Chocolate Espresso Revel Bars

The cat is finally out of the bag, if you follow me on instagram or twitter that is. After working on it in secret for most of last year I can finally say that I have written a new book, it is available for pre-order now, and it comes out in the UK this June and in North America in early Sept. The book is called One Tin Bakes and you can read all about it here, but a quick one sentence description would be - ‘One Tin Bakes is a cookbook with 70 varied and exciting recipes all using the same one tin, a 9x13 brownie tin’. The book includes everything from cakes to cookies, desserts to breads and everything in between. I am not going to spam you with info about the book all the way up until its release but if you want to find out more I will be posting about it occasionally over on Instagram so make sure you’re following me there. 

Now as the book is a lot of rectangles and I worked on it for the best part of a year you would think I would be excited to bake in different tins, making round recipes after a year of rectangles, but one of the first things I baked this year, after all the edits were finally submitted , you guessed it, another rectangle. It was even in the same 9x13 tin. Obsessed. But the recipe had been sat at the top of my extensive ‘to bake’ list for months and it had to be made. When I tell it you the resulting recipe was incredible I’m not joking, not exaggerating, I loved these bars so much. The recipe comes from my friend Shauna Sever’s wonderful book Midwest Made, a fantastic book that explores the wonderful world of baking from the American Midwest and what a world that is to explore. 

The midwest has a fascinating history and its baking is influenced by its different waves of immigration with German, Scandinavian, Polish, French and Italian immigrants all making their homes in the Midwest over the years. From my, obviously limited, experience and knowledge of the midwest the book does a great job at digging into the areas culinary past and presenting a fascinating array of recipes, everything from classics from German Lebkuchen to modern interpretations of classics like a Raspberry and Rhubarb Swedish Flop. I devoured the book on receipt and there are so many recipes bookmarked to be made at some point, but the one recipe that jumped out to me, the one I have been dying to make for months, is a bar recipe called ‘Chocolate-Espresso Revel Bars’. To me a revel is a brand of chocolate buttons, that had its heyday when I was a kid in the 90’s, not a homemade recipe. These bars start with a simple oatmeal cookie laced with chocolate chips and topped with ribbons of espresso chocolate ganache before a final coating of the cookie mixture. It may be two simple elements layered together but the flavour you get is a pie joy, these give me the comfort I get from a chocolate chip cookie but that sense of nostalgia that seems somehow intrinsic to an oatmeal cookie. In the book Shauna explains that the recipes seems to credited to an edition of the Iowa based Better Homes and Garden magazine back in 1968. Shauna took that idea and reduced the sweetness a little (the original was made with a condensed milk mixture) and added espresso to add a new dimension. The Revel Bar might be a midwestern classic and as far I am concerned they’ll become a classic in my house too, it’s a true baking love affair.

I have always loved Shauna’s work but this book is a particular triumph, I know how much work must have gone into the research for this book not to speak of the work that goes into developing these recipes for a modern audience, updating classic recipes for modern palettes and reinventing ideas that we had long forgotten. Whilst the recipes are historically linked they feel as exciting to me today as I’m sure they did to the midwesterners who created them all those years ago. 

Espresso Revel Bars
From Midwest Made by Shauna Sever
Makes 12-24 

Filling and Assembly
120g double cream
50g caster sugar
3/4 tsp instant espresso powder
1/8 tsp fine sea salt
170g dark chocolate (60% cocoa content)

Dough
300g old fashioned rolled oats
225g plain flour
1 1/2 tsp instant espresso powder
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp fine sea salt
225g unsalted butter, room temperature
395g light brown muscavado sugar (see note)
1 tbsp vanilla extract
2 large eggs
85g dark chocolate chips

Note: the recipe in the book calls for dark brown sugar but from experience British dark brown sugar has a much higher molasses content and might not be the best fit for this recipe so I used light brown muscavado which seems more in line with American dark brown sugar

Preheat the oven to 180ºC (160ºC fan). Lightly grease a 9x13 inch light coloured baking tin and line with a strip of parchment paper so the excess hangs over the long sides of the tin.

For the filling, in a small saucepan, add the cream, sugar, espresso powder and salt and over medium stir together and cook until it reaches a bare simmer. Turn off the heat, add the chocolate and let sit for 1 minute before whisking until smooth and glossy. Set aside to cool.

