Orangey Chocolatey Chilli Truffles - for a dinner party, and in aid of Fairtrade

It's really amazing the lengths I will go to in support of a cause that's dear to my heart. Take this evening, for example. Now as some of you may know, I am trying to lose weight, but here I am, selflessly showing you another wonderful thing to do with Fairtrade chocolate and spices.

We have people coming for dinner on Saturday night, and as I can't bear to turn my blog into a catalogue of my weight loss (or not) I will be majoring heavily on the additional tinkering in the kitchen this event has allowed me. Like making chocolate truffles.

Do, by all means, say if you'd rather I show you how to make a mushroom souffle omelette (with dill - I know, you can barely contain yourselves) with less than 200 calories, but secretly we all know what you'd rather read about- and, let's face it what I'd rather write about.

When the Fairtrade Foundation included a bar of Green & Blacks Maya Gold in the package of goodies they sent me for Fairtrade Fortnight, I had an inkling that it might taste delicious melted down with cream into truffle chocolates, but alas it also tasted delicious on the sofa in front of NCIS one evening when I was home and the Husband wasn't, so instead, I took advantage of Fairtrade chocolate range stocked in our local Co-Op, and purchased some of their Ghanaian dark chocolate with spices and orange oil.

Add to that some more dark chocolate, cream, cloves, cinammon, allspice, a pinch of chilli flakes and some Cointreau and, my friends, you get something that is so much better than the individual components. I know some people might say why bother to make chocolates, but I say when they taste this good, it is no bother whatsoever. The quantities here make lots, but each little mouthful is very rich and even a pig connoisseur such as myself would only be able to manage a couple at a time. They also keep brilliantly in the freezer so all you need do is get a few out as you need them. And I won't tell you that in fact they need hardly any defrosting, so you could just take one as the fancy came over you, dinner party or not.

Chocolate Orange Chilli truffles

300g Fairtrade dark (70% cocoa solids) chocolate
200g Fairtrade orange spiced dark chocolate
200g Fairtrade dark (50% cocoa solids) chocolate
400ml double cream
10 cloves
pinch of dried chilli flakes
good pinch of Fairtrade ground cinammon
good pinch of  ground allspice
30g unsalted butter, cut into quite small cubes
2 tablespoons Cointreau
25g Fairtrade cocoa powder
25g Fairtrade hot chocolate powder

Grease a 20x20 cm tin and line with clingfilm. You'll also want a baking sheet lined with greaseproof paper for the final freeze.

Break the chocolate into pieces in a large bowl.

Grind together the cloves, chilli flakes, cinammon and all spice with a pestle and mortar. Pour the cream into a large heavy based pan and add the spices. Over a gentle heat, bring the cream to hot, but NOT boiling (you can err on the side of caution here - see later), and then pour over the chocolate.

Stir it all together to melt the chocolate. If it doesn't melt completely, put the bowl over a simmering pan of water to complete the melting, then stir in the butter and the Cointreau, and pour the whole lot into the prepared tin. Make sure it spreads out evenly, then put the tin in the freezer for 1-2 hrs.

After the mixture has chilled, bring it out of the freezer.

Sift the cocoa and hot chocolate powder onto a large plate. You can dust a board with some of the sifted cocoa/hot chocolate then turn out the truffle mixture and cut into squares. Resist the temptation to make the squares too big - honestly, you're after little morsels of dark deliciousness. Toss the squares in the cocoa/hot chocolate mix, and put them on the lined baking sheet.



All ready for the freezer -
but there appears to be one left

When all the truffle squares are coated and on the baking sheet, cover and pop them all back in the freezer until needed. After an overnight in the freezer, you could move the truffles into a freezer bag and retrieve your baking sheet in case you needed it.

Oops - now where did that go...





I'm linking up with the "One Ingredient" for March challenge which this month is focussed on Chilli. There's not a lot of chilli in these beauties, but enough to give some warmth underlying the orange and spices. Altogether delicious. One ingredient is hosted alternately by Laura at http://www.howtocookgoodfood.co.uk and Nazima at  http://www.franglaiskitchen.com . This month, it's Laura's turn and you can see more recipes in the linky here

Fairtrade Fortnight lives on - Chocolate Coconut Cake

You remember I got all that lovely stuff from the Fairtrade Foundation a week or so ago to mark Fairtrade Fortnight? I made a rather lovely (if I do say so myself) Green Tea, Cardamon and Vanilla cake, and you've heard no more about it. Well, be it by accident or design that I didn't post again during Fairtrade Fortnight, I do think that we need to remember that buying Fairtrade isn't just about a fortnight a year - it's about an ongoing commitment to what's in your shopping basket, so I don't feel that it's too bad that I am posting this after Fairtrade Fortnight has finished - more that I'm reminding you that you can buy Fairtrade produce all year round.

Anyway, lecture over, and on to cake. In my goodies from the Fairtrade Foundation, I got some rather luxurious looking drinking chocolate:

This is described as "Smooth, rich and creamy... 40 percent pure cocoa from the Dominican Republic. A generous 40 percent cocoa makes this a truly luxurious and delicious drinking chocolate. The expert growers at Conacado co-operative, San Cristobal, in the Dominican Republic, have generations of experience caring for their cocoa pods and are passionate about growing premium quality cocoa." Sounds good to me.


