon of sea salt flakes

For the chocolate layer:

  • 100g caster sugar
  • 2 eggs
  • 2 egg yolks
  • 250g dark chocolate
  • 150 g butter (cubed)

Method:

For the sweet shortcrust pastry:

1) Pulse the flour, butter and icing sugar in a food processor briefly until the butter is in small lumps. Add half the beaten egg and continue to whiz for another few seconds or until the mixture looks as though it may come together when pressed. Prolonged processing will only toughen the pastry, so don’t whiz it up until it is a ball of dough. You may need to add a little more egg, but not too much as the mixture should be just moist enough to come together.

If making by hand, rub the butter into the flour and icing sugar until it resembles coarse breadcrumb,s then using your hands add just enough egg to bring it together.

Reserve any leftover egg to use later.

2) With your hands, flatten out the ball of dough until it is about 2cm thick, then wrap in cling film or place in a plastic bag and chill in the fridge for at least 30 minutes.

3) After 30 minutes, butter a 23cm deep loose-bottomed, fluted tart tin and remove the pastry from the fridge. Roll it out to fit the tart tin, no thicker than 5mm. Rachel recommends putting it in between two sheets of clingflim but I’ve tried this and it makes rolling the pasty bloody difficult. I’d suggest just using enough flour on your surface and rolling pin to keep it from sticking.

4) Once your pastry is large and thin enough to fit your tart tin, roll it up round the rolling pin. Then unroll it over the tart tin, with the tin centrally beneath the pastry. Press the pastry into the edges of the tin (a good trick for doing this is to use a small ball of the pastry as a damper, rather than your fingers). Then using your thumb, ‘cut’ the pastry along the edge of the tin (press down onto the edge of the tin and the excess pastry falls away) for a neat finish. Prick the base all over with a fork and chill the pastry in the fridge for another 30 minutes or the freezer for 10 minutes.

5) Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 180C/fan 160C/gas 4. Remove the pastry from the fridge and line with foil, greaseproof paper or baking parchment, leaving plenty to come over the sides. Fill with baking beans or dried pulses, then place in the oven and bake blind for 15–20 minutes or until the base of the pastry case feels dry. Remove from the oven, take out the baking beans and foil/paper, brush the base of the pastry with any leftover beaten egg, and cook in the oven for another 3 minutes or until lightly golden. Remove from the oven and set aside:

tart 13

For the caramel:

6) Put the sugar and 75ml water into a heavy-based saucepan over a low heat and stir until the sugar dissolves. Add the butter and stir until it melts. Increase the heat to medium and allow to bubble away, stirring occasionally, for about 15 minutes or until the mixture is a light toffee colour. Mix in the cream and sea salt and boil for another 2–3 minutes until slightly thickened. Allow to cool. (NB this sounds straightforward. It is *not*. You need to stand over the molten sugar and butter, stirring and watching like a HAWK. The first time I did it it took me four gos to get it right. It burns and crystallises very, very quickly. Take it off the heat as soon as it is toffee coloured or it will burn and crystalise and you’ll have to start again).

For the chocolate layer:

7) Whisk the sugar, eggs and egg yolks until thickened and creamy in colour. Gently melt the chocolate and butter together in a bowl over a saucepan of simmering water. Leave to cool for a minute and then add this to the sugar and egg mixture and whisk until glossy:

tart 10tart 8

8) Spread the caramel over the cooled pastry base:

tart 11

9) Spoon over the chocolate mixture, spreading it evenly.

tart 5

10) Bake in the pre-heated oven for about 20 minutes or until it is almost set but still a bit wobbly. Allow to cool in the tin for 40–45 minutes before removing from the tin and serving in slices. Yum (and then some!)

tart1 tart fianl

[Some people like to put cream over their slices. I think that is inherently wrong as you don’t need it, but each to their own.]

tart with cream

me with tart

Gluten free ‘petticoat tail’ shortbread biscuits

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Filed under Baking, Biscuits, Gluten free, Sweet things

final biscuit

My mother does not approve of shortbread. It is the fact that it is entirely comprised of butter, sugar and flour. She prefers her homemade biscuits to have oats, seeds and dried fruits in so as to offset their calorific burden with a nutritional bonus. But my children and I care little for that and find the particular synergy of fat and sugar in a shortbread biscuit a sheer and utter delight. And it works wonderfully well in a gluten free format so we make it a lot. Delilah has a ‘tribe’ fundraiser at school tomorrow. There is to be some biscuit decorating going on so I’ve made some petticoat tails to send in with her so she doesn’t miss out on the fun.

