Puffed Quinoa Chocolate Bites

My favourite type of cake has always been Chocolate Cornflake cakes. Is it the Crispiness and the sort of mixture of crisps and chocolate? Is it the association with School Dinners which I loved? Is it a harking back to childhood nostalgia?  Who knows, but I love them!

A while back, I decided I wanted to make some plastic-free Chocolate Cornflake cakes but when I went to the Refill room, she had discontinued them because they hadn't been selling. I was sad and explained that I wanted to make the aforementioned treat  (speaking of which, a moment's break whilst I go to the cupboard...)

And the owner suggested I could try using their organic Puffed Quinoa cereal instead.  I decided to give it a go.

Using the Puffed quinoa, a bar of Fairtrade Dark chocolate and some local Essex honey, I did the usual, "heat the chocolate in a saucepan in a bowl of water and mixed the three ingredients and then spooned them into lumps on a baking tray with Greaseproof paper.  Then refrigerated them and bingo- treats for every evening!

Crunch!

Advent Day 17: Confectionery

Sorry, this is a day late. I shall be back with my Pause for Advent later...

We went over to my Mum's for lunch yesterday and had a very pleasant lunch of wild Alaskan salmon, squash and sweet potato mash and peas. Then Chocolate pudding for dessert. It was very tasty and kind of her to cook for us.

She'd made these fondant mint leaves (the underside is covered in chocolate).  They looked very delicious but I was utterly stuffed from lunch! A pity as I'd now like to try one!

I wonder what your favourite confectionery at Christmas is? If you were able to eat a chocolate of sweet of choice, what would it be.

As usual, I have received a wealth of chocolate and biscuits from school children. It is very kind of them but I feel rather overwhelmed by it all.  SOooo much chocolate, SO many biscuits.  It's not good for me to eat that amount.

To that end, I feel a bit guilty about doing it, but when our postman called to deliver a parcel, I gave him one of the boxes of chocolates.  He seemed very pleased and I figured that the joy I got from his smile is much better than the joy of eating those chocolates (Milk Tray incidentally).

I may also deliver a box to the staff at my local station.  I know that I mustn't eat loads of chocolates, so I hope that is ok and you don't consider it wrong that I will pass on one of the many boxes!

Regarding confectionery- I always love After Eight mints or those Elizabeth Shaw Mint crisps but if I received 6 boxes of those, even those would seem to much. I guess it's about things in moderation and not excess!

This is my Advent Calendar entry with Julie at KC's Court

xx

The kitkat that gave more

When I recently posted my nostalgic tale of the Big Feast that had no chocolate block- Ang told me of the opposite experience when she had a Breakaway bar that was all chocolate and no biscuit.

That reminded me of the times I ate a Kitkat to discover it had no wafer in it and was purely chocolate.  My Step-dad at that time told me that such kitkats were special and if you sent them back to Nestle, you would be sent lots of kitkats in return.  Somehow though, despite the lure of potentially extra chocolate, I didn't try it- instead, I ate that entire kitkat.  Another Christmas, the Milkman started doing Christmas hampers and special chocolate boxes etc and as a one-off, very special treat that year, we ordered a metal tin (kitkat logo) full of kitkats.  And lo and behold, in that tin, around about 8 of them were pure chocolate- Kitkat misfits.  And his words came back to us in speech and in memory but somehow, we still didn't send any back, eating them quickly.  I sometimes wonder whether we would have received lots of Kitkats?  And if I ever got another all-chocolate kitkat, would I still do the same?  My childhood best-friend and her sister bought some salad gums from Tescos and there were teethmarks in some of the sweets, so they sent them back and as well as a voucher for a new bag, they received an entire cardboard box full of Tescos sweets! I couldn't believe it at the time!


Have you ever received substandard confectionery and sent it back?  Did you get a reaction/refund/bonus hamper?

xx

I've got the polka dot blues

It's always a happy Christmas or birthday for me if I receive a hat!  CBC bought me this absolute corker this Christmas and I rudely haven't worn it that much! I think I was scared of the rain ruining it  (remember UK based peeps, we had permanent rain!) and then just hadn't worn it! It's a darling cloche!   I teamed it with this cobalt cardie (Monsoon) and a polka dot dress plus Kate Middleton engagement ring inspired jewellery and boots!!

Gutted I missed hat attack this month- just a bit too disorganised and what with other things going on. So I am hoping I can link it next month!

