Baked Alaskan Rasberry and Chocolate Chunk Brownies with Chambord

Whilst making this cheesecake for Norway Day we had to go to Tesco to get some supplies (namely food colouring). While wandering about the home baking section I had an idea to use up some remaining raspberries which has been frozen. While i didnt plan on making it tonight, when we got back form Tesco I had a couple drinks and half midnight seemed like a perfectly reasonable idea while I waited for the cheesecake to bake.

So heres the mix,m again, its premade, but i'm going to make it better.

The remaining pot of raspberries, delicious and defrosted.

The dry mix didnt look to have many chunks, so I improvised and found some Dairy Milk minatures in the chocolate tin. You used to be able to get a dispensing machine for kids to play with for these. Mine took 2p coins and dropped out a bar for each one. You could load half a box at a time and it made it last a bit longer, until you worked out how to unload all the coins again and just run them through or take the back off. But thats no fun.

Half a pack of those chopped into thirds made a nice pile of decent sized chunks.

Again, the mix needed and egg, some oil, and some water. Instead of water I added what was left of the chambord (just over a shot) and the raspberry mess

The mix was a bit thin due to the extra liquid from the fruit, so a few teaspoons of flour were added to bulk it out. Forgetting to use the sieve was probably an error...

... But part 1 of the instructions saved the day

The cheesecake had to be cooked in a hot water bath, and the only tin I had was an oversize cake tin. This turned out to be cakemix tight, but not water tight, so the pan I intended on using for the brownies was acting as a drip tray to stop the bottom of the oven being covered in water. As it happened the leaks were far from bad and what little escaped evaporated pretty fast.

Because of this, while I was waiting to get the pan back I had more free time, and what seemed like a good idea was to use the two egg whites left over from the cheese cake and try and make a meringue. Having never done so, and it being 1AM, i elected not to use the mixer and just put in some elbow grease.

First it got whisked to a foam and then gradually added caster sugar so as not to make it collapse. After about half an hour, heres the results. Firm enough to stand the whisk in and forming soft, but fluffy peaks. First attempt and making a meringue, first success.

In the mean time of finishing the whisking to end all whisking the cheesecake stopped leaking enough to retrieve the pan and line it with baking paper. The mix went in and hid under the other try catching the drips so it didnt get wet and would crisp nicely. After 20 minutes the brownie tray came out and I decided to put a layer of the meringue on the top as they were a bit thin at the edge.

There was just enough form the two egg whites to cover it.

Finally it went back in the oven to turn the outside a golden brown.

The Great Norwegian Cheesecake-capade

Today (May 17th) is Norwegian Constitution Day and as Sue is Norwegian, we must celebrate! In this case, she has decided we're to make a tri-colour cheese cake for the occasion and for the BBQ this afternoon. So last night became something of an escapade while making it and spawned a number of other things too.

Most cheesecakes have a crushed biscuit base, but this seemed a little tame for our adventurous step into the world of crazy cheesecakes. After a few different ideas, we settled on COOKIE DOUGH!

Being a bit rushed, we decided to use a dough mix, and make it better. The mix called for an egg, some oil and some water. Instead of water, we used a water substitute for extra flavour. After mixing, it looked a little dry, better add more...

RUM! Far better than water.

The mix came together much better and filled the tin about 1/4" deep.

The cheesecake mix was a pretty standard affair from the BBC site, with 900g of cream cheese, 3 eggs (plus 2 yolks), some creme fraiche and vanilla extract.

Mmm, gloopy.

To make the tri-colouring effect the mix was split into three bowls, and then food colouring added. At least it would have been, if I'd had any in the house. On closer inspection of the baking cupboard, the food colouring had disappeared, so we used whatever we had, That turned out to be alcohol!

The red was made with Chambord and when that wasn't enough (just a pale pink) some blended frozen raspberries from the freezer. The white was pretty simple, but so as not to spoil a good idea, Absolut Citron went in along with some lemon peel. The blue was... troublesome. While I had a lot of blue curacao in the bar and it did start making it a pale blue, the more that was added, the greener it got.

At this point, the red is looking ok after roughly half the chambord and frozen raspberries, plus some potato flour to rethicken the mixture. The white is looking as white as ever, really a sort of pale cream colour, and the blue is still pretty green and thin. More potato flour fixed the consistency, but obviously not the colour.

After an 11pm trip to Tesco Newbury we came back with blue food colouring, among other things (more on that later), and the poring could begin.

