Salted Black Cocoa Sables with Caramelised White Chocolate Chunks

I feel like this post needs to start with an apology to my fellow British bakers because to make this exactly as written will be a little bit tough. Black cocoa, the elusive cocoa used to make Oreos and of course this sable cookie, is a little tough to track down here at home in Blighty Right now, in the UK, there is only one brand of black cocoa availble (over on amazon of course) and I have no idea of the quality. I am lucky to have a stash I bought from King Arthur Flour over in the US and I use it sparingly not wanting to run out anytime soon. The good news is that in this recipe the cocoa is mainly used for look so your favourite cocoa powder will also make for a wonderful cookie, just remember this recipe should you find some black cocoa and want to try a recipe that put its dramatic look to good use. 

I also realise as I am typing this that many of you may also never have heard of black cocoa powder. Simply put it’s just another version of ‘Dutched’ cocoa powder. Cocoa powder comes in two main forms, natural and dutched. Natural cocoa powder is the leftovers after cocoa mass is stripped of its cocoa butter (this form is more common in the US). Dutched cocoa powder goes through one extra step, it is washed in a solution of potassium carbonate to neutralise the acidity found in natural cocoa powder, it also happens to darken the colour of the cocoa powder and give it a deeper more roasted flavour profile (people argue whether natural or dutched has the strongest ‘chocolate’ flavour but I’m not getting into that today). Black cocoa powder goes through a more intense version of this dutching process which gives it an almost entirely black colour. Generally it isn’t seen as having the strongest chocolate flavour compared to the more common cocoa powder varieties so I use it mainly when I want a more dramatic colour, often blending it with a regular ducted cocoa powder to give the best of both worlds. 

In todays recipe I use the black cocoa to make a cookie that looks incredible and also one that gives a chocolate flavour but without overpowering the hero ingredient of this recipe, caramelised white chocolate. If you know me you know I love nothing more than a batch of this magic ingredient. By slowly roasting white chocolate you can caramelise it and add a ton of caramel notes to the chocolate. If you’ve never made it before let this recipe be the reason you finally give it a go. 

If you don’t want to track some black cocoa down this will still taste incredible with regular ducthed cocoa powder so don’t let that stop you from whipping up a batch, 

Salted Black Cocoa Sables with Caramelised White Chocolate Chunks

Makes 30-35
140g plain flour
140g wholemeal rye flour (you can replace with plain flour if you prefer)
40g black cocoa powder
3/4 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp flaked sea salt
220g unsalted butter, room temperature
125g caster sugar
125g light brown sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
200g caramelised white chocolate (recipe below), roughly chopped

To make the cookie dough sieve the flours, cocoa powder and baking soda into a large bowl, pushing any lumps of cocoa powder through the sieve. I avoid sieving unless necessary and this is one of those time. Cocoa powder often forms little lumps so it’s always important to sieve it unless you want little dry pockets throughout your recipe. Add the salt and whisk everything together. Place the butter and sugars into the bowl of an electric stand mixer, fitted with the paddle attachment, and on medium speed beat tother for about 2-3 minutes just until smooth and creamy (you can do this with an electric hand mixer too if you want). We don’t want to beat lots of air into the butter we just want to make it soft enough that the flour mixture combines easily so don’t overdo it at this stage. Add the vanilla and mix briefly to combine.

Turn the mixer off and pour in the flour mixture. We don’t want to make a huge mess and have a cloud of flour and cocoa powder cover every surface in your kitchen so cover the bowl of the mixer with a kitchen towel and then gently pulse the mixer on and off just to get the flour combined a little before turning the mixer to low to mix it in properly. We want to mix in the flour just until it disappears into the butter but before the mixture forms a ball of dough, it should still look a little crumbly. Add the chunks of caramelised white chocolate and mix briefly just to distribute. Tip the dough out onto the worksurface and use your hands to briefly bring together as a uniform dough. Cut the dough into two roughly equally sized pieces and set one aside for the moment. Form each ball of dough into a log that is roughly 4-5cm thick. Roll the log of dough in parchment or clingfilm and refrigerate until firm, about 3-4 hours. Repeat with the second piece of dough. 

