Chocolate Cherry Love Bites..

With Valentine's Day looming, I present you with the most seductive Valentine's baking treat possible. These beautifully moist black cherry cakes are smothered in a silky ganache and one bite is just enough..!
These are the perfect present for your Valentine - so crack out your bakeware and enjoy!


To make 12 of these beauties, you'll need:

• 125g of Unsalted Butter, softened
• 125g of Caster Sugar
• 2 Eggs
• 175g of Self-Raising flour
• 25g of Cocoa Powder
• 1 x 425g Tin of Dark, Pitted Black Cherries
• 150g of Dark Chocolate
• 75ml of Double Cream
• 75 ml of Whole Fat Milk
• 1 Tbsp. of Golden Syrup
• 100g of White chocolate

Drain the cherries from their tin for about an hour before beginning.

Preheat the oven to 180C Fan/400F/Gas Mark 6  and line your baking tin - I used a 23 cm square baking tin, but the choice is yours.

Then quarter your cherries and pop to the side.

Begin  your sponge by creaming together your butter and sugar until soft and creamy.

Add the eggs one at a time, don't worry if it looks curdled - keep adding them and mixing them into the sugar - butter mixture.

Then sieve the flour and the cocoa and stir into the mixture.

Finally add your cherries and stir into the mixture. Turn out into your lined baking tin.

Pop into the oven for about 30 -35 minutes or until a skewer inserted comes out clean.

Turn out immediately onto a clean board and leave to cool to room temperature.

Then using a heart cookie cutter, cut out your sponge hearts, press the sponge down to compact it a little if you are finding it all a little crumbly.

Pop to the side whilst you make your ganache.
Heat the milk, cream and golden syrup in a pan until just below boiling.

Then pour the mixture onto the broken chocolate pieces and leave for a minute. then stir the mixture thoroughly until you have a glorious chocolate mixture.

Now the ganache must be left for a couple of hours until it is spreadable, it's a tricky wait  - but it'll be worth it! (In the meantime eat the left over sponge!)

Then smother each sponge heart with the ganache - it'll be a messy job!

After covering the sponges, melt the white chocolate and place into a piping bag with a No. 2 piping nozzle attached. 

Pipe a heart around the outline of each chocolate bite.

And there you have it.. your very own Chocolate Cherry Love Bites - Happy Valentine's Day! 

Troubleshooting..

• If your sponge is very crumbly and it's tricky keeping the heart shape, leave the sponge to dry out for a couple of hours - it'll become much easier!
• If your chocolate ganache appears to split, it's likely the cream/milk mixture is too hot - bung the mixture in the fridge and it should keep together
• Remember that you cover the sponge heart with the ganache - it'll hide a multitude of sins!

Custard Tart..

I'm a complete sucker for a Custard Slice, you know - the ones you get in those quaint little patisseries -  with the crisp pastry and thick icing, which is impossible to break without the custard oozing out..! Therefore, I've reshuffled the good old Custard Slice and I present to you the Custard Tart! This has everything wonderful about the Slice but bigger and easier to share (although if you didn't, it would be understandable..!)

Therefore to serve up this beauty, you'll need:

•  1 x batch of Perfect every time Shortcrust Pastry
• 4 Egg Yolks
• 60g of Caster Sugar
• 125 ml of full-fat Milk
• 150 ml of Double Cream
• 1 tsp of Vanilla Bean Paste
• 200g of Icing Sugar
• 1 tbsp of Water
• 50g of Dark Chocolate
• Baking Parchment
• Ceramic baking beans or dried out lentils - for the blind baking

Preheat your oven to 180C Fan/400F/Gas Mark 6.

You'll need to start off by blind baking your pastry, I use this really handy pastry mat, so I know roughly how far I'm rolling my pastry out to.

So dust your surface with flour liberally and place your chilled pastry in the centre. Start to roll out the pastry and try to keep a circular shape (it'll make life easier!)

When you've rolled your pastry out to about half a centimetre, place your rolling pin in the centre and flip the pastry over it.

 Then lift and cover your tart tin.

Using a bit of excess pastry, gently push your pastry into the grooves of the tin, so the ridged pattern should be fairly visible. 

When you're happy that your tin is well covered, using your rolling pin, firmly roll the pin across the top of the tin - this will cut the edges and give you a neat finish.

 Ta-dah! Now prick the base with a fork - this will prevent the pastry from rising too much.

Then line your base with baking parchment and pop in your baking beans.

Pop your lined tart into the oven for 12-15 minutes, then remove the ceramic beans and greasproof paper and pop back in for another five minutes.

