A Pinterest trawl the other night turned up a little Martha Stewart recipe for these brownies, which intrigued me because you make them in a saucepan not a bowl. It turns out they are rather spectacular and adaptable so these appeared in my kitchen two nights in a row this weekend. Do try them, in whatever guise you want.

The top batch were chocolate & ginger, as per the original recipe. Simple and brilliant with a cup of tea. The second batch are chili and walnut with white chocolate ganache on top and are decidedly more of a dessert. Also, awesome.

Saucepan brownies
(adapted from Martha Stewart here)

1/2 cup butter
100g dark chocolate
1 cup sugar
2/3 cup flour
1/4 cup cocoa powder
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/4 tsp sea salt

For chocolate & ginger variant
1 tsp grated fresh ginger
1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
1/2 tsp ground ginger
1/8 tsp ground cloves

For chili & walnut variant
1-2 tsp chili flakes (to taste)
1 cup chopped walnuts
White choc ganache to slather on top*

(Being lazy and reproducing directions verbatim here)
Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Butter an 8-inch square baking dish. Line bottom with baking paper, allowing 2 inches to hang over 2 sides. Melt butter and chocolate together in a medium saucepan over medium-low heat, stirring until smooth. Remove from heat, and stir in remaining ingredients.

Pour batter into prepared dish. Smooth top with a rubber spatula. Bake until a cake tester inserted into center comes out with moist crumbs, 30 to 35 minutes. Let cool in pan on a wire rack 15 minutes. Lift out, and let cool completely on rack. Cut into sixteen 2-inch squares. Brownies can be stored in an airtight container at room temperature up to 4 days.

*Generally equal quantities cream and chocolate melted together – however in this instance I had no cream so used sour cream instead – it was actually quite tasty and a nice foil to the chili in the brownies.

Apologies for this one, it’s really only a picture. Our lovely EO resigned a coupe of weeks ago and since one can’t let lovely people go without cupcakes, et voilá. These were my go-to chocolate cake recipe with added walnuts and chocolate buttercream.

For those interested, the stars were my first foray into making my own marshmallow fondant – recipe here.

This came about when Steve was sitting down with a block of Lindt chili dark chocolate and a block of Lindt Strawberry Intense and eating them both at the same time. The following is what happens when somebody says ‘gosh, these would be really tasty if they were all together in cake form…’

Chocolate, strawberry and chili frangipane tart

Base

• 1 1/2 cups flour
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1/3 cup cocoa
• 1/2 cup butter, chopped into small chunks
• 1 egg
• 1/4 cup milk

1 punned of strawberries

Frangipane

• 1/2 cup butter
• 1 1/2 cups sugar
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 1 tbsp balsamic or red wine vinegar
• 200g dark chocolate, melted
• 4 eggs
• 1 1/2 cups almond meal
• 1 tbsp chili flakes

For the base, mix the flour, sugar and cocoa in a bowl, then rub in the butter until it’s all rubbed in. Mix in the milk and egg, then press into a 23cm (ish) springform tin. Bake for around 10 min at 200 degrees (I think, I can’t remember exactly what I did but you’ll be able to tell when it looks done).

Slice the strawberries in half and lay them cut side down to cover the base. Beat all the frangipane ingredients (except chili) together and spread evenly all over the strawberries. Sprinkle chili flakes over the top and bake for 60-75 min (depends on your oven) at 160 degrees, until it looks mostly set and there’s just a tiny bit of wobble in the middle.

It occurred to me that I’ve never posted one of the most basic comfort food recipes I’ve got – a simple buttercake from a spattered old recipe written in an exercise book of my mother’s. Today’s afternoon tea seemed like an opportune time to whip it up and turn it into a quick teacake.

Buttercake

• 1/2 cup butter
• 1 1/2 cups sugar
• 2 eggs
• 2 tsp vanilla
• 1 cup milk
• 2 1/4 cups flour
• 3 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp salt (quaintly this exists in the original recipe as my mother’s handwritten typo ‘salk’)

Simple and standard to make – cream butter and sugar, beat in other wet ingredients followed by dry ingredients and give it a couple of minutes on high in the mixer. Bake for between 20-50 minutes at 180°C (will depend on which tin/s you’re using – this will give you 20-24 cupcakes, 2x 20cm round layers, 20x30cm sheet tin etc).