When ready to bake preheat the oven to 160ºC (140ºC Fan) 325ºF and line a couple baking trays with parchment paper. Unwrap one of the logs of dough and use a sharp knife to cut into slices about 1/2 an inch, just over a cm, thick. Place them onto the prepared baking trays leaving just a little space between. The cookies will spread but not significantly. Sprinkle each with a little extra flaked sea salt, unless you are one of those people that have sent me angry emails about your hatred of salt being sprinkled onto cookies you guys can leave it off and stop emailing me. Bake in the preheated oven for 14 minutes. The cookies wont look done, they’ll be incredibly dark so you cant use visual clues and if you press them they’ll feel too soft but trust the process, as the cookies cool they crisp up leaving you with a wonderful sable texture. Sable is French for sand and these cookies should have a slightly crumbly, almost shortbread like texture. 

Kept in a sealed container these cookies will keep for about 4-5 days.

Caramelised White Chocolate

300g white chocolate, minimum 30% cocoa butter content

To make the caramelised white chocolate simple roughly chop the chocolate and add to rimmed baking tray. I use an American style quarter sheet pan which is the same size as a regular 9x13 brownie pan so if you own one of those you can also use that. Place the baking tray into an oven that has been preheated to 125ºC. You’re basically going to leave it in there for anything from an hour to hour and half until it has reached your desired level of caramelisation. The one thing you need to do is a lot of stirring. 

Every 10-15 minutes you need to remove the tray and give the chocolate a really good stir. When the chocolate comes out of the oven it may look a little stiff, a little grainy. With a good stir the chocolate will smooth out and become liquid again. To prevent the chocolate from burning or become an unpleasantly grainy mess you must do this stirring very well and every 15 minutes. Don’t be tempted to leave the chocolate any longer between stirs, it will stiffen up to a place from which it cant be rescued. The reason I recommend white chocolate with at least 30% cocoa butter is that it melts thinner and is easier to work with. Once the chocolate has reached a rich golden brown colour remove it from the oven and scrape it into a container. I like to divide it into rectangular plastic trays so it almost resembles the original bar form it came in. Refrigerate until solid and then use however you fancy. You’ll note my cookie recipe only use 200g and my recipe for the chocolate uses 300g of white chocolate. The reason for this is two fold. The chocolate is so good you’ll need extra to account for everything you snack on as you make the cookie dough and secondly making a smaller batch makes it more prone to problems so 300g is the smallest batch I would recommend making. 

Banana Pancakes with Passion Fruit Butterscotch Sauce

This post is sponsored by Doves Farm Organic Flour

How can anyone dislike a holiday that is celebrated with the eating of pancakes? I for one can absolutely get behind this day. Pancake Day, Shrove Tuesday, Fat Tuesday, Mardi Gras, the day goes by different names depending on where in the world you live but the one thing that stays the same is we all celebrate the day by eating fatty foods before the fasting of lent begins. Generally this means we enjoy sweeter treats, that might be King Cake, Semla, Malasadas or even…omelettes. Okay I’ll admit that last one doesn’t quite follow the pattern. Here in the UK we generally stick to the classic pancakes. Traditionally this would be in the form of crepes, thin French style pancakes, and quite often the filling would be incredibly simple and, at its most classic, the British version is served with lemon juice and sugar. Now there is absolutely nothing wrong with this classic dish, I love it, it’s nostalgic, it’s what I grew up with. But, when I am making the pancakes myself, I quite often turn to a more American style pancake, thick and fluffy, and topped with all manner of delicious things. For this year’s pancakes I stuck with my favourite fluffy pancakes but I made them with mashed bananas and Khorasan flour giving them a wonderful banana bread flavour and served them with one of my favourite things, a passion fruit spiked butterscotch sauce, a fabulous twist on the classic stack of pancakes. 

