Showing posts with label chocolate. Show all posts
Showing posts with label chocolate. Show all posts

Friday, December 21, 2012

Home-made chocolate nut spread

well, not totally 100% home-made as I didn't make the chocolate from scratch! I bought it :P

something like Nutella but I made it with almonds instead of hazelnut

So, I was wanting to eat bread with chocolate spread today, and I don't have Nutella at home, it's not a common item in my home. I had some baking chocolate compound and some overtoasted almonds :P (I overtoasted some almonds last week for my cookies, it was a little on the dark side which will not appeal to the customer but it was not burnt yet. So I keep it for myself)

Well, if you want to do this too, it's very easy, just need some baking chocolate, milk, dark or semi-sweet up to you, some butter, and some ground almonds. Mine were toasted slivered almonds, grind it in a blender to fine crumbs...not fine enough but that'll do. I don't really measure for this one, simply throw it in, eyeing the amount to my liking, but for the sake of posting this, I'll work out some measurements for you:


Ingredients:
1 cup of compound chocolate (milk, dark, semi - I used a mix of Beryls milk compound and the 60% cacao chocolate block from LeBourne)

1 and 1/2 tablespoons butter

1/3 cup of ground almonds

Method:

1. Melt chocolate and butter in double-boiler. I just put a heat-proof bowl on top of a small saucepan quarter-filled with water. Heat with low heat. You can also use microwave to melt your chocolate. (we don't have microwave :P )

2. When the chocolate and butter have fully melted, stir in your ground almonds.

Tadaaaa, finished. Easy. This makes about 1/3 full of the small disposable round container. You can throw away the measurements and just put in the amount of chocolate and ground nuts that you like. Just not too much butter as it will make your spread runny and oily. I would say keep about 1-2 tablespoons of butter for 1 cup of chocolate - maybe.

For the nuts, use any nuts. Nutella is with hazelnuts, that would be good too, but the always-in-stock in my house is almond. You can even make it with peanuts. Notice how the nuts in mine look coarse and chunky? That's probably because I used the dry blender to grind it, if you have food processor it may do the job better. If you like fine, smooth end product, you can even put the mix of chocolate and nuts in your food processor and whirl it smooth. But I love chocolate too much that I won't let even a speck of chocolate waster on the walls and nooks of my blender. Do not waste, especially good stuff like chocolate!

Cool the spread thoroughly first before storing in airtight container and into the fridge. Enjoy!

Wednesday, July 18, 2012

Chocolate Muffin


This is horribly chocolatey awesome!


chocolate muffin
I like muffins. I like to try all kinds of muffins. I like muffins more than cakes for it texture is moist and denser than cake. I love that. Chocolate is my favourite flavour for anything! And I think it is the same for the 2/3rd of world population too. And I found this delicious muffin recipe from Allrecipes....as always, it is the first place I go for recipes if I wanna try to bake something or cook something. I like collaboration-style site and review-bility for anything, cooking, education, any how-to sites...because you can try to do something that you have no idea at all on how to do it and the luxury of reading reviews of people who have tried it, whether it works or not, what are the options and changes you can make to get a better outcome, what's new to try out and what flavour you dislike that you can leave out and what the difference will it make........plenty of information prior of your project!

well anyway, I didn't plan to babble a lot on this one so here it is:


and this is my tweaked recipe:

  • 2 cups wholemeal flour
  • 1/4 cups ground almond
  • 1 1/2 cups brown sugar
  • 1/2 cup dark unsweetened baking cocoa
  • 1 teaspoon baking soda
  • a pinch of salt
  • 3 eggs
  • 1 cup sour cream
  • 1 cup water
  • 1/8 cup milk powder
  • 1/2 cup vegetable oil
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
  • 3/4 cup semisweet chocolate chips
  • 3/4 cup raisin

The method is taken from Allrecipes :D In case you didn't click it, here, I copy-pasted it for you.

In a large bowl, combine the flour, sugar, cocoa, baking soda and salt. 
In another bowl, beat the eggs, sour cream, water, milk, oil and vanilla. 
Stir into dry ingredients just until moistened. 
Fold in chocolate chips. 
Fill greased or paper-lined muffin cups two-thirds full. 
Bake at 160 degrees C for 20-25 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean. Cool for 5 minutes before removing from pans to wire racks.