Special Occasion Gift Ideas - 2013

Prestat are purveyors of fine chocolates and truffles, and who can resist chocolates that have the royal seal of approval.  This iconic brand is sure to please.  The chocolate truffles are smooth and made from the finest chocolate.  They are presented in a beautiful heart shaped box that can be kept long after the chocolates are gone. A fabulous gift for Valentine's Day.

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Handmade - Toasted Kentish Cobnut Brittle, Toasted Kentish Cobnut Fudge, Coffee & Kentish Cobnut Fudge, Roasted Kentish Cobnut Plattinums Enrobed in Ecuador Dark Chocolate

Potash Farm - artisan, fine quality, exclusive products, made in St Mary's Platt, Kent.  The cobnut fudges melt in the mouth and the brittle is buttery and very delicious.  The chocolates are exquisite, a thick shell of very high quality chocolate surrounds the roasted kernel of the cobnut.

All the products make an ideal gift for Valentine's Day, Mothering Sunday, Easter or Christmas - for further gift idea inspiration please visit their online shop. Cobnuts are a type of hazelnut and are traditionally grown in Kent.

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Tan Rosie - Cherry Valentine's Day fudge made with fabulous Morello cherries, white chocolate, cinnamon, nutmeg and a hint of rose water. Only available until Valentine's Day. Grenadian Rum & Raisin Fudge is nice and spicy. There are lots of other treats to buy at their online shop. Tan Rosie create Caribbean food products inspired by family recipes from Grenada and Carriacou - they are based in the West Midlands.


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Chocolat Chocolat - Bouquet of Handmade Chocolate filled with their famous handmade sheet chocolate and made with the finest Belgian chocolate.  These French Style wavy sheets of chocolate are sprinkled with French Sea Salt, Turkish Hazelnuts, Freeze Dried Raspberries to all give the most exquisite flavour combinations.  These chocolates are a taste sensation.  A beautiful, special and unique gift for any occasion which can be purchased either online or from their shop in Cambridge.

Chocolat Chocolat have been voted Cambridge's favourite chocolate shop.  Pop into the shop to try samples, take a leisurely browse at all the beautiful chocolate or even book a chocolate making or tasting course.

Thank you for all the wonderful samples.

Camembert Baked in a Box

I chose my Camembert because it has a small gingham cloth under the cheese and I thought how great it looked. Cooking the cheese this way is quick, easy, delicious and perfect for Valentine's Day or in fact any day of the year.

Not very long ago I bought a Camembert and it was so smelly I actually considered stopping the car and throwing it into the nearest bin, because it made my car smell worse than an old pair of slippers - it did the same to the fridge too. The cheese in the photograph was smelly too, and it too made my car smell horrible but I learnt from the previous one, I didn't put it in the fridge and cooked it the same day.

Preheat the oven to 200°C, take the cheese out of the box and remove the inner wrapper, place back in the box, rub the top of the cheese with a clove of garlic, cut a cross in the top and pour in some white wine. I poked a few sprigs of thyme into my Camembert and then replaced the lid. Place the box onto a small baking tray and bake for 20 minutes until the cheese wobbles.

Toasted ciabiatta, french loaf, hot new potatoes, tiny cherry tomatoes, asparagus or purple sprouting broccoli all make good dippers.

Hotel Chocolat - Valentine's Day Chocolates

Head over Heels from Hotel Chocolat are a fabulous selection of chocolate truffles presented in a beautiful ribbon tied box. The box is classy and the chocolates look very classy too. Remove the lid and the aroma from the chocolates is heavenly.

A menu is enclosed with detailed descriptions for each chocolate. The chocolate flavoured truffles melt in the mouth and I especially liked Bakewell Tart with more than a dash of cherry brandy and the chocolate heart Raspberry Rapture with zingy raspberry, my recommendation is to eat the Strawberry and Black Pepper truffle last, otherwise I'm not sure you will be able to taste the others and that would be a waste of good chocolate............all that's needed now is the pink bubbly!

