I'm a little too young with not enough time

During my laptop free life, I made possibly the easiest, tastiest treats ever known to man and it caused me a lot of sadness to know I couldn't instantly share the joy with all of you chocoholics out there. Fear not, because I've been saving up all of my excitement about these beauties for all this time ready to post about once I had a working laptop at my fingertips. 

I'm talking about Oreo chocolate truffles. Three ingredients, no baking, no fuss, what more could you ever need in life? 

To make these beautiful little things, all you need is:

two 154g packets of oreos (I used the ones with chocolate creme just to add a bit of extra chocolatey goodness)

1 tub of Chocolate philadelphia (they work just as well with just ordinary cream cheese but once again I decided a bit of extra chocolate wouldn't go amiss)

150g milk chocolate

To start, put the oreos in a plastic bag (or whizz them in a food processor if you're fancier than I am) and take out your frustrations on the biscuits with a rolling pin until the oreos are ground into fine crumbs. 

Pour the ground up oreos into a bowl with the cream cheese and mix together until it is all combined. 

Take a small amount of the mixture and roll into a ball. Repeat this until you have used up all of the mixture. 

Put the balls into the fridge for 30 minutes or so. 

Just before you remove the balls from the fridge, melt your chocolate in a heat proof bowl over a saucepan of water or in the microwave.

You've got a few options at this point. You could easily add lollipop sticks to the balls to turn them into cake pops as this will make the coating a bit more even all over or just leave them as I did and hope that the lucky recipients of these treats are too busy enjoying the taste to notice the imperfect presentation. 

Coat each ball in chocolate and then put back into the fridge for about 30 mins until the chocolate has set. 

Remove from the fridge about 10 minutes before serving, you could even go crazy and cover them in glitter like I did (yes, I was hoping the glitter would hide the parts where the chocolate coating had come off!)

See what I mean about them being easy to make? You'd be crazy not to give them a go! 

Stuck in my teeth- Circa Waves

Oh, my hair smells like chocolate

Eating out isn't something I tend to talk much about on this little slice of the internet. Which is kinda strange as its something I spend a slightly unhealthy amount of my life doing, I like to try my hardest to make sure any catch up, activity or day out fits around some sort of nice meal (or cake...) wherever possible. Leeds is spoiling my food obsessed little belly these days, there are so many new restaurants popping up all over the place so my list of places to try is getting longer and longer (perfect excuse to eat out even more!).

My foodie friend Coral and I went for a slightly fancier than usual meal earlier this week at Roast and Conch, a new restaurant run by Hotel Chocolat, as we'd been intrigued by the whole chocolate-food thing since it opened a few months ago. As soon as we walked up the stairs,an incredible smell of chocolate filled the room, so as far as I was concerned the night was off to a great start! 

Most people I've mentioned the restaurant to have greeted me with a confused look of "Why would you want to eat chocolate with a meal?" but its as far away from that idea as you could possibly get! Most of the dishes are infused with roasted cocoa beans and WOW it works- the cocoa is more like a spice when its cooked like this and it gave my meal such an incredible flavour! 

We were given a butternut squash soup as a bit of an amuse bouche (I'm definitely not posh enough to be able to say that normally!) which was really yummy. I picked the burger as my main course because there'd be something seriously wrong if Kaz went to a restaurant with a burger on the menu and didn't order it. Being a massive burger obsessive, I feel I can say with confidence that this was without a doubt in my top 3 burgers ever list (yes I have a list... don't judge me!). But the real showstopper with my meal were the onion rings that came with my burger and the chips we ordered as a side on the recommendation of the girl who showed us to her table who said they were by far the best thing on the menu! They were cooked in cocoa butter and OH MY GOD they were incredible and didn't taste anything like something that you'd find on the shelves of The Body Shop!

Given that I'd wolfed down my whole meal plus the chips we definitely didn't really need (but couldn't have lived without!) in record time, I was saddened to admit that I wasn't going to have room for dessert. It seemed like a crime against chocolate given the restaurant we were in as I can imagine the desserts would have been bloomin' incredible, but Roast & Conch have clearly thought long and hard about this problem so they created a 'Tray of Temptation' filled with every flavour of chocolate you could possibly ever imagine for £1 each. Funnily enough, despite my fullness, I still had room for chocolate and decided I couldn't narrow it down to just one either. I ended up with a salted caramel chocolate (which they gave me two of because it was a bit smaller than some of the others) and a raspberry and milk chocolate cup. Its amazing how quickly I forgot about having a 'proper' dessert.

If you're in Leeds and fancy somewhere a little different and a bit special (or if you've been sent a 20% off voucher through work like Coral had!), I'd definitely recommend a trip to Roast & Conch. It was one of those meals that I'll be dreaming about for months to come!

Chocolate- The 1975

If anybody wants to know, our love is getting low

 Last week, everyone at work was (semi) jokingly talking about how I haven't provided them with cake in a while, I fully blame this on the massive quantity of Christmas chocolate we still had in every corner of the office throughout January... working in education is possibly the most chocolate filled career ever. Teachers always have tonnes of the stuff! Towards the end of last week, we miraculously polished off the last of our supplies, so I agreed that we probably needed something to get us through so we weren't all experiencing withdrawal symptoms from a lack of Roses in our lives.

And so, not wanting to do things by halves, I went for possibly the most gooey, unhealthy option ever. Salted Caramel Brownies. They're quickly becoming my favourite thing in the world to make and they went down an absolute treat with everyone at work (which I'm not sure is the highest accolade really as we'll literally eat ANYTHING if its left on the table for more than five minutes!). The recipe is based on this one from The Boy Who Bakes and its surprisingly easy to do!

