Cooks' Corner

[Maggi Young]

It keeps a couple of weeks in the freezer.

Huh! Well that is the daftest thing I've ever heard  No chance!!

[WimB]

Chocolatiest ice cream

Sounds wonderful Sue. I'm certainly gonna try it

It keeps a couple of weeks in the freezer.

Huh! Well that is the daftest thing I've ever heard  No chance!!

 

[Lesley Cox]

This one is for Maggi and all of the other chocoholics on here. Buy an ice cream maker if you don't have one. You wont regret it!

60g 70% chocolate
1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1.5 cups milk
2 large eggs
1 cup sugar
1 cup double cream
1 tsp vanilla extract

Melt the chocolate in the top of a double boiler over hot... Not boiling water. Stir in the cocoa a little at a time stirring constantly until smooth. It can get a little stiff, but dont worry if it does.
Stir in the milk a little at a time and heat until completely blended. Remove from the heat and let it cool.

Whisk the eggs until light and fluffy then whisk in the sugar a little at a time then continue whisking until completely blended. Then pour in the cream and vanilla and whisk until completely blended.

When it is cool, pour the chocolate mixture into the cream mixture and blend. Cover and refrigerate until cold.

Transfer the mixture to an ice cream maker and freeze.

You can add chocolate chips but wait until the ice cream just begins to stiffen.

When it is ready transfer to a carton and freeze until you are ready for it. It keeps a couple of weeks in the freezer.

Forumists shouldn't be allowed to post recipes like this, endangering the health of certain members. (Those of us with weaker than normal wills.)

[annew]

Interesting article in New Scientist recently about willpower. It seems that using willpower actually consumes energy, and if you use it a lot, you can need to eat more to provide the necessary energy to carry on. So the more you deny yourself, the hungrier it will make you. In experiments, people who had been made to resist food for a while were then less able to use willpower on another task afterwards.
Maybe God is a man after all - with a wicked sense of humour.

[Kristl Walek]

A (very-large) shortbread-raspberry-white chocolate cookie for my Valentine....

[David Nicholson]

My Valentine's on a diet, can I be yours too Kristl

[Lesley Cox]

You can be mine if you like David. Only the Crambe maritima seedlings on the left are edible but these look very scrumptious. There are 10, packed with buds so I'll have an autumn flowering.

[annew]

I'm reading an American cookbook at present and have a couple of questions:
How do you eat what the americans call 'biscuits' (they look like what we would call 'scones' but are made quite differently)?
One recipe calls for a mix of 'all-purpose flour' and 'cake flour'. What is their equivalent in UK flours?
Thanks!

[Anthony Darby]

What are our biscuits called in America? Cakes go hard when stale; biscuits go soft. Cookies are already soft so are not biscuits, but that doesn't make them any less tasty.

[annew]

Crackers. That's the biscuits, not you, Anthony.

[Anthony Darby]

Crackers, as in Jacob's, doesn't really fit as they don't "crack" when you bite e.g. digestive biscuits, they crumble?

[johnw]

Anne  - I think these are what we in Nova Scotia call tea biscuits.  I think Lesley may have asked the same question several years ago.  Eaten with scads of butter & jams as a rule.   Good recipes are difficult to find - made similarly to scones by chipping room temperature butter into the dry mix then pinching it in and by no means mixing too much just to encorporate, to wet but workable.  They bake quickly at 425, best the same day but can be revived by a 7 second stint in ther microwave though not difficult for two to eat a dozen the first day.

I can dig out a recipe for you.

Apparently American flour is quite different than Canadian flour but can't tell you why.  I know we can buy cake flour but many say there is no need with our high quality flour.  In the USA they have All purpose flour, bread flour and cake flour - confusing.
http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/654303
http://www.askmehelpdesk.com/cooking/canadian-flour-vs-american-flour-323155.html

A pic but ours are a tad lighter looking, not quite so wide and a bit taller.

johnw

[Anthony Darby]

They look like excellent scones (pronounced skons) to me. My favourite are cherry scones.

[annew]

I don't think those are what I mean. I've seen in films where the family sits down to dinner and hands round a basket of biscuits along with the vegetables etc for the main course, but I've never noticed what they did with them after that. Do they put them on a side plate as we would do bread, or put them on the main plate as we would a Yorkshire pudding?
Anthony, I think what we call digestive biscuits are called Graham Crackers in the US.

[Lori S.]

Let me see if I can translate...      (Being Canadian, regardless of actual ancestry, is sort of like being a hybrid between the UK and the US!)

I don't think those are what I mean. I've seen in films where the family sits down to dinner and hands round a basket of biscuits along with the vegetables etc for the main course, but I've never noticed what they did with them after that. Do they put them on a side plate as we would do bread, or put them on the main plate as we would a Yorkshire pudding?

Raised biscuits would be put on a side plate, split and buttered, usually (this is familiar to me), except in the southern U.S. where they might be covered with milk gravy.   (The latter is a perverse misuse of biscuits and should be discouraged.)

Tea biscuits are usually a leaner mix, while scones are richer, containing cream and larger amounts of fat, usually butter.