To teacake-ify: Once the cake is done, brush the top with melted butter and sprinkle with a mixture of sugar and cinnamon. Nom.

Apologies for dodgy photo. I’m no photographer ordinarily anyway but even for me this is dodgy.

Winter. Puddings. ‘Nuff said.

Orange, almond & poppy pudding

• 1 cup butter
• 2 cups sugar
• 4 eggs
• zest of 4 oranges and juice of 2
• 1 cup flour*
• 1 cup almond meal
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1/4 -1/3 cup poppy seeds

Orange toffee sauce

• Juice of the other two oranges
• 1 cup sugar
• 2 tbsp butter

For the puddings: cream the butter and sugar, then beat in the zest and eggs. Beat in everything else and give it a good minute or two on high. Spoon into greased containers** and smooth the tops, then put into a water bath that comes halfway up their sides and bake*** at 160°C. You’ll want them so they’re not too wibbly on top (they’ll still be quite wibbly inside under the nice crunchy top) but don’t overcook them or you’ll lose the puddingy factor.

For the sauce – bung everything in a saucepan and simmer carefully until all the sugar is dissolved and the sauce has coloured up a bit and thickened a little.

Insert icecream between sauce and pudding, then insert into face and bliss out.

* These make quite wibbly puddings. If you’re not a fan of wibble and prefer more cakey, you’ll need to add some more flour and probably cook a bit longer.

** You’ll want either a pudding dish or ramekins of some description

*** Baking time will vary considerably depending on what size puddings you’re making – one big one might take over an hour and a half. I used individual ramekins (around 1 cup capacity) and they still needed around 45 minutes.

So it came to my attention that I have never made sticky date pudding, and conveniently we had a container of dates left on our table after last night that were rather asking to be turned into said pudding.

Recipe tweaked from Donna Hay.

Sticky date pudding with butterscotch sauce

• 1 1/2 cups chopped dates
• 1 cup boiling water
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 cup butter
• 1 cup dark brown sugar (normal is ok but dark brown sugar is quite nice)
• 2 eggs
• Generous splash of rum (dark is best but if you use Bundy I will hunt you down and remove your spleen with a rusty spoon)
• 1 1/2 cups self-raising flour (or plain flour with 3 tsp baking powder)

Butterscotch sauce

• 1/4 cup butter
• 1/2 cup brown sugar (again, dark is nice)
• 1/3 cup (ish) cream
• 2 tsp cinnamon

Soak the dates in water with the baking soda for 5-10 minutes, then blitz in a food processor until smooth (ish – will still be a little chunky). Cream the butter and sugar, then beat in everything else. Pour into a greased & lined 20-22cm square pan and bake for 35-40 min at 180°C.

For the sauce, melt the butter and sugar together over low heat in a small saucepan, then add the cream and cinnamon and let it bubble away for a bit until slightly thicker.

If you need instructions for what to do with these after making them, I will be extremely depressed. However, if it involves vanilla icecream I will be at your place in 5 .

Last Monday was my 30th birthday (hence the new Kitchenaid in the last post ), and I don’t normally do the party thing but I decided I wanted a nostalgic little bonfire-type party with a few friends. More specifically, I felt the need for mulled wine, cider and s’mores. Which is exactly what we did. For those of you not familiar with American culinary traditions, s’mores are a campfire treat made by toasting a marshmallow over a fire, them smooshing it between graham crackers with a thin piece of chocolate so it all melts together. Nom.

However – there are a few issues for anyone who might want to make these in Australia. Primarily, you can’t easily get graham crackers or Hershey’s chocolate bars. A lot of people say digestive biscuits are like graham crackers but IMHO this is a fat lie and there’s not really any equivalent. Enter – Smitten Kitchen’s graham cracker recipe. Can’t get it? Make it yourself . The crackers turned out to be extremely tasty, although I’m still not convinved about their graham-crackery-ness. The only modification to the recipe I made was substituting 1/2 a cup of wholemeal spelt flour as per the suggestion.

The other issue was with chocolate – Hershey’s bars are really thin and thus melt easily.  went with Lindt chocolate, which is about the thinnest you can get (also means you can make awesome s’mores with dark chili chocolate and sea salt chocolate and…), but it was still a little too thick for the marshmallow to melt it effectively. Ultimately, though, it didn’t matter and the resulting concoction was gooey and sweet and fun. If you’ve never eaten a s’more, you should do it. Definitely an experience.

