Coffee chocolate ripple ice cream (for Bloggers Scream for Ice Cream)

For a while now I've been wanting to take part in Kavey's Bloggers Screan for Ice Cream, which makes me drool every month. Last month's theme was sorbet and I was really intending to make the effort but time got the better of me. This month, the theme is chocolate, and while I love chocolate I actually really dislike chocolate ice cream (weird, I know!) so I had to think of some sort of ice cream that involved chocolate in some other way. And it couldn't be stracciatella because I've done that before. 

What I came up with is rather in keeping with a theme that's been prominent on my blog over the last couple of weeks - coffee! But this has nothing to do with the other challenge I'm taking part in, this is strictly for BSFIC. I love coffee ice cream but it's really difficult to find in the shops, and when you do find it usually it's really not very nice at all (unless you happen to be in Italy), so again the diet has gone out the window and I've made some coffee chocolate ripple ice cream.

I use a Magimix Le Glacier 1.5L machine, having upgraded from the Kenwood 1.1L I used to have because I wanted a bigger capacity, but I think the mix will be fine for a smaller machine. I would kill for an ice cream machine with a built-in freezer but the budget unfortunately won't stretch that far! This recipe comes in two parts, but both parts are very easy so please don't feel put off. 

 

Big one for the ice cream, little one for me.

COFFEE ICE CREAM

Ingredients:

250ml semi skimmed or whole milk

Approx 150ml strong black coffee (I used a whole six-cup Bialetti pot)

4 egg yolks

80g caster sugar

1 vanilla pod

1 tsp cornflour

300ml whipping cream

Before you start, fill the sink with cold water and add some ice cubes.

Put the milk, coffee and the seeds from the vanilla pod in a saucepan, whisk together and heat until just before it boils.

Meanwhile, whisk together the egg yolks, sugar and cornflour in a big bowl.

Pour the hot milk/coffee mixture onto the egg mixture slowly while constantly whisking (if you pour it all in too quickly it will cook the eggs!), and then return this mix to the saucepan. Heat it gently while stirring constantly until it thickens up enough to coat the back of a wooden spoon (don't boil it, or it will curdle). What you have just made is a thin coffee custard. Pour it back into the bowl you used to whisk the eggs, add the cold whipping cream and whisk it in, and stand this in the sink full of icy water - this will stop the custard cooking. Leave it there till it cools down enough to go in the fridge, and then chill till it's really cold - preferably overnight. 

With some extra sauce drizzled over the top...

Meanwhile...

CHOCOLATE SYRUP (makes 2 jam jars full)

Ingredients:

1 cup of cocoa powder

2 cups of sugar

2 cups of water

2 tsp vanilla extract

Pinch of salt

1 tsp cornflour, mixed together with 2 tsp cold water

Sieve the cocoa powder into a small saucepan. Add the sugar, salt, water and vanilla and whisk it all together. Bring to the boil and simmer for a couple of minutes. Pour in the cornflour mixed with water, and whisk it in - the mixture will thicken up. Take off the heat, pour into jam jars and let cool before putting in the fridge until completely cold.

Now churn your ice cream in your ice cream machine, or if you normally just freeze it in a tub and take it out every few hours to give it a mix around, that's fine too.

When it's ready (it should still be quite soft), scoop it out into a tub and do the next bit by hand. Add a few tablespoons of the chocolate syrup to the tub and swirl it all around with a fork. Don't mix it in completely, you want to see a nice chocolatey ripple going through the ice cream. You can add as much syrup as you want.

Now stick the tub in the freezer and leave it there for another couple of hours until it's firmed up enough to scoop out and eat!

I'm sorry this recipe looks quite long, but honestly it really is very easy and the bits where you're actually involved (ie making the custard and making the syrup) probably take no more than 15 minutes for both - the syrup takes five minutes at most and is so incredibly versatile that it's worth having some in your fridge at all times to drizzle over ice cream, swirl through yoghurt or, best of all, to add a few spoonfuls to a glass of cold milk for some instant chocolate milk that's as good as the stuff you used to get when you were a kid :)

Thanks to Kavey for running such a great blog challenge, I can't wait to see everyone's recipes.

Sue's chocolate chip coffee muffins

This post is dedicated to my lovely friend and workmate Sue. When I first told her about Lavazza's Coffee,Set, Match challenge, she immediately decided that I needed to make some coffee chocolate chip muffins, and for weeks afterwards she regularly harangued asked me when they would be forthcoming. 