Here are some more Valentine's Day Gifts and lovely Chocolate Hearts to tempt you.

Thank you Hotel Chocolat.

Valentine's Day Chocolates, Cookies and Cupcakes

Chocolates are a great way to decorate cupcakes and the Hearts and Kisses and Chocolate Hearts look really pretty. The foil cupcake cases are my own and I made the chocolate cupcakes too. The Chocolate Heart Lollipop could also be used to decorate a cake.

I fell in love with Mr & Mrs Love Bears Gingerbread and the Heart Shaped Gingerbread too. The box of strawberry and vanilla mini heart shortbread's smell wonderful and will go beautifully alongside some strawberry or vanilla ice cream.

A cute selection of goodies from Sainsbury's - and there are lots of other Valentine's Day products in their stores.

Thank you Sainsbury's.

Jamie Oliver's Chocolate Love Cake with Cherries and Booze

Does the special person in your life like brownies? If so, you could make this Love Cake, a recipe from Jamie Oliver, especially for them. It has a squidgy brownie consistency, is dotted with cherries and has a boozy chocolate sauce poured over. The original recipe has crushed hazelnuts added but I like this dessert without.

Men often leave present buying until the last minute, and find it really difficult choosing presents. Why not be kind to him this Christmas and leave a list of ideas, this way at least you should get something you like. If you have a dish like mine, you can attach a craft label onto the handle with a list of your Christmas wishes! A Christmas Gift Ideas list I have put together can be found in my previous posting.

You are possibly wondering if I have done this - the answer is no, I'm just trying to help!


The dessert is quite rich and very similar to a brownie in taste and texture. I served mine with some of the reserved chocolate sauce, and a dollop of creme fraiche, which cuts through the richness.

You will need: 9 or 10 inches ovenproof dish greased.

For the cake: 2 tablespoons cocoa powder, 100g softened butter, 100g caster sugar, 1 egg, 100g self-raising flour, ½ tsp baking powder, ½ tin black cherries drained.

For the chocolate sauce: 25g butter, 142ml double cream, 75g dark chocolate broken into pieces, a splash of either brandy, rum, Amaretto or Baileys.

1. Preheat the oven to 180°C/350°F/Gas 4.
2. Mix the cocoa powder with a few tablespoons of boiling water and stir until the mixture is smooth.
3. In another bowl beat the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy, then add the cooled cocoa mixture, egg, flour and baking flour. Mix all together and pour into the ovenproof dish. Sprinkle over the cherries and bake in the oven for 25 minutes.
4. To check if the cake is ready, make sure it doesn't wobble too much then it's done, if not give it some more time in the oven.
5. To make the chocolate sauce: Place the butter in a small pan with the cream and bring to the boil. Turn off the heat and add the chocolate pieces to the pan. Give it all a good stir and leave for 5 minutes so the hot cream can melt the chocolate. Add a splash of either brandy, rum, Amaretto or Baileys and stir until thoroughly combined.
6. Once the cake is ready, pour over the warm chocolate sauce. Any sauce that is left will reheat in the microwave.

Good Luck!

Hotel Chocolat Valentine's Day Gifts

I have been sent two Valentine's Gifts from Hotel Chocolat, firstly a beautifully presented box of Melting Hearts H-Box Selection containing hearts in 40% milk, 70% dark and 29% white chocolate, decorated in twirls and swirls. The centre of the chocolates are bursting with flavour. Pistachio Praline melts in the mouth, Strawberry Love has a tangy ganache centre and Chocolate Brownie for brownie lovers everywhere. My favourite has to be the Liquid Caramel with an oozing lightly salted caramel centre.


A beautiful engraved Milk Engraved Chocolate Heart intricately engraved with love birds and made from smooth 40% cocoa chocolate. The heart weighs 125g, so no excuses for not sharing.

