What do you do with 15kg of chocolate? Apart from eat it, give it away, eat some more, hide it so you don’t eat it, or share it with the dog, the best thing to do is transform it into something else. This way chomping down copious amount of chocolate is justified. Hey, it’s not chocolate I’m eating, its chocolate cake and its HOMEMADE, so much better for you.

The scenario above is not made up. Yes, Alex and I were once the owners of 15kg of rejected Cadbury chocolate. 5kg of picnics, 5kg of boost bars and 5kg of crunchies to be exact. While we thought we were very clever at the time ( “hey we can get really cheap chocolate, what flavours do you want? You cant ask me to choose, get them all!” was how our conversation went)…unfortunately we could only stomach so much before we would get to the  point of needed to be boosted out of the house having almost eaten half the  weight of a small child in chocolate

Of course we could not waste the chocolate so we decided to get creative and combine our favourite bar, the crunchie bar, into a delicious cake. (Ok I admit now that I could have chosen a favourite flavour and ended up with only 5kg of chocolate) .

The idea of the cake was to combine the flavours of honeycomb and chocolate. After brainstorming a few ideas we decided that a chocolate cake, with a buttery icing with crunchie crushed through it  in the middle, chocolate ganache on the outside and crunchie crumbled on top would meld together into a delicious representation of a crunchie bar.

And let me tell you it was delicious. I used this chocolate cake recipe from one of our favourite blogs, raspberri cupcakes. The recipe has been taken from David Lebovitz’s devil’s food cake recipe. The cake itself was made with cake flour and cocoa so it has a light fluffy texture without being too rich. This meant that the icings did not make the cake too overly sweet.

While the crunchie bars paired fabulously with the chocolate cake, the icing in the middle could also be easily adapted to use any other chocolate bar. Just an idea if you ever have 15kg of chocolate lying around….

A Slice of Family Tradition – Caramel Slice Recipe

This caramel slice recipe is the epitome of a homemade , traditional  family recipe. It doesn’t come from a fancy cookbook, a celebrity chef or from the internet, instead it has been passed down to me by my Nanna, Maureen Beall.

I grew up on this slice. It was something that Nanna would always make us when we came to visit her in Glen Innes, a small country town in north-eastern New South Wales. Or,  when she would travel down by train to Wollongong or Melbourne where we now live, she would carry this slice, packed between layers of baking paper in an old ice cream container. And let me tell you, it never lasted more than a day and we would beg her to make more.

My Nanna was born in England and apart from this caramel slice she would always make for us other traditional english treats. Think steak and deep fried chips, shepherds pie or a roast lamb with mint sauce for dinner and  then for dessert or afternoon tea  she is a master at steamed pudding, scones with jam and cream or pretty butterfly patty cakes. I hope one day that I can prefect the craft of english cooking just like Nanna.

As for the recipe for the caramel slice, it required a bit of trial an error before I finally got it right. When I asked Nanna for the recipe she told me it was in her head and that she would get my Poppy, Basil Beall to type it up and email it to me ( I guess even with a recipe like this you can’t escape the joys of technology). So Poppy did just that and I’m delighted to be able to share the recipe with you. I have posted the recipe, exactly how poppy sent it and like all handed down family recipes, there aren’t precise measurements or quantities.

A Few Tips on Perfecting Caramel Slice

That being said I can offer a few tips to you for getting this slice right but it might require a few goes to work out what works best for the size of your pan, oven etc.

Nanna uses a cookie tray that measures 32cm squared. I use a cookie tray that is about 30cm x 28cm. I find this is ok. In order to get the best ratio of base:caramel:chocolate I would recommend at tray at least this size. Anything smaller and you will have a thicker base (this is not necessarily a bad thing if you like a thicker biscuit).

Nanna also uses two tins of sweet and condensed milk for the size of her tray and so do I. Again if you have a smaller tray, have a go at using just one can.

Nanna only uses Cadbury’s milk chocolate and uses one and half blocks. I have found that for my tray size this works well. You could use one block if you have a smaller tray, again this is a personal choice. If you like a thicker top use a bit more.

Finally, Nanna always runs her fork though the chocolate when it is nearly just set. To me when we were kids if it didn’t have these fork lines, it wasn’t “Nanna’s slice”.

The final result of this slice, if you follow the measurements, is the perfect ratio of buttery biscuit crumb, sweet caramel and smooth chocolate. This definitely trumps those thick bricks of mass produced caramel slice that you can buy from cafes. We have paired this slice with Toby’s Estate coffee, ground and brewed  by Alex. The combination is perfect for morning or afternoon tea. I hope you get as much joy from this slice as I have from having it prepared for me by my loving Nanna. She is someone who I admire not only for her delicious baking but for who she is a person as well. This post is dedicated to her.