What is Khorasan Flour

These pancakes use Doves Farm Organic Stoneground KAMUT® Khorasan Wholemeal Flour to give a boost of flavour. Khorasan (KAMUT® is the registered brand name of the flour) is an ancient grain that is thought to be a distant relative of Durum Wheat (which is maybe why it’s very well suited to making pasta). The flavour is rich and creamy, almost buttery. Like spelt it can produce soft and tender bakes but when used as the sole flour can also make recipes a little crumbly. Khorasan is said to have been found in the tomb of an Egyptian pharaoh, giving it the nickname king tut’s grain, it was also said to have been carried on the ark by Noah, giving it a second nickname of the prophets wheat. Whilst these are likely nothing more than fancy storytelling I love a product with a good backstory and have you ever heard of another flour having nicknames? I certainly haven't. Whilst these stories link the flour to having a middle eastern origin these days the flour is only grown in US and Western Canada, cultivated since the 1970’s. The flour is also higher in protein, fibre and many minerals compared to modern wheat.

How to Bake with Khorasan 

I find that Khorasan is similar in application to Spelt, you can use a relatively high proportion of the flour without any negative issues. Using Khorasan for 50% of the flour called for in a given recipe works well without noticeable problems. Used in bread recipes it can make for tender but more dense loaves. Like with some of the other ancient grains I have been using recently, Khorasan is a little more absorbent than modern wheat flour so you may need to up the moisture content a little. When using a new grain for the first time it can be advisable to substitute the wheat flour with smaller percentages of the ancient grain, testing how it behaves in your recipe. I always suggest using 20% of the overall flour called for in a recipe as a good starting point. 

Doves Farm Organic Stoneground KAMUT® Khorasan Wholemeal Flour is available from Ocado, Sainsbury’s, Tesco and Waitrose & Partners, and direct from Doves Farm

Khorasan Banana Pancakes with Passion Fruit Butterscotch Sauce
Makes 8-10 pancakes (serves 4)

Banana Pancakes
150g Doves Farm Organic Stoneground KAMUT® Khorasan Wholemeal Flour
1/4 tsp salt
2 tsp baking powder
125g bananas, (weighed without the peel)
2 large eggs
40g caster sugar
25g unsalted butter, melted and cooled
150ml whole milk

Passion Fruit Butterscotch Sauce
165g light brown sugar
165g unsalted butter
Pinch of salt
75ml double cream
50g passion fruit pulp

To make the butterscotch sauce, place the sugar and butter into a medium saucepan and cook over medium heat until the butter has melted and the two ingredients have combined into a caramel like sauce. Once bubbling cook for a couple minutes more before adding the salt and cream and cooking for a further 2-3 minutes until slightly thickened. Take of the heat and stir in the passion fruit pulp. Set aside to cool slightly before using. If you like, you can also add sliced banana to the sauce when adding the cream.

To make the pancake batter place the Doves Farm Wholemeal Khorasan Flour, salt and baking powder into a large bowl and whisk together to combine. 

In a separate bowl mash the bananas with a fork until only small lumps remain. Add the eggs, sugar and butter and mix together until smooth. Add the milk and mix until combined. Pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and mix together briefly just until smooth and combined. 

To cook place a non-stick pan over a low/medium heat. Using piece of kitchen roll lightly coat the pan with a little oil. Add a spoonful of dough to the pan and spread into a thin disc. Cook until bubbles that hold their shape when they pop form around the edges of the pancake, flip and cook for about 30 seconds more. After the first pancake you shouldn’t need to grease the pan again. 

Serve warm with a large spoonful of the caramel

Very Vanilla Sour Cream Bundt Cake

I love being experimental in the kitchen, unusual flavours, new combinations, its all fun and games to me but, and hear me out, it’s very important to learn to walk before you can run. With baking I think it is so important to learn the basics before we start playing around. How will you know a cake will turn out well if you’re just making random changes to something you’ve never made? When people ask about learning to bake better, learning to make their own recipes, the advice I give most often is make things multiple times before making changes and even then make changes one at a time. I cant tell you how many times I have received emails from excited bakers that are wondering why something went wrong even though they changed multiple things. If you don’t know the foundations how can you build a successful house. Are you bored of the metaphors yet? I am, so I’ll get to recipe in one second. Really what I am saying is the technical foundations, the skills, the way a recipe works, all of this is super important especially if you love adapting recipes. The more you understand how basic recipes work the easier it is to understand what adaptions can be made without the recipe failing. 

