Sloe gin truffles and other chocolates

The kitchen really is the workroom of the house.  Nothing brings that home to me more than the last week, where I seem to have been on a production line of chocolate goodies and other meals.  I started the week making chocolate brownies for the choir's Christmas Social, went on to make sloe gin truffles and finished with another round of coconut rough.   Everything smells of chocolate!  With the exception of a few brownies, I haven't been able to face eating any of them.

My sloe gin recipe and sloe gin truffle recipes come from a wonderful website called Sloe.biz.  I've mentioned them before.  Unfortunately, when I went to give the link to some friends earlier in the week - and again, today - I got a 508 error message, "Resource Limit is Reached".  I am not trying to plagiarise someone-else's recipe, but in order to preserve them for posterity, here are my versions of  SloeRanger's Sloe Gin Truffle recipe and Sloe.biz's Sloe Gin recipe.  You have to start with the gin:

Sloe Gin

Buy a litre bottle of gin.  Drink half.  To the remainder in the bottle, add a wine-glass full of castor sugar (approximately 5oz or 150g).  Then add sloes - see note - until the liquid is back to the neck of the bottle.  Put the lid back on and shake violently.  Place bottle in a cool dark place, shake daily for a week then weekly for 3 months.  Gin is ready to drink in 3-4 months but can stay steeping for up to 9 months.  (Apparently it gets musty after that.). When ready, tip the gin into a large jug or bowl - something with a pouring spout, ensuring you get all the sloes out of the bottle.  Recant the gin liquid back into the bottle, straining it and saving the sloes.  It's now ready to drink but will keep for months.

Note - for best effect, the sloes need to be pierced before use.  Alternatively, freeze them overnight because that will split the skins.  You can put them in the gin frozen.

Sloe Gin Truffles

This is best made with sloes that have steeped for 3-4 months, no longer.  To "stone" your sloes, peel them with a knife.  I've tried a cherry stoner and they're usually too small to fit.   Once stoned, the sloe flesh can be frozen for months until you are ready to make truffles. Also, I make multiples of the recipe, since I usually make multiple litres of sloe gin at a time.

Ingredients

25g butter
75ml double cream
225g 70% dark chocolate, broken into pieces
75g stoned sloes, chopped up (I use the blender)
2 tablespoons sloe gin

To finish:  100g 70% dark chocolate

Method

1. Place the butter and cream in an appropriately sized saucepan, over gentle heat.  Bring slowly to the boil, stirring constantly.  Boil for 1 minute then remove from heat.
2. Add the chocolate and stir until melted.
3. Mix in the sloes and the sloe gin.  Be careful with the gin - melted chocolate will seize when exposed to water, so add the gin gradually to stop the mixture splitting and stir like mad.
4. Tip the mixture into a swiss roll tin and refrigerate for at least 2 hours or until solid.
5. Line cookie sheets with cling film.
6. Using a teaspoon, break off pieces of the filling and roll into balls with your hands. (Wear gloves.) Arrange on the cookie sheet and put back in the fridge to chill again for half an hour, minimum.
7. Suspend a bowl over a saucepan of  water and bring to the boil.  Melt the coating chocolate in that.
8. Using two desert spoons, roll/dip the truffle balls in the melted chocolate.  Place the coated balls back on the lined cookie sheets and chill.
9. With any leftover chocolate coating, make coconut rough.

The original recipe says that it makes 40 truffles. 

- Pam

Recipe Tuesday - Chocolate Brownies

(Yes, I know the date stamp below says "Wednesday", but as I type this on Wednesday morning it is still Tuesday evening in California, so I figure this squeaks under the wire.)

Everywhere I've worked in the UK, it's traditional for the birthday girl/boy to bring cakes into the office to celebrate their birthday.  Breaking with the shop-bought norm, a couple of weeks ago I decided I'd bake chocolate brownies, which is what I took into the office on Monday.  They went down a treat!

In the end, I had to make two batches on Sunday.The first batch  were too gooey - our combi oven is on its last legs (we've ordered a replacement) and didn't hold its temperature well, so I got the timing wrong for it.   For the second batch, I used a proper oven - the fan oven on the stove - and they turned out perfectly.

Chocolate Brownie Recipe - makes 16 - 20

Ingredients:

110g dark chocolate  (I used 50% stuff from Lidl)

110g butter

225g self-raising flour (or 225g plain flour plus 2 teaspoons baking powder)

40g cocoa powder

275g soft dark muscovardo sugar

4 eggs, beaten

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 180C.
2. Melt the chocolate and the butter together in a medium sized saucepan, over a low heat.  (Or use a large bowl suspended over a saucepan filled with boiling water.)
3. Stir in the sugar and keep stirring until combined.
4. Remove the pan from the heat and whisk in the eggs.
5. Add the cocoa and flour (plus baking powder if using).  Whisk until all ingredients are combined and there are no lumps.
6. Line a large rectangular baking dish with silicon baking paper (I think mine is 30cm by 20cm and 2cm deep).  Pour in the mixture.  It may not spread all the way to the edge.  Don't worry about that.
7. Bake at 180C for 15-20 minutes.  If you stick it with a knitting needle, the needle should be slightly sticky but not covered in goo.  Turn out onto a cake rack and allow to cool.
8. Once cool, cut into 16 or 20 squares.  Store in an airtight container.

Notes

Mixing - I mixed this by hand using a balloon whisk.

Flour - I used what I have in stock, which is wholemeal chapatti-bread flour and added baking powder.

Eggs - The second time I made this yesterday, I only had 3 eggs.  Turned out slightly stiffer and a fraction smaller but otherwise fine.

Time - takes 5 minutes to measure all the ingredients.  Another 5-10 minutes to melt the chocolate and butter and combine everything into a batter.

Doubling up - The first time I made this recipe, four months ago, I made a double quantity.  It works well but you get a lot of brownies.  

Enjoy!

- Pam

Happy Chocolate Festival Everybody

For the non-Christian, Easter is all about chocolate. No matter what you believe, it's hard to resist it's siren call. Easter eggs are everywhere.

We'll be visiting family and friends for the next few days and I'm taking along my Dad's absolute favourite chocolate: Coconut Rough. I've never seen it for sale in the UK, but if you're ever in Australia in winter, look for a branch of Haigh's Chocolate Shops - they'll sell you some. (They don't make it in summer because it melts too fast.)

Coconut Rough

375g chocolate, either drops or bars broken up (I use 50:50 70% dark chocolate : milk chocolate)
60g copha (pure distilled edible coconut oil, sold white and hard in a jar or bar)
3 cups of desiccated coconut

Method

1. Break the chocolate up into small chunks if necessary.
   
2. Line a couple of baking trays with non-stick/silicon paper.
   
3. In a bowl suspended over a saucepan of boiling water, melt the chocolate and the copha and stir well to combine.
4. Stir in the desiccated coconut until well incorporated. Switch off the heat.
5. Drop teaspoonfuls of the mixture onto the lined baking trays. Refrigerate until hard. It makes 30+ generous dollops. Here are mine just before I put them in the fridge to harden.
   

Store in the fridge.

Enjoy!

- Pam