Then pop to the side and you start on the custard!

Whisk the Eggs and Caster Sugar together in a bowl until paler in colour and  well mixed.

Then pour the Milk, Cream and Vanilla Bean Paste into a saucepan and pop onto the hob. Now you want to heat this until it is almost boiling - but not quite, so keep an eagle eye on it and remove from the heat as soon as its about to boil!

Then adding little by little, pour the hot Cream/ Milk mixture onto your whisked eggs and continue to whisk the mixture carefully.

When the whole mixture is incorporated, pop back into the saucepan and on a low heat. Keep stirring it until it becomes a thicker mixture, it will take about 15 -20 minutes, but eventually it will thicken and you'll have a beautiful custard!

It should just cover the back of your spatula - hurrah!

Carefully pour the mixture into your pastry case and pop into the oven (at the same temperature as before) for about 30 -35 minutes or until the custard is set but has a little wobble in the centre. 

Leave your rather delicious Tart for an hour or two, so that its fairly cool before you ice it. 

Pop your Chocolate into a disposable piping bag and zap in the microwave for about thirty seconds until its all melted, then snip the end of the bag - I find this a really hand way to reduce washing up and you don't lose any Chocolate!

Then in a large bowl, add a couple of drops of water to your icing sugar and work together until you have a thick consistency.

 Pour this icing onto your Custard tart and using  the back of a spoon, spread all over and up to the edges.

Then with your melted chocolate, pipe some rough circles into the icing (Don't worry if it's not neat - mine were ridiculously clumsy!)

 With a cocktail stick draw lines from the centre outwards (cleaning the stick after each line) repeat this the whole way around your tart.

And there you have it - one incredibly tempting Custard Tart!

Troubleshooting..

• If you feel that your custard is really not thickening turn the heat up slightly, but keep stirring - it'll turn quickly!
• When you add the warm Cream/Milk to the egg and it appears to have split - your mixture is probably too hot and you've added it too quickly - the best thing to do is to start again 
• If when you drag the cocktail stick from the centre of the icing out, the icing is starting to form slight ridges, your icing is starting to set - you can continue with feathering it but it may be a little resistant!

Perfect Every Time Shortcrust Pastry!..

I thought I better put this up as it is a really handy recipe - it never lets me down and can be tweaked so easily that you can use it for sweet or savoury bakes! Plus as Shortcrust Pastry is in so many recipes, master this and you'll find everything much easier to work with.

For one batch of Shortcrust Pastry (will cover a 23cm tart tin comfortably), you'll need:

• 200g of Plain Flour
• 100g of Unsalted Butter - chilled and cubed
• 1 Egg - whisked 
• 1tablespoon of icing sugar ( if making Sweet Shortcrust) or a pinch of salt ( for Savoury Shortcrust)

• You can also add a teaspoon of mixed herbs or even a broken up sprig of lavender  for a fragrant bake

Pop all the dry ingredients (butter, flour and icing sugar or salt) into a large mixing bowl.

Using only the tips of your fingers, gently rub the butter into the flour. Try to aerate the flour, by lifting the flour up and out of the bowl as you rub the butter in.

(slightly dodgy phototaking /rubbing in / multi tasking photo!)

Continue rubbing in until the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs - this can take up to twenty minutes by hand, so be patient (it's quite relaxing really!)

Whisk up your egg and have ready to pour in. The key is to use as little egg as possible, you want to bring together the pastry dough mixture, but you don't want to swamp it in liquid.

At this point, you want to use a metal knife to bring together the mixture - the butter will have started to warm up  a little when you were rubbing it in, so use a knife to prevent it warming further and changing the structure of the pastry.

You can add a little more egg to bring it together - but be mean with your egg!

When your pastry dough has come together, place on a lightly floured surface and ever so gently knead a couple of times to bring it together until it is all combined.

And there you go! Your shortcrust pastry - hurrah!

Wrap in clingfilm and pop into the fridge for half an hour to rest and then you can use it to line your pastry tin. Alternatively place in a sealed bag and pop in the freezer - it will last for about three months and when wanted can be defrosted in the fridge then rolled out as normal.

Troubleshooting..

• If your pastry is falling apart completely, add a little more egg, mix well and then add more if required - this will bring it together.
• If your pastry is sticking to your hands - you've added too much egg, so add a pinch of flour and continue adding until your pastry stops sticking.
• If you've got bumps and blobs of butter in your final pastry ball, you've not rubbed your butter in finely enough, the best thing is to probably start again - don't be impatient - keep going until it is fine breadcrumbs!