Category Archives: Chocolate

Blueberry Choc Chip Cookies by Dan Lepard

A cookie before bedtime

I never make cookies. I don’t drink milk, so no cookies. On the other hand, I can always be persuaded to try something new. Or I like to think so. As Celia, Suelle and Jacqueline had all made these and said they were great, I found myself making cookies at 9 pm tonight.

I used dried cranberries and raisins instead of blueberries or sour cherries which are the fruits Dan wrote in the recipe  but I didn’t have those and I did have cranberries….. (why were they in the cupboard? Who knows, they were relieved to get out of there that’s for sure)…. and some raisins and some milk choc chips and I confess I cooked them a bit hot as I misread the temperature instructions.  So they are a little browner maybe than they are supposed to be and a bit crisper, but you know what I don’t care, because they are cookies and they are mine and they are delicious and use wholemeal flour and brown sugar and are still a delight, so what’s not to love about them? Tell me if you can.

Edit Feb 2012 : If you feel tempted the recipe is still on the Guardian’s website, it is no longer available on Dan’s website however,which is where I linked to originally,  so you can’t see all the photos of my friends’ cookies anymore.

By the way I forgot to ask…. what’s your favourite cookie?  I think mine is straight choc chip or english shortbread biscuits, or maybe ginger nuts, or maybe dark chocolate digestives….but these are pretty tasty and easy to customize to suit!

Temper temper…

Please excuse the lack of mature comment in this post, my inner child has surfaced again…

Hee hee Celia!  I finally had a go at this.

Dominos anyone?

Notice all those hits on the tempering page of your blog Fig Jam and Lime Cordial today?  That was me.

There is only so much reading about home made chocolate a friend can absorb and not want to have a go too. I have resisted for a long time now and today I realised resistance was futile and I wanted to join the Chocolate Borg.  I think what I ended up with was tempered, the chocolate squares go snap,  the raisin bark bends – but that’s the raisins I think, and the smooth sides are shiny, except where I got finger prints on them…  I’ve got a lot to learn – what fun!

I messed up the temperature

(Celia’s tempering instructions are crystal clear,  but I don’t think I managed to follow them. I thought I’d melt the chocolate in a bain marie, and the temperature soared to over 130 degrees, every lump of chocolate I put in to be the tempering seed bit, melted and disappeared. Ah well, first time, I found a funny little chocolate mould tray that I bought last year, dusted it, and washed it, put some of the melted choc in it, when it got to 88 F, put some sultanas in the rest of it and put those on a tray… )

but the chocolate didn’t scorch or get moisture in it and the chocolate gods forgave me as it was my first time.

Brian says this is much nicer than shop chocolate. He’s well versed in the art of compliments when it comes to sweet things.  I used a mixture, you can’t see it properly in the pic, of light and dark buttons and assorted bits of chocolate from my stash.

Every piece of tempering chocolate I put in melted and they were all dark, so I couldn’t rescue any of the pieces, but it just means more chocolate in the final pieces. Thank you Celia for your ongoing inspiration! I feel strangely happy!

And, I was going to say, if I had one of Inawelshgardens’s lavender bath bombs, my joy would be complete.

The pretext....

Assorted chocolate found lying around...

Note the thermometer...

No idea how you smooth them down...

Nutella tablets and raisin bark

Stem Ginger and Dark Chocolate muffins


50 minutes from thought to eating. If you were organized you could probably do it in 30 but I am just not that quick!  It finally rained today so now the weather is back to normal, we needed muffins for tea! I have reduced the butter and increased the milk in this recipe by a little as I am trying to cut down on butter.

From a recipe by Diana Bonaparte in Mad about Muffins my favourite muffin book! Loads of other wonderful recipes in here, including B’s all time favourite, mint choc chip muffins and many, many more!

Preheat oven to 170 C Fan. Find muffin tin with 12 compartments, find muffin cases, find the rest of the ingredients and off you go…..

The wet stuff: two parts to this:

  • 110 grams unsalted butter
  • 100 grams dark chocolate

Melt 100 grams of dark chocolate  and 11o grams of unsalted butter in a pan or the microwave on a low heat just enough that the butter melts and stir until smooth.

In the meantime mix up in a separate bowl:

  • 1 egg
  • 100 grams plain yoghurt –  (I used homemade)
  • 160 grams skimmed milk

Then add the butter-chocolate mix to the egg mix, or the other way round, just make sure the chocolate isn’t too hot or you will end up with scrambled eggy bits.

Whizz 2 nuggets of stem ginger, the sort that comes in syrup in a jar, in a food processor, or chop finely and add to the wet mix as above.


The dry stuff:

  • 260 grams of plain flour (all purpose)
  • 200 grams light brown muscovado sugar (sieved to get rid of the lumps)
  • 10 grams ground ginger
  • 1 and a half tsp of bicarbonate of soda
  • a pinch of salt

Sieve these together and mix well in another bowl. You now have one bowl of dry and one bowl of wet ingredients

Filling and topping – weigh these out before you mix the wet and the dry together!

  • 150 grams dark chocolate, chopped up roughly or use choc chips
  • one more nugget of stem ginger finely sliced into 12 slivers

OK, all set! You should have one bowl of wet stuff, one of dry stuff, one little bowl with more chocolate bits in it and a saucer with some slices of ginger.

Fold the dry mix into the wet mix, work quickly, don’t beat it,  just mix it enough that the flour has just disappeared, more like folding than beating. The batter can look quite lumpy which is fine!  Then quickly fold in the second lot of chocolate bits.  Spoon the batter  into the paper cases. Put a sliver of stem ginger on top of each one and bake for 20 – 25 minutes. Mine took 25 minutes because I think I made a bit more mixture than I meant to and so the muffins were quite big! They are done when they are well risen and spring back a little when you press them.

Cool on a wire rack but don’t wait too long to eat them, in fact invite someone round for a cuppa and then you can eat two while you are talking to them and no one will notice!

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