For the dough add the oats, flour, espresso powder, baking soda and salt to a large bowl and whisk to combine. In the bowl of an electric mixer, fitted with the paddle attachment, beat the butter on medium speed for about 1 minute, or until creamy. Add the brown sugar and vanilla and beat for about 1 minute more to until smooth and lightened a little in colour. Beat in the eggs, one at a time, mixing until fully combined. Reduce the speed to low and gradually mix in the oat mixture until fully combined. Transfer a rough 1/3 of the dough to a clean bowl and set aside for the moment. To the remaining dough stir in the chocolate chips. 

Spread the chocolate chip laced dough into the prepared pan, pressing into an even flat layer that coats the entire tin. Pour the ganache filling over the base, drizzling it in thick ribbons - no need to smooth it evenly. Using your fingertips pinch off generous tablespoons of the remaining cookie dough and drop them randomly over the ganache filling. 

Bake in the preheated oven for a out 35-40 minutes or until the top is golden and the bars are beginning to pull away from the sides of the tin. Let cool completely in the tin, set atop a wire rack, for about 2 hours before using the excess parchment to lift the bars from the tin (you may need to use a knife to tease the bars away from the shorter sides of the tin). To make cleaner cuts refrigerate the bars for an hour after removing them from the tin. Stored in an airtight container these will keep for at least three days. 

Chocolate Orange Spelt Biscotti

This Post is Sponsored by Doves Farm Organic Flour

It is now irrefutably Christmas baking season and I am throwing myself in to it wholeheartedly. We always have plenty of cakes and puddings, but I think we need more cookies. Those recipes that are great to have on hand for when relatives drop round or for when you’re fed up of shop bought mince pies. 

These biscotti are incredibly easy to make, requiring almost no equipment and a few delicious ingredients. The hero ingredient is Doves Farm Organic Wholemeal Spelt Flour, which adds a slightly sweet nutty flour. Now for those of you who haven’t used spelt, it’s a great introduction to using alternative grains. Firstly it’s important to note that whilst Spelt has less gluten than regular wheat flour it is not a gluten free flour, so it is not appropriate for those with gluten allergies or for coeliacs.. Because of its high protein content and its relatively good level of gluten I find you can often switch it for plain flour fully, although for some recipes like cakes/muffins I tend to use a blend with regular wheat flour to get the texture I want. This is mainly because in recipes where gluten is needed to create structure, like in cakes, the gluten the flour has isn’t as good at creating this type of structure. In cookies or pastry I will often use 100% spelt with less noticeable differences and just an improvement in flavour. With recipes like breads or cake an important thing to note is the flour’s absorption level. The flour tends to absorb more moisture than regular wheat flour so less liquid ingredients are required. If you are wanting to experiment with spelt or other ancient grains I find a good place to start is to use spelt for 25% of the required flour and then work upwards. 

Also for those of you that followed my recent sourdough adventures you might remember that I love to add a small amount of spelt when making sourdough, because the type of gluten present in spelt flour leads to dough with greater extensibility which in my experience gives a more open crumb.

For these biscotti which I make on the smaller side (almost like the size of cantucci) I wanted to go with a flavour we often associate with Christmas without being out and out Christmas and what better than chocolate orange? Growing up my grandfather would regularly make me and his other grandkids a batch of orange chocolates and it was always one of my favourite things. For the chocolate element I have included cocoa nibs in the biscotti and coated the biscuits in milk chocolate. Normally biscotti, which is an unusually crunchy biscuit, is served alongside coffee and dunked to help it soften. With my version being coated in chocolate when you dunk them it ends up giving the coffee a mocha vibe, so a double win as far as I am concerned. 

Doves Farm Organic Wholemeal Spelt Flour is available from Morrisons, Ocado, Sainsbury’s, Tesco

Chocolate Orange Spelt Biscotti
Makes Around 25

Biscotti
335g Doves Farm Organic Wholemeal Spelt Flour
3/4 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp fine sea salt
150g caster sugar
3 tbsp honey
50g unsalted butter
Zest of 2 oranges
2 large eggs
100g raw, skin on, almonds
50g cacoa nibs

Coating
200g milk chocolate 
Zest of 1 orange

Preheat the oven to 180ºC (160ºC Fan) and line a large baking tray with parchment paper. 