One thing my mother and I do agree on is the use of salted butter in baking. She never uses unsalted butter, reasoning that if you’re going to add a pinch of salt to the mixture anyway, why go to the bother of buying separate butter? I didn’t have any unsalted butter in tonight so I used salted and it works wonderfully well here, not least as you sprinkle them with delicious golden caster sugar anyway, and isn’t everything sweet ‘salted’ in some way these days? It really does enhance the flavour.

One word of warning, these biscuits will spread A LOT whilst baking so go with it when I say make the dough cake thick; it needs it or they melt away to nothing and you want a shortbread biscuit that you can sink your teeth into. It is a fabulous recipe though, the cornflour makes them wonderfully light, and gluten free or not they are a damn fine biscuit. In my humble opinion.

You could of course just make them into rounds (each to their own) but the kids and I find their triangular heart shapedness particularly pleasing.

Ingredients:

  • 230g gluten free flour
  • 110g cornflour
  • 110g icing sugar
  • 230g room temperature butter (salted or unsalted), cubed

Method:

Pre-heat your oven to 180c (fan)

1) Sieve the dry ingredients together into a large bowl

2) Rub in the chopped butter with your fingers

3) When all the butter is rubbed in, press it all together to make one big ball of dough:

shortbread dough

4) Wrap the ball in clingfilm and put it in the fridge for 20 minutes or so.

5) After 20 minutes roll out the dough on a lightly gluten free floured surface. Be careful, as it will crack so you need to be very gentle with it and shape and form it with care. You want to end up with a nice thick round cake shape, 2 cm high by 18 cm in diameter:

dough cake

6) Take a sharp knife and bisect the cake 4 times to demarcate 8 triangles. Then take a fork and with the tines facing down, gently impress the ends of the tines against the edges of the dough like so:

dough cake 2

I used the index finger of my other hand to press the edge of the dough in whilst pressing down with the fork as it is quite crumbly.

7) Then cut the triangles out and place them onto two baking trays lined with baking parchment (4 on each, with lots of space between so they don’t spread into each other):

triangles

8) Bake in the oven for 15-20 minutes.

9) Take out and after a couple of minutes transfer to a wire cooking rack and sprinkle them with golden caster sugar (or regular caster sugar if that’s what you have). They will be very crumbly whilst still hot, but once cooled they do firm up.

cooling cookies

They’re probably best eaten the next day/later in the afternoon once completely cooled and firm. Yum!

Bank holiday gluten and egg free pancakes

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Filed under Breakfast, egg free, Gluten free, Sweet things

stack

We travelled back from Wiltshire today and ended up having a very late lunch, so all I could be bothered to do for the kids’ tea was pancakes. These pancakes are great. They contain no gluten or egg so my daughter can eat them, but the whole family love them. They’re light and fluffy, simple to make and really tasty. And you don’t need to leave the batter to rest so if you want to make them on the spur of the moment, you can.

The main ingredient is buckwheat flour (I use a brand that is labelled gluten free, just to be on the safe side), but the secret, I think, is to add a bit of gluten free bread flour, because it has xanthan gum in it. Xanthan gum is often used as a binder and thickener in gluten free recipes (gluten is what makes the stuff it’s in sticky) and having it already mixed into your flour saves a lot of faff. I also use a branded egg replacer called, originally, ‘no egg’, to really ensure a nice thick consistency. And just for good measure, a tablespoon of Flaxseed because I read somewhere that it can be used as a binder to replace eggs. You could probably leave it out, but at the very least it replaces some of the Omega 3 that real eggs would bring to the dish, plus it contains calcium and iron, so I like to put it in.

