One for the Weekend

Winter gives me a sweet tooth, and if you too are looking for something simple, speedy and sugary to devour in chunks (at intervals, or in one sitting) over the weekend, here's the thing to cure your craving. Nigella's (need I mention her second name? We all know exactly who I'm talking about? Good....) recipe for Rocky Road involves no real cooking, uses just five ingredients and includes no nasty surprises (i.e. raisins or nuts- always controversial subjects). I made a tray of this for my biology class last week (which partakes in the educational revolution that is Cake Friday) and it went down a treat; add the following to tomorrow's shopping list:

125g unsalted butter (i.e. half a packet)
300g dark chocolate
3 tbsp golden syrup
200g rich tea biscuits
100g mini marshmallows

Melt the butter, chocolate and the golden syrup over a moderate heat on the hob. Bash the biscuits up in a sturdy plastic bag until some are crumbs, but a few bigger bits remain. Once the melted mixture is all stirred together nicely, add the biscuits and marshmallows. Tip into a lightly greased tin and leave in the fridge for at least two hours, before cutting up into as-big-as-you-like slices. Dust with icing sugar if you want to be fancy, although it usually just annoys me to have powder all over my fingers...

Have a nice weekend, everyone!

Bikinis Bite the Dust

The weather in England grows increasingly autumnal; I hear cries of 'sod the diet!' as the opportunity for donning a bikini dims and we all pull on wooly jumpers to shield us from the howling wind. I was at a friend's house on Wednesday evening to a) have dinner and b) forage around in his neighbour's vegetable patch (with the owner's consent, of course). Having ventured out into heavy rain and picked a generous crop of tomatoes and root vegetables, we were in need of something warm and sweet to take our minds off our soggy feet. I prepared this easy-peasy chocolate & peanut-butter sauce and spooned it over vanilla ice-cream, creating a fussiless comfort dessert. The sauce is adapted from a Nigel Slater recipe; I have reduced the ingredients list to just four items, three of which may well exist in your household anyday.

Ingredients:
180g dark chocolate
2 tbsp. golden syrup
2 tbsp. peanut butter (quantity can be varied, according to your taste)
Milk

Method:
1. Melt the chocolate and peanut butter in a bain-marie, cooking gently and without the bottom of the bowl touching the water beneath it.
2. Stir in the golden syrup, reserving some if the mixture gets too thick to stir comfortably.
3. Stir in splashes of milk, little be little, until a smooth, glossy sauce is achieved that dribbles in thick ribbons off the spoon.

Substitute unsalted butter for the peanut-butter if you'd like a simpler, less sickly sauce. The end result will always be calorific but, with swimsuits back in the drawer, there's now much less pressure to have such a defined figure.