Brighton Bakery at Kemp Town Carnival this Saturday!

I am very excited to announce that Brighton Bakery will have it's first stall at the Kemptown Carnival this Saturday 4 June.  As I write this post the delicious aromas of a Sticky Jamaican Ginger Cake that's in the oven right now are filling the kitchen and I will have to do my best not to eat all the produce before it gets to market ;o)

All our cakes will have a bit of a twist (as you may have picked up from reading this blog) - expect appearances from my Beetroot Brownies, Peanut Butter & White Chocolate Blondies and Apple Crumble Muffins as well as some new recipes including a Latin American Chilli Chocolate Fudge Cake I can't wait to make.

If you're in the area it's free to get in so please come along and show your support - if you're not able to make it then wish us luck and do a dance for the weather gods to pray for sunshine :o)

See you there!  x

Beetroot...in a brownie??

Melissa and I both really like beetroot but for some reason they never seem to fit into any of the meals we're making (and I had also promised Melissa that I wouldn't make her eat the bright pink beetroot and vodka valentine's risotto again).  While we were at Shoreham Farmers' Market the other weekend Melissa and I had signed up to a local veggie box scheme and three earthy purple cricket balls from our first delivery had been sitting in our fridge for a few days calling out for me to use them in something good. 

I remembered a cookery programme I saw a while back when Diana Henry made a beetroot and chocolate cake that looked absolutely delicious.  I thought, if it could work in a cake, then why not a brownie?  So I googled "beetroot chocolate brownie" and top of the results was a recipe from BBC Good Food for a beetroot brownie.  It called for 500g of beetroot, which was exactly the weight of the three beets I had in the fridge, so figuring it must be a sign I decided to whip up a batch.

It always feels like a comedy recipe when you have to put on rubber gloves before you start but I have to say this is one of the weirdest recipe's I think I've ever made!  The gloves are necessary to prevent Lady Macbeth syndrome from the deep purple juices that seep out of the beetroot, which you peel, chop then microwave until cooked.  Then while they're still hot you stick them in the food processor with butter and a rubbley pile of bashed up dark chocolate chunks and blitz until everything has pureed and melted together.  I have to say it did not look appetising at this point...

You then whip up some eggs and sugar and fold in the mixture, adding flour and cocoa powder at then end.  What you end up is a pinky brown beetrooty chocoatey mush that looks like this:

Utterly unsure of how this was going to turn out I stuck the tray in the oven, crossed my fingers and hoped for the best.  20 minutes later they were cooked to perfection but Melissa and I were both none the wiser as to whether they would taste any good!

Once they had cooled I cut them into squares and carefully lifted them onto plates (as they are quite delicate) for an after dinner treat.  The texture of the brownies was beautiful - they managed to be rich, chocolatey and moist but still quite light at the same time.  I was a bit unsure of the taste on the first bite as you can taste the earthy tang of the beetroot, but they are surprisingly really moorish.  Usually one brownie is more than enough for me but I would have quite happily polished off a second one.  And as they are only half the fat of a regular brownie it wouldn't be a total sin to do so....

Our friend Jo is down for her birthday tonight so we now have some beetroot birthday brownies for her to sample for an unbiased verdict :o)

The first batch of brownies...sort of...

After our market research on Saturday, we think that there might be a gap in the (farmers') market for a stall selling brownies and tray bakes - sweet mouthfuls that people can enjoy with a cup of tea or even to eat on the way round browsing the rest of the stalls at the market.  With this in mind comes my two favourite parts of the process - baking and tasting!

So I pull down all my recipe books from the shelves and decide to start the hunt for the perfect signature brownie.   And there are many recipes to choose from that all have me salivating, spiked with all different kinds of nuts, flavoured with orange zest, caramel, differing degrees of chocolatiness and fudginess, topped with After Eight mints.... I think I might need to host a dedicated brownie party in order to choose between them :o)

And after all that, the recipe that sprung out at me wasn't for a brownie at all, but a blondie.  Like a brownie, but flavoured with brown sugar and vanilla instead of chocolate.  Despite being a brunette myself I don't discriminate, and the need for me to try Rachel Allen's recipe for Peanut Butter and White Chocolate Blondies from her lovely Bake book was just too hard to ignore.

The recipe was pretty easy to follow and put together, although I didn't have the right size cake tin.  Undeterred, I used my  trusty swiss roll tin and fashioned a "wall" out of tin foil that worked a treat and 40 minutes later delicious aromas were wafting from the oven as I pulled out the first batch.  I'm ashamed to admit that I couldn't wait for them to cool down and burnt my finger breaking off a sneaky corner to taste - mmmmmmmmm.  Yep they were goooood.  Buttery, laced with vanilla but balanced by the salty peanuts, fudgey in the middle and perfect with a cuppa in my favourite mug:

The only thing that I would do differently is to chop the white chocolate bigger so that it adds more texture - it seemed to melt away into the blondie.  Oh well, I'll just have to bake another batch....