I rarely eat After Eights, but when I do it always reminds me of my childhood. Those black wrappers looked so posh when I was younger lol.
To be honest, I’m more of a chocolate orange fan but these mint cheesecakes blew me away! I thought this would be a perfect light and refreshing dessert for Christmas. If you love mint chocolate/After Eights and cheesecake then you have to make this…right now!
The other good thing is the cheesecake looked really amazing, tasted lovely and was really easy to make.
This recipe can be easily halved and that’s what I did and placed in 12 hole push up tin.
For those of you who don’t know these are a known are a Brazilian “truffle” but I think they are more similar to fudge then a truffle.
I first seen these little bad boys was so many years ago that I actually can’t remember it’s been that long! Well it’s about time I made them right?! They are actually pretty simple and easy to make. This recipe also had another bonus of only using just 4 ingredients yay!
They require a cooking and setting time and then you have to get your hands dirty and create the truffle little balls but I suppose you could steer away from the traditional round shape and make them into a square shape, who says you can’t?
I have been waiting to make these little bad boys for quite some time now. I really love anything Lotus. I actually didn’t follow the recipe fully as I made some Lotus cheesecakes for a family lunch and let’s say I didn’t read the recipe properly and I only needed half the recipe, luckily it was only the base that I had double amount of not the cheesecake filling! Anyway I decided that this would be the perfect time to make these as I could replace base of the cheesecake mixture for the base of millionaire shortbread.
I did I was struggle a bit with making the caramel, but as Jane said on her recipe, this is can be a bit tricky to make. I didn’t quite get the fudge as dark as I wanted it to be but I didn’t have time to make it dark…places to go, people to see!
Although this recipe isn’t hard to make (apart from me getting the fudge part wrong) it’s a bit time consuming as each layer needs to set in the fridge and you can’t move on from one layer until the other layer is set! I cut these in small pieces as they are super rich. I couldn’t handle one 5x5cm size (normal size) wayyyyyy too much! that little piece of appreciation is more then enough for me!
Praline is such a delicious flavour. When I was younger, I always thought that praline was very exclusive and would be only used in very expensive pastry shops. The ones where you see all these small miniatures in the window and drool over them, then have a heart attack over the price. It would be a real treat to have anything with praline in. To this day, I still have this regard for praline, I think it has been stamped in my brain.
Whilst I was shopping, I was very surprised to find this jar of Bonne Maman hazelnut praline caramel in a supermarket, yes a supermarket!. It was something I felt I should savour for eternity and use it with great care. Like how stupid? Bonne Maman, is well known name and is widely available in all supermarkets. Also it doesn’t cost the earth, so yeh, get a grip woman!
So the big question…what will I be making with this special jar of liquid gold?. Well I wanted to make something that I could taste the raw flavour and thought it would be better to do this without it being heated. So I thought why not a chocolate and hazelnut tart. It was simple enough and once the tart shell has cooled I will add the caramel and then add the chocolate and let it set.
I managed to save (savour) a spoonful of the praline and it tasted amazing, has a lovely rich dark caramel and nutty hazelnut taste. Bonne Maman did good and took me to that luxurious place!
I have been experimenting with GF recipes recently as my Uncle can’t eat gluten. Generally I find GF recipes really tricky to make, they generally have such a weird texture and a horrible flavour unless you use ground almonds. This cake was beautiful though, with the lovely sharp lemon, it had a fluffy texture and had a subtle almond taste. I don’t like almond extract but this can be added in for extra flavour.
I topped the cake with whipped cream and fresh sweet strawberries. This gave a lovely fresh taste and added a nice balance to the cake.
So I know most people are used to ‘White chocolate raspberry cheesecake’ butttt I and other members of my family don’t like white chocolate so I thought why not switch the white chocolate to dark chocolate.