I decided to use it to make a tray bake cake. I used a recipe from The Pink Whisk blog as my starting point, and adapted freely. As I was using drinking chocolate rather than cocoa, I reduced the caster sugar, and added in dessicated coconut (Fairtrade) which I felt drawn to - I've always been a fan of Bounty chocolate bars. I also keep meaning to make the intriguingly named 'Choc-o-ruff' which is another chocolate/coconut recipe passed on to me by a friend which came from her Granny. I will post it, I promise, but not today...

Instead of frosting my cake, I used a chocolate syrup drizzled over. If I make this again, I will only make half the syrup as it made the cake a little too moist - but still scrummy.

Chocolate Coconut Cake

110g unsalted butter
2 heaped tablespoons Fairtrade drinking chocolate
120ml boiling water
100g caster sugar
90g dessicated coconut
130g plain flour
1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
60ml milk
1 medium egg

for the syrup:

1 tsp Fairtrade cocoa powder
125ml water
100g caster sugar

Grease & line a 20cm square cake tin.

Stir the sugar, coconut, flour and bicarb together in a bowl.

Put the butter, drinking choc and boiling water into a large-ish pan (you'll add in the rest of the ingredients in a bit) on a medium heat to melt the butter, then bubble for 30 seconds or so. Mix in the dry ingredients, followed by the milk and the egg, then scrape the mixture into the prepared tin and bake for 20 minutes or so.

Make the syrup by boiling up the cocoa, water and caster sugar for 5 mins or so till reduced and syrupy, then poke some holes in the cake with a skewer and drizzle the syrup over the cake.

How easy is that? Very, I tell you. And very delicious. A little soggy due to the excess drizzle, but I'm sure we'll be able to force it down.

Green tea, Cardamon and Vanilla Cake for Fairtrade Fortnight

So the other day I was urging you all to Go Further for Fairtrade . It's Fairtrade fortnight, and a great opportunity to focus on the products we buy when we're shopping. Obviously, when I blog about things like that, I need to put my money where my mouth is. Where I'm shopping for something that isn't available from a local producer, I will try and choose Fairtrade - things like tea, coffee, chocolate. This week, however, it's been a little bit easier, because the lovely people at the Fairtrade Foundation sent me a bag of goodies to bake with. Unfortunately, I can't show you a picture of the Divine dark chocolate & raspberry bar because it got eaten rather quickly, but I also got some Pukka green tea and lemon tea bags, some Barts cardamon pods, and some ndali vanilla pods - in the most gorgeous packaging I think I have ever seen.

 

Time for cake - but of course. Now, I have recently found myself on a little bit of a kick to lose a little bit of weight (getting bars of Divine dark choc with raspberries doesn't help!). I wouldn't go so far as to use the 'D'* word, but I have been saying things like "I really need to cut down" more frequently than normal. As a result, cake hasn't featured much recently. But it's the weekend. There is gardening to be done, dog walking, fresh air. There most definitely needs to be cake in the house - and not just in the freezer sliced up ready for lunchboxes.

See it there, cosying up to Hugh and the Hummingbird?

I took inspiration from the Chai cake I made a few months back, but looking for something a little lighter, left out the ginger, and used the vanilla seeds from one of the pods (I put the scraped pod into a jar and covered it with caster sugar to make vanilla sugar for future baking) . The cardamon always has such a beautiful lemony aroma, that it seemed only natural to pair it with the green tea & lemon, too. And the icing - well I wasn't sure. I had a little teeny taste of the cake once it had cooled before I finally decided whether it would need some. Uniced, the cake was beautiful and vanillary, with the lemony cardamon providing a kind of subtle undertone, but in the end I decided it did need something sharp and sweet to finish it off. Taking inspiration from the lime frosting for carrot cake in the utterly seductive Red Velvet & Chocolate Heartache book by Harry Eastwood, I made a lemony (but not too lemony) cream cheese icing.


The result? Well I am very pleased. I'm definitely looking forward to my cup of tea and slice of cake later today.

Green Tea, Cardamon & Vanilla cake

350ml semi-skimmed milk
2 green tea & lemon teabags
8 cardamon pods, bashed in a pestle & mortar
1 clove
seeds scraped from a vanilla pod

170g unsalted butter
230g golden syrup
20g light brown sugar
20 cardamon pods
280g self raising flour
pinch of salt
2 large eggs, beaten  
50g unsalted butter
200g icing sugar
zest & juice of half a lemon
50g cream cheese

Pour the milk into a small pan with the teabags, 8 cardamon pods, the clove and the vanilla seeds. bring gently to the boil then simmer for 10-15 minutes, before setting aside to cool. 

Pre-heat the oven to 170C/160C fan/Gas 3.5 and line a 20cm square cake tin.

Strain the milk, and if necessary make back up to 200 ml with some more milk.

