Why Does Easter Egg Chocolate Taste Better Than Regular Chocolate?

Despite my love of all food, I do have a slightly take-it-or-leave it approach to chocolate. However, at this time of year, I do get cravings for that sweet, milky shards of an Easter egg. It doesn't even have to be fine 70% solids chocolate. Nope, plain old Cadbury's cheap confectionary is the only cure for my sweet tooth desire.

Because there is something extra nice about Easter egg chocolate. Essentially, a shell of Cadbury's Easter egg is nothing more than a bar of Dairy Milk. But for some reason when the chocolate is in egg form, it transcends being a run of the mill chocolate bar and is elevated to a heavenly chocolatey symbol of fertility.

In all serious, like advent calendar chocolate, it genuinely tastes so much better. I always put my Easter eggs in the fridge and taking out a shard of broken brown bliss and slowly letting it melt over my tongue is pure pleasure. I think the reason it tastes so much better is due to thickness. Lovely thin, sheets of chocolate that snap satisfyingly when you break a fragment off; it's so much nicer than a breeze block of chocolate that you get everyday.

And I think the other reason is that it comes down to seasonality. Like mince pies, Easter eggs are that rare food we just don't get nowadays - something only available for a limited period of the year. With modern production we get strawberries in winter and even hot cross buns are available all year round.

The Easter egg is therefore a treat to be snatched at when the opportunity arises because, come May, you have a whole other year to wait before you can get your hands on that sweet treasure enrobed in its aluminium dressing. So whether or not I'm crazy for thinking it's nicer than regular chocolate, I'm going to crack to devour my chocolate joy with gusto whilst I can.

Oatibix Cranberry

Up there with bread and cake, cereal has got to be one of my biggest food weaknesses. I can devour bowl after bowl of crunchy bliss in one sitting. I cannot even let myself buy granola - it's so delicious I cannot walk away after one bowl and I can easily shovel 200g of the stuff down in one sitting. The worst culprit has to be Quaker's Granola, which is the cereal equivalent of cocaine.

Whilst treating myself to a trip around Waitrose (well it is Easter weekend and we all deserve something special around this time of year), I came across a boxed of reduced Oatibix Cranberry. I've been meaing to sample Oatibix for ages. I absolutely adore porridge, muesli and granola and a bowl of Weetabix is always a fantastic way to start my day (especially if you microwave it on a cold day. It goes sumptuously soggy, turning it into a delicious warming mush).

I have to say, I think I've got another contender for cereals that are hard to stop at just one bowl. (Though thankfully, it's not as addictive as granola). Oatibix are little crunchy pillows of oats that have the lovely textured taste of Weetabix with the added crunch and bulk you get from oat based products.

Studded with glistening little cranberries, they glow a ruby red from within the sandy coloured mini Weetabix, winking at you like little gems in a sea of milk and oats. They are also satisfyingly solid.

Many cereals like Special K or Cornflakes disintegrate into the milk and you gulp them down without even really tasting them. Oatibix soak up a little milk but they don't absorb it like a sponge, giving you a lovely balance between hefty crunch and softened milky oats. They also left me feeling comfortably full, rather than craving more, which is just what you want from a product that is supposed to set you up for the day.

It was just my luck then, that the reason they were reduced in Waitrose is because the cranberry version is being discontinued. Looks like I'm going to have to ration these out for as long as I can...

Easter Chocolate Fudge Cakes

Following on from yesterday's rant about cheap mini eggs, I mentioned that I made some Easter Chocolate Fudge Cakes. In my disgust at the knock off confectionary, I ended up not allowing them on top of my cakes and instead opted for Cadbury mini eggs.

This was necessary because when cakes are this good, they deserve to be royally crowned with Cadbury mini eggs, rather than being manhandled with a jester's hat of synthetic confectionary.

This recipe came from the BBC Good Food website, a digital treasure trove for the ecstatic eater, where I can lose myself for hours in the tempting array of culinary delights on offer. What with it being Easter Sunday this weekend, there was only one type of cake I would be making for work this week and hence my oven conceived these plump chocolatey babies, smeared in a sticky chocolate fudge buttercream with a nest of brightly hued mini eggs nestled on top.

I couldn't recommend this recipe enough. It requires only 5 ingredients for the cakes and a further two are needed for the buttercream and the cupcakes can be made and baked easily within half an hour. Not that you want to hurry to make these. The warming smell of chocolatey goodness permeating my kitchen made this something I could have happily have been making for hours.

The cakes were beautifully moist, dark spongy pillows of cocoa batter, but it was the buttercream that really took them to the next level. I adapted the recipe by using Chocolate Philadelphia instead of the milk chocolate because I can't get enough of this tub of creamy delight. Fudgy and gooey without being sickly, sticky and sweet without being cloying, this was a dream frosting. I'm not ashamed to admit I scraped out and ate every last inch of the glorious goo out of my mixing bowl after all the cupcakes were iced.

