What’s Your Guilty Pleasure

Regardless of our refined our tastes may be, we all have a few guilty pleasures. Foods that we just love even though we know we shouldn't. I am very much against processed food, but there are some to which I just can't seem to shake my addiction! I have to admit that a lot of these were introduced to me on my trips to the US, like Twinkies, peppermint patties and potato bread. Even now back in Zambia I crave potato bread hot dogs. I also love canned pasta, especially Heinz Macaroni Cheese. When I was in Italy I fell in love with Kinder Brioche, a type of oblong cake that Italians like to eat for breakfast. Again I still pine after these tasty sponge cakes that are just wonderful dipped in coffee and I wonder why they have never been for sale in the UK. Then of course the ultimate sin – pork fat (crispy) and roast chicken skin. Most of my guilty pleasures are comfort foods or foods that remind me of a particular time in my life. Sometimes it's just reverting back to my childhood, who doesn't want to do that every now and then?

So, share with me, what's your list of guilty pleasures?

Best Brownies

THIS IS A YELLOW RECIPE

I have a good friend to thank for this recipe for brownies. A decent brownie is a very special thing and so often I find when I buy brownies they are either far too sweet of dry and spongy (basically like a chocolate cake). These brownies are dense, dark and chocolatey as any brownie should be. I use walnuts for these because I think the slightly bitter taste goes so well with the chocolate, but also because the brownies my mum used to make had walnuts in too.

8 tablespoons of butter

A 100 gram pack of chocolate – 70% cocoa solids

¼ cup of cocoa

1 cup of sugar

2 eggs

1 tspn vanilla (optional, I suggest substituting for espresso for extra depth)

Pinch of salt

½ cup flour

Handful of nuts

Pre-heat the oven to 160 °c

Melt the butter with the chocolate and cocoa

Add the sugar, leave to cool (if you're impatient, plunge saucepan into cold water)

Add the rest of the ingredients and beat well

Pour into a lined tin (I use a loaf tin)

Bake for about 40 minutes, until the batter is set and starts to smell cooked

Don't do the skewer test because you want the mixture to be a little undercooked

Chocolate Almond and Fig Clusters

THIS IS A GREEN RECIPE

This is the perfect snack, the chocolate is the 70% cocoa kind, so less calories and the almonds and dried figs are sweet, crunchy and very good for you.

Melt your chocolate 100 gram chocolate bar in a bowl over hot water

When melted add enough almonds and chopped up figs so that they are covered in chocolate and there is no excess chocolate in the bowl (like when you make rice crispy cakes) – ½ cup of each or more

Use a teaspoon to spoon the clusters onto a greaseproof paper lined tray or plate

Put them in the fridge to set

When cold and hard store in a rigid container in the fridge, they can last for ages if they are not eaten up in a few days!

*you can use half dark and half milk chocolate if you find the chocolate too rich but this will increase the fat content*

Since I live in the Southern Hemisphere, you would imagine that hot chocolate is not the best choice for the time of year being as it is hot and humid. However it is also the rainy season and when it rains it definitely cools down and then hot chocolate doesn’t seem like such a bad idea.
I’d also heard that really good quality hot chocolate is a great pick me up and is filling, as well as tasting wonderful.

The first time I tried this it was very satisfying and stopped me snacking all afternoon, however in the morning I was hungry a couple of hours after (but I also didn’t use quite enough chocolate that time, maybe that’s why). Either way, make this with low fat milk or soy milk and your calorie intake can’t be massively high. I also imagine almond milk would be really good too.

Use a chocolate bar high in coco solids, a standard large one should last about 4 cups.

2 heaped dessertspoons of grated chocolate (or break into chunks) *
¼ tsp each of dry ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg
1 couple of drops of vanilla
2 tsps of golden cane sugar
½ mug of milk

Heat all the ingredients together in a small saucepan until the chocolate has completely melted. Make sure you stir well to blend everything together – enjoy!

*Experiment with amounts of chocolate because everyone's taste is different*

Treacle Chocolate Ice cream

My previous attempt at ice cream was not too successful, I lost patience with having to stir it regularly for hours to break up the ice crystals so it became too hard and the flavours weren't right. To be honest, this is second try is not really ice-cream, more like a frozen pudding, the end result is much smoother and denser than ice-cream, but until I get an ice-cream maker, it will do quite nicely. Of course, the condensed milk makes this very sweet and I recommend a chocolate with a high cocoa content so that you get a more chocolatey and less sugary end result. The treacle or molasses adds a great depth and nice liquorice aftertaste. This makes enough for two, I put them in two separate plastic containers as individual servings.

1 can of condensed milk

Fresh milk – enough to fill the empty condensed milk can

90g of dark chocolate

2 dessertspoons of treacle/blackstrap molasses

• Combine the milk and condensed milk in a pan over a moderate heat
  


• Add the chocolate broken into pieces
  


• Stir until melted
  


• Add the treacle and blend well
  


• Continue to heat the mixture until you have all the ingredients combined well with no streaks
  


• Simmer for a few minutes
  


• Pour into you plastic container or containers
  


• Wait for it to cool before popping into the freezer
  

Leave for at least 6 hours