Ingredients:

  • 130g gluten free buckwheat flour. I use Doves.
  • 70g gluten free bread flour. Again, Doves is good. If you can’t find bread flour just use gluten free plain flour.
  • 1 teaspoon of baking powder.
  • 2 tablespoons of golden caster sugar.
  • 1 tablespoon of Flaxseed mixed with a tablespoon of water. I sieve the Flaxseed so there are no husks in the batter and Delilah (that’s the daughter) can’t detect its presence (she is monumentally fussy).
  • 2 teaspoons of Organ ‘No Egg’ mixed with 1 tablespoon of water.
  • 1/2 a teaspoon of regular table salt.
  • 200ml milk (any kind; I use full fat) and 150ml natural yoghurt (I usually use a nice thick Greek one) mixed together.

Method:

  1. Sieve the flours and baking powder together into a bowl.
  2. Add the sugar and salt and make a well in the centre.

flour for pancakes

3. Mix the milk and yoghurt with the egg replacer and Flaxseed, and stir into the flour.

mixing flour

4. If the mixture is too thick, thin it with more milk. You need it to be fairly thick though; it should  look roughly like this:

batter consistency

5. Heat some sunflower or groundnut oil in a frying pan over a medium high heat. Add a spoonful of batter. Because it’s a thick and sticky mixture, you’ll need to shape and form it a bit in the pan.  I find this sort of ladle really helpful:

ladel

6. When you can see little air bubbles in the top of the mixture in the pan, flip the pancake over and cook the other side:

bubbles in batter  pancake cooking 2

7. Put the cooked pancakes onto kitchen paper to absorb excess oil then serve with your choice of topping. Diggy likes maple syrup, Delilah prefers Nutella:

diggy eats pancakes  delilah eating pancakes 1

I like lemon juice, a sugar substitute and chopped fruit. Yum!

berriespancakes

Salted caramel nut brittle

Posted
Filed under Gluten free, Sweet things

image

It’s half term. It’s a bank holiday weekend (woo!). We’re off to visit friends in Wiltshire tomorrow and I’ve made some chunky nut brittle to take as a gift. I’ve therefore burnt my arm because I always, ALWAYS burn myself when I boil sugar. Be warned. But it’s worth it. This salty, sweet, nutty chunk of deliciousness is one of my favourite things to nibble with coffee after dinner. And it’s perfect for wrapping up in cellophane with a nice bow and giving as a present. Just make sure you wait until it’s completely cold before you try any. Tempting though it may be, molten sugar is bloody lethal.

Ingredients:

  • 150g caster sugar
  • 80g roasted salted peanuts (or cashews if you prefer)
  • 80g  almonds (unroasted)
  • 80g walnuts or pecans (also unroasted)
  • 2 teaspoons of sea salt
  • 1 teaspoon of regular (fine grain) salt

Preheat the oven to 200C/180C fan.

1) Toast the nuts on a baking tray in the oven for about 8 minutes until they are golden and beautifully scented.

nut brittle 4

2) Put some baking parchment onto a baking tray or large wooden chopping board.

3) Tip the sugar into a large heavy bottomed saucepan, along with 3 tablespoons of water. Swirl the pan to get all the sugar wet (add more water if necessary).

4) Heat the sugar on a highish heat until it dissolves. Don’t, whatever you do, stir the sugar, just swirl the pan every now and then (more so towards the end). nut brittle 3

5) Once the caramel has turned a lovely clear golden brown (probably after about 6-7 minutes) take the pan off the heat and stir in the nuts and sea salt. nut brittle 2

6) Pour out onto the prepared baking parchment. Use a large spoon or forks or whatever you have to hand to spread it out as evenly as you can. You’ll need to move fairly swiftly as it sets really quickly. Sprinkle over the regular (fine grain) salt.

7) Leave to cool and set hard. Then break it up as gently as you can into bite sized pieces.

Yum!