Plus, the cakes look so charming with their pastel eggs huddled together on top. So this is a real winner in terms of ease, aesthetics and taste.

Ingredients:

For the cakes:

140g soft butter

140g golden caster sugar

3 medium eggs

100g self raising flour

25g cocoa sifted

For the icing:

85g milk chocolate, broken (I replaced this with some Chocolate Philadelphia).

85g soft butter

140g icing sugar

Plus 2x 35g bags of white chocolate malteasers and min foil-wrapped chocolate eggs. I, however, used mini eggs instead.

· Heat oven to 190C/fan 170C/gas 5 and put 16 gold cases into a fairy-cake tin. Tip all the ingredients for the cake into a mixing bowl and beat for 2 mins with an electric hand-whisk until smooth. Divide between the cases so they are two-thirds filled, then bake for 12-15 mins until risen. Cool on a wire rack.

· For the frosting, microwave the chocolate on High for 1 min. Cream the butter and sugar together, then beat in the melted chocolate. Spread on the cakes and decorate with Maltesers and chocolate eggs.

http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/3481/chocolate-fudge-easter-cakes

The Dangers of Cheap Confectionary - Why only Cadbury Mini Eggs will do

It was my own fault really. Usually, I never buy food based on how cheap it is or if it’s on promotion. I’ve always been a strong advocate that it is worth paying that bit more for something you will actually enjoy. And I don’t mean that in a food snob sort of way because I sadly don’t have the money to be able to be one. People may think I’m a foodie, in reality I’m just greedy.

In an ideal world I would buy literally all my food from Waitrose and M&S but this isn’t an ideal world so I have to mix my Waitrose Pumpkin Falafels and M&S Cherry & Almond Frangipanes with stuff from Morrison’s, Sainsbury’s and Asda (but never Tesco. I could go into the reasons why but frankly that would take at least a whole post to itself).

As part of my leisurely weekend bakeathon, I decided to make some Easter Chocolate Fudge Cupcakes (and I will be posting about these later in the week). Of course, no Easter cake would be complete without being adorned with the speckled beauties that are mini eggs.

Now usually I would buy Cadbury Mini Eggs. If I’m honest, I’m not really a fan of Cadbury chocolate. There’s nothing wrong with it, but, at the same time it never delivers that smooth, silky bliss that only really good chocolate can deliver. However, I do like their mini eggs - bright, colourful sugary shells protecting a dark, sweet core of chocolate joy.

Like I said I would usually have bought these and at 100g for £1, buying the 200g I needed for the recipe would hardly have broke the bank but for some reason I ended be drawn against my will into buying some ‘Sweet Heaven’ chocolate eggs at £1 for 200g.

So for the sake of a pound (though the price of the Cadbury ones was 200% of the Sweet Heaven ones) I went for the bargain basement eggs. What could go wrong I thought? Chocolate = good. Sugar shells = good. It’s a pretty simple formula.

How wrong I was. These were the definition of cheap, nasty, potent confectionary. The shells were brittle and shredded my mouth and the chocolate didn’t even taste of chocolate, just a cocoa-ey sugary chemical formula. I didn’t want these sugar bullets ruining my Easter cupcakes so I didn’t even end up using them (though admittedly, despite hating them, I did shovel a fair few in my mouth - they had that addictive quality that E number riddled candy has).

It just goes to show, it’s just not worth scrimping on food. Food is to be savoured and enjoyed and to do that you need to be prepared to splash out. Scrimping and being miserly only ends in mini eggs that are more like chocolate bricks than chocolate bliss so be warned!

Lorraine Pascale's Doris Grant Loaf

The weekend is always the perfect time for cooking and I love nothing more than to lose myself on a Saturday afternoon in spending time on a more involved recipe. Weekends offer the chance to do the type of cooking that we regrettably just do not have the time to do during the average week. It is a time when cooking becomes what it should be about, pleasure and the love of eating, rather than just throwing something together to fuel yourself for another day. For me, the weekend is about baking, in particular cakes and bread.

I'm a complete carboholic. I could never contemplate doing something like the Atkins diet. To exist without dense doughy sourdough, golden, crusty baguettes smeared with butter or bulging muffins bursting with chocolate chips or brilliant blueberries is just unthinkable.

One of my favourite baking bibles is Lorraine Pascale's 'Baking Made Easy' and today I made the Doris Grant Loaf. I've actually made this several times but I have such loaf love for this bread that I find myself always coming back to it, instead of trying the other bread recipes in the book.