 

Sue is such a sweetie that I would hate to disappoint her, so coffee chocolate chip muffins were made and delivered to work, and while a few of them were shared with other workmates, most of them accompanied a gleeful Sue home - they were most definitely enjoyed! (I may or may not have eaten one for breakfast myself.)

I decided to use some cupcake cases I found in Poundland. I really love the 1960s style pattern on these, but unfortunately you do tend to get what you pay for and during the baking process they soaked up a lot of grease and went a bit see-through - not a good look. I'm on the lookout for some nice Jubilee-style cupcakes but I live miles from the nearest Lakeland - has anyone seen any good ones in the supermarkets?

Not the best quality but what a fab pattern.

Anyway, here's the muffin recipe. If you have unexpected visitors or a cake sale you've forgotten about till the last minute, these are ideal as you can be taking them out of the oven half an hour after deciding to make them! And like my fudge recipe, this is very adaptable. Leave out the coffee, use white chocolate, and add a big handful of frozen raspberries (don't defrost them first) for a lovely summery treat.

Ingredients:

280g self raising flour

1 tsp bicarbonate of soda

Good pinch of salt

90g caster sugar

1 egg

250ml plain yoghurt

90ml semi skimmed or whole milk

90ml vegetable oil

1 tsp vanilla extract

1 shot of espresso (I used a Lavazza Caffè Crema Lungo Dolcemente pod)

100g chocolate, chopped (I used milk chocolate as I wanted a bit of sweetness to counterbalance the coffee, but dark would be fine, as long as it's a fairly low cocoa content)

Preheat the oven to 225ºC and get your muffin tin ready with paper cases.

Sieve the flour, bicarb and salt into a large bowl (or tip it all in and give it a whisk to get rid of any lumps).

Beat the egg and sugar together in a big measuring jug. Add the yoghurt, milk, oil, espresso and vanilla, and give it all a really good mix with a fork or small whisk.

Pour the wet stuff into the dry stuff, and fold it all together with a big spoon. Don't overmix - you want it to stay lumpy. Finish by folding in the chopped chocolate.

Divide the mixture between the paper cases (you should get 12, but if you use smaller cases like I did you might end up with 14 or 15 - if so, and you can't fit two tins in the oven, you could bake a couple in silicone cases which will hold their shape in the oven without needing to be placed into a muffin tin).

Place in the oven, immediately turn the heat down to 200ºC, and bake for 20 minutes. Remove the muffins from the oven, let them cool for a few minutes till you can handle them, and then put them on a wire rack to finish cooling. They are lovely eaten while still a bit warm, as the chocolate chunks will still be melty and gooey!

Don't forget - you can win prizes  from Lavazza too!  Look out for instant win details on promotional cups of takeaway Lavazza coffee, or enter online HERE.

Prizes include pairs of tickets to Wimbledon, Lavazza A Modo Mio Favola Plus Wimbledon Limited Edition coffee machines and exclusive sets of espresso cups created especially for the tournament. 

 

1950s Royal Doulton espresso cup which is one of my favourites! 

Delicious mocha fudge (for Coffee Set Match)

Our friend Mike, whose birthday it is today, is a big fan of fudge. I made some rum & raisin for a sweetie stall I was running at the local Christmas fair, and he devoured a bag of it in about five minutes. Normally I make him a birthday cake, but this year I thought I’d make him some fudge instead, and as he loves coffee and I’m trying to think of lots of interesting things to do with coffee for Lavazza’s CoffeeSet Match, instead of bogstandard vanilla (not that there’s anything wrong with that!), tonight Mike will be receiving a big bag of mocha fudge! 

Nom.

Whatever kind of fudge you’re making, I have a few little tips for you:

1. Use a big pan. Seriously. When you boil sugar, it bubbles up to quite a height. I started off with my biggest non-stick pan and it boiled over and made a horrible mess, so I poured it into my 6.5l pressure cooker to finish it off.
2. Use a sugar thermometer, and make sure it works (dip it into boiling water, it should say 100 degrees C, or 212 F).
3. If you overcook or overbeat the fudge and it goes too hard or too grainy, don’t fret. You can probably rescue it. Tip it back into a clean pan along with half a cup of water, heat it slowly till it all dissolves, and boil it back up again to soft ball stage (118 C). It might come out a bit darker than usual, but it’ll be fine.

This recipe is infinitely adaptable. You can replace the coffee with a shot of any booze you like, vary the type of sugar (granulated for vanilla fudge, dark muscovado for something like rum & raisin), leave out the chocolate or add a different type, add dried fruit or nuts or marshmallow or just about whatever you fancy. But for the purposes of Mike’s birthday, we’re sticking with mocha!

