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    Top 5 snacks for reading

    Hello bookworms!! Welcome to Top 5 Tuesday!! This week’s topic is top 5 snacks for reading. Wow… I think in my quest to make an easy month of top 5’s, I might have gone too far on the easy train for May. But, we’ll make the most of it before I decide what to do for July-September. (Also, if you…

  • Peanut butter chocolate chip cookies

    So, I am a terribly unorganised blogger.  I usually forget to take photos of baked goods for recipes, and when I do remember I’ve usually missed the natural goodness of daylight so they look terrible.  Anyway, I’m pretty impressed with myself today as I absolutely remembered to take (lots) of pics while I was baking!  So now you get to…

  • Baking fails!

    So I spend some weekends baking up a storm, and then forget to take photos to add to the blog.  So when I go to publish recipes that I have either created or amended from their original (it’s not often I will not play with a recipe when I bake) I have no photo.  So, because of this I have…

  • Chocolate Brownies

    Brownies are one of those magical things that have migrated from the US, along with Coca-Cola, Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups and Hallowe’en.  And the best brownies are slightly gooey in the middle… just like these ones! Ingredients 125g unsalted butter, melted 3 eggs 1.5 cups white sugar 3/4 cup plain flour 1/4 cup cocoa powder (Dutch cocoa powder is the…

  • Cookies and Cream Cheesecake

    One of my ‘go-to’ recipes is my cookies and cream cheesecake.  It’s relatively simple and very delicious – a definite crowd pleaser.  It is based on my white chocolate cheesecake recipe, but I make it as a larger slab type recipe for bigger groups.  It has the potential to last up to a week in the refrigerator – but alas,…

  • Chocolate salted-caramel tart

    This is a complicated recipe – there are three parts to cooking it, BUT it is well worth it in the end. Chocolate shortcrust pastry base Ingredients 125g butter, cubed 1.25 cups plain flour 2 tbsp cocoa powder 2 tbsp caster sugar 1/4 tsp salt 2 tbsp iced water Method Add flour, cocoa powder, caster sugar and salt into bowl…

  • Vegan buttercream frosting

    Now, it is a little known fact (which I like to tell people about) that Oreo cookies are vegan-friendly.  I’m not sure if this is by design, or by accident, but it certainly make decorating (non-butter) buttercream frosting easier!  You can chop Oreos in half and add them to the top of the cupcakes for that little bit of extra…

  • Vegan chocolate cupcakes

    I love to experiment with baking.  I have this great chocolate cake recipe (that I will likely NEVER publish the recipe for because it’s my signature cake), but I also acknowledge that people have dietary requirements – I am a primary example of that. So, I like to play around with recipes to make alternatives for others.  This is my…

  • Jaffa cheesecake

    So, as I mentioned in my recipe for White chocolate cheesecake, I use this as my base cheesecake recipe for heaps of different variations.  This variation is for all the orange-chocolate lovers out there! There are two steps you need to add to the base recipe to transform it into choc-orange deliciousness. Steps for choc orange cheesecake goodness: At step 6, add…

  • Mint chocolate cheesecake

    So, earlier this week I posted my recipe for White chocolate cheesecake.  As part of this I mentioned that I use this as a base recipe to do variations – which is absolutely correct. Some of the variations include: Tim Tam dark chocolate caramel salted caramel, and cookies and cream. This version is Mint chocolate one.  Essentially the recipe is…

  • Rocky road

    Rocky Road

    I can’t eat whole nuts, so I generally just don’t eat nuts at all because there’s a fine line between what I can eat and what will make me sick (I’m not anaphylactic, but it’s not pleasant).  What I can get away with (luckily) is eating foods that may contain traces of nuts.  However, I know that this is not the…

  • White chocolate cheesecake

    So this is what I use as my base (not baked) chocolate cheesecake recipe.  It has a simple flavour and it is easily adjustable to make several variants, which I am sure you will see a few of in later blog posts. Ingredients Base: 250g plain chocolate cookies (I use Arnott’s chocolate ripple) 100g melted butter Cheesecake filling: 375g cream…