The last few weeks have seen a bit of a break from baking. Maybe it’s the warmer weather (she says, on a day when it’s pouring down with rain), the summer holiday season or the inevitable consequence of over a year of cookbook testing, writing, eating and promoting. There have been sweet treats, of course, scoops of ice cream I haven’t made myself (on holiday in Italy, it’s allowed), shop bought cantuccini (see previous bracket) and all the fresh fruit that the season can bring. There was a pistachio cake for my birthday a few weeks back which I filled with a pillow of whipped cream and fresh raspberries, but it disappeared before I got the chance to take any photos, and sometimes (always) living in the moment is more important than snapping it for posterity. Continue reading
Category Archives: Brownies & Bars
Gingebread Blondies with White Chocolate Chunks
In a previous post about blondies I brought up the age old debate about blonde vs. brunette. Blondes, they say, have more fun but in the edible stakes, brownies definitely have the upper hand. There are far more recipes for brownies than blondies on this blog, and if you cast your net wider to google, a ‘brownie’ search returns 45 million results; blondies fewer than 2. But what about that elusive third category, the much-maligned, often forgotten but every bit as delicious ginger? Continue reading
Homemade Cashew Cookie Nakd Bars
Over the last couple of years, a range of healthy little snack bars has been inching its way into our everyday lives. Nakd bars (or Larabars as they’re known in the US) bridge that gap in the sweet treat on-the-go market between an apple and a chocolate bar. They’re small but mighty, packed with energy in the form of good fats and natural sugar, and despite their hippy credentials are now available to buy in supermarkets and service stations all over the country. Continue reading
Pumpkin Pecan Shortbread Squares
On Friday morning I opened my email to read this post. Emma, a friend in real life and one of my favourite baking bloggers, has decided not to post any new recipes on Poires au Chocolat while she gets to grips with her graduate medicine course. Rather than leave the blog completely static, she’ll be revisiting recipes on occasion, treating the blog something like an ever-evolving book, but I’m still sad that we won’t be seeing many (any) new recipes for the foreseeable future. Continue reading
Salted Caramel + Cocoa Nib Brownies
I first tried one of Milli Taylor‘s brownies around this time last year. We’d been chatting online about various food-related things and realised that we live pretty close to one another. Milli had some goodies going spare from a catering job so promised to drop a few samples round the flat while we were out. Several bemused messages later, it dawned on us that she’d left them in the wrong street and I ended up having to tiptoe my way down a stranger’s garden path to retrieve the box from behind the bush by their front door. Not the easiest brownies to get hold of, but some of the best I’ve ever eaten, so when I received a copy of Milli’s debut cookbook, I knew this recipe was the one I’d have to make first. Continue reading
Anytime Sunshine Bars
A whole week has passed since we arrived back from our honeymoon in Bali and I’m slowly coming back to reality. Some might suggest it’s a time for the post-wedding blues but sitting at a desk, daily commute and grizzly grey weather aside (granted, that’s a fairly large aside), reality is pretty damn good when you find yourself married to your best friend and favourite person in the whole wide world.
So much has happened in the last couple of weeks that I’m never going to fit it into one post. There’s the wedding day itself, the food, my thoughts and photos (which we’ll be getting at the beginning of October, I promise to share a few). There’s also two weeks’ worth of adventure on an island thousands of miles away, more photos and a catalogue of delicious meals consumed and new flavour combinations to experiment with. Continue reading
Brown Butter Banana Bread Squares
On the eve of the French revolution, Marie Antoinette is said to have responded to claims that there wasn’t enough bread to feed the French people with the now infamous phrase, ‘Let them eat cake’. Historians have since refuted this, suggesting variously that it was completely made up, the much maligned queen was misquoted, or that something may have been lost in translation from the French into English.
Whichever way you like to look at it, there’s definitely some sort of confusion between bread and cake. Continue reading
Caramelized White Chocolate Brownies
Squidgy chocolate brownies packed with caramelized white chocolate
The simple magic of an oven will never cease to amaze me.
Subjected to its heat, pudgy rounds of dough become crusty loaves, liquid batter rises into golden-crowned cakes, pastry puffs, biscuits bake and incredible aromas escape around the edges of its door.
Normally baking requires some sort of skill, an understanding of the alchemy of ingredients and an ability to weigh, whisk, beat and blend. Butter, sugar and flour are combined, flavours and textures far greater than the sum of their parts created. Whether an amateur cook or a professional chef, it’s satisfying to know that baking is both a science and an art. Continue reading
Squidgy Chocolate & Pistachio Squares
Squidgy little squares of nutty chocolate goodness
Before the age of about fifteen, I don’t think I’d ever made buttercream icing.
I’d eaten it, of course, at friends’ houses and birthday parties, spread over simple sponge cakes and smothered between the rounds of the ubiquitous caterpillar cake (one made an appearance at a 28th birthday we recently attended, clearly caterpillar cake will never go out of fashion in some circles), but I’m pretty sure I’d never actually made my own buttercream at home.
Continue reading
Raspberry Chocolate Brownies with Amaretti Crunch
Celebrity chefs are making us fat.
Or so the media might have you believe. According to recent research from the British Medical Journal, recipes from the likes of Jamie, Hugh and Nigella are less healthy than a supermarket ready meal. The study shows these recipes to contain, on average, considerably more calories and saturated fat than their pre-packaged counterparts, casting the latter in a much more favourable light. Continue reading