Wednesday 12 February 2014

Cadburys Creme Egg Brownies

I found this recipe after someone shared it on Facebook, and I knew straight away that I would be trying this recipe out. You can find the recipe here.

With this recipe, luckily I had most of the ingredient already. Only needing to buy the Creme eggs and cooking chocolate. You may have heard me talk before about money saving, on this occasion I was able to get both items from Aldi, which made them quite a bit cheaper than me having to go to a different supermarket.






I put the creme eggs in the freezer for about 10 minutes, while I was making the brownie mixture. I had seen people commenting that the eggs melted during cooking. Once the mixture was made, I poured it in the prepared baking trays, and then pushed the creme eggs down into the mixture, and in to the oven they went. I was nervously checking them as they cooked, and the eggs held their shape, much to my relief.
Once out of the oven, I allowed them to cool before I made the white icing for them. Before I put the icing on the top I marked wear the eggs where, so I knew where to cut once all the icing and chocolate topping had been added to the top of the brownies.
Once it had all set, them came the moment of truth, cutting the brownies. My marking had worked so each brownie contained half an egg and the eggs had held there shape. The white and yolk in the eggs had melted a bit and reset, but on the whole I was pretty pleased.

I discovered that leaving them out at room temperature to go a bit gooey before eating was a must and they were very good :-)

Saturday 1 February 2014

Deep Pan Pepperoni Pizza

One of my favourite meals is a fresh large deep pan pizza from the pizza counter at our local supermarket. However, the last few months they have had a supply issue for their large pizza bases, meaning limited or little choice, so an unhappy Lucy.

After complaining to Tim (he does well to put up with me), he suggested I just made my own from scratch. Why didn't I think of that? The first and hardest task of this operation was finding a reasonably priced 14 inch deep pan pizza tray, as none of the high street stores seemed to sell them , luckily Ebay came to the rescue and my new pizza pan was on it's way.

So with Ingredients ready and pizza pan delivered I was ready to go. I started by making the dough, I'm not that experienced at using yeast to bake so it took a while to get the dough right and a while longer to kneed the dough. I left it for an hour to rise and it seemed to do what it was meant to do so I was quite happy.

After the dough was rolled and and placed in the bottom of the pizza pan,it was time to add the topping. As well as pepperoni, I also added some green chillies to give it a bit of a kick (that they did, must remember to cut the up smaller next time!).

I had purchased a mozzarella ball instead of grated mozzarella for the top of the pizza. I did try to grate the mozzarella ball, it worked reasonably well but will remember to get grated next time. With that on the top along with parmesan shavings it was ready for the oven.

15 minutes later and I was very happy with the result. The base had risen pretty well, and the pizza was nicely cooked.

Now to test it, the base was so light and much nicer that the shop purchased ones (think I might be converted to homemade pizzas every time). The topping was also just right, not too much cheese and nicely spicy.