One of the best recipes you can have in your arsenal, that recipe that you whip out when you don’t have a lot in the house but need a special cake, is a classic pound cake. My ideal version is a very vanilla forward cake, laced with sour cream. The cake is so simple the vanilla should be very present, this is the time to crack out the vanilla pods, and in fact this recipe uses both a vanilla pod and vanilla extract for a double dose of the good stuff. The cake has no frosting so the texture needs to be the right amount of moist (dont come at me with your hatred for the word moist, it’s useful and I cannot be persuaded to stop using it) and the sour cream ensures a velvety crumb that is a joy to eat without any adornments. 

With this recipe the technique is key and if you follow me over on Instagram you know this year one of my aims is to help you all become more confident bakers and arm you with the skills to master any recipe. For this recipe we are using the creaming method and even if you’ve been baking for years I encourage you to watch the video to really nail your technique. This recipe is based on a classic sour cream pound cake, one of those that appears everywhere but the origin is hard to trace but I have adapted it quite a bit to suit both my tastes and British ingredients. The sugar in the original recipe was much higher and whilst delicious my takeaway was too much sugar so this gives you the right taste without an overwhelming level of sweetness. 

Very Vanilla Sour Cream Pound Cake
Serves 15-16

340g unsalted butter, room temperature
450g caster sugar
1 vanilla pod
5 large eggs, room temperature
325g plain flour
50g cornflour
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp baking soda
240ml sour cream, room temperature
1 tbsp vanilla extract

Preheat the oven to 180ºC (160ºC Fan).

First we need to prep our Bundt pan. Because the pans have nooks and crannies this is especially important. My favourite method for this cake is to lightly spray the inside of the tin with a non-stick baking spray (this is the one I use) and dust the inside of the tin with a little extra flour. When spraying the tin the area I find most people overlook is the core, this is likely where the cake will stick the most so make sure this is fully coated before adding the flour. The flour coating wants to be super thin so once every part of the tin is coated invert the Bundt pan and tap it on the worksurface to remove any excess. 

When a recipe calls for room temperature butter that can be a little vague, everyones kitchen is a different temperature after all. What this actually means is the butter should between 15-20ºC but no warmer. If you don’t have a thermometer the best way to test this is to press your finger into the butter. Your finger should easily leave an impression without being coated in a layer of greasy butter, the butter should still feel a little firm, it shouldn’t completely give way to a little pressure. This is the ideal temperature for butter to be whipped and for it to hold on to lots and lots of tiny air pockets, making for a nice light cake. We also want to make sure that by this point the eggs and sour cream are also at room temperature. I never keep my eggs in the fridge but to ensure you batter doesn’t curdle, if you do chill your eggs, you’ll need to get them out well in advance of baking to bring them to temperature. 

So to make the cake place the butter and sugar into the bowl of a stand mixer, along with the seeds scraped for a vanilla pod, and on medium speed beat together for about 5 minutes. To test this mixture is ready you’re looking for the butter and sugar mixture to have gone from a dense looking, very yellow in colour, mixture, to a light and fluffy, almost white in colour, mixture. With butter starting at the right temperature this normally takes 5 minutes. 

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First in a new weekly series showing you a technique or tip to make you a better baker. Todays video is how to properly cream together butter and sugar. Yes its a simple technique but its the foundation of a lot of recipes so its worth spending the time to do properly. Also if there is a technique you want to film, let me know! - #bakingbasics #techniquetuesday #theboywhobakes #creamingmethod #bakingguide #cakesandbakes #igtv #bundtcake #bundstagram #poundcake #vanillacake

A post shared by Edd Kimber (@theboywhobakes) on Jan 21, 2020 at 10:04am PST

Add the eggs to a large jug and briefly whisk together to break them up. With the mixer still running add the eggs a little bit at a time, mixing until the egg has been fully combined before adding more. This slow addition of the egg, along with the proper creaming of the butter and sugar, ensures a good emulsion and will stop the batter from curdling. Whilst a cake batter that has curdled is worth baking the resulting cake will not be as light as it could have been. Meanwhile add the flour, cornflour, salt and baking powder to a large bowl and whisk together. Once all of the egg has been combined add a third of the flour mixture and mix briefly just until combined. Mix in half of the sour cream and the vanilla. Continue alternating like this until everything has been added. 