Melt the butter, syrup and sugar in a pan, and set aside to cool slightly. While this is cooling, bash the 20 cardamon pods in your pestle and mortar, remove the pods so you are left with the little seeds. Grind these up to a powder. Sift the flour and salt into a bowl, stir in the cardamon powder followed by the melted butter/syrup/sugar, the aromatic milk and the eggs. Stir all together, scrape into the tin and bake for around 45 minutes. You may need longer, but make sure there are still a few crumbs on your cake tester - it doesn't necessarily want to come out completely clean.

Once the cake is cooled, make the icing. Whisk the butter for a minute or so till soft (I used my Kenwood to do this, If i was doing it by hand I'd probably beat with a wooden spoon), then sift in half the icing sugar and whisk again (slowly, you don't want to choke in clouds of icing sugar). Add in the lemon juice and whisk to a paste, then add in the rest of the icing sugar, the cream cheese and lemon est and whisk or beat together till smooth. Chill the icing for 15 minutes or so before smearing and smoothing all over your cake.

Wait till it's time for a cup of tea and eat a small slice slowly. Or just put the kettle on now and devour...
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*Diet. Ssshhhh.

Go Further for Fairtrade - 25th February - 10 March

Fairtrade Fortnight starts on Monday – 25^th February.

Go Further for Fairtrade

Following on the from the ‘Take a Step’ campaign last year, this year, the Fairtrade Foundation is calling on us to Go Further for Fairtrade in 2013: to look after the food we love and the people who grow it. Without our support now, farmers in developing countries face a difficult and uncertain future. Crucially, the interactive petition that will call on the Government to take action before the 2013 G8 Summit will signal the start of a three-year long campaign by Fairtrade Foundation – ‘Make Food Fair’.

I can barely move in the morning until I’ve had a cup of tea, rendering it, in my privileged life, an essential – the Husband certainly thinks so. And yet while we in the First World sit in our comfortable homes in relative security, there are thousands, if not millions of farmers in the Third World working hard to produce many of what we might consider to be our daily essentials –– and yet they are still not getting paid fairly for their produce and still cannot make a living from their labour. Aid is all very well, but to quote Mike Gidney the Fairtrade Foundation CEO “Trade - if it’s done fairly - enables people to take control of their own lives and build a more secure future.　 It’s a very clear proposition and the results can be transformational.”

But what about ‘local’?

As you know if you read my blog regularly, I’m a lot about local – but the tea leaves that make my essential morning cuppa don’t grow in rural Hampshire at the moment, so I choose Fairtrade bags. The same goes for the chocolate and sugar I bake with:

and the coffee the Husband loves. Small holder tea growers, for example, often receive less than 3% of the value of the tea they grow – sometimes it’s as little as 1%. Maybe I’m naïve but I find this shocking.

I am aware that sharp practice is applied to farmers in this country too – big business often making them sell their meat, milk or veg for pitiful amounts of money. This should be addressed too – I’m not saying it shouldn’t – but I believe that we should also look beyond our national boundaries and think about where all our food is coming from and the conditions in which it has been produced. If you are going to buy a product from overseas, why not make sure that it has been ethically sourced?

‘Fairtrade’ requires companies to pay prices (which must never be lower than the market price) that cover the costs of production, when buying from Fairtrade certified farmers. This amount must never fall below the Fairtrade minimum price which is decided by Fairtrade producers and traders. This acts as a guarantee that producers receive a price which covers the cost of producing their goods in a sustainable way. And in addition, money paid on top of the Fairtrade minimum price is known as the Fairtrade premium. This is invested in social, environmental and economic development projects, decided upon democratically by a committee of producers or workers. Marvellous.

So what’s going on?

Well, as I mentioned, there’s an interactive petition you can join for starters – and let me tell you it’s really fun: you get to create your own little marcher online – do it with the kids, they’ll love it. Here’s my Recipe Junkie marcher – and no, I don’t look half as glamorous as that in real life but they didn’t have wonky specs, and bags to go under the eyes for the avatar… 

The petition will be presented to David Cameron in the advance of the G8 summit in May, when hopefully, he will champion the cause of small holder farmers who need the support of governments to enable them to create viable businesses and feed their families, becoming self supporting.

There are many other events organised across the country encouraging people to get involved and this year to get creative, building sculptures out of fairtrade packaging which will form part of the petition. Pink is already obsessively collecting the Fairtrade logos from the food packaging in our house to stick on her class ‘fairtrade banana’. There will also be visits from fairtrade farmers themselves talking about the difference fairtrade has made to their lives.

Of course, it's not just about a fortnight - it's about the choices we make every day when we shop for our food - whether we can take a step to think beyond the act of putting a packet into our trolley or clicking on a radio button to 'Add to trolley'. Taking time is hard for all of us in our busy lives, but it seems to me that times are a changing and, more of us are taking that step to think a little more about where our food has come from, and what has gone into it - not just in terms of the product itself (I'm hoping there won't be horsemeat in my fairtrade chocolate bar), but the toil that went into to making sure I get my morning cuppa.

You can find out more about the Fairtrade Foundation and the Fairtrade Fortnight actvities on their website.