Ingredients:

1 large tin of evaporated milk (Carnation is 397g, the Co-Op own brand stuff I used is 410g – it varies from brand to brand but just get something around that size)

450g Demerara sugar

100g butter, cut into small cubes

120ml milk (full fat or semi skimmed, NOT skimmed)

A 30ml shot of espresso

100g white chocolate, chopped (I love the 200g bars from Lidl in the purple packaging)

Method:

Place the evaporated milk, milk, coffee, butter and sugar in your biggest saucepan and heat slowly over a low heat while stirring with a wooden spoon until everything dissolves. It will look very runny but don’t worry, it’ll thicken up.

It's not easy to stir boiling fudge and take a photo at the same time!  Keep your fingers out, it's VERY hot.

Turn the heat up and bring to the boil. Continue to boil while stirring constantly and scraping the bottom of the pan with a wooden spoon (important! It will catch if you don’t and you’ll have horrible burnt-tasting black bits). You need to keep it boiling until it reaches 118 degrees C or 240 F on a sugar thermometer – this will probably take about 15 or 20 minutes. If you don’t have a thermometer, you can boil it for about 15 minutes and then try the soft ball test – drop a little bit of the mixture into a glass of cold water. If it forms a soft ball that you can roll together with your fingers, it’s done. If not, keep boiling and check again in a few minutes).

 

Waiting for it to set... 

 

When it reaches the magic temperature, take it off the heat, add the chopped chocolate, stir till it’s melted in and let it cool for a few minutes. Then beat it and beat it and beat it some more with the wooden spoon. As you’ve already been stirring for about 20 minutes, you’re probably exhausted by now so if you have a willing helper, now would be a good time to enlist their assistance! Alternatively you could put it in a food mixer with the paddle beater on a low heat, but keep an eye on it as if you over-beat it will go very grainy. The mixture will thicken up. Pour it into a greased tin (I like using silicone bakeware for fudge) and put it in the fridge for an hour or two to firm up. Then turn out, cut into squares, and try to resist stuffing it all into your mouth at once as it’ll probably make you sick.

The recipe I’ve given here makes a cupful plus some… 

 

My lovely assistant

…although it’s a very big cup!

 

Let’s hope the birthday boy likes it.

Don’t forget to enter the competition at Lavazza to win lots of Wimbledon goodies, including pairs of tickets to Wimbledon, Lavazza A Modo Mio Favola Plus Wimbledon Limited Edition coffee machines and exclusive sets of espresso cups created especially for the tournament.

Coffee Set Match - a new challenge!

I'm so excited to tell you about a really fun event I'm taking part in! To celebrate Lavazza's second year as the official coffee of Wimbledon, it's running a challenge called "Coffee, Set, Match" - it has invited a group of bloggers (including yours truly!) to come up with lots of different coffee recipes, and just like Wimbledon we will be judged in different rounds and a lucky winner will eventually win tickets to Wimbledon or a trip to Italy - but to honest it all seems like such good fun that I'm happy just to be taking part - if you know me in real life, or read my blog regularly, you'll know that I am an absolute coffee fiend. 

It's not just us bloggers that can win awesome stuff though - so can you! More on that below.

To help me come up with lots of lovely coffee-based recipes, Lavazza have been kind enough to provide a shiny A Modo Mio machine, which uses pods and is simplicity itself to use (by the way, unlike another market leader which sells its capsules online only and charges for delivery, you can actually buy these pods in Waitrose!) and I have guzzled a few cups already. 

I have tons of ideas already for recipes, but I am happy to take requests, so if there's something you'd like me to make please let me know and I'll do my best to come up with a recipe for you. I've already made some treats and I will share the recipe just as soon as I've written it up - but watch this space for something that's delicious, gooey, chocolatey AND virtuous!

Now if you love your coffee as much as I do, you'll want to know how you can get your hands on some goodies too. Look out for instant win details on promotional cups of takeaway Lavazza coffee, or enter online at http://promotion.wimbledon.lavazza.com/. Prizes include pairs of tickets to Wimbledon, Lavazza A Modo Mio Favola Plus Wimbledon Limited Edition coffee machines and exclusive sets of espresso cups created especially for the tournament. 

 

Coffee tastes better with a piece of fudge! 

Look out for twitter hashtag #coffeesetmatch to see what other bloggers are up to!

New Douwe Egberts ground coffee range - plus decaff giveaway!

When Douwe Egberts asked if I'd like to try their new ground coffee range, I was genuinely excited. As you may know I'm a big coffee fan and in fact I have a cafetiere and a secret stash of Douwe Egberts in my drawer at work, so I don't have to drink the sludge that passes for coffee in our office. (Snob, moi?)