Scrape the finished batter into the prepared Bundt pan, trying not to get any up the sides of the pan. Spread the mixture into an even layer and then bake in the oven for about 75-85 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the middle of the cake comes out clean.

Remove the bundt from the oven and set it on a wire rack for 10 minutes before inverting it onto the wire rack and releasing it from the pan. With Bundt cakes this timing is important. I find if you try and turn the cake out immediately after baking the structure of the cake may not be fully set and the cake is more prone to breaking. If you turn the cake out much longer than 10 minutes after removing it from the oven, the sugars in the cake can make it adhere to the pan, I find 10 minutes is the sweet spot for most recipes. Allow the cake to cool fully before serving. Whilst this cake is wonderful on its own I love serving it with a dollop of creme fraiche and roasted rhubarb. Kept covered the cake will keep for 3-4 days. 

Rhubarb, White Chocolate and Spelt, Courgette Muffins

This post is sponsored by Doves Farm Organic Flour

I have been writing about food, and specifically baking, for 10 years now and if I am correct I don’t think I have ever published a recipe for a muffin. It’s not that I don’t like them, I think they can be wonderful. Truth be told I have no idea, no excuse, no reason why but here we are, 10 years in, and this is the first muffin recipe I have posted. Thankfully it was worth the wait, these spelt rhubarb muffins are incredibly easy but also jam packed with flavour. 

What is Spelt Flour

This is another recipe in my series on baking with ‘Ancient Grains’ with Doves Farm Organic Flour and in this recipe I am using their ‘Stoneground Wholemeal Spelt Flour’. Now spelt is maybe one of the easiest grains to use when you want to swap out regular wheat flour and because of this and its flavour it has become an incredibly popular ancient grain. When we talk about ‘ancient grains’ it is easy to think this means we’ve been using it for hundreds of years but the truth is much more impressive. It is said that spelt has been cultivated since around 5,000/6,000 BC. Over the years, wheat flour became the dominant grain which we bake with and spelt was, for many years, relegated to animal feed. Since the 1970s ancient grains have been re-introduced to UK soils however and thankfully now it is among one of the more popular ancient grains. Milling historic, heritage grains since 1978, Doves Farm has led the way in this and was the first in the UK to grow and produce flour from spelt 

There is, however, a lot of confusion about what spelt actually is. Many think of it as a gluten free option, or that it has less gluten, or less ‘bad’ gluten and strictly speaking none of these are accurate. Rather than less gluten it actually has a different formation of gluten, which for those who suffer gluten intolerances (not coeliac or allergic reactions) can be an easier form to digest. Without getting into too much technical detail, gluten is made up of two proteins and one of these gives stretchiness and the other gives strength and structure. Wheat flour is viewed as having the perfect balance between the two proteins and is why it became the most commonly used grain for baking. The gluten in spelt has more of the stretchy type of gluten which means breads with lots of spelt tends to rise less and spread more and it also means you should avoid kneading spelt doughs too much as it can cause crumbly breads, in fact when you work with spelt bread doughs you’ll find they become incredibly stretchy much quicker than when made with regular wheat. Flavour wise, I like to compare the grain to wholemeal flour, but sweeter - no real bitterness is present, it’s a great taste that suits a wide variety of flavours. As it is also a soft flour, it makes for particularly tender recipes.