Recipes:

http://www.merrygourmet.com/2012/02/so-long-january-and-a-recipe-chocolate-brownie-pudding/

and

http://www.couriermail.com.au/ipad/cooking-with-donna-hay-sweetly-spiced/story-fn6ck8la-1226397435295

Several things coincided to make these happen. The first was a day off in lieu for working last weekend, the second was someone mentioning cinnamon rolls on Twitter, and the third was a cold, grey day. Really, I didn’t have much choice other than to spend a few hours making warm, yeasty cinnamony treats .

If you have the time, handmade bread is a thing of wonder and there are very few ills it can’t fix. If you don’t have the time, a bread machine is a thing of wonder and I use it all the time so no shame if you do, levels of catharsis just tend to be lower. To make these using a bread machine, whack all the dough ingredients in on the dough setting, then continue from the part where you roll out the dough.

Malted Cinnamon Rolls

Bread dough:

• 3 cups flour (give or take)
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 2-3 tbsp malt powder (I used Horlicks)
• 2 tbsp melted butter
• 300ml warm milk
• 1 sachet yeast
• Optional: 1 beaten egg (either reduce milk by 50ml or add extra flour if you add this) – I was totally intending to but discovered a little too late there were no eggs in the fridge

Filling:

• 2 tbsp melted butter
• 1/4 cup brown sugar
• 1 tbsp cinnamon
• Optional: chopped nuts of any description

Glaze:

• 1 tsp malt powder
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 tbsp boiling water
• 1 tbsp milk
• Enough icing sugar to make a nice thick pourable glaze

For the dough, dissolve the yeast in the milk, then mix all the dry ingredients together. Add everything else and mix until it’s kind of roughly holding together. Tip it out and spend the next 10 minutes or so kneading until you have a lovely smooth dough. Put in a warm, greased bowl, cover with cling wrap or a tea towel and leave somewhere warm to rise until doubled in size (could be anywhere from 45 min to 2 hours depending on season, weather, yeast, flour etc etc).

Once doubled, punch it down and roll the dough out into a nice big rectangle. Brush with the melted butter, then spread all the filling over the top. Roll it up, making sure you pinch the long edge firmly closed to hold it all together. To cut into rolls, the best thing to use is not a knife but dental floss (trust me on this). Grab a length of floss, slide it under the log, then at inch (ish) intervals, bring the floss up over the log, cross the ends and pull it tight until it cuts right through. Makes lovely rounds without the squishing a knife can cause.

Put your rolls cut side up in a baking tray – you’ll get about 15, so you’ll need something at least 30x20cm. At this stage you don’t want the rolls to touch. Cover the tray loosely (pro tip: at this stage they will sit rather nicely in the fridge overnight, ready to bake up for breakfast the next morning) and let them rise for another 30-40 min. Once risen, bake for about 20 min at 180 degrees.

For the glaze, dissolve the malt and vanilla in the water, add the milk then gradually add icing sugar until you get a nice thick but pourable consistency. Pour over the rolls while still warm, and eat ASAP because there’s really not a whole lot in life that gets better than a fresh warm cinnamon roll .

It may be difficult believe but I *almost* got to 30 without ever having made a mug cake. However, I found myself in the situation at 9.30 the other night where I really *required* some cake, so it seemed like an opportune moment to venture into the world of mug cakes.

A quick Google later and I had this recipe, which sounded really rather good. I then promptly discovered I had no eggs in the house, so fudged something together based on the vague recollection that you can substitute sour cream for eggs in an emergency. I made quite a few tweaks to the recipe so thought I’d just write out my version in its entirety for you. Because I’m nice like that.

Red velvet mug cake (accidentally eggless; serves one, in about 5 minutes flat)

• 4 tbsp self-raising flour (you may need a little more than this)
• 3 tbsp sugar
• 1 tbsp cocoa
• 3 tbsp vegetable oil
• 1 tbsp sour cream
• 3 tbsp milk
• Dash of apple cider vinegar (optional but nice)
• Dash of red food colouring

Mix it all up in the bottom of a mug until smooth, then microwave for somewhere around 90 seconds. It won’t be pretty, but when you really *need* cake, it’s really good.