In a large bowl mix together the flour, baking powder, salt and sugar. Place the honey, butter and orange zest and place into a small saucepan and over low/medium heat cook until the butter has melted and the mixture is combined. Set aside for 5 minutes to cool.

Pour the butter mixture, eggs, almonds and cacoa nibs into the bowl with the flour and use a wooden spoon to stir together to form a soft dough. Dust the worksurface with more flour and turn out the dough and cut into two even pieces. Roll each piece into a log that is 5cm wide and place onto the prepared baking tray.

Bake in the preheated oven for about 25 minutes or until golden brown then remove from the oven and allow to cool for 10 minutes. Once cooled use a large serrated knife to cut into slices, about 2cm wide. Turn the slices cut side up and bake for a further 10 minutes. Remove and allow to cool fully. At this stage you can store the cookies in an airtight container for up to two weeks. But if you want to serve them as I prefer, melt the chocolate and dip the cookies halfway into the chocolate. Allow any excess to drip back into the chocolate before transferring to a sheet of parchment. Once all of the cookies have been dipped grate the orange zest over the cookies. Set in the fridge for 15 minutes or until the chocolate has set. Made like this the cookies are best within a week or so. 

Chocolate Chip Molasses Ginger Cookies

Chocolate Chip Molasses Ginger Cookies
Makes 22 cookies

As I write this I am sat in my local coffee shop and its packed so im squished in at the last table by the door, shivering away as the biting cold constantly rushes in every time someone opens the door. It is well and truly winter and I my sixth bakers sense is telling me to break open the spices, the wintery bakes that provide comfort, a sense of warmth and make getting out from under the blanket worth it. Todays recipe is a special one, a mash up of two favourites and it is one of my recipes that appears in this years Bake From Scratch ‘Cookie Issue’. If you’ve read the magazine before you know I write for them regularly and am always thrilled when they ask for another feature from me. If your in the UK it is not currently on the shelves in shops here but you can subscribe and they’ll send out issue or you can also get a digital subscription should you want more Christmas cookies (my other recipes include a espresso chocolate sable sandwich cookie and a stamped lebkuchen)

Nothing says Christmas to me more than spiced bakes and very few recipes will win me over more than a soft gingerbread cookie. Add chocolate to that cookie and then they’ll be nothing else I want to eat this winter! Because the cookie uses both muscavado sugar and molasses there is already a hint of bitterness in the recipe so when choosing your chocolate you can go a little lower in cocoa content than you might usually for a chocolate chip cookie, even a milk chocolate would work wonderfully here.

The recipe was originally written for an American audience so you will see that it uses molasses as one of the ingredients, it gives it that charecteristic flavour, the depth, the treacly notes. Thankfully you can happily use black treacle as a replacement. I know you can buy molasses from some health food stores here in the UK now but to be honest I haven’t actually tried these yet so if you’re in the UK I would simply suggest sticking to black treacle.

Whilst these gingerbread cookies are already packing a lot of flavour there is always room for more, right? If you like your gingerbread cookies with as much ginger flavour as possible you can also add a few tablespoons of crystallised ginger to the batter, making them a triple ginger cookie. When it comes to texture these veer towards the softer side of gingerbread cookies but if you are one of those people that prefer a chewy gingerbread cookie you can use a 50/50 blend of plain and bread flours.

Chocolate Chip Gingerbread Cookies 
225g unsalted butter, room temperature
220g light brown muscavado sugar
160g molasses (black treacle will also work here)
2 tbsp grated fresh ginger
2 large eggs
1 tsp ground ginger
2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp freshly grated nutmeg
525g plain flour
2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
300g dark chocolate (55-60% cocoa solids) roughly chopped
100g demerara sugar, for rolling

In a large pan set over medium/high heat, melt the butter, sugar and molasses together until the butter has fully melted and the sugar has dissolved. Remove from the heat and allow to cool for about 30 minutes. Once cooled whisk in the eggs, mixing until fully combined. 