Salted Caramel Brownies

Ingredients:

180g plain flour

3tbsp cocoa powder

1/4tsp salt

300g dark chocolate

150g butter

150g caster sugar

220g soft brown sugar

4 eggs

1tsp vanilla extract

for the filling:

1 tin of Caramel

1 or 2 tsp salt

Preheat the oven to 160C (fan) and grease your baking tin (I'd probably suggest using some baking paper to line it with but I didn't have any in the cupboard... the brownies still came out ok though!). 

Place the chocolate and butter into a heatproof bowl over a pan of water and stir on a medium heat until all has melted.

Add the eggs, sugar and vanilla extract to a bowl, add the chocolate and mix together until smooth. Sieve in the flour and cocoa powder and beat the mixture until it is all combined. 

Pour half of the mixture into the tin, making sure it is evenly spread across the whole tin. 

Take the tin of caramel and add the salt to the tin, mixing thoroughly. 

Add a layer of caramel on top of the brownie mixture in the tin- make sure you don't get the caramel too near to the edge of the brownie- leave a gap of about 1-2 cm. 

Layer the remaining brownie mixture on top of the caramel, making sure none of the caramel is visible afterwards.

Bake the brownies in the oven for about 30 mins and then leave to cool before serving (unless you're as lazy/greedy as I am... in which case tuck in- they taste pretty damn good warm!).

Let me know if you try these!

Carry Me: Bombay Bicycle Club

Hold your horses now, sleep until the sun goes down

Yesterday was my best buddy's birthday. We celebrated with an absolute mammoth feast at Cielo Blanco in Leeds Trinity, and when I say feast I mean morefoodthanI'veeverseeninmylifebefore. Wow. Not only was there absolutely tonnes of food, but it was all incredibly tasty too- I'm a big fan of Mexican (and cocktails...) and definitely was not disappointed! If you're ever in Leeds, definitely pay them a visit and get one of the sharing boards if you're feeling hungry- the pork belly was a definite highlight! It wasn't the cheapest place I've ever been but it was great for a celebration, if you want something a bit more budget then I've road tested Neon Cactus (their more relaxed sister restaurant on Call Lane) which is a bit more budget friendly. 

Anyway, now I've made myself want to eat that all over again, the meal was followed by a cake made by yours truly. I felt as though I was under quite a lot of pressure making a cake for someone who's such an expert baker, but knew I was off to a good start when her boyfriend and I both simultaneously decided that the perfect cake for Charlie should be pig themed. Clearly we both know her too well. I'm not particularly good with icing cakes so when I found this cake after googling 'pig cakes' I managed to come up with the perfect solution to my far from perfect presentation skills.

The chocolate cake is my Granny's old tried and tested recipe. I spent many happy days with her in the kitchen as a child making lovely chocolate cakes with her. Its the only chocolate cake I ever make- nothing else compares to the taste of this and the memories I have attached to the taste.

And guess what, lucky people... I'm going to share Granny Betty's recipe for you all to try. (Piggy decorations optional...)

You will need:
For the cake:
8oz butter
8oz caster sugar
4 eggs
12oz self raising flour
2oz cocoa powder
2tbsp milk
2 tbsp golden syrup

For the icing 
(this isn't part of my Gran's recipe, she used to just melt chocolate but I decided I wanted something a little more 'mud-like'... also explains why this part is in grams... I didn't want to risk messing the quantities up by converting it!)
150g icing sugar
150g butter
125g melted dark chocolate

Preheat oven to 190C.

Cream together the butter, sugar and golden syrup in a bowl until light and fluffy. 

Once combined, add each egg one at a time, mixing after adding each egg.

Sift the flour and cocoa powder into the mixture gradually, stirring as you go. 

Then add the milk and mix together until you have a smooth consistency. I ran out of milk, having just guessed and bought a little home from work (not being a tea drinker or cereal eater I never buy milk so thought I might aswell just grab a little from the work canteen to save wasting a whole bottle!). 

Pour the mixture into a lightly greased cake tin and bake for 40-45 minutes until a skewer comes out clean.

Once the cake has cooled a little, remove from the cake tin and leave to fully cool. 

Meanwhile, melt the chocolate for your icing. Begin to cream together the butter and icing sugar and then add the melted chocolate and mix until it is all combined.

Cover your cake with the buttercream icing and then if you're making a nice little mud bath then grab some pink icing and roll into little pig shapes (this was by far the most fun bit, and they were surprisingly easy to make thanks to the help of my lovely assistant Coral) and cover the edges of the cake with crumbled up flakes.

Enjoy! 

Let me know if you try this- I'd love to hear if you like my Granny's old faithful recipe as much as I do. 

Mountain Sound- Of Monsters and Men

Because I want to see people and I want to see life

The start of the festive season, for as long as I can remember, has always been defined by a trip to York early in December with my parents. York has always been one of my favourite cities with its beautiful cobbled streets and quaint Christmassy charm, and despite the horrendous crowds, it still maintains a lovely cheerful atmosphere that you just don't experience on a Saturday in many other places.

This year, the annual Kaz and Papa T supermarket sweep style trip to Next to buy all my Mum's Christmas presents in the space of 15 minutes was replaced by a trip to York's Chocolate Story which was really interesting, largely due to the abundance of samples for visitors. I think my Mum might have engineered this chocolate filled detour to spare herself yet another year of socks, umbrellas and slippers from Next (its hard to be creative with present ideas for the woman whose mantra from mid-November onwards year in year out is "Don't buy me anything, I mean it, I don't need anything, don't worry about me"... my poor Mum agonises over buying everybody else the perfect present, god forbid we should try and return the favour).

Anyway, I was a bit too busy stuffing my face with samples  too engrossed in the Chocolate story to actually take any photos but I took plenty of pretty little pictures of festive York so I'll bore you to tears with those instead.