Dieting is so often a dismal business, but occasionally you do find a ray of hope. For the past few years, my occasional diets have been cheered considerably by my discovery of Sue Kreitzman’s low-fat cookbooks. She may be a little-known author, but her low-fat dessert book is a revelation: gorgeous, creamy desserts, chocolate ones too! Happily it all fits in very neatly with WeightWatchers so I can continue to indulge in what were previously complete diet no-no’s.

This cheesecake has been defatted from 30g per slice to approx 6g, according to Sue. Very impressive, eh? I wasn’t quite sure if I’d like it, as it was described in the pre-recipe blurb as being fairly tart. Yes, it is much tarter and less sweet than a New York Cheesecake (she has a gorgeous recipe for this too) for example, but I really liked it. It’s very refreshing but still very cheesecake-y.

Its very easy to make, and quite fast as compared to her other recipes. The New York Cheesecake recipe requires hours of pampering (bake high, bake low, cool in oven, cool on rack, chill etc etc), but this is much more robust. Be careful to actually divide the mixture equally – as you can see, I didn’t manage this and the raspberry layer wasn’t quite as intensely flavoured as it could have been. On the upside, the chocolate layer is mind-blowingly good!

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I’ve had a lot of fun making my cake for this month’s “Is My Blog Burning?” day, hosted by the lovely Renee. I’ve owned a beginner’s piping set for a few months now, but I’ve only used it to pipe macaron’s thus far. So, I was looking for a cake where I could pipe pretty things and make a nice fancy looking cake. After some musing about flavours, I decided to make a liqueur cake, with buttercream icing that I could do pretty things with. After further thought, I decided that a cake flavoured with Bailey’s would be rather nice, especially as I had a huge bottle of Bailey’s to hand.

My original intent was to devise my own recipe, but all such thoughts went out of my head when I stumbled over the recipe for Bailey’s Irish Cream Cake from “Karen’s In The Country” in Colorado. The flavour combination of cake, creamy Bailey’s filling, rich coffee buttercream and chocolate fudge seemed utterly dreamy. And also (perhaps) teetering on the edge of being just too intense. I must admit, I do still feel a bit guilty about making such an extravagent cake, especially as there are only two of us. On the other hand, is eating cake for breakfast really such a hardship?

Despite its good looks, the cake was actually quite simple to make. It just involves many steps, but all of which are nice and simple. Plus, I spent almost all day on Friday putting it together, so I was able to take my time and have fun.

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I had a craving for marzipan the other day. But as I tend to gorge on marzipan whenever it enters the house, I needed a half-decent excuse to go and buy some. After trawling my cookbook shelves I found a copy of “The Cooks Encyclopedia of Chocolate”, a present from Dave that I’ve spent many an hour drooling over but have never cooked from… Shocking behaviour for a chocoholic!

This rather lovely book opens with a fairly substantial section on the history of chocolate before going on to discuss the characteristics of the various brands available in different countries. It then nicely segues into a technique section with excellent directions on tempering chocolate (something I have yet to try), making chocolate decorations and then finally we have the recipes. Recipes for all manner of chocolate goodies. I’ll admit that the recipes are nowhere near as involved or as glamorous as those composed by Pierre Herme, but they’re definitely friendlier for the home cook. Its beautifully illustrated too!

Anyway, enough ramblings about the cookbook. The chocolate marzipan cookies immediately leapt out at me as a good possibility. The recipe is very straightforward (see below), but I do have a few notes/thoughts about it.

I’d suggest trying to roll out the dough between two sheets of clingfilm rather than onto a floured worktop. The dough is very soft and readily absorbs flour which toughens it. I actually found it to be a nightmare to deal with and I really wish I’d thought of clingfilm at the time – hindsight is a wonderful thing.

If you find making paper piping bags to be rather fiddly, just pour the melted chocolate into one corner of a plastic freezer bag, snip off a tiny (and I do mean tiny) part of the corner and pipe using that. Its very quick and easy, and also gives a good finished look. The white chocolate decoration seems to lift both the appearance and taste of the cookies substantially.

I found that the cookie dough was more flavoursome raw than cooked, which was disappointing. I think this is due in part to the absorption of the extra flour and also the lack of salt in the dough. I’d be tempted to add a good pinch of salt and also some chocolate extract to the dough next time around. The contrast between the cookie dough and the marzipan was good though.

