favourite of the week

Cake: carrot cake

Ice cream flavour: watermelon

Topping or sweet: chocolate drops

style: french

Your favourite chocolate

After the poll that I held, i found out your favourite chocolate flavour is milk choclate, followed very closely by white chocolate! 

How to make chocolate chip cookies

Ingredients 85g/3oz butter  85g/3oz granulated sugar  85g/3oz brown sugar  Few drops vanilla essence  1 egg  170g/6oz self raising flour, sifted  Pinch salt  60-120g/2-4oz chocolate chips Method Grease two baking trays.  Cream the butter with the sugar and vanilla essence.  Beat in the egg.  Fold in the flour and salt with the chocolate chips.  Drop spoonfuls of mixture onto the baking trays and bake the cookies at 175°C, Gas Mark 4 for 12-15 minutes.  Stand for 1 minute then place chocolate chip cookies on a wire rack to cool.

How to make choclate bowls

You will need ...

Some balloons

300 grams of chocolate

A desert to fill your bowl with

 

1. Break the chocolate into small pieces. Melt the chocolate.  Remove from the heat and leave to cool for 5 mins. 
2. Meanwhile, blow up your balloons. Try to pick small balloons and don't blow them up too much. Tie with a knot.
3. Line a baking tray with parchment. Holding the knotted end of the balloon, dip it into the melted chocolate to create your bowl. Repeat with all your balloons. Leave for at least 30 mins or until set.
4. When the chocolate has set, pop the balloons and carefully peel them away from the bowls. Fill with your chosen dessert ,ice cream is good because it keeps the bowls cold.

Five fun chocolate facts

The word “chocolate” comes from the Aztec word, “Xocolatl”, which rather funnily means “bitter water”.

The biggest bar of chocolate ever made was created in 2000 and weighed 5,000 pounds.

Chocolate manufacturers currently use 40% of the world’s almonds and 20% of the world’s peanuts.

Every Russian and American space voyage has taken with chocolate bars.

The chocolate company Cadbury made the first chocolate bar in the world in 1842.

10 chocolate muffins

INGREDIENTS

• 250g plain flour
• 2 tsp baking powder
• ½ tsp bicarbonate of soda
• 4 tbsp unsweetened cocoa powder
• ½ tsp salt
• 100g caster sugar
• 75g plain chocolate chips
• 1 large egg
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 250ml milk
• 90ml vegetable oil

METHOD

1. Preheat the oven to 190°C, fan oven 170°C, Gas Mark 5. Put 10 paper muffin cases into a muffin tray.

2. Sift the flour, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda, cocoa powder and salt into a large bowl. Stir in the sugar and chocolate chips.

3. Beat together the egg, vanilla extract and milk. Add the oil, stirring to mix.

4. Pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients, stirring until just combined. Do not beat or over-mix – the batter will still be a little bit lumpy.

5. Spoon the mixture into the muffin cases and bake for 20-25 minutes. Cool on a wire rack.

Chocolates story

Where does chocolate come from? Actually, it DOES grow on trees. It all starts with a small tropical tree, the Theobroma cacao. About 70% of the world’s cacao is grown in Africa.

A cacao tree can produce close to two thousand pods per year. There is a sticky white pulp and about 30 or 40 seeds inside the pods. The seeds are very bitter. 

Next they are roasted and cleaned and the outside of them taken away. The inside is crushed and made into a creamy paste which is added to sugar, vanilla, milk and cocoa butter. Finally its put into moulds, wrapped and packaged, sent to the shops and eaten by us! 

So that is chocolates story very briefly.