Mars Bar Slice

On Saturday, it was the kids day at the farm where Paul shoots. Last year was the first time he'd been involved - the day before we smoked and wrapped two shoulders of lamb with a lot of harissa, garlic and preserved lemons. They, along with everything else on offer, disappeared as if a plague of locusts had been let loose.

This year, they were determined to out-do themselves. They had four kettle barbecues set up for slow roasting and a gas grill for burgers. Paul acted as pitmaster. Starting at 7am they cooked through until about 4pm, getting through 1.5 sheep (in various cuts), 3 small deer, 160 pheasant, duck and venison burgers and some sausages. All meat either produced or shot on the farm. There was also a bakery full of bread and buns, salads and a vast array of confectionary. He got home sunburnt and too tired to speak and slept for 12 hours.

My small contribution was a tray of Mars Bar Slice. Always a crowd-pleaser. Although given that the locusts left not a single bite of anything, it's hard to adequately assess the popularity with this particular crowd.

Mars Bar Slice (makes lots)

100g butter
2 tbs golden syrup
More-or-less 500g mars bars (they keep changing the size, but anything from 450-550g total weight is absolutely fine). 1/4 of them finely chopped, the rest cut into rough chunks.
120g rice krispies
200g milk chocolate
200g dark chocolate - or you could use 400g milk chocolate, but I like that touch less sweetness from combining the two
30g coconut oil
Pinch of salt
Sprinkles (optional)

Line a tin with non-stick baking parchment. I used a 20 x 30cm pyrex lasagne dish, but an inch either side of those measurements isn't a problem.

Combine the butter, golden syrup and the roughly chopped mars bars in a medium pan, and melt gently over a low heat, stirring constantly until smooth, then remove from heat.

Put the rice krispies in a large bowl with the finely chopped mars bars. With your hands, gently toss the mixture together to separate out the pieces of mars bar, which have a tendency to cling together.

Stir the melted mars bar mixture through the rice krispies. Scrape into the prepared tin and press down well with a spatula. Cool for an hour to set.

Combine the milk and dark chocolate, chopped into chunks, with the coconut oil and a small pinch of salt in a heat-proof bowl over a pan of simmering water (not letting the water touch the base of the bowl) and stir until the chocolate melts. Pour the melted chocolate over the set slice and tilt the pan around to make the coating even. If you are using sprinkles, allow the chocolate to cool for about 5 minutes before adding them, so they don't just sink straight through. I used some very glamorous bronze crunch sprinkles which I think make everything look classy. They'll probably turn up on cauliflower cheese at some point.

Allow to cool for 30-45 minutes at room temperature before cutting into small squares with a sharp knife. Store in the fridge if it's warm or humid.

Boozy Christmas Pudding Truffles

So-named because they contain Christmas pudding, not because they look like them. Although you could definitely take a leaf out of Nigella's Christmas Puddini Bonbons book and decorate them with white chocolate and glace cherries. They are basically a rum ball but I didn't use rum and bourbon balls doesn't quite capture it.

I had an out-of-date Christmas pudding that I wanted rid of before all my shopping arrived for this Christmas, so I opened it and gave it a sniff (seemed fine) then cooked it and ate a bit, to no ill-effect. I figured it was worth a gamble.

They are very dense and gooey and intensely flavoured. Even Paul and his lack of sweet tooth was impressed. He took them on a shoot, where they were rapidly re-named "Reindeer Poop" and devoured. Why you would want to eat something that you'd called poop is beyond me.

Boozy Christmas Pudding Truffles (makes 35+, depending on how big you make them)

600g leftover (cooked and cooled) Christmas pudding
200g dark chocolate
60g cream cheese
1/4 cup your choice of delicious brown liquor (rum, bourbon, brandy, whisky - I had bourbon)
100g dark chocolate, extra
sprinkles, to decorate

Place the 200g dark chocolate, broken into pieces, into a medium-sized glass mixing bowl. Put the bowl over a pan of simmering water (making sure the water doesn't touch the glass) and gently melt the chocolate. I've never got the hang of melting chocolate in the microwave, but if you can you should.

While the chocolate melts, break the pudding into small chunks.

When the chocolate has melted, beat in the cream cheese, then the pudding chunks and alcohol, and stir well until it's all combined. The pudding will pretty much disintegrate. Chill in the fridge for about half an hour.

Set out paper (or foil, if you are feeling very fancy) petit fours cases on a baking sheet.

Roll heaped teaspoonfuls of the cooled mixture between your hands into tidy-ish compact balls and place into the petit fours cases. Return to the fridge for half an hour.

Melt the extra chocolate in a small bowl over simmering water. Drip half-teaspoonfuls of the chocolate over the truffles and then spread the chocolate out a bit with the back of a teaspoon. I find a swirly motion is the most efficient. While the chocolate is still soft, sprinkle with whatever sprinkles you are using to decorate.

Chill overnight, but serve at room temperature.

Flourless chocolate orange cupcakes

I mostly do my grocery shopping online. I like being able to ponder without pressure and other people. I like having various tabs open on my computer with recipes and a weekly meal plan. I like being able to duck down to check what I have in the freezer and being able to consider my budget. Of course, the down side is that there are some things that are less convenient. The smallest pack size for oranges is 4. So if I want to make something that uses the zest and juice of an orange, I have to come up with other things that use the rest of the oranges.

Which is my excuse for making these. They are mostly Claudia Roden's wonderful orange almond cake. Which is also Nigella's wonderful clementine cake. But deeply chocolatey. And small. They aren't particularly pretty - at first sight you might think they were going to be a bit healthy and worthy - but they are moist to the edge of gooeyness, with a voluptuous, rich chocolate orange flavour. Like an R-rated Jaffa cake.

Flourless Chocolate Orange Cupcakes - Makes 18 medium sized

2 large oranges (approx 375g)
6 eggs
250g caster sugar
2 tbs good quality cocoa powder
100g dark chocolate
1tsp baking powder
250g ground almonds
Chocolate decorations and a bit of marmalade if you are feeling extra, but this is not the time for buttercream

Wash the oranges and boil them whole for 1½ hours or until they are very soft, topping up with boiling water from the kettle as necessary.

While the oranges are cooling, preheat oven to 190C (fan) and line medium-sized cupcake tins with paper cases

In a large bowl, beat the eggs, sugar and cocoa powder.

Either chop the chocolate into small pieces, or break it up and pulse it to rubble in a food processor (you have the processor out to puree the oranges in a moment, so you might as well. You don't have to wash it up before you do the oranges. But I digress).

Add the baking powder, chocolate rubