Hunk a chunk of choccy love!

I'm not one to get swept away in the commercialism of Valentines Day (that might sound strange coming from a marketeer!) I find it a bit overwhelming the variety of items that are Valentinised all in a bid to 'get us in the mood'. How slapping a few hearts & flowers onto a standard supermarket product is meant to do that I just don't know? That's not to say that I ignore the day, but I'd rather make something myself that feels more personal & special. As is the case for most occasions, I usually bake!

Last year I took part in a Forever Nigella challenge & tried out her recipe for Love Buns (still makes me giggle!) Click here to take a look back at that post.

So keeping with the competition theme, this year I was invited by Baking Mad to go head to head with 14 other bloggers. The challenge was to create my ultimate Valentines treat, using a minimum of 3 ingredients from a mystery box of goodies I was sent.

Where to start? What to bake? Cake? Biscuit? Brownie? Cupcake? Arrghh...too many options! Then inspiration struck me! Now bear with me on this explanation, I'm not even quite sure how exactly my brain worked it's way round to this...

I was listening to my ipod on shuffle, the Elvis track Burning Love came on. If you're not familiar with it, at the end of the song there is a section that goes, 'hunk a hunk of burning love'. My head was singing 'hunk a chunk of burning love', which made me think of chocolate, which lead me onto Rocky Road...et voila, this weeks recipe! In honour of it's inspiration I have named it,

Hunk a Chunk of Choccy Love

The ingredients I selected from my ready steady cook style package were:

A large bar of chocolate
Chocolate heart sprinkles
Giant white chocolate snowies
Pink shimmer balls
Dark chocolate melt & squeeze topping
White chocolate letters

To these I also added:

150g unsalted butter
200g shortbread biscuits (bashed up a bit into chunks)
50g sultanas
50g glace cherries
1tbsp golden syrup

1. Melt the butter, chocolate & syrup together. Stir in the bashed up biccies & fruit & stir well until all combined.

2. Line a dish with baking parchment, pour in the mixture & press down firmly. Leave in the fridge to set for 20 mins.

3. Melt the topping & spread evenly over your base, decorate at will! Pop back into the fridge to set fully.

I didn't leave mine to set for long enough before adding the topping, so some of the butter from the mixture rose up through the topping, making a bit of a mottled effect on the top. Hasn't effected the taste at all, but you might be able to see from the picture it meant the top looked a little uneven.


When it was set solid, I took the slab out of the dish & paper, wrapped it in fresh baking parchment & tied it up with a ribbon!


What I really like about this (other than it's delicious chocolatey biscuity loveliness) is you can cut a chunk as big or as small as you fancy & it lasts for ages in the fridge. It's not like cake that I feel compelled to eat as soon as possible to avoid it going stale!


Hope you like it? I'd love to hear if you have your own homemade Valentines day treats. Thanks to Baking Mad for the ingredients for my recipe. Happy Valentines Day! Rebecca x

Chocolate week, baking week, is there any week that isn't a week, cookies!

Hello. You may remember a few weeks back was National Cupcake Week, in honour of which I created some peanut butter & jam cupcakes. Well I posted a piccie of said cupcakes on the Baking Mad Facebook page & ended up winning a pack of orange flavour buttons which I probably got a bit too excited about. If you're not a fan already I'd recommend joining, they often run giveaways & competitions. The Baking Mad website is also worth a look for all things related to baking & cupcake making!

So they are the inspiration for this weeks recipe, which I created to celebrate both Chocolate Week (last week) & Baking Week (this week) It never ceases to amaze me the number of 'weeks' we actually have, although I feel there's a critical one missing. I think we absolutely have to have a 'National Eat Crisps Week' where every meal has to be accompanied by a potato based snack! Who's with me??

The orange buttons are made from cocoa butter & made a great cookie topping, I also added some natural orange essence to the cookie dough mixture to create the perfect chocolate orange cookie.

100g unsalted butter
140g caster sugar
1 egg
140g SR flour
25g cocoa powder
2tsps natural orange essence
Pack of Silver Spoon orange flavour buttons

1. Cream the butter & sugar until light & fluffy, then beat in the egg gradually until you have a lovely smooth batter.

2. Sift in the flour & cocoa powder & fold together, finally add the orange essence.

3. Place small dollops of cookie dough onto a baking sheet, add some buttons to the top. Don't worry it they look a bit squished, they'll spread out when the cook.

4. Bake in the oven at 180c/GM4 for around 10-12 minutes. Leave to cool completely & crisp up.

Looking at the finished article they would probably be quite good for a Halloween party if you were that way inclined? As my friend pointed out, there were a few of them that ended up looking like something out of the Mighty Boosh, google it, you'll see! Enjoy, Rebecca x