The best thing about making your own marmalade is that you can use it for other baking recipes and the flavour is going to be so much better than a basic supermarket marmalade.
This simple brownie recipe is delicious with very chunky bitter seville orange marmalade, but you can easily use any other type. And you know what? I'm not going to judge you if you use a shop bought one either!
Marmalade Brownie Recipe
200g dark chocolate
175g unsalted butter
325g caster sugar
130g plain flour
3 eggs
3 table spoons of seville orange marmalade
icing sugar to decorate
33x23x5cm baking tray lined with greaseproof paper
Makes about 12 portions
Here is what to do:
1. Preheat your oven to 170C (325F) Gas 3.
2. Break your chocolate into small pieces and place it with butter in a heatproof bowl melt it slowly in microwave, 20 seconds at a time and stiring until completely melted.
3. Add the sugar stirring well until incorporated.
4. Add the flour and stir well.
5. Stir in the eggs and mix until thick and smooth.
6. Add the marmalade and stir the mixture carefully.
7.Spoon the mixture into the prepared baking tray and bake in the preheated oven for about 30-35 minutes or until flaky on the top but still soft in the centre.
8. Leave to cool in the tin on a wire rack, before dusting with icing sugar to decorate.
This recipe for salted caramel sauce is one of the easiest recipes with sugar I've ever made. And not just that - it's also very versatile - pour it on top of your favourite pudding, ice cream, use it as a filling or just dive in with a spoon!
There are really just four basic ingredients:
200g granulated sugar
90g salted butter
120ml double cream
1 teaspoon salt
And here is what you do to make your salted caramel sauce:
I love that once one festive season finishes another one starts! There is something comforting about spending an afternoon making marmalade, whilst it's cold and rainy (mostly!) outside. I love deciding on my marmalade flavour, experiment with different types of fruit and finally baking my own bread and butter to taste the marmalade when it's finished. A total bliss! Every year I find myself putting in my diary 'marmalade making' dates to make sure I don't miss the short Seville orange season. I always buy more than I need and freeze some oranges for later.
This easy chocolate brownie recipe is perfect for when you have spare 20 minutes or so and want to make a desert really quickly.
The recipe is also great to make with children - you can't over mix it and you don't even need electric whisk to mix everything together. I often bake this recipe to serve at my bread baking workshops and since a lot of people asked me for the recipe, I've decided to share it here.
I can never resist the smell of freshly baked bread, thickly buttered and topped with marmalade. While January and February are the best months to make a proper Seville Orange Marmalade, for the rest of the year, we have to use other citrus fruits. Rather than seeing it as a disadvantage, I think it's great to experiment with different flavours and make marmalade from other fruits.
Today, I wanted to share with you my favourite recipe for tangerine marmalade. Tangerines are available throughout the whole year; they are usually much cheaper than Seville Oranges and marmalade making is much quicker, because their skin is much finer than oranges one.
These chocolate treats were popular in British schools home economics or cooking classes towards the mid to end 20 century. There were cheaper versions of the grown-up chocolate truffles and were easy for children to make during the school class. I’m assuming that this recipe was developed after the second world war when real chocolate was still rationed, expensive and very difficult to come by.
While a lot of war time food rationing shopped after the end of the war a lot of food items continued to be rationed well until the 1950s. Chocolate was rationed until 5th of February 1953 and sugar until September 1953.
That is why this recipe originally uses only drinking chocolate as the only source of chocolate, and the sugar element comes from condensed milk. Fresh cream, which is what chocolatiers use mostly to create chocolate truffles these days, was far too expensive and not everyone had a fridge to keep it in. Since digestive biscuits were invented around 1839 by two Scottish doctors, it’s likely that this school truffle recipe is originally Scottish too.
Digestive biscuits were invented to help to aid digestion, and they are probably a a little bit healthier than other types of biscuit. They would also be cheap to buy and easy to crumble into the recipe mix.
I’m also guessing that the original recipe wouldn’t include butter, as it would add to the cost of the recipe. You can easily leave it out, if you like, just adjust the amount of the biscuits (you will need more than stated in the recipe or omit the desiccated coconut to even out the wet/dry ingredients).
The desiccated coconut is also a later addition, making the recipe extra yummy, but of course adding to the cost.
If you want to make this recipe on a budget, you only need three ingredients — tin of condensed milk, pack of digestive biscuits and cocoa powder.
I would suggest using cocoa powder instead of the drinking chocolate powder (the original recipe has this, because of the cost). The cocoa powder will, of course, give you stronger chocolate flavour, and these days it’s probably not more expensive than a good drinking cocoa powder.
Before you start making this chocolate truffle recipe, I have to warn you, that these school truffles are very sweet and totally addictive. Once you make them, you’ll know!
So, how do you make truffles with digestive biscuits? Here is how:
Truffles made from digestive biscuits - ingredients
Large pack of plain digestive biscuits (about 400g)
1 tin of condensed milk
125 g of unsalted butter
2-4 tablespoon of cocoa powder or drinking chocolate
125g desiccated sweetened coconut
Topping
Chocolate sprinkles, desiccated coconut or cocoa powder
Melt the butter first and leave to cool down a bit. Break and crush the digestive biscuits. The best way to do this is to place all the biscuits in a large ziplock bag and use a rolling pin to crush them. Mix all the dry ingredients in a large bowl, add the condensed milk and butter.
Mix gently until you have a good consistency. Scoop out a heaped teaspoon of the mixture and roll in cocoa powder or a topping of your choice. Leave to set in a fridge for a couple of hours and enjoy!
These school truffles are best enjoyed within a week of making, and you can store them in a fridge in an airtight container.
Now, that you’ve made these chocolate truffles with digestive biscuits, what do you think? Do let me know in the comments below and if you would like to make some more chocolate truffle recipes.
If you've ever wondered how to make butter at home, you are not alone. I somehow always thought that you can't actually make butter at home (well, similarly to how I thought that you can't bake good bread home, but that's for another story...), but it turns out that you can! And it's much easier and quicker than you think.
Over the years I've made a lot of marmalade batches, to just about call myself an expert. But, expert or not, I still get days, when batch of marmalade just doesn't want to set or the flavour is not quite right. I know that marmalade making can be really puzzling, so here is a list of frequently asked questions:
What fruit can I use for marmalade making?
Any citrus fruit can be used - Seville Oranges, Lemons, Limes, Sweet oranges, Tangerines or Satsumas.
When can I buy seville oranges?
Here in the UK, seville oranges is very short. You can only buy seville oranges in January/February, when they are available in large supermarkets or your local fruit stall. It's worth buying few extra ones and freeze them or make several batches.
500g of seville oranges will make about 5 smaller jam jars, so if you buy few kilos, you have supply for most of the year!
