Ecuador - Marks and Spencer

Hopefully, today we will be on safer ground and the actual wording on the outside of the packet will represent what is on the inside, see my previous post regarding the Marc De Champagne Egg.

On first inspection this looks like an interesting bar of chocolate titled, 'Equador' - single origin dark chocolate, from Marks and Spencer.

As with the Marc De Champagne Egg, this piece of chocolate also seems to be part of 'The Collection' which I now believe is a totally overused term and meaningless, as everything sold in Marks and Spencer seems to be part of The Collection. 


For some bizarre reason the packaging designers have become all excited and decided to go with two alternative spellings for the words 'Ecuador', spelt 'Equador' and 'Ecuadorian' spelt 'Equadorian'. Why?

The chocolate slab itself is bright and ebony in presentation and has an excellent snap. Marks and Spencer has described this chocolate thus, "this Equadorian dark chocolate possesses floral Jasmine notes with a slightly nutty aftertaste. The touch of astringency gives a surprising wholeness to the flavour profile. Perfectly paired with an aged tawny port". 

I have noticed more and more retailers are now pairing their chocolates either with fine wines, ports or surprisingly beers. Another retail opportunity never to be missed! In fact you can now buy some interesting bottled beers from M&S...try their Cheshire Chocolate Porter.

To be honest I can't place the Jasmine but I can certainly pick up a slight tobacco aroma with a hint of lemon. Just breathe it all in...delicious! 

The dark chocolate melts quickly with a slight sweetness and a fair amount of acidity which hangs around for a while. This is not unpleasant and compliments the rich, silky smoothness of the melting dark chocolate. 

In terms of ingredients there are not many, including: Cocoa Mass - Sugar - Cocoa Butter - Emulsifier: Sunflower Lecithin...which is good news if you are allergic to Soya Lecithin.

Single Origin Dark Chocolate - Ecuador

I really enjoyed this bar of chocolate and at £3.00 for 80g it proves to be good value for money. If you are looking for alternatives check out similar chocolates from Chocolatiers but expect to pay a bit more.

Marc De Champagne Egg - M&S

Marc De Champagne Egg

Remember that old saying, "All that glitters is not gold" and so it would seem with this Easter Egg purchased from Marks and Spencer earlier today. Beware and read the label carefully before purchasing one of these colourful eggs...unlike me. 

At a quick glance you may be forgiven for actually thinking that you are buying a chocolate egg filled with marc de champagne truffles. When in actual fact you are buying a decorative piece of cardboard, tied with a turquoise bow, in the shape of an egg filled with marc de champagne truffles. 

This attractive and eye catching Faberge style egg stands about 6.5" or 16.5 cm high and is filled with 10 marc de champagne truffles, approx. 145 g, sealed within a plastic bag to stop the icing sugar going all over the place. This particular egg has been earmarked as being part of "The Collection" which as far as I can make out could apply to anything from denim jeans or a pair of slingbacks. So, just another nonsensical marketing ploy to make you think somebody has selected this item for its uniqueness and quality.   

Made in Ireland

I've never been a great fan of Marks and Spencer truffles and this offering is very much the same old, same old, sugary and overly sweet concoction that I have come to expect from them. Each truffle is well made and covered liberally in icing sugar, perhaps best eaten naked. The soft sweet ganache is en-robed in a fairly thick casing of milk chocolate. I suggest you cut the truffle in half and scoop out the ganache with your tongue. 

The marc de champagne is not overpowering and adds a slightly pleasant alcoholic flavour. If only Marks and Spencer could cut down on the sugar and increase the cocoa content of their truffles then this might be a fairly pleasant experience. However, after the sugar hit you are left with a gloopy and slightly acidic feeling as it slides down your throat. Not the nicest of experiences and on reflection I've had more enjoyable sore throats.

Marc De Champagne Truffles - 30% Cocoa

I was disappointed from the start with this egg especially on discovering that there was no actual chocolate egg for me to crack open! So, staying objective was a problem from the beginning. However, the egg is well presented as are the champagne truffles. For the cost of £9.00 you do get a lovely egg shaped box and 10 'gob stopper' size champagne truffles. 

However, I feel that I could have done better with my money and perhaps I should have gone with a Percy Pig! However, if M&S is not your thing then here are a couple of examples of Easter chocolates available on the internet and high street:

This year's Easter gifts Chococo-style from £9.50...

Or

Something with imagination from Hotel Chocolat from £7.00...