I just really craved chocolate and bizarrely, we had none in the house it seems.  We had something that CBC disapproves of- what he calls, "The snack box" in which I put all unhealthy snacks like crisps, sweets, chocolate etc and he always tells me off for putting more in but bizarrely, there are no chocolates at the moment! There are dried mulberries and some sort of mango licorice and a few totally stuck-together drumstick lollies but no chocolate!  I can't even make a cocoa as we are out of milk! Just when I thought I was going to have to make a dash to the COOP through the scary alley in the dark, I found a random Milky-bar ice-cream stick in the freezer.  It was the size of a Mini-milk and was well and truly crushed and forgotten about and all slid up the stick but it did the trick!!! Must fill up the snack box (and buy milk!)  Speaking of milk, and why I had finished it up, I've managed to have a cup of tea in the morning, two days running. Admittedly it was a "Make it, add cold water and gulp in 10 seconds job" but it's still made a difference.  I even managed breakfast yesterday (bran flakes and again, gulp down in 2 minutes job!)

At swing-dance Monday night, we learnt a couple of new moves including the 'Fake Texas-Tommy' which I quite liked and CBC hated. It involves being pulled in close and being pivoted 180 degrees! Unfortunately, it also involved treading on toes. Yesterday seemed to be a night for OUCH as CBC kicked me in the shins and produced a big lump and bruise, got my fingers bent back accidently when social-dancing with one guy, arm slightly wrenched when doing a Texas-Tommy-with-lady-turn at the end!  I'm really excited because we are attending a special 1 day swing dance course and evening May Ball during half term to celebrate the what-would-have-been  100th birthday of Frankie Manning- the 'father' of Lindy in this country, I think.  Now just need to get more social dancing in!!!

Another thing is that I spent a large amount of time at the weekend, cleaning and tidying. Now anyone who knows me, knows I am no domestic model and indeed, am a bit of a slattern. But I really did try hard and now I'm anxious to keep the kitchen all shiny and lovely! Long may it last.

Hope all's well with you!  x

Vienetta

Thanks to Unilever for the image

We used to think we were really grand and pushing the boat out buying a Vienetta when I was a child.  We used to go round to the Off-license round the corner, owned by a lovely Indian couple and buy one as a treat (I loved that Off License as they often reduced out of date crisps to 10p, then we could buy posh crisps like McCoys or Walkers for the same as 10p picked onion space raiders..).

It was the best dessert though with those crispy layers of thin chocolate- they were all through it between the smooth ice-cream and I used to eat mine in a disgusting way (it seems I have a disgusting way of eating everything)- starting with the top and eating a layer of chocolate, then ice-cream, chocolate, ice-cream, to the end.

Nowadays, I think they skimp on the recipe a bit- there's definitely less layers of chocolate in there, more ice-cream, nor do I think they are as long but they are still as tasty and also inclined to be on special offer in the supermarket! In fact, the COOP had them for £1 on Monday.  I was tempted...

What's your take on Viennetta? Like, love, loathe, never tasted...?

The incredibly sad tale of the Indonesian Big Feast

Image taken with thanks from here

I love a good bit of childhood nostalgia! Who's ever eaten a Big Feast ice-lolly?   Hands up?
They've always been my favourite ice-lolly all my life and I can bet you know why.  The big chocolate chunk in the middle of course!  My preferred method of eating them is the following:

1. Carefully nibble around the perimeter (from bottom by the stick, up over the top and back down the other side)
2.  Now, carefully break off the front and back panels of nutty chocolate leaf with your two front teeth and crunch joyfully. You should be left with an ice-cream covered chocolate block.
3.  Lick off the ice-cream from the front and back (if it's a hot day and you fear droppage, then you might have to nibble to do this faster)
4.  You should be left with a clean chocolate block.  Slowly nibble around the edge and downwards until you are just left with the chocolate parallel to the stick.
5.  Finito.

As usual, of course, I have digressed from the original point I came here to make.  Well, you can understand my love of the Big Feast.   When I first moved to Indonesia to study Gamelan on the Scholarship programme, it was August and I was very homesick.  I adored the food in Java and Bali, it was wonderful, but after two weeks, I was craving proper chocolate.  In Bali/Java, it's not proper chocolate- it taste cheap, waxy and odd (or at least what I could buy for my budget in local shops was.  Couldn't afford foreign imports) and I hadn't seen any proper actual blocks of solid chocolate.