The new range comprises six brand new coffee blends:

1) House Blend – a smooth classic blend of the finest beans. Perfect for any time of day.

2) Time Together – a spicy blend with a hint of vanilla and nut. Perfect for when you are relaxing with friends.

3) Café Milano – a traditional Italian style coffee with a relaxing blend and a hint of spice. Perfect to relax and escape with.

4) Flavourful Decaff - a smooth blend with a hint of vanilla and chocolate using decaffeinated beans. Perfect for those who prefer a lower caffeine intake.

5) Morning Americano – an American style coffee with a strong blend of nutty flavouring. Perfect to kick-start your day.

6) Fired up – an espresso style blend with intense spice and chocolate flavouring creating with dark-roasted beans. Perfect for those who appreciate a rich flavour.

And lucky me, I got to sample them all! I was very impressed. They all tasted very fresh (sometimes pre-packed ground coffee can be a bit stale) and rich without any hint of bitterness. My favourite without a doubt was the Morning Americano, which is lovely brewed quite strong in a stovetop espresso pot and enjoyed black, but I also really liked Time Together. I'm not convinced by the name, I have to admit, but the coffee itself is very tasty without being too intense and is lovely with a piece of cake!

The range is available now in Tesco and other stores, priced around £3.14 for a 300g bag. The Morning Americano is definitely going to be a permanent fixture in my fridge!

I have a bag of the Flavourful Decaff to give away to one lucky person. Just comment on this post and tell me how you take your coffee. I'll pick a winner on Sunday 11 December. Make sure you leave your email address so I can contact you. Sorry but I can only post the prize within the UK.

Many thanks to Jessica for the yummy samples :)

A brief chat about coffee.

Up until recently, I was quite happy to drink instant coffee.

Not exclusively, mind you. My coffee of choice was Douwe Egberts ground coffee, brewed in a filter machine or (preferably) in a cafetiere. But on those mornings when I just couldn't be bothered, or if I needed to fill up a flask to take somewhere, I could cope with some Kenco instant. No problem.

No more.

I have always liked espressos but lacked the equipment to make them at home. Recently I did a bit of looking around on the internet and discovered that a little stovetop coffee pot was the next best thing to an expensive espresso machine, and one trip to TK Maxx later and £5.99 poorer, I became the proud owner of a little cream-coloured one. And to make my shopping trip even more successful, I found some pretty white and duck egg blue espresso cups and saucers in a House of Fraser outlet store - £3.00 for a set of four. It'd be rude not to.



For my first attempt with the little stovetop, I used my Douwe Egberts coffee. It was good. Really good.

The following day I popped into a coffee shop in the town where I work. They blend and roast all their own coffee and will grind it however you like. I bought a little bag of java mocha, which is apparently their biggest seller and which smells better than almost anything on earth. And you know what? This is the stuff that's ended my relationship with instant coffee for good. I can never go back now.

So I'm interested. Do you drink coffee? What type? How do you brew it? Tell me about your coffee habits.

The only thing that can improve a good coffee, by the way, is a good biscotti to perch on the saucer. So here's a recipe for a good chocolate chip & hazelnut biscotti (adapted slightly from Good Housekeeping Favourite Cakes, Bakes & Cupcakes).



Ingredients:

125g plain flour
75g caster sugar (golden, if you have it)
1/2 tsp baking powder
pinch of cinnamon
pinch of salt
1 egg
1 tbsp milk
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
25g hazelnuts (remove the skins first)
25g chocolate chips, or chopped chocolate

Preheat the oven to 200ºC. Line a baking sheet with parchment or a Silpat or similar.

Mix the flour, sugar, cinnamon, baking powder and salt. In a separate jug or small bowl, beat the milk, egg and vanilla with a fork. Make a well in the dry ingredients, pour in the wet stuff, the hazelnuts and the chocolate and mix it all together with a fork until you get a sticky dough.

Knead this on a floured surface till it comes together and roll it into a log about 25-30cm long. Place this on the baking sheet, flatten it slightly and bake for about 20 mins till golden.

Remove from the oven and drop the oven down to 150ºC. Transfer the log to a chopping board and slice it on a diagonal into slices about 1cm thick. Stand the slices on the baking tray and put back into the oven for about 10-15 minutes until dry and golden.

This particular biscotti recipe produces biscuits that are very hard (this is traditional, but see here for a softer biscotti recipe) and you really need to dip them into your drink to make them easy to eat - but they are truly delicious!