Banana, Orange and Chocolate Cake

This cake has been in my recipe book for more years than I care to remember and I cannot remember when I actually made it last, possibly decades!

A straightforward, quick recipe and a great way to use up bananas that look more black than yellow. I've tweaked this recipe with a little added milk chocolate to compliment the orange.

Ingredients

3 ripe bananas
8 oz/250g self raising flour
1 oz/25g ground almonds
1 tsp baking powder
5 oz/140g soft brown sugar
3 oz/75g soft margarine
2 eggs
1 orange and zest and 1/2 for juice
2 tbsp marmalade
4 oz/100g dark chocolate

Method

• Grease a 2lb loaf tin and line with a strip of greaseproof paper
• Peel and mash bananas
• Beat in flour, almonds, baking powder, sugar, margarine and eggs until well blended
• Add the orange zest and juice and the chocolate and mix well
• Pour into loaf tin and bake at 160 degrees C Fan/Gas Mark 4 for 55 minutes. 
• Remove and brush with marmalade and return to the oven for a further 10 minutes.
• Check that the cake is cooked by inserting a skewer into the centre which should come out clean if fully cooked.
• Allow to cool in the tin

The zesty orange and tangy marmalade work really well with the milk chocolate...one slice is not sufficient!

Chocolate Beetroot Cake

Beetroot, a vegetable full of rich, damp, earthy aromas is not an ingredient you would associate with baking. A salad yes but a cake?! 

Well, strange as it may sound beetroot and dark chocolate actually make the most perfect bedfellows. Those earthy smells just melt away leaving a delicious sweet cake.

With all this good weather my late planted beetroots have done really well and are now ready to be transformed into cake! 

I used a recipe from the 'delicious magazine' website just click here to read more. I did not make the icing but the recipe is shown below if required. 

If you want a cake with 'wow' factor click on the link and follow this recipe from Joy the Baker

Ingredients

250g dark chocolate, broken up
3 large eggs
200g light muscovado sugar
100ml sunflower oil
1 tsp vanilla extract
100g self-raising flour
a pinch of salt (not in the original recipe)
½ tsp bicarbonate of soda
½ tsp baking powder
50g ground almonds
250g raw beetroot

For the icing
150g dark chocolate
100g icing sugar
100g soured cream

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 180°C/fan 160°C/gas 4. Grease a 22cm round, loose-bottomed cake tin with a little butter and line the base with baking paper.

2. Place the dark chocolate in a bowl and set over a pan of gently simmering water. Allow the chocolate to melt slowly until smooth, then set aside to cool.

3. Place the eggs, sugar and sunflower oil in a large mixing bowl and whisk together, using an electric hand whisk, for about 3 minutes until the mixture is smooth and creamy. Stir in vanilla extract, then sift over self-raising flour, bicarbonate of soda, baking powder and gently fold in, together with the ground almonds.

4. Using a pair of rubber gloves to protect your fingers from staining, peel and grate the beetroot, then squeeze out the excess liquid. Fold the beetroot into the mixture with the cooled chocolate, until thoroughly mixed.

5. Pour the mixture into the prepared tin and bake for 50 minutes-1 hour. Cover with foil if the cake browns too quickly. Test the cake by inserting a skewer into the centre to see if it comes out clean. Cool for a little while, then remove from the tin and leave to cool completely on a wire rack.

6. For the icing, place 150g dark chocolate in a bowl set over a pan of gently simmering water. Allow to melt gently until smooth. Set aside to cool, then beat in icing sugar and soured cream until you have a thick, creamy and spreadable icing. Spread it over the top and sides of the cooled cake and serve.

Chocolate and Courgette Cake

Home grown!

Yesterday, this post was going to include a chocolate courgette brownie recipe but, that will have to wait for another time.

This year has seen a proliferation of courgettes in my small but productive vegetable patch. To deal with this unexpected glut I have turned to baking. Surprisingly, courgettes make good bedfellows with all things cake. Which is good news if you like a balanced diet.

Inspiration for this particular recipe was from Doves Farm.  Just follow the link to read all about their organic flour business.

Ingredients

7oz plain flour
1tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp bicarb of soda
1/2 tsp salt
4oz caster sugar
6 fl oz sunflower oil
2 large eggs
6oz plain dark chocolate
8oz grated courgette

Method

• place dry ingredients - flour, baking powder, bicarb of soda, salt and caster sugar into a large bowl and mix together.

• Then beat oil and eggs and add to the dry mixture and stir in. Add melted chocolate, grated courgette and mix.

