Baking Wishlist (Part 1)

As I continually browse the web for more recipes I can make. I come across soo many mouth-watering recipes that I end up putting on my to-bake list, I thought I would share some of the recipes and let you guys drool over these recipes as much as I have! So here is part one of my baking wishlist:

Deep Dark Chocolate Cookies
From Divine Baking

These reminded me of chocolate crackle cookies but look a lot more fudgy and chocolatey, you can't go wrong with more chocolate! I will definitely be trying these out soon, so keep an eye out for a blogpost soon!

Dark Chocolate and Raspberry Brownie Tarts
From Erinnish

I love desserts that have berries in them and especially the chocolate and raspberry combination, the contrast of flavours is just amazing! These looked impressive and I love that they are served in cute individual portions.

Chocolate Chip Cookie Pie
From  Love From the Oven

One of my favourite desserts to eat when I go out would have to be the chocolate chip cookie dough from Pizza Hut and I have been on the hunt to find a recipe that could help me recreate the dessert a home. This may be it! Although it is a bit thicker than the original dessert, I'm not going to complain, just means more cookie dough for me to eat!!

Brownie 'n' Berries Dessert Pizza
From Betty Crocker

As I mentioned before I love berries in desserts and so I saw this berry filled post and knew it would go straight to my wishlist and the idea to serve it as a pizza is ingenius, making the dessert unique.

Raspberry Breakfast Bars
From Smitten Kitchen

I love breakfast and definitely would not be able to function if I skipped it, but it can get a little boring having the same cereal everyday, so this recipe looked like a great idea, as I could easily make loads of them and store them, so I can just grab them and eat them everyday!

Mississippi Mud Pie
From Bake Or Break

Just look at it!! Do I even need to explain why I chose this to be in my wishlist! The chocolate, the cream and more chocolate and cake and a crumbly biscuit base!! 

Make sure to check out the blogposts that these pictures are taken from (links are in the captions), it's where you can find the recipes and more drool worthy pictures of these dishes!

Let me know which of these desserts you liked the most! I will definitely try to make as many of these as I can, so look out for the blogposts of that!

Also check back to see part 2 of this baking wishlist!

Keep it Sweet!

Aneesa

Mars Bar Brownies

As I browsing the internet for more recipe ideas, I found this recipe for Mars Bar Brownies on Cafe Lula. Since Mars bars are my favourite chocolate bar I knew I would have to try out the recipe! This recipe makes incredibly rich and ohhh so chocolatey brownies! 

To start off with preheat the oven to 180°C/355°F or 170°C/340°F for a fan oven.

SOOOOOO MUCH CHOCOLATE!!!

 In a pan over a low heat melt together the butter, finely chopped Mars bars and chocolate. Keep stirring with a wooden spoon and make sure to break down the nougat-y parts of the Mars by mashing them with the wooden spoon. When the mixture has melted and is smooth, remove it from the heat and let it cool slightly. 

Pour in the sugar and stir together. Then sift in the flour, cocoa powder and baking powder and mix together until it has fully combined. Next beat in the eggs, until you have a smooth mixture, then fold in the chopped slices of Mars bar.

 

Pour the mixture into a lined square baking tin and spread it evenly, making sure to level off the top of the thick mixture.

Bake this in the oven for about 30-40 mins until a skewer inserted in the middle comes out with a few sticky crumbs on it.

Let the brownies cool in the tin until they are warm. Remove them from the tin and when they are cool, you can cut them into pieces. 

The chopped slices of Mars bar folded in at the end add so much to the texture as well as taste of the brownie and as you can see there are some trails of caramel left, which adds another layer of flavour. They come out soft, goey and just delicious!

Ingredients:


Mars Bar Brownies: A Cafe Lula recipe:


2 Mars Bars (or Milky Ways) chopped small
200g/7oz/1.75 sticks butter, cut into chunks
100g/3.5oz Dark (bittersweet) chocolate, broken into pieces
100g/3.5oz Plain (semisweet) chocolate, broken into pieces
65g/2.3oz/1/2 cup+2 tablespoons Cocoa Powder
75g/2.65oz/1/2 cup Plain (all-purpose) flour
1 teaspoon Baking powder
250g/8.8oz/1 cup+2 tablespoons Caster sugar
3 Large eggs
2 Mars Bars (or Milky Ways), each sliced into about 10 pieces.


Cafe Lula recipe and instructions can be found here.


Keep it Sweet!


Aneesa

Brownie Burger Cupcakes and Sugar Cookie Fries

I have been following Bakeralla for quite a while now and I always loved this baking project she did. It was just very creative and didn't seem very difficult either as most of the components in this are made using mixes. 

So I finally decided to go for it and try the project for myself! As I thought it was not very difficult to bake everything - however it was very time consuming, but it was all worth it in the end when I saw the look of the final product!!

To start off with I made the dough for the sugar cookies as the dough needed to be refrigerated for at least an hour. I couldn't find the mix for sugar cookies so I used this recipe I found on the Joy of Baking website. It was quite easy and made more than enough dough - so I even had extra dough to make some cookies for myself! 

Once the dough was set, I rolled it out into a rectangle-ish shape and just cut thin strips, about the length of normal fries and placed them slightly spaced out on a baking sheet, since they do spread out a little when cooking. Once they were cooked, I put a bit of caster sugar on top of them so they looked like the "fries" had salt on them, making them look more realistic.

For the next component, the brownie burger, I used my favourite brownie mix - Betty Crocker Chocolate Fudge Brownies!! Once they were cooked according to the instructions on the box, I just cut out circles to make them look like burgers!

The only thing left to make was the cupcakes! I have a fail safe cupcake recipe I use whenever I need to make vanilla cupcakes, which I will definitely show in a future post. They only took about 10/15 minutes to bake, and I was ready to construct the fast food masterpiece.

To make the coloured icing to look like lettuce and ketchup, I just used some ready-made icing from Betty Crocker and added food colouring to get the right shade. Yellow food colouring could also be used to look like cheese or mustard in the burgers. 

Once the icing is made, just cut the cupcakes in half horizontally and put in the brownie circles. Then pipe a little of the icing on top of the brownie and top it off with the top-half of the cupcake. Then just serve the burgers and fries in the classic fast food looking trays, templates to which I will link at the end. To add an extra touch, you can add some sesame seeds on top of the cupcake buns, by brushing some water on them and sprinkling over the seeds to make them look like real burger buns.

The templates, are the ones linked to on Bakerella with the original recipe and they contain: the tray template, french fry holder (blank & with Happy Faher's Day) and the design for the Happy Father's Day tissue paper, as the original recipe was made for Father's Day. The templates can be downloaded here.

I was extremely happy with the way they turned out and am really glad I finally decided to give it a try! I definitely recommend giving this recipe a go as they are sure to impress anyone you make them for and they were really tasty too! 

Aneesa