In a large bowl whisk together all of the remaining ingredients, except the chocolate. Pour the butter mixture into the flour mixture and mix together with a wooden spoon until almost fully combined. Add the chocolate and mix together until you have a uniform cookie dough. Cover with plastic wrap and chill the cookie dough for 2 hours before baking.

Preheat the oven to 190ºC/375ºF (170ºC/340ºF Fan)

Roll the chilled cookie dough into ping pong ball sized pieces and coat the outside in demerara sugar. Place onto two sheet trays, lined with parchment, a couple inches apart. 

Bake in the preheated oven for 10-12 minutes until set and lightly browned around the edges, but still soft in the middle. Allow to cool on the sheet trays for 10 minutes before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely. 

Kept in a sealed container these cookies will keep for up to three days.

Oatmeal Raisin Flapjack Bars with Caramelised White Chocolate

This post is sponsored Lyle’s Golden Syrup

I know 2019 isn’t over yet but its been an incredibly busy and exciting year and I am doing a little reflecting. I have been working on a few projects that I haven’t been able to talk about and very soon I get to share everything, I have something fun for Christmas and something for next year that I am so excited to reveal, it’s been driving me bonkers not sharing it with you guys. But as the year is coming to end and I am starting to slow down just a little, and it is really just a little, I am back in the kitchen testing recipes for you guys and first up is something I have been sitting on for a few months that I think will become a firm favourite, its definitely one of my new favourites.

I think oatmeal raisin cookies are the unsung hero of the cookie world. They’re nostalgic, easy to make, textural and they have great flavour. Yet they’re always outshined by their chocolate chip cousins. This recipe takes the idea of an oatmeal raisin cookie and transforms it for a modern day, something a little bit more special, a bit more extravagant and yes there's a little chocolate for good measure. For the chocolate I am using caramelised white chocolate. White chocolate is the obvious choice for an oatmeal raisin cookie and caramelising it just adds a whole bunch more flavour. The base is a mix of a flapjack/oatmeal raisin cookie which of course needs a little Lyle’s Golden Syrup for that classic taste and for that perfect chew plus it uses a touch of milk powder which really ups the classic oatmeal cookie flavour. If you’ve ever baked with Lyle’s Golden Syrup you know it normally comes in the iconic tin but to make baking a little easier they’ve just launched a new 700g squeeze bottle which is an easier format for baking, less mess and easier to use.

Oatmeal Bars
85g plain flour
100g rolled oats
1/4 tsp flaked sea salt
100g raisins
75g unsalted butter
2 tbsp Lyle’s Golden Syrup
100g light brown sugar
2 tbsp milk powder
1/4 tsp baking soda

Caramelised White Chocolate Ganache
250g white chocolate, roughly chopped
100g double cream
1 tsp flaked sea salt

Preheat the oven to 180C (160C Fan). Line an 20cm (8”) square tin with a strip of parchment or foil, with the excess hanging over the sides of the tin to make removing the bars easier later on.

To make the bars place the flour, oats, salt and raisins into a large bowl and mix together until everything is evenly mixed. Place the butter, golden syrup and brown sugar into a saucepan and cook over medium heat, stirring every now and then until everything is melted and smooth. Add the milk powder and whisk until combined. Take the pan off the heat and add in the baking soda and 1 tbsp water, stirring together for a minute until the mixture is a little foamy. Pour this mixture over the oat mixture and mix together until well combined. Whilst the oat mixture is still warm tip it into our prepared pan and press into a flat and even layer.

Bake in the preheated oven for 20-25 minutes or until the flapjack is golden brown and just a little darker around the edges. Allow to cool in the pan whilst you make the caramelised topping.

Place the chocolate onto a rimmed baking tray (don't use a black or non-stick tray) and place into an oven preheated to 120C, 250F, Gas 1/2. Bake for 40-50 minutes. As it bakes remove every 15 minutes and stir thoroughly, making sure the chocolate is smooth and silky. Remove from the oven when the colour reminds you of dulce de leche. Pour the melted chocolate into small bowl and pour in the cream, stirring to combine. Pour the ganache over the cooled flapjack bars and spread into an even layer. Pop the bars into the fridge to allow the ganache to set. Before its fully set sprinkle the ganache with the sea salt. 

Cut into small bars and serve.