• Place into a 2lb greased and floured loaf tin and bake in centre of oven at 180 degrees C / 160 Fan for 50-60mins or until cooked. Once cooked allow to cool for 10 minutes in the tin and then remove.

Pump Street Bakery - Madagascar 72%

A damp Cedric the Citroen outside Adnams

On a rainy Saturday in Southwold a little brightness was provided by Cedric the Citroen, a restored 1981 HY Citroen (currently unwell according to twitter and replaced with a transit) which seems to be 'de rigueur' for all cool street food vendors these days. If you head to Kings Cross you will see what I mean. 

If handmade soughdough breads, buttery and deliciously rich pastries and fine 'bean to bar' chocolate form an integral part of your 5 a day then Pump Street Bakery must be on your list of cool foodie shop bucket list. Mobile in this case. Traveling from their family run bakery in Orford, on Suffolk's heritage coast to Saxmundham, Ipswich and Southwold. See website for route and further details. 

Having quickly mastered the art of producing the most amazing breads and pastries, they've turned their attention to chocolate joining a handful of 'bean to bar' specialists in the UK, which is great to see. Oh, how I hate talented and gifted people.....I don't really. I'm just seriously jealous. 

You instinctively know when you are about to taste a good bar of chocolate. Just opening the packet gets chocolate sensors working overtime and goose bumps start popping as the senses kick into action. The Jiffy style packaging is probably unique and obviously cool. I like the fact that I can re-seal the package preserving all those fantastic flavours and characteristics of this wonderful chocolate.

Madagascar 72% by Pump Street Bakery

Their cocoa beans are sourced from Ambanja a region Northern Madagascar. After careful roasting, winnowing, grinding and even conching for many hours the final result is an amazing shinny mahogany coloured block of chocolate. 

Chocolate from Madagascar usually has citrus and fruity notes and this does not disappoint. In the mouth the chocolate melts quickly producing a rich fluidity that just smoothly wraps around your tongue as flavours are slowly released. Scrummy!

At £5.80 for a 75g bar it is pricey but close your eyes and pop it in your shopping bag. Well done guys a stunning bar of chocolate. 10/10.

Belle Epoque Handmade Chocolates

We discovered Belle Epoque at the recent Abergavenny Food Festival. They were doing a blistering trade in their honeycomb chunks and chilli discs! First thoughts, packaging is simple and does the job but overall presentation could be better.

Seven seriously lovely big chunks of milk chocolate covered honeycomb. A milk chocolate with a 39% cocoa content was used to make this rather wondrous and very delicious chocolate confection.

Chunky handmade honeycomb dipped in chocolate. Honeycomb is light, airy, gooey with a slightly chewy and crunchiesque texture. Just how I like it!

Not overly sweet and guaranteed to stick to every part of your molars. Your tongue will be wiggling for ages. I really enjoyed this and a lot of care has gone into producing the honeycomb, perhaps one of the better ones that I've experienced in a long while. 8/10.

Five dark chocolate (54% cocoa content) disks sprinkled with dried chilli flakes.

The amount of chilli flakes on each disc sets you up for possibly a mind blowing 'heat' experience when in fact it is all a little bit mellow.

The dark chocolate has a good snap and is fairly sweat but goes well with the chilli. However, both the chocolate and chilli lack a bit of bite, for my tastes. The heat does linger on but it is not overly strong. Unlikely to cause any lasting scarring! Perhaps, a little more experimentation required with different varieties of chillies will resolve this. 5/10.

Belle Epoque describe themselves as a small artisan chocolate maker creating wedding and party favours for special occasions. Happy times!

Abergavenny's Food Festival 2013

By the time you read this Abergavenny's 15th Food Festival will probably be over and tired exhibitors will be packing up after the busiest weekend that they can remember. The small historic market town of Abergavenny used every available space to show off some truly amazing food. 

A vast array of food and drink was on show to taste and buy. It was a shoppers paradise! If you somehow became bored with all this you could join the queue for book signings, enter a master class or just enjoy a picnic in the castle grounds and watch the world go by. This was my first visit and it was without doubt a most amazing spectacle.

The Handmade Scotch Egg Company - food with personality created with passion! A truly cracking product and slightly egg-centric but ever so enthusiastic team certainly knew everything about their product. They only have 40 scotch egg recipes! 

Abergavenny's beautiful Victorian Market Hall and Brewery Yard full to the brim with exhibitors, flying vegetables and thousands and thousands of people.

