Tuesday, April 24, 2007

Chocolate Orange Cheese cake

Ingredients
Base (personally doubled all these and made a thicker base)
4 tbsp butter, melted
115g/4oz digestive biscuits, finely crushed
2 tsp unsweetened cocoa powder

Chocolate Layer
800g/1lb mascarpone cheese
200g/7oz icing sugar
juice of 1/2 orange
finely grated rind of 1 orange
175g/6oz dark chocolate, melted

1. Grease an 8inch loose-bottomed cake tin.
2. To make the base, put the crushed biscuits, cocoa powder and melted butter in a large bowl and mix well. Press evenly onto base of tin.
3. Put the mascarpone and icing sugar into a bowl and stir in orange juice and rind. Add the melted chocolate and mix together until thoroughly combined.
4. Spread over base and chill in fridge for at least 4 hrs.

Friday, April 06, 2007

Millionair Shortbread

For the shortbread -
400 gr plain flour
250 gr butter
140 gr caster sugar

For the caramel -
1 tin Nestlé sweetened condensed milk
200 gr butter
200 gr caster sugar

For the chocolate topping -
500 gr chocolate of choice (never tried white chocolate, but both milk and plain are good)

Preheat oven to 180 °C
Grease 2 swiss roll tins
Combine all shortbread ingredients (I use a mixer) until it's like fine breadcrumbs.
Divide into 2 and press down into the 2 tins.
I use a rolling pin to get it nicely squashed down and level.
Prick with a fork and put in oven for about 20 minutes - should be very lightly browned and still soft (but will harden on cooling).
Leave to cool.
Put the caramel ingredients in a thick based pan, melt (taking care that it doesn't burn) then once melted bring to boil, stirring all the time.
Once boiling, turn down heat and keep stirring while it boils until it thickens and is pale brown in colour. (Probably about 10 minutes from first boil).
Cool slightly.
Melt chocolate (in a bowl over a pan of simmering water - bowl must not touch the water) and pour over the two tins of shortbread.
Leave to cool.
To cut - cut down the edges of the tins and tip out onto a chopping board.
Cut into squares, rectangles, whatever.
Keeps well in the fridge for a while or can be frozen too