The combination of dark chocolate with raspberry works so well. The tartness of the raspberries cuts through the richness of the chocolate but it works alongside the sweetness of the cheesecake, it’s such an amazing flavour combination. This cheesecake is super easy to make and also is quite large size, so great for entertaining (there is way too much to eat on it’s own!) It’s also nice served with some cream to cut through the richness. Also the dark chocolate instead of the white chocolate worked well, I would make this cheesecake again, and for those who are not Gluten free it’s still the same!
You know when you have one of those day, when all you want to do is chill out. It’s not that often for me, I prefer to get out and about at the weekends compared to staying at home. However, this happened to be one of them days. I was at my parent’s house and my mum and I were watching the TV and Nadiya from the bake off was on with her cookery program. She was going to make this chocolate tart made that used salted crisps as the base….I know strange, right? but as I’m strange I loved this idea!. I was so excited as I love a bit of salty and sweet, I’ve used this combination in X and X and it’s such a flavour explosion! I watched that episode such a while ago and have been meaning for such a long time to make it and things have just got in the way. Just to make you aware you do have to set the tart in the fridge, so it has to be made in advance.
The tart was really simple to make, just a bit of melted, crushing and combing, really easy to do!. It didn’t take long to bake and as she advised be careful not to overbake as well.
I did found that there was a lot of oil that seeped through, I think there was probably a lot of fat that came from the oil of the crisp and the melted butter that bind the tart together.
I wouldn’t say I could taste the saltiness of the crisp, and also I found it really rich, I could only have a small piece which is unlike me!
This cheesecake is one of those bad boys you would only bake for a special occasion and that is exactly what I did. This was for the most special person in my life, my daddy and his favourite dessert is cheesecake.
I wanted to go all out and do something on the more luxurious side, I know my dad loves cherries also anything nutty and I thought this was perfect for him 👌🏽. This recipe was surprisingly easy to make, I found the hardest thing for me about this cheesecake was taking it out the tin. I think I was breaking out in a sweat! As I have many disasters when the whole cheesecake just collapses! However by some miracle and with a lot of help this came out in one piece yay!. Back to the cheesecake, I have to say this was something that had all the combinations of flavours I love, cherries, almonds and cream cheese. Bakewell is something I really enjoy, what I don’t enjoy though is almond extract – this stuff to me is evil, it has a horrible artificial taste that I can taste straight away and ruins the whole bakewell, so yes marzipan, bakewell and stolen is out the question I just don’t eat it. This recipe did include almond extract so if that’s your thing add it in!…that stuff just doesn’t enter my kitchen.
I wanted to try something new from ‘the book of buns’ which I’ve used previously to make Tootmanik. I love this book, it has the most amazing bread recipes from around the world. So instead of being boring it makes you explore the world of bread/bun recipes. After a very indulgent December of over eating a load of chocolates and other sweet stuff I wanted to bake something savoury. A lot of recipes include a starter dough, I still need to have a go at using a starter dough recipe. This one seemed quite simple and it had cheese in yummmmmm 🧀 . Love cheese!!!
After looking over the method it seemed that it was just like making a scone but a yeasted scone. So after all that it was a scone in the end of the day.
Not only do I love the taste of pistachios, I love the vibrant green colour as well. They really are such a unique nut, which other nut has a green colour? 🤔.
This cake was pretty simple and easy to make the only thing that took long was to un shell the pistachios! I was hoping this cake would be really fluffy and nutty but I didn’t find it that moist. Although the taste of pistachio did come through and sometimes you don’t get that.
1. Preheat oven to 175°C. Line the a loaf tin with baking paper.
2. Put pistachios in a food processor and pulse into fine crumbs. Transfer to a bowl and add flour, baking powder, and salt, stir to combine.
3. In a large mixing bowl with a stand or handheld mixer fitted with a whisk or paddle attachment, beat butter and sugar until creamy for about 2-3 minutes. Add 1 egg at the time and mix until incorporated. Add sour cream and vanilla* and stir to combine. Alternately add dry ingredients and milk, beginning and ending with dry ingredients. Stir just until combined.
4. Transfer to the prepared baking pan and bake for about 25-28 minutes or until a toothpick in the centre comes out clean. Let cool in pan on a wire rack to room temperature.