Some intense Street Food in the Priory section!

Certainly not what you would see in Pizza Express!

My find of the day!
The Poffertjes Co...making delicious Dutch waffles served with butter,
icing sugar, chocolate and more chocolate. 

Sweet treats from Love Patisserie!

There was even room for chocolate from Sciolti Botanical Chocolates

The Arabic Food and Spice Company served up some Turkish delights!

M'Hencha from the M'Hencha Company with its mind blowing Moroccan recipe. M'Hencha is a coiled pastry cake made from almond frangipane, citrus zests and rosewater, wrapped in brick pastry and topped with pistachios.

Despite their slightly stern looks.....these girls get my award for the 'most cheerful vendors of the day'. They were still smiling five hours later when we returned to pick up some duck pate from cnwd. To be honest all the exhibitors were brilliant!

The Easiest Chocolate and Banana Loaf Cake

Ingredients:

4oz/125g Hard margarine (at room temperature)
4oz/125g Brown sugar
2 Eggs
8oz/250g Self raising flour
A pinch of salt
1 tbsp golden syrup
1 tspn mixed spice
2 Medium chopped bananas
6oz/175g Milk chocolate chopped into large chunks

Method:

• Butter a 2 lb loaf tin and line with a strip of grease proof.
• Place all the ingredients except for the chocolate into a mixer and beat until smooth.

• Stir in the chocolate chunks and pour mixture into prepared tin.

• Bake at 350 F/160 C Fan/Gas Mark 4 for 1 hour.
• Then reduce the heat to 325 F/150 Fan/Gas Mark 3 for a further 10 minutes.
• Allow to cool before serving.

Triple Chocolate Loaf Cake

Ingredients

• 175g softened butter, plus extra for greasing the tin
• 175g golden caster sugar
• 3 eggs
• 140g self-raising flour
• 85g ground almonds
• 1/2 tspn baking powder (level)
• 100ml milk
• 4 tbsp cocoa powder - I used dark
• 50g plain chocolate, chopped - I used Rainforest Alliance Certified dark chocolate from Costa Rica.
• a pinch of salt

Decoration:

• 50g milk chocolate
• 50g white chocolate

Method:

• Heat oven to 180C/160C fan/gas mark 3 and line a 2lb/900g loaf tin with two strips of baking parchment. Ensure the corners of the tin are well greased.

• Beat the softened butter and sugar using an electric whisk until light and pale in colour.

• Sieve the self-raising flour, cocoa powder, salt and baking powder and add this to the mix along with the eggs, ground almonds and milk. Beat until smooth.

• Stir in the chocolate chips and then pour the mixture into the tin.

• Bake for 45 - 50 minutes until cooked and well risen. To test that the cake has cooked insert a skewer into the centre of the cake. If the skewer comes out clean then your cake is cooked.

• Allow to cool in the tin, then lift out, remove baking paper and place onto a wire rack over some kitchen paper.

• Melt the extra milk and white chocolate separately in pans over barely simmering water.

• Then use a spoon to drizzle each type of chocolate in turn over the cake.

• Leave to set before slicing.

Triple Chocolate Loaf Cake - Will cut a piece later...

Preparation time: 20 minutes

Cooking time: 50 minutes

Cherrytastic Easy Chocolate Mousse!

Ingredients
(Serves 6)

150g  Dark Chocolate (I used a 64%) - chopped
4        Eggs, separated
50g    Butter
3        tbsp golden caster sugar
4-5     Whole Cherries in Kirsch per portion plus 2 tbsp of the kirsch (If you     cannot source the cherries then use Cointreau or Tia Maria instead.

Method

• Divide the cherries between 6 ramekin dishes.

• Place the chocolate and butter in a stainless steel bowl and melt very gently together over a pan of hot water....do not boil the water! 

• Add the separated egg yolks and the kirsch to the mix and stir gently.

• Whisk the egg whites until stiff.

• Add the sugar and continue whisking until the mix is shiny and stiff.

• Fold the egg whites into the chocolate mix starting initially with two large spoonfuls to slacken the mix before adding the remaining egg whites. Do not over stir the mix otherwise you will lose all the air, but make sure that all the egg whites are incorporated.

• Divide the mousse between the ramekins and chill for at least two hours. Top Tip: Put the ramekins in an air tight container before placing in the fridge rather than messing up the surface of each mousse with cling film.

• Serve with biscuits, see recipe.

Preparation Time: 15 minutes, plus chilling (2 hours)