Caramel Slice Recipe

One weekend in June, Alex escaped the winter chill of Melbourne and came up for a visit to Sydney. And the Sydney weather didn’t disappoint. We had two days of sunshine, albeit it was a little cold. However with no wind or rain to dampen the day, we managed to cram in a lot into the weekend. On our early morning run we were rewarded with stunning views of the Harbour Bridge.

 On the way home I introduced Alex to whats been labelled a Sydney institution – Bourke Street Bakery. We picked up some coffees and a wholemeal sourdough loaf which became the foundation of our lunch and late nights snacks for the weekend.(word of warning to BSB virgins – the bakery doesn’t have a bread slicer, so don’t bother asking for them to slice your loaf. Alex found out the hard way when he asked  the girl behind the counter to slice the loaf “for toast”( ie thick slices) and she proceeded to slice the whole loaf by hand and put them in the toaster!)

 We also visited another Sydney icon on the restaurant scene, Ms G’s in Potts Point where we sipped alcoholic bubble tea and ate mini bah mi. The rest of  the night was a little less classy than Ms G’s when we watched and laughed at the inappropriate, Inbetweeners Movie.  On Sunday we had breakfast at a Darlinghurst local, The Bunker  and then wandered the wealthy streets of Woollahra to Donna Hay’s General Store for inspiration.

 Amongst all this we did find time to bake and  an we needed an excuse to try out my new Kitchen Aid. When thinking of what we wanted to bake, we were focused on creating something other than your usual cake or muffin and  we also wanted to experiment with some different flavours. Also being on location, we didn’t want anything too difficult. Alex had some small tarts tins that were yet to be used so we thought we would try them out. Donna Hay provided us with a recipe to try – maple cheesecake tarts.  Her original recipe uses gingernut biscuits as the base but we decided to swap spices and biscuits and used plain butter snap biscuits as the base and cinnamon on top. The flavours and textures of these little tarts was wonderful. The filling was sweet but tangy from combining the maple syrup with the cream cheese and the base was crunchy and buttery. Served with whipped cream ( which took seconds in the Kitchen Aid to make!), they were a heavenly dessert.

 Having succeeded with these tarts we are keen to find some bigger cases and make a buttery pasty so keep an eye out for more tarts to come! We also hope you spice up your weekend or (weekday!) and give these little tarts a try!

Sticky Date Pudding Recipe

The second weekend of June each year brings to me the same realisation, that winter is officially here in Australia and that it’s not going to get ANY warmer for the next 3 months! (Actually, I shouldn’t complain too much and also mention that the  second weekend of June brings the consolation prize of a day off to celebrate the Queens Birthday!)

While I don’t have anything against winter personally, I just don’t like the cold! I have to admit I enjoy the change in seasons and I love watching the tree-lined streets of Melbourne become bare and wintery as the final autumn leaves fall to their resting place on the ground. I also enjoy the fact that with a change in temperature comes a whole new array of seasonal produce and a whole new winter  menu of food to cook and enjoy! Winter is one of my favourite times to spend in the kitchen. Dinners that were once vegetables, salad and  BBQ’d meat are now able to be transformed into slow cooked casseroles, curries, pies and roasts. When it comes to baked goods, well winter is designed to indulge in richer sweets (who wants to eat cold fruit when its cold outside!) Instead think puddings, crumbles and warm cakes.

Alex had his heart set on producing a sticky date pudding way back in summer(!), so we decided to celebrate winter and our long weekend by making a delicious sticky date pudding complete with butterscotch sauce and home-made vanilla bean ice cream.

On a dreary Friday, I whipped up the puddings and I have to admit making them  was a risk as, because we were unable to locate a texan muffins pan (i.e. one that has 6 2/3 cup capacity moulds) I had to settle for some ramekins I found in my local $2 shop. I had to guesstimate the amount of mixture to put in each ramekin and I must confess that the first one I made, was pulled out of the oven with half the mixture having over flowed onto the tray. This was not necessarily a bad thing in the end as I was able to sneakily taste the mixture – it was delicious! Despite this small game of trial and error, we managed to produce the puddings and spent Sunday morning admiring them as we took the photos.

By  the afternoon we had worked up an appetite and we were treated to lunch from Hook’d with Alex’s parents, who were visiting from Hobart.  We then wandered through Chapel Street Bazaar for hidden treasures before just missing the rain shower as we walked back home.  By the afternoon, the puddings, warm, gooey and full of caramel goodness were waiting for us, begging to be eaten. They tasted divine and like all good puddings were best enjoyed when it’s cold and wet outside.  Despite the gloomy shadow of winter, I would not have asked for a better way to spend Sunday.

We hope you brighten up your winter too and make a date to enjoy these  comforting and oh so yummy puddings.