Dense, deeply brown, textured but soft, grainy bread encased by a shell of satisfyingly crunchy crumb. This bread ticks off everything a carbomaniac could want. I prefer wholemeal bread generally and this is in a 'whole' different world to the pappy, soggy excuses our supermarkets palm off on us, wrapped in clinical polystyrene bags. The fact it is also a bread that you don't need to knead makes this a charming, leisurely Saturday afternoon activity rather than a strenous work out.

Frankly, this bread is so good, I literally needed nothing else with it to make a divine lunch. Well, actually that's a lie, I did have one little supplement - a pot of gleamingly golden extra virgin olive oil with a little puddle of dark, powerful balsamic vinegar to dunk my bread in.

And this bread is so soft and tender that it absorbed my little bath of oil and vinegar like a sponge. Popping warm slices of homemade bread in your mouth with olive oil dribbling down it -there's no finer lunch.

Ingredients

• 225g/8oz strong white bread flour, plus extra for dusting
• 225g/8oz strong wholemeal flour
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 x 7g sachet fast-action dried yeast
• 1 tbsp clear honey
• 300ml/11fl oz warm water
• vegetable oil or oil spray, for oiling
• a little milk, for brushing

Preparation method

1. Dust a medium baking tray with flour.
2. Sift the flours into a large bowl and reserve the grain – the brown bits that are too big to fit through the sieve. Add the salt and yeast, then make a big hole in the centre and pour in the honey and water. Mix well to form a smooth dough, working it gently with your hands if necessary. If the dough feels a bit stiff, add an extra two tablespoons of water. Shape the mixture into a ball and place on the prepared baking tray. Make sure the top is smooth and wrinkle-free. Cover the dough loosely with oiled clingfilm, making sure it is airtight, and leave to rise in a warm place for a good hour, or until it has almost doubled in size.
3. Preheat the oven to 200C/400F/Gas 6. Remove the clingfilm from the dough and make a few slashes in the top with a sharp knife – I use a sharp, serrated knife and saw gently. Brush the loaf with milk, sprinkle with the reserved grain and then place in the oven.
4. Put about 10 ice cubes into the bottom of the oven – they will produce steam, which keeps the crust from hardening too quickly. (A quickly hardened crust prevents the bread from rising well.) Bake the bread for 30–40 minutes, or until it has risen, sounds hollow when tapped underneath and comes easily off the baking tray. Remove from the oven and leave to cool on the tray.
5. Serve fresh from the oven with loads of butter. These loaves do not keep well. However, if the whole lot does not disappear in one sitting, slice up the remainder and put it in the freezer to eat as toast.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/doris_grant_loaf_16985

Harissa Chicken Breast in a Foccaccia Bun with Caramelised Red Onion

This is barely a recipe at all. In fact, just reading the title of this post is pretty much it.

For a delicious lunch today, I simply took a chicken breast, bashed it with a rolling pin to flatten it and then rubbed it in a good tablespoon of lovely, earhy harissa paste.

Whilst leaving it to marinate, I took a foccaccia bread roll, which I got from the in store bakery at Waitrose, drizzled it in a little olive oil and then toasted both sides in a griddle pan over a medium-high heat.

I then swapped the now crispingly crumbly foccaccia rolls and kept them warm in the oven whilst I cooked the spicy chicken breast in the griddle pan. Then it was a case of putting the bird in the bun and smearing liberally with the gooily tangy caramelised red onion chuntey I bought from M&S (this stuff more than warrants its £1.99 price tag).

Andf that was it. But I can't describe how good this was. The crunch of the bread that had the depth of the olive oil pemeating it, the juicy chicken enlivened by the fiery heat of the harissa and the sweet sharpness of the chutney: three components each giving the most perfect mouthful of food.

Butternut Squash

Today's inspirational ingredient is the Butternut Squash. Big, bulging beasts of a vegetable with a cheering mellow orange flesh lurking underneath that smooth, tough exterior.

What inspired me to have Butternut Squash tonight was a simple idea I saw in Delicious Magazine. You just cut your Squash into chunks, put it in a roasting tin and annoit in with the golden lubricant that is olive oil. Then, simply add a good dollop of heat with the help of some harissa paste and after roasting in a hot oven for 45 minutes, I had a comforting but healthy supper that left my stomach feeling as warm and glowing as the yielding Squash flesh.

All of that with no effort - now that's what I call a result. The beauty of this was that you do nothing, the oven takes care of transforming the hard, firm Squash into a blissful bath of sweet tang. I didn't even pother peeling it.

And whilst we're on simple ideas for Butternut Squash, here's another one of my favourite standby ideas, courtesy of Nigella:

Roast some diced Squash with olive oil and thyme in a hot oven. Take out and then crumble over some salty nuggets of blue cheese and scatter over some toasted crunch courtesy of some pecan nuts. Again, nothing to it but I really cannot describe how comforting this is.