On Dorota’s blog it’s called “brownie for kids”. It’s nothing like a brownie, but it’s very quick and easy to make, it’s light, delicious and I was able to recycle one of 2 remaining  chocolate Easter bunnies. Not much mess in the kitchen either, even though a 4 year old enthusiastic helper was involved in the making of it.

110 g of butter, melted, 110 g of chocolate added to it, I used 80 g of milk bunny and 20 g of dark chocolate., nicely combined till a thick, silky sauce appeared. 2 whole eggs gently whipped by hand with 90 g of sugar ( 110 in original recipe). Butter and choc mix added. 110 g of plain flour with 0,5 tsp baking powder added.  100 g of chopped walnuts. Into a lined tray, sprinkled with flaked almonds and into the oven. 170 degrees, 25 minutes.  Will be fab with black coffee. 🙂

Life is treating us so well lately, that at the end of the day, when the Child retires upstairs, one simply wants a mug of steaming tea and a slice of a fabulous cake.  Custard slice delivers. It’s not particularly challenging, it was the first time I’ve made custard with gelatine though. One thing- it’s quite difficult and messy to eat. Puff pastry looks great, but without a serrated knife one curses like a trucker.

Shop bought block of puff pastry, about 500 g, ready rolled out, divided in two, both sprinkled with icing sugar and flaked almonds- the almonds are a great idea, baked, they tasted great. They need to  be pressed gently into the pastry, then secured with baking paper, a heavy tray on top and into the oven for about 30 mins, 200 degrees, best to keep an eye on the edges, easy to burn.

In the meantime, the custard. I soaked 1,5 gelatine leaf, gently whipped 3 egg yolks and then added them to a mixture of 750 ml of milk, 250 ml of double cream, some vanilla paste, 100 g of corn flour, 25 g of custard powder( a first for me again, never bought it before), 100 g of sugar. All this, plus the yolks gently heated up, stirring all the time until nice and thick. Off the heat, gelatine in.

The baked pastry needed to be trimmed a little in order to fit in the tray nicely, custard onto it, pastry on top. Chilled for about 4 hours and was ready to eat.

I have to say that the custard when tasted still warm did not wow me. Not sure if it was that powder that made it taste artificial and cheap, but those hours in the fridge changed the taste for the better.  Nice one from goodfood.com. 🙂

First harvest of rhubarb from my garden this afternoon, as I craved a cake. Quickly looked through Dorota’s ideas, found what I needed, dug up some raspberries from the freezer and was ready to go. Relatively quick and very tasty cake to go with tea.

I used about 200 g of rhubarb, did not peel it, as fresh and young, chopped in small pieces. 100 g frozen raspberries, crumbled, no need to defrost.

For the cake- 1 whole egg and 1 yolk whipped up with 4 tbsps of sugar until pale and fluffy.  2 tbsps of ground almond and 3/4 glass of plain flour, a sprinkle of baking powder, some vanilla extract and then 60 g of melted and slightly cooled butter all added in and briefly combined. Onto the small tray with baking paper, flattened, fruit generously on top. And then a delicious crumble made of 90 g of ground almonds, 50 g of melted butter, 50 g of sugar, some if which was vanilla sugar. I ended up adding a sprinkle of flour to make it more crumbly.

Baked in 175 degrees for about 30-35 minutes, kitchen smelled like heaven.

This is the kind of baking I love- when Florek comes home, sticks a knife through the cake even before dinner and after dinner picks up that knife again. It will not last very long. Yum. 🙂