VALENTINE'S DAY AMARETTO TRIFLE

It's a sin not to eat trifle, at least once a year. I haven't made trifle for at least a couple of years, but to compensate I have made an Amaretto, berry, meringue and cream trifle, it was certainly worth the wait. The trifle was made with frozen berries, but I will definitely be making this again with fresh summer berries.



Meringues - just a few to break up. I used two large egg whites and 110g golden caster sugar, the recipe is here on Delia's website.
500g mixed berries - if using frozen, thaw in a sieve over a bowl to remove the excess juice.
4 tablespoons of Amaretto
250g Madeira cake - I made mine but again it is perfectly fine to buy some, don't be tempted to use trifle sponges though because you don't want soggy cake and trifle sponges will go soggy!
500ml fresh custard
300ml whipping cream, softly whipped

1. Place the thawed berries in a bowl and pour over the Amaretto, leave to marinate for 15 minutes.
2. Cut the Madeira cake into cubes and place in a large, deep serving bowl. Top with two-thirds of the fruit, and pour over the custard.
3. Pop into the fridge to firm up for a couple of hours then remove.
4. Spoon a layer of cream on top of the custard, arrange broken pieces of meringue on top of the cream and then place clouds of whipped cream around the meringue pieces.
5. Top with the rest of the berries.
6. Decorate with Valentine hearts.

VALENTINE'S DAY CUPCAKES

More Valentine's offerings, this time it is the turn of the cupcake, plus a cheeky little apron!

The cupcakes are a basic sponge mix of 125g each of butter, caster sugar, self raising flour, 1 tsp vanilla extract, two large eggs and a couple of tablespoons of milk added after the initial 'all in one' mixing of the ingredients. Twelve muffin cases are placed in a muffin tin and filled with the cake mixture. Bake at 200°C/Gas 6 for approximately 20 minutes.

As the cupcake tops need to be flat, if they peak, just cut some of the cake off. After cooling make up some royal icing to cover the tops, allow to set a little, and top with fondant shapes.

I decorated mine with red and white fondant icing, coloured sprinkles, gold disco dust and sugar roses. Let your imagination run wild to put the necessary Valentine's Day pizazz into them.


Thank you Victoria.

VALENTINE'S DAY CAKE

How about making a heart shape cake for sharing and one that is perhaps a little too pink, topped with lots of butter cream. I bought the shimmer sprinkles and silver dragees from Sainsbury's (these were made by Supercook) and planned the cake around them. The cake is simply a three egg Victoria sponge mix.

We had a family wedding yesterday morning and lunchtime was spent at the bride and groom's house for snacks and cakes before we had a 'bit of a do' in the evening for the wedding reception. As cake is my domain, I baked three quite simple cakes to take along. Everyone seemed to enjoy them and I thought I would share the cakes with you. I made the heart shape cake, a Bakewell cake and an iced lemon drizzle cake.


Cherry Bakewell cake from the February 2009 BBC GoodFood Magazine tasted as wonderful as it looked. The only alteration to the original recipe was I used Bonne Maman Raspberry Conserve instead of the suggested morello cherry conserve. If you like Bakewell Tart then you will love this.


I topped a lemon drizzle cake with butter cream and a few pastel coloured dragees. Use any lemon drizzle cake recipe, but for the 'drizzle' you will need to make a lemon syrup by placing into a small saucepan 25g caster sugar and the juice of one lemon, heat gently to dissolve the caster sugar into the lemon juice, simmer until syrupy. Prick the cake all over when it comes out of the oven and carefully spoon over the hot lemon syrup. Leave in the tin until the cake is cold before turning out.

It's perhaps best to line the cake tin first with baking parchment so that you can just lift the cake out of the tin - it makes life easier. The buttercream was made with unsalted butter, otherwise the buttercream is just too sickly.

