Five Spice Chocolate Ganache Dessert with Star Anise Infused Pineapple

What would we do without spices? Just think what you'd miss - cinnamon whirls, hot cross buns, aromatic roast duck and hoisin sauce, meat Dhansak, chilli con carne! You have to admit that the culinary world would be a very dull place if spices hadn't been found and brought back to England all those years ago!

The idea for this creation came from me thinking what would a chocolate ganache-based dessert taste like with Chinese five spice and soaked with a sugar syrup steeped in pineapple and star anise.

The sponge layers are sandwiched with the ganache and topped with small chunks of star anise soaked pineapple. If you like aniseed and a hint of Chinese flavours, you'll love this.

A big thank you to the pioneers of exploration and shipping - we owe you one!

Sour cherry amaretti (from Ottolenghi cookbook)

I absolutely love anything with Amaretto, almonds or cherries or any combinations of these great flavours which complement each other so well. So when I saw the recipe for these in the first book by Yotam Ottolenghi I couldn't resist having a go at making these.

The amaretti are really sweet but are slightly tempered by the tartness of the sour cherries which you can get very easily on the supermarket shelf.

Handmade Brioche - Ottolenghi

In all the recent snow and ice, the streets were white, the roads quiet and all around, all you could hear was the soft crunch of white virgin snow being walked across for the first time!

After walking to work for a couple of days, on the way home one night, I thought I'd stop off and get some bread but instead of coming out with a fresh crusty loaf, I left with a bag full of strong bread flour and a tin of dried yeast ready for making my own bread as the panic buying had left the shelves as empty as Old Mother Hubbard!!

Searching through for some recipes I had a yearning for making some brioche and came across this recipe for brioche loaf in Yotam Ottolenghi's book - yes another recipe from that book!

As a lot of my kitchen equipment is stored in cupboards in a "second kitchen" in our converted garage, I didn't fancy the idea of trudging through a foot of snow to get my electric mixer in so I thought I'd try making it by hand. Well, I can tell you that if you want muscles like Atlas or Popeye, then forget going down to the gym for a weights session - just get on and make some brioche with a wooden spoon!! My arms felt like bricks after 10 minutes of beating in the butter!

Anyway, the result was very nice, however, the recipe could do with more sugar if you want a nice sweet breakfast/brunch style slice.

White Cake Truffles

What do you do with left over sponge cake? After making Macey's castle cake I had lots of sponge cake left over and so I wrapped it and put it in the freezer. At the weekend, I thought I'd be creative and do something with it before it passed the normal one month limit before it started to turn into a lab specimen! I'm sure we've all been there!

First of all while it was still frozen I used a melon baller to scoop out small round balls of sponge and dipped them in dark chocolate while still frozen. They came out like mini jaffa cakes but without the smashing orangey bit in the middle!

With the rest I found a recipe for White Cake Truffles from an Australian book called Crazy for Chocolate. I then double-dipped the truffles in white chocolate - verrrrryy sweet!

Are cake orders like London buses?

Why does it seem like orders for cakes are like waiting for London buses? For months on end, I don't get asked to do any but in the last month or so, I've made two (and fitted in a holiday to Lake Garda!). The first was a fairy castle cake for Macey...



... and the other a 70th birthday cake for a family friend.


Now what number bus am I waiting for now...?

Green's Barbie Cupcakes

Most of the time, I prefer to make cakes from scratch with little or no commercial packs of Barbie or Mr Men ready to make packs. Sometimes however, when you have certain little visitors over to stay, they are really quick to knock up to satisfy some hungry little tummies.

This is what happened on Friday when we had our granddaughter Macey to stay over. She conveniently reminded her mum to pack a box of Greens Barbie cupcakes to make while staying with us. The picture shows how good they can turn out with an added unique touch of four year old decorating skills!! However, be warned that the topping is very sweet and watch that the cakes don't dry out!

Hairdryer in the kitchen? Keep your temper!

It might sound like a cryptic crossword clue but there’s more to it than that! There are lots of gadgets out there that help with lots of things in the kitchen – blow torches, mandolins, spice grinders but you might think "Is it hygienic to use a hairdryer in the kitchen?"

Well, for those who work with chocolate a hairdryer can be considered a very useful gadget in the kitchen to melt chocolate but also to reheat it when it becomes too thick to work with properly ie it starts to set or gets too thick to pour or dip chocolates properly. In other words it helps in slightly re-melting chocolate to keep it in the right temperature range to work with properly. However, be careful not to overdo it as it could bring the chocolate too much out of temper in which case you’d have to temper it again or you could burn it or have chocolate all over the walls and floor if you have it too high!

I’m sure my wife wondered why I was using her hairdryer in the kitchen and hoping I wasn’t getting chocolate in the vent or on the controls. However, a tip I learned while watching Paul Wayne Gregory at a chocolate demo in the Whitgift Centre in Croydon is to wrap the handle in cling film to ensure that any melted chocolate you get on your hands is not transferred to the hairdryer. All you need to do when you’ve finished is to remove the cling film and you have a clean handle. This can also be done with any other utensil with a handle – palette knives, scrapers.

And what other tools do you need? Well, I'll explain some of these in another post.