Would I make these again? Yes, but only a half-batch and I’d probably also use flavoured marzipan too (grate some orange zest over marzipan and knead it in for a very special taste experience!). Even for a chocoholic, a batch of 36 is a LOT!!

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Happy Easter everyone! Unlike Clotilde, Dave and I don’t have any special Easter traditions. In fact, last year I even forgot to buy him an egg!! This year, I decided to make up for that by splashing out on some very special eggs from Hotel Chocolat (the same people who do my monthly Chocolate Tasting Box)…

Dave’s White Chocolate Extravaganza is shown above and looks absolutely gorgeous! My egg was half milk and half dark chocolate and was filled with eight huge chocolate truffles in assorted boozy flavours. Mmmmmm!

I’m back! (At long last, I might add.) Almost all of our boxes have been unpacked and I’m now the proud owner of a beautiful, shiney and safe(!!) gas cooker. The kitchen is still a bit of a mess, i.e. I can’t decide where anything should go. Hopefully I’ll get it sorted out soon so that I can do some baking again. I’m keen to test out some recipes on the gas oven…

The chocolate fudge cake shown above is one I made at the end of February for our friend Chris’ 29th birthday. I never got around to mentioning it at the time, but this is the absolute best chocolate fudge cake I’ve ever made or tasted! It went down a storm, with folks coming back for seconds… Apologies for the awful photo – I’m suspecting I was slightly tipsy when I took it! Its the best of a bad bunch, believe me!!

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Inspired by Clotilde’s Valentines Day macaron, I opted to spend my Sunday afternoon in the kitchen making Pierre Herme’s Chocolate Macaroons from his wonderful chocolate dessert book which I bought a couple of weeks ago.

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I recently received an email from Dan Lepard, who had stumbled across my previous disasters with a couple of his recipes from “Baking With Passion”. After swooning slightly, I then felt a smidgeon of guilt for wanting to burn his book, so resolved to try one more recipe from the book before putting it away for good. Dan, if you’re still reading, I will try the garlic bread again at some point!

I couldn’t decide which recipe to try, so I made Dave decide. Which neatly meant that if things went wrong, it would be entirely his fault! I love my twisted logic. Dave chose the Orange Cheesecake Brownies as they looked interesting. I adore chocolate and he loves cheesecake, so it seemed like the ideal combination to me.

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After suffering some disastrous attempts at bread-making (Triple Chocolate and Hazelnut bread and a garlic stuffed bread), I decided to cheer myself up by making a cake. My favourite cake/baking book has to be Nigella Lawson’s “How To Be A Domestic Goddess”. I’ve never had a recipe fail from this tome, so (in my nervous state) this boded well.

After some indecision, I decided to make her Chocolate Marsala Cake on the basis that I had some dark chocolate to use up (how odd!), eggs to use up, and plenty of Marsala (which I adore) in the cupboard. Plus, I’ve wanted to make this cake since I bought the book!

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Please note that I am not affiliated with the Chocolate Tasting Club, Hotel Chocolat or any subsiduaries. I cannot help you with subscription problems and so forth.

At last! My chocolate tasting box has arrived! I’m a member of The Chocolate Tasting Club which sends me (for a small fortune of course) a box of fresh and artisanal chocolates each month. I’ve only ever had one chocolate I didn’t enjoy from them, a chocolate filled with Thyme Ganache (waaaaaay too much thyme). The others have all been sublime… I’m living in hope that they’ll start selling kilo boxes of Mandel Nougat.

I do feel very virtuous when I work my way through the box of chocolates. After all, when I score the chocolates the scores do go to the chocolatiers, so its almost as if I am providing a service to them! Therefore, its work, and if we follow that tenuous logic far enough…. the chocolates must be calorie-free! Like I said, virtuous.

I’ve just ordered their Chocolate Oscars box for Feb 2004 – all the top scoring chocolates of 2003 in one box. I’ll be watching the Oscars this year (if LoTR didn’t sweep the boards, I’ll eat my hat!) so I’ll be sure to indulge myself with most of the box.

And now its time for me to go and gorge on my chocs – which one shall I try first? This month (amongst others) we have “Manon Framboise”, “Beaujolas Pear Truffle” and “Macadamia Turtles”. All look equally delicious….

I’m not normally a fan of St Delia’s recipes (she’s very patronising) but I when I spotted Souffléed Macaroni Cheese I couldn’t resist trying it out. I adore macaroni cheese and I was really intriegued by the souflee concept. Plus, I’ve never made souffle before, so it would also be a challenge!

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