The first two colours worked perfectly, nice concentric circles, but once again, the blue wasnt done with trying to screw me. It was still a bit too thin and going into the fairly thick white layer it spilled over the top a little and didnt stay confined where it was poured. In retrospect it should have gone in before the white, or been thickened more.

But on the plus side, it did bake pretty well. 10 minutes at 180C, 40 minutes at 140C and then 10 more about 160-180 to set the top a little more.

Hopefully by the time you're reading this, i'll have cut it and can see the results of the pour in cross section. If it worked, hurrah! if it didnt, at least i've got a reasonably boozy cheesecake.

Illuminating ideas at the bar.

For a while now i've had a bar in the corner of my living-room, and its awesome! except for one problem. When you stand at the bar, you're directly between the light in the center of the room, and the drinks, so you cant really see anything while pouring.

So here's the bar:

Its still not 100% finished, but i've been waiting for a solution to the light problem to do it. Or to move house. 

The other problem is the amount of different drinks needed for a really good variety of interesting drinks. Bases and juice only go so far, which is why this happened of many years of collecting:

I've been looking at getting some strips of paper back LEDs you tear to a length, and then wire them all up, but today in Costco, we found some rope light. 18 feet to be precise for the princely sum of £13. And even better you can daisy chain them together 'safely' (so the box says) to make a single 300 foot string. 

Sadly i have no need nor space nor money for 300 feet o fit, so one strip for here and another for the kitchen has to suffice.

As a temporary fix until i can get some better stick on fixings and to make sure I hadn't wasted my money I've used some twist ties and ingenuity to fix it in place.

Happily, it looks pretty good, once it gets a front fascia to hide the rope from view from the rest of the room, i recon it'll look even better.

Next on the list is mounting the other set in the kitchen under the cupboard so I can see the worktop. Whoever designed the lighting in this house must really hate tall people. In the kitchen its right in the middle, so as soon as you're stood in front of any work surface or cupboard, you're blocking all direct light to anything. Even short people block the counter tops from light, its rubbish. But not for long...

Cider - The Second Coming

Third post of the day, perhaps mark it on the calender...

The first batch of Cider was a resounding success, but as its no longer apple season, buying loads of apples and crushing them isnt cost effective or fun outside in the cold (this was done in February, despite only being posted about in May).

So as some friends had successfully tested, using cartons of apple juice works just as well.

With this in mind I got two slabs of apple juice, 2KG of brewers sugar and a packet of yeast and started emptying the cartons into the brew bucket.

With the brew bucket full with roughly 5 gallons of apple juice, i forgot just how heavy it was, and in retrospect, shouldn't have filled it in the sink.

The SG of the contents was a bit low, so a kilo of the sugar got added to in theory bring it up to around 7-8%. Not as strong as the last brew (which was about 10%) but enough to be merry.

The bucket got put under the bar into a small tray in case of leakage and ignored until this week.

So the sugar has all fermented and its tastes pretty good, not quite as dry as the first batch, which is good.

Some of it's going to be bottles and fermented a second time to get some fizz, but the bulk is in the keg to be stored and poured as needed.

Once i've bottled it i'll post more about it.

Home Brew 101

Some friends have been making Cider at home for some time now, after finding a couple of friends who have a surplus of apples seemed like a good time to try it myself.

The basic idea is simple enough. Take apples, get juice, add sugar and yeast, leave it alone, drink. Ghettoing something for a press was an option, but in the end a quick trip to Milton Keynes for a proper press and scratter was probably the best decision ever (Thanks John and Vikki).

The scratter is basically a funnel with blades underneath that turn. The blades mesh together and tear the apples apart when the handle turns the gears, turning the blades.

A large bucket is essential :). We had just over 80 lbs to break up, once the apples were in the bucket they were compressed, but it didnt juice them as well as hoped. In the end they were mostly pulped in a food processor and then pressed.

This took most of the day to do and we eventually stopped when it got dark around 8pm. Even with all of this we didnt quite get through all of the apples or get the 5 gallons for the fermenting bucket.

We got 3.5 Gallons of juice form the apples which was pretty impressive and then topped up the rest with apple juice from Costco. You can just use all juice from cartons and it still makes nice cider.

I didnt take a picture of the hydrometer but is measures the specific gravity so you can calculate how much sugar is needed for a given target percentage. You could just add a lot of it and see what happens, but its best to have some kind of idea :). This should, in theory at least be around 10% give or take and take until the first week of December to finish fermenting.

More updates once its done and can be sampled