Well, fast forward 3 weeks and I was in Yogyakarta, a city in Central  Java for the week-long Foreign student Orientation Programme where we learnt to speak Indonesian better, got to know each other and found out about our courses.  There was one day mid-week where we had the chance to leave our campus for the afternoon to explore/relax/do things by ourselves. I set off with a small group of Europeans (Hungary, Germany, Switzerland, Poland) and we went into town and went to get our hair cut etc and buy cheap Indonesian dictionaries.  On our return journey, we were all talking intently of our craving for real chocolate, chocolate in blocks and we saw a small shock with a sign advertising ice-creams including the holy grail of ice-lollies, the BIG FEAST!!! Excitedly, I pointed it out and told everyone that at the centre, there was a big block of chocolate!  We stampeded into the shop and each purchased our Big Feast.  The exterior was delicious, the ice-cream in the middle, creamy and delightful as it should be but as we ate the ice-cream, something was amiss.  The ice-cream kept going and we reached the middle without finding the treasure.

Yes, woefully, devastatingly, guttingly, it transpired that Indonesian Big Feasts do not have a chocolate block in the centre, but just consist of the ice-cream!!!!   It was a sad moment for all of us.  Yes, we enjoyed the crunchy exterior and smooth ice-cream but to miss the key USP (unique selling point) of the Big Feast was a pretty bitter pill to swallow (first world problems eh?)

Over to you:  How would you have felt in this situation?  What's your feeling about Big Feasts?  Have you ever experienced a similar 'foreign equivalents' tale of disappointment?

The eternal mystery of Smarties

Image taken from here

As Lent is now over, I am free to eat chocolate and crisps to my heart's content again. My sister bought me a box of Smarties (For our lovely international readers who may have not tried Smarties- they are essentially a sort of M&M's- bigger and flatter, without a letter on top- they used to come in tubes which could be turned into panpipes if you blew across the top) for my birthday in February which I haven't been able to eat.  The box is just like the ones they used to (and probably still do) sell at our local theatre when I was a child/teen.  Oh, the joy of going to the glass fronted, wooden-paneled booth at our local theatre to choose which box of sweets- would it be the jelly babies- most delicious but alas, few given and eaten quickly; Smarties- lots of them but they always melted and became shiny and sticky; Fruit gums- lasted for AGES but really annoying as you had to suck them and couldn't chew if you got frustrated; Fruit pastilles- the best of all worlds- lots of them, could be chewed or sucked and didn't melt: Still, I didn't always choose them.

BUT, I digress! Back to the main point.  As I opened this nostalgic box of Smarties, the age old eponymous question occurred to me: WHY do only the orange Smarties have a distinctive taste?  They were always my favourite as they tasted of orange (and I've just checked- they STILL do).  Why were all the other Smarties just that generic chocolate, Smartie flavour?  There was a brief spate of time in my life when I believed that the (at the time) newly-introduced blue ones had their own flavour.  Do you remember that they replaced the light brown variety?  When I was very young, there used to be a light brown AND a dark brown variety.   There was a time when they introduced the white Smartie- white chocolate (but still no special flavour).

Nowadays, the colourings are made from (in the words of the Maker) "from Nature's colourful palette"
(For the sake of transparency, they come from the following: Red= hibiscus fruit; purple= red cabbage; yellow= lemon;  green= Spirulina; pink= radish; brown= black carrot)
and the colours are less lurid than their '80's counterparts, but the mystery remains, the orange ones still taste of orange (there's orange oil in the ingredients list), but ALL the others are equal.

WHY did Nestle only choose to flavour the orange ones?????


It seems only Smarties have the answer....

Nostalgia!

In the great clean-up, clear-out of the cupboards, I have come across some worrying finds!  One- a dried pasta sauce with the best-before date of 2002- I took it in to school to eat for lunch (cheese and broccoli- honestly, it's not going to hurt me is it?) to the horror of my colleagues but didn't have a bowl big enough to cook it in! The other find was that 'Smash and crack magic sauce for ice-cream, you know, the one that hardens to form a chocolate shell!  You must know this if you are a child of the 80's!   I enjoyed it on Wispa ice-cream.

Jealous?!

What other nostalgic treats can you think of, or do you miss? 

Easter treats!

I received some really lovely Easter treats which I didn't deserve! CBC's mum bought me a beautiful handmade set of chocolates, covered in flowers, and one with a cute caterpillar!!!



CBC bought me a lovely Chocolate Alchemist mint egg- I adore mint chocolate!


CBC also received cute handmade easter eggs which I just had to take pictures of as they were soooo sooo pretty! Hand-decorated with flowers!




We decreed that CBC looker rather like an upside down egg here! (hee hee!!! A very cute one!)