a simple blog about my experiments with baking, whether they be tasty and successful or go horribly wrong.

Monday, 10 January 2011

January 9th 2011 - Fudge Fingers


So today I decided to get back into the whole baking thing and decided to start with a recipe that is pretty much fool-proof by now: fudge fingers, the tried and tested chocolatey treat from way back in year 7 (so about 10 years ago). I’m not sure where the recipe came from originally, I just know that I was told to make them in year 7 at school and they taste pretty good so have carried on making them over the years, god knows where they originally found the recipe. I also chose this as I wanted something I could take to work with me and that wasn’t too hands on as when I started making them earlier today I was a bit sniffly and that seems to have now developed into a full-on cold.


Ingredients
 100g (4 oz) margarine/butter
 200g (8 oz) digestive biscuits
25g (1 oz) walnuts
 50g (2 oz) glace cherries
75g (3 oz) chocolate
1 tbsp cocoa powder/drinking chocolate
1 egg
 Foil


Method
1.   Line a square baking tin with foil.
2.   Crush the digestive biscuits in a bag with a rolling pin.
3.   At this stage you should chop the cherries and the nuts, however I’m not a fan of
       either of them so have never felt the need to include them in this recipe, but again,    
       the choice is yours. 
 4.  Melt the butter in a saucepan, over a medium heat.
 5.  Add the crushed biscuits, nuts, cherries, cocoa powder, sugar and egg to the butter and stir well to combine all the ingredients.
 6.  Transfer the mixture to the foil-lined baking tin, press the mixture level and leave to 1 side for a bit.
        7.  Break up the chocolate into a heat-proof bowl. 
        8.  Melt the chocolate over a pan of hot water, then spoon or pour the chocolate over the
              fudge mixture in the tin, and spread it over so it is completely covered.
        9.  Put the tin in the fridge to set and then cut into fingers.


 I choose to use chocolate digestives as I prefer them to normal digestives. There will be some leftover from the packet and chocolate ones are much nicer than plain ones, but its completely up to you as to which you decide to go for.
 
 

While the recipe says 75g of chocolate, when I originally did it with that amount it didn’t seem to spread that far so I usually use a larger bar of chocolate and just go with what looks right.

 
  To make it easier to cut into fingers you could cut it before placing it in the fridge, then going back over those cuts when set then enjoy :-)
 


Monday, 3 January 2011

new years resolution...bake more :-)

Hi. Not been on for a while, partly due to being ill and a very busy couple of months at uni. I haven't really baked for a while now - I did make some cheese scones a few weeks ago but didnt have my camera with me at the time and therefore was unable to take photos, so it seemed kinda pointless including it on here, I shall bake them again at some point though as they tasted pretty damn good. Also, as I wasnt at my house over christmas (only just got back to mine today) I couldnt really bake much either. I had a great christmas with my family and friends though. My dad knows I like baking things so as part of my christmas present he and my step-mum bought me a big top cupcake mould to make giant cupcakes with, some sillicone cupcake cases (never used sillicone bakeware before so will be interesting I imagine) and a set of 3 "ninjabread man" cutters to make gingerbread ninja's, which I'm super excited about for some reason, especially as they were actually on my amazon wishlist of what to get with my christmas money.

At the moment though I am unable to do any baking as my kitchen is a mess due to a problematic and apparently very leaky water tank in the bathroom upstairs, which when left unattended for just over 2 weeks had decided to soak my kitchen, leaving the plug sockets unuseable (and have actually been removed from the wall completely by an electrition who came to look at the problem) and no hot water so will see when i can have my kitchen back to some semblance of normality, supposedly tomorrow but you never know.I'ts also far too cold to do any baking in there due to no heating (when you can see your breath you know you have a problem) so i am curled up on the sofa with my quilt, hot water bottle, mug of hot chocolate and a fan heater pointed in my direction. Hope to get back to baking soon though, its been far too long.