Delicious Chocolate Brownies

Recently, I searched high and low for a chocolate brownie recipe that would cater for both a nut and gluten allergy. I couldn't find something (they all either had nuts or 'normal' flour) so I adapted a recipe from BBC Good Food - see their recipe here.

Carrot Cake Mini Cupcakes

This is my go to recipe if I need to bake for a nice occasion such as a christening or birthday party. They are nice and small (even though a little bit more work) but make nearly 90 mini cupcakes and therefore feed a lot of people. Guests rave about them and also complain that they are on a diet while slipping the 5th one into their mouth whole. It's great!

Party Food

We love entertaining! Having guests over in our place, feeding them good food, some really good cocktails and always great chat, it's a perfect night in my view!

We love coming up with ideas for food and spend the days prior to it discussing recipes and ideas for what we could do. As many of the guests overlap on these nights, we need to constantly think of new ideas. Saying that, we always make two dishes that have been tried and tested at our previous parties. These are great as you know how to cook them well and they act as fall backs in case your new recipes go haywire!

The last party we had was a few weeks back, and our safe bets were chicken wings & potato skins. The skins are great as they can be prepared well in advance, so you can just pop them into the oven as your guest arrive. 

Our new recipes were mini pizzas and jalapeno poppers. We also tried a new way to display the dessert - gluten free chocolate biscuit cake!

With the mini pizzas - we started by buying a pizza base. (I could have made a pizza dough but this was a nice and easy cheat to save time and energy.)

I cut the pizza base into small circles (about 2 inches in width) using a small glass to indent & cut, and a knife to free any stubborn pieces not coming away with the glass. I popped these onto a tray lined with baking parchment and put them into the oven at 180 degrees for 10 minutes. This allowed the mini bases to crisp up.

Once they were crisp enough, I took them out of the oven and spooned about a table spoon of pizza sauce (passata mixed with tbsp of oil and herbs) onto the base. On top of this I put pieces of mozzarella and then a slice of pepperoni or some sweet corn. I also added a sprinkle of oregano on top.

These went back into the oven again for about 10 - 15 minutes until the cheese was melted enough and the base had crisped even more.

*To cater for our Gluten Free friend, we used Gluten Free (GF) pita breads as some of the pizza bases out there for coeliacs are terrible.
We cut these out using a glass/knife as well (being careful not to use the same glass/knife/chopping board as we used for the 'normal' pizza base as that contains gluten and will contaminate the GF food). 
We used a separate tray for these mini bases and used the same ingredients as the mini pizzas. They worked perfectly.*

For the Jalapeno poppers, we used both jalapenos and sweet peppers. 

These were the poppers pre-oven. Again these can be prepared hours in advance.

We started by cutting the peppers into half, length-ways. Then de-seeding the insides. We then spooned some Philadelphia cream cheese into the centres and closed the peppers again. 

The peppers were then wrapped in streaky bacon, and we stuck a toothpick into them to secure them together.

We placed these on a rack in a tray and into the oven (set at 180 again but this time turned to the grill-oven setting). These took about 15 minutes in the oven, turning once. The bacon should be crisped up and the cheese inside should be melted.

We lost one or two of these to the tray because either the toothpick or bacon weren't holding it together tight enough. Lesson learned!

Everyone loved these! Before hand I had thought that they may be the only item left on the table after the night, but they were devoured! And because they were de-seeded, they weren't too spicy!

The final piece was the dessert. I had made the gluten free chocolate biscuit cake before, so we decided to do up the display of the dessert this time. We also made this gluten free, so that everyone could enjoy.

We had some sherry glasses from IKEA so I spooned some whipped cream into these glasses and placed a large slice of chocolate biscuit cake on top. There were 'ooooohs' and 'ahhhhs' when they were brought to the table, which is really what you are looking for isnt it?

Baked Crunchie Cheesecake

I was looking for a baked cheesecake to make for a dinner party we were throwing. One of the guests is Coeliac and therefore my choice had to be a careful one.

I had posted before about a Gluten Free Crunchie Cheescake that I had made but this time I was looking for it to be baked!

It turned out really well and is able to last in the fridge for days. It didn't make it that long though as we devoured it over the space of 24hours. 

Ingredients:

300g Biscuits - chocolate digestives, bourbons, etc (gluten free or normal)

100g butter, melted

5 Crunchie Bars

300g Sour Cream

500g Philadephia Cream Cheese

115g Caster Sugar

3 eggs

1.5tsp Vanilla Essence

Method:

Preheat fan oven to 170 degrees

Put the biscuits in a bag and crush util broken down into small pieces. 

Add the melted butter to the biscuits and mix.

Pour the biscuit mixture into the tin (I used a 10" tin with a pop out base) and pat down with the back of the spoon.

Bake in the oven for 10 mins

Beat Philadelphia, Sour Cream, Vanilla and Caster Sugar in a bowl. 

Add in crushed Crunchie Bars and mix.

Add eggs and mix again.

Pour the mixture on top of the cooled biscuit base in the baking tin and bake in the oven for an hour. The cake will feel a little under done if you feel the centre of the cake. This will firm up when cooling.

Let the cheesecake sit in the oven for a few minutes with the oven off. Remove and let it cool at room temperature. Then move to the fridge. For best results refrigerate overnight. 

Gluten Free Crunchie Cheesecake

I was looking for a Gluten Free (GF) cheesecake. I couldnt find any that had chocolate bars in it, so knowing that the Big Crunchies (40g bars) were GF (the small bars are not) I decided to find a crunchie bar cheesecake recipe and adapt...

Turned out YUM, as you can see :)

I found the recipe on the Channel 4 website from the 'Come Dine With Me' section.
Here is the link: http://www.channel4.com/4food/recipes/tv-show/come-dine-with-me-down-under-recipes/josie-s-crunchie-bar-cheesecake-martini-recipe

I replaced the biscuits with gluten free digestive biscuits and made it in a 9" tin instead of the martini glasses in the original recipe.

Ingredients:
375g full fat soft cheese (I used Philadelphia)
50g caster sugar
3 tsp vanilla extract
3 tsp powdered gelatine
3 x 40g Crunchie bars, crushed
300ml double cream

For the base:
300g gluten free digestive biscuits, crushed
75g Butter, melted


Method:
1. Melt the butter and add to the crushed biscuit and mix. 
2. Pour the mixture into a greased 9" tin and press down with the back of the spoon
3. In a separate bowl, mix the cheese and sugar together until creamy. 
4. Add the vanilla extract.
5. Place the gelatine in a small bowl and add 2-3 tbsp of boiling water, or enough to dissolve the powder.
6. Mix into the cheese and sugar mixture
7. Fold in the crushed Crunchie bars (at this point you can hold back a small bit for decorating the top of the cake)
8. Whisk the cream in another bowl and once it has formed soft peaks you can fold it into the cheese mixture.
9. Put in the fridge for at least an hour before serving.