Chocolate spice cupcake

This little beauty is a chocolate spice cupcake. It is a thing of gorgeousness yet its looks do not even begin to describe the delight of its taste.

It's also a bone of contention. This cupcake was made by my dear husband from his family's secret recipe (for a larger cake) that he has tweaked to produce these marvels.

I accepted, during the years we were together before we married, that I was not able to have the recipe. Then we married, in 1998, and still the recipe was not forthcoming. I had his children. Still no recipe. They're now nine and seven. Still no recipe, although he has hinted that he will pass it on to his daughters. One day.

Me? Frustrated. Furious (and curious).

I have observed the baking process. It involves many processes, the separating of eggs, the mixing up of three different mixes which are combined at the last minute. It involves the careful incorporation of air, the melting of chocolate. I know what goes in but not the order. It's that which is vital.

The recipe is written in longhand in a little black book which is kept hidden from curious wives. Except last week when it lay, alluringly open, on the worktop. I considered theft. I considered this blog and the posting herein of said recipe.

Then I considered the consequences.

I quietly ate my cupcake. Well, three. Maybe one day I will get that recipe.

Maybe.

Cookies and Cream Brownies

These brownies were almost impossible for me to photograph. I baked them - they vanished.

They are inspired by Lorraine Pascale's recipe in her lovely book Baking Made Easy crossed with Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's ultimate double chocolate brownies from The River Cottage Year.

What you do is cream 125g soft butter with 200g caster sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in two eggs and 50g cocoa powder.

This is where my recipe diverts with Hugh's. He melts 100g good chocolate with two tablespoons of warm milk and beats that in. I opened my chocolate cupboard and found that I had fed the cooking chocolate to the children in the form of a fondue and all that was left was a bar of Green and Black's sublime 85% plain chocolate. Now that is officially The Best Chocolate in The World and no way was I going to put 100g of it into brownies. Instead I meanly broke off a few squares (having tested it first, just to check) and I melted it with the milk and a good dollop of Tesco Value chocolate spread.

How big is a good dollop? Ah ha. I used a dessert spoon and I scooped with enthusiasm. Having cooked the brownies I can confirm it adds a certain wonderful fudginess, so don't hold back. Pause to lick the chocolate spread spoon.

Next beat the chocolate or the choc-spread mix into the butter, sugar, eggs and cocoa, fold in 75g of self-raising flour and then add a 154g packet of Oreo cookies broken into at least quarters. Spread the mixture into your brownie tin (approximately 15cm x 25cm) lined with baking parchment.

Bake at Gas mark 3/170 degrees C until nearly cooked - a skewer inserted into the middle will come out slightly sticky. Actually I overcooked the ones in the picture a little, but the chocolate spread kept them delightfully gooey.

Pile on a plate and watch them disappear!

Chocolate courgette cake and lime courgette muffins

This is a my take on a recipe from BBC Good Food's website for chocolate courgette cake. I had a look at their recipe and decided to add a few tweaks here and there. For a start I decided wholemeal flour would be a better bet. I often use wholemeal flour in recipes which use fruit or veg as I find it mops up the extra moisture better than ordinary plain flour. If you don't like the bran bits, sieve them out. I also reduced the sugar a little, changed the oil and left out the nuts. It takes about ten minutes to mix up and about an hour to bake.

Ingredients:

• 350g plain wholemeal flour
• 2 tsp baking powder
• half a tsp bicarbonate of soda
• 50g Green and Blacks cocoa powder (you can use other brands, but this is the best for this cake)
• 175ml sunflower oil
• 350g golden caster sugar
• 3 eggs
• 2 tsp vanilla extract
• 500ml (by volume, measured in a jug) grated courgettes

Method

• Combine the flour, baking powder, bicarb and cocoa powder in a bowl and whisk with a fork.
• Beat the oil, sugar, eggs and vanilla together and add the courgettes.
• Mix the wet into the dry and pour into a greased and base-lined 24cm cake tin.
• Bake at Gas mark 4/180 degrees C for 55 to 65 minutes. (Check after the first 45 mins to see how it's doing - your oven might be faster than mine.)

The original recipe tops it with a chocolate ganache which would be lovely but it's nice just sliced and served with a cup of coffee.

Lime Courgette Muffins

These are based on Flora's Famous Courgette Cake from Nigella's How to Be a Domestic Goddess. As usual I can't bear to follow a recipe to the letter and sometimes muffins are more convenient than a cake. I made these to hand around at a picnic at St Anne's Lighthouse this summer.

Ingredients

• 60g sultanas
• 250g grated courgettes, drained in a sieve
• 2 large eggs
• 125ml sunflower oil
• 150g golden caster sugar
• 225g self-raising flour
• half a tsp bicarbonate of soda
• half a tsp baking powder

Method

• Mix the eggs, oil and sugar in a bowl and beat until creamy.
• Sieve in the flour, bicarb and baking powder and beat again.
• Add the courgettes and the sultanas.
• Spoon into muffin cases in a muffin tin and bake at gas mark 4/180 degrees C for 15 to 20 minutes.

Icing

• Mix icing sugar and lime juice (I use the ready squeezed stuff from a bottle that I always have in the fridge) to a thick paste.
• As soon as the muffins are done spoon on dollops of icing while they are still hot from the oven.
• If you have an actual lime to hand, grate over a little of the peel onto the tops of the muffins.

Muffins for breakfast

I read somewhere, which was probably Nigella, that Italians eat cakes and puddings for breakfast. That seems an excellent idea to me and you'll often find us eating up the leftover Sunday pud - apple crumble and custard or sticky toffee pudding and ice cream - for breakfast on a Monday morning. It gets the week off to a great start and it feels slightly naughty (especially the ice cream bit!)

Why not though? It can't be worse than some of the sugary breakfast cereals currently on sale. I often make muffins too. They're quick and easy to make and I usually make them to use up whatever fruit is about to go rotten in the fruit bowl before we can eat it. This is usually bananas, but can be strawberries or nectarines. I usually use wholemeal flour too as it feels more wholesome and breakfasty.

Today it was two bananas. They had passed the just-spotty-and-totally-delicious phase and were well on the way to falling-out-of-the-skin-in-a-very-bananary-way phase.

So I made muffins, but not without my orders. R6 doesn't like the brown bits that really ripe bananas leave in muffins but doesn't mind the flavour so subterfuge is the order of the day. "Make them really choclatey," I was told, so I did.

Bananachocanilla Muffins

MAKES: 12 big muffins.

INGREDIENTS:

(I always make muffins in ounces for some reason...)

7oz plain wholemeal flour
1 oz cocoa powder
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
4oz dark soft brown sugar
4oz melted butter
1 large egg
4 fl oz milk
1 tsp vanilla extract
two very ripe bananas
chopped plain chocolate - about a couple of ounces, whatever is to hand.

METHOD:

1. Mix all the dry ingredients in a bowl, break up any lumps and whisk with a fork to get some air into the mix.
2. Mix the wet ingredients together.
3. Mush the bananas and add them with the wet ingredients and the choc chips into the dry ingredients.
4. Stir briefly until just about mixed. Too much mixing makes them tough.
5. Spoon into muffin cases and bake at Gas mark 5 (190 degrees C) for 10 to 15 minutes until springy on top. Eat for breakfast with a glass of milk.

If you're feeling really self-indulgent you could spread a bit of Nutella on these as you eat them but that would be VERY naughty indeed, and don't even think about putting ice cream on these too as the Diet Police will be hammering on your door...