How To Use Spelt Flour

For many recipes spelt can be used as a straight swap for regular wheat flour. When making breads it tends to spread out, more than rise up, so I personally like to use it as a portion of the flour if baking a free form loaf or if I want a higher percentage of spelt in the bread. Baking it in a tin ensures the bread holds it shape. When substituting regular wheat flour for spelt flour I happily start by replacing 50% of the flour, in cakes and breads, and for things like biscuits and pastry, recipes that don’t rely on the gluten for structure, you can use a higher percentage of the grain. If you’re not following a recipe that was specifically designed for an alternative grain then when making flour substitutions it is always a good idea to start by subbing out smaller percentages so you can see how the recipe reacts to the alternative grain. With spelt the benefit is you can generally start this at a relatively high level. With a lot of recipes you’ll find using spelt as the sole flour is absolutely possible and absolutely delicious. The one thing to note about using spelt is that it has a higher rate of absorption so it’s often advisable to reduce the amount of liquid called for. I find this particularly true when making spelt breads, and find a 10-20% reduction is advisable.

Muffins

Because of the type of gluten in spelt these muffins tend to rise flatter than is normal but it’s a really good way to start baking with spelt as the muffin cases ensure structure as the batter clings to the paper cases rather than spread out. So if you’re not ready to try breads, this is a great recipe to test the waters. For the muffins I wanted something easy and really packed full of flavour. The base of the recipe is a courgette cake which is similar to carrot cake but the courgette gives less of a flavour which means it’s a great option if you want to use flavours that pair less well with carrots. For its main flavour I added rhubarb, because it’s in season and I will never not be excited to use it in more recipes, and topped the muffins with a little white chocolate because it tastes so good with the rhubarb. I also included some complimentary spices - cinnamon for a background flavour that really bring outs the flavour of the spelt, cardamom which is dream with rhubarb, and finally a little pepper which really gives everything a boost and a bit of liveliness. 

The recipes makes between 12 and 15 depending on the type of muffin case you use. If you use tulip muffin cases then it’ll make 12 large muffins but if you use regular muffins it’ll make 15. With the spelt, but also just because you’re making muffins and we don’t want to work the gluten too much, make sure to fold the batter just until the flour disappears.

Doves Farm Organic Stoneground Wholemeal Spelt Flour is available from ASDA, Morrisons, Ocado, Sainsburys and Tesco. You can also buy direct from Doves Farm

Rhubarb and White Chocolate Courgette Spelt Muffins

Makes 12-15
200g courgette, coarsely grated
175g rhubarb, sliced lengthwise and diced
175g caster sugar
75g unsalted butter
250g Doves Farm Organic Stoneground Wholemeal Spelt Flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground cardamom
1/4 tsp ground black pepper
1/4 tsp fine sea salt
3 large eggs
275g natural yoghurt
75g white chocolate, roughly chopped

Preheat the oven to 180ºC (160ºC). If you are using regular muffin cases line two muffin tins with 15 cases, if you are using tulip cases line one muffin tin with 12 cases. 

Place the courgette onto a clean kitchen towel and use to squeeze as much liquid out of the courgette as possible. The courgette has a much higher level of moisture than carrot so to make it behave in the same way we need to get rid as much water as possible. 

Take about 50g of the rhubarb and place it into a small bowl with about 1 tsp of the sugar. Stir it together to coat evenly then set aside for the moment. Place the remaining sugar and rhubarb into a large bowl and similarly mix together. Place the butter into a small pan and heat over low heat just until melted. Remove from the heat and set aside to cool slightly. 

Place the Doves Farm Wholemeal Spelt Flour into a large bowl with the baking powder, baking soda, spices and salt, whisk together so everything is evenly distributed. Add the eggs and yoghurt to the bowl with the majority of the rhubarb and mix together until everything is thoroughly mixed. Make a well in the dry goods and pour in the liquid goods and add the courgette. Gently fold together just until the flour has just about been absorbed, a few spots of flour is fine. The key thing with muffins is mixing as little as possible, you don’t want a tough muffin. 

Divide the batter evenly between the prepared muffin cases, you should be filling the cases about 2/3-3/4 of the way. Sprinkle over the reserved rhubarb and the white chocolate. Bake in the preheated oven for about 18-20 minutes or until the top of the muffin springs back to a light touch. Remove from the oven and allow to set for 5-10 minutes before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely. 

Kept sealed the muffins will keep for about 2-3 days.