Beetroot Brownies

Over the weekend I harvested some beetroot from my allotment. I was pleased to have some crops but didn't have a clue what to do with it, so I typed it into my trusty BBC Food website and came up with these brownies, the recipe can be found here. 

Ingredients:

400g raw beetroot topped and tailed and peeled. 

100g butter

200g plain chocolate

1tsp vanilla extract

250g caster sugar

3 eggs

100g plain flour

25g cocoa powder

I've never made anything with beetroot before but I have heard of the combination of beetroot and chocolate so thought it was worth a go. The first obsticle I hit with this though was cooking the beetroot. The recipe said to place it in the microwave for 17minutes, so I did and I ended up burning them and filling the room with smoke. I had a few more, but have to sacrifice the other recipe I was going to make in order to make this. Second time around I decided to cook them in some water on the hob. This worked much better and I got some tender beetroot. 

The beetroot was then mixed in a food processor with chocolate and butter. The heat from the beetroot melts the chocolate and butter and it ends up a smooth paste like mixture. 

The eggs and sugar are whisked until light and pale. Into this the chocolate mixture, flour, vanilla extract and cocoa are folded and this is poured into a tin.

Ready to go in the oven

It was baked in the oven for 25 minutes. This resulted in my brownies being firm, not gooey, so if you like a gooey texture I'd recommend doing it for a slightly shorter time. They were left to cool in the tin and then I sliced it up into 20 squares. 

Sliced into squares

The Verdict: I really like this combination of flavours, the beetroot brings a subtle sweetness to the brownies and really enhances the chocolate flavour. The resulting brownies are lovely and rich but also I didn't find them so rich that I couldn't manage it, in fact it made me want a second one. The recipe was OK aside from the overcooking of the brownies and beetroot. It's something I'd like to make again, maybe with a few changes but I'm not sure what yet. I would happily eat more. Having nevertried beetroot with chocolate it's certainly something I'd try again. One other slight issue I had with it was when I sliced it up the top was a crust and this just fell off. This may be linked to the slightly more cooked nature of my brownies so I'll reserve judgement on that until I've tried again with a shorter cooking time. 9/10, just the slight issues with the recipe. 

Ready to eat!! 

Bakewell Tart

After taking the mincemeat and almond tart to work, Gary came home with many comments that people were requesting a bakewell tart. One of his collegues is having a BBQ on Wednesday so I decided that our contribution would be a bakewell to keep everyone happy. I did my usual, when looking for a specific recipe, and search on the BBC food website. The bakewell tart I selected is by the hairy bikers and can be found here. 

The tart was very easy to make. The first step was to make the pastry and I just did this in my mixer. It involved mixing together butter, flour, salt, sugar and almonds until they are a breadcrumb mixture. Then add the egg and egg yolks until it forms a dough. This is then chilled for at least 30 minutes. 

Once ready the pastry is the rolled out to cover the dish, pricked and then baked blind in the oven for 15 minutes. 

For the filling mix together the ground almonds and caster sugar and then add the eggs, almond essence and mix it all well. Part of the reason I chose this recipe was the almond essence, I know what a difference that makes to the flavour. 

When the pastry is cool, spread the base with jam (I used strawberry but the recipe states raspberry) and pour the mixture on top. 

Jam filled tart

This is then cooked in the oven for 25-30 minutes. Mine was in there significantly longer than that but this is because I forgot about it whilst doing other things. I'll have to learn to set the timer!! As it turned out it just made the edges a little "crispy" as Gary called it!! 

Slightly "crisp" topped tart

The full view

The verdict: as yet I haven't tried this but will report back the verdict once we've been to the BBQ!! 

Afternoon Tea Baby Shower

For my "baby shower" I decided that I wanted to invite all of the female members of our family over for afternoon tea and some games. I wanted it to be a relaxed environment giving people a chance to catch up and nibble on some good food. 

I've spent time planning and choosing some yummy recipes for the gathering. I knew there'd be loads of food for the number of people but I wanted there to be lots of choice and plenty of each item so should something be more popular there was enough. I hadn't made any of the recipes before, which was part of the fun, so everything was new and exciting. It took 12 hours of baking but we ended up with a great feast of food and I think it was all very nice. I will be making posts of all of the individual baked items over the coming weeks so more detail will follow, however, I'll add in a little teaser that one of the items got 30/30!! 

All the goodies ready to be eaten

To plan and pick all the recipes I did some google searches for afternoon tea recipes, I found that the BBC food website was really helpful and gave me plenty of ideas, in fact, most of the recipes I ended up using came from there and they worked well. 

So let's start at the beginning, my first thoughts went to what savoury items we should include. I wanted a traditional tea so we couldn't have any of the pizza or crisps ideas that my mum suggested!! So we had to think a little harder. Of course sandwiches were essential but what flavours? After some thought we decided to keep it simple and go with some tried and tested fillings:

• Tuna and Sweetcorn
• Ham
• Cheese and tomato
• Smoked salmon and cream cheese

We made all the bread fresh so on Friday, using a bread machine borrowed from my mum, which was baking away producing 3 loaves for us. I cut off the crusts and made them into neat little squares, originally I was thinking of making sticks but this would have resulted in tiny sandwiches so it wasn't worth it. 

Tuna and Sweetcorn

Ham on the left and Salmon on the right

So to go with the sandwiches I wanted a couple of other items. Years ago I remembered making some mini quiches that my mum liked, I didn't still have the recipe and I haven't made them since but I thought they would be a good addition. To go with these we looked through the recipe books and chose parmesan and sunflower biscuits. 

All afternoon teas have to have scones so of course these were a necessity along with some kind of fruity cake. We decided on a a fruit tea loaf which could be neatly sliced up. 

Finally the cakes element of the meal, and this is where we had the most fun, I looked through the lists and my "short" list ended up being quite long :-\ so then came the process of narrowing it all down. I wanted a balance of fruits and chocolate so we didn't have too many similar items but I also wanted things that could be made in bite size pieces. So we finally narrowed it down to:

• Chocolate tarts
• Lemon tarts
• Double Chocolate Loaf Cake
• Bakewell Cheesecake
• Pineapple and Coconut Cupcakes

I hoped this would create a nice mixture of items and have something to suit everyone. 

The food went down very well and I only received nice comments on it all, as I said, I will be writing about each item and marking them all separately with links to the recipes. There was lots of food left over, as expected, so my guests also got to leave with goody bags of their favourite items. Poor Nanna had 2 bags of salmon sandwiches as no one else wanted those!! 

Now a quick diversion off of baking to show some of the other things we also had going on. Last minute this week we decided that some bunting might look nice around the room, so my mum rushed out on Wednesday to try and find some that we could personalise. We ended up with 3!! 

Firstly the fabric bunting, we got a fabric one from Lakeland, which was a lovely mix of colours in checks and strips. To personalise this she purchased some stickers and iron on pictures to put on each flag. She chose some baby designs and some tea party designs along with Mia's name (our expected baby). 

Fabric Bunting in room

She also got some paper bunting as back up but we decided to put these up as well. The first was a flowery design and the second had bears, horses and solid colours to mix it up. 

Flowery Bunting

Bear and Rocking Horse Bunting

These made a nice difference to the room and made it feel a little more partyish!! 

Finally I'll finish with a big thank to my mum, who worked SO hard to make my vision come to life; my husband, who was lumbered with all the cleaning and tidying up; and to my guests who came with wonderful gifts, lots of chatter and provided fun. 

Overall a great day was had, hopefully, by all. :).