Followers of my blog might like to pop over to read a piece by Becky Hogge who has written an article for the NewStatesman called Recipes for Twitters. Becky has given my humble blog a little mention!

Hotel Chocolat - Valentine's Day Chocolate

My name is rather naughty, I'm called a 'Peepster Box' - 'The Love Selection'.
I come in a beautiful black box with a rope handle and bright pink label with the words Season of Love.
The wonderful people at Hotel Chocolat sent me by post, to an address in the West Midlands. Unfortunately for me, I've now been eaten up rather greedily by Mr Him and Mrs Her.


Now Mr Him and Mrs Her had a wonderful time with the chocolate love slabs, tasting them on your behalf. They started with the MILK LOVE SLAB - this has a pink cherry coloured ripple, crispy feuillentine (fo-yer-TEEN) praline textured with small pieces of crispy, oven baked pancakes (crepes dentelles), decorated with sour cherries and engraved with a chocolate heart. The pink chocolate is a softer texture than the milk chocolate. Fabulous.
Next they moved onto the MILK CHOCOLATE AND WHITE PRALINE FUSION, which is milk chocolate swirled with white chocolate hazelnut praline and this just melted in the mouth.
Now it was the turn of the DARK LOVE SLAB - how beautiful this slab of mini chocolate was. It's a thick slab of dark chocolate and tinted white chocolate swirled together with feuilletine and decorated with dried sour cherries and a dark chocolate heart. Their hearts melted when they looked at this and I think it was trying to seduce them!
CROSTINI FRUIT AND NUT - this is a milk chocolate slab with cranberries, sultanas, almonds, crostini biscuit and hazelnuts. They loved the chocolate, fruit and nut combination and definitely left the best until last.
This Love Selection is perfect for sharing and a wonderful way to introduce the love of your life to the pleasures of eating exceptional chocolate.

Now Mr Him, have you thought about what Mrs Her might like on Valentine's Day?

St.VALENTINE'S DAY PAVLOVA Retro Recipe Challenge RR6

St.Valentine's Day is nearly here, but I made this for what is sometimes called St.Valentine's weekend and also for the
Retro Recipe Challenge #6 Food of Love.

BRITAIN'S FAVOURED RECIPES
BY AMBROSE HEATH (WOLFE PUBLISHING 1964)

Serves: 4 people

Skill Level: Moderate

Taste Test: The meringue was sweet and a little chewy.

This recipe was taken from the Retro Food Recipe website. The ingredients list was unusual in that icing sugar instead of the usual caster sugar was used, also baking powder was in the list of ingredients to make the meringue. I made this in a heart shaped tin which I lined with a large piece of parchment baking paper. The method was unusual in that you didn't whisk the egg whites until they were stiff as you would usually do. The sugar etc. was added to the egg whites gradually from the beginning. The addition of baking powder worried me slightly. When the meringue was cooking it rose quite alarmingly (obviously the baking powder was doing its job) - far too much for my liking. I cooked the pavlova at 140°C for 90 minutes then left it in the oven to dry out.
I took the pavlova out of the oven, turned it out - oh dear! it had a top, middle but no base! Also, the top looked like a crater. I think maybe my tin would have been more suitable for a 2 egg white mixture and not the three specified in the recipe, perhaps that is why the mixture rose too much and it didn't have a base.
The cream I used to cover the top was my usual favourite - ¼ pt of softly whipped double cream, ¼ pt of thick Greek yoghurt and 1 tablespoon of icing sugar mixed together.
What is your favourite cream?
I made a raspberry coulis to go with the pavlova - 170g raspberries, 60g icing sugar, 1½ tablespoons fresh lemon juice. Just whiz everything together, push the sauce through a plastic sieve. Store covered in the fridge - Beautiful.
Would I use this recipe again - definitely no. Would I make this again using a different recipe - yes!!
We ate it all up, even the meringue crumbs and so it couldn't have been all bad could it?

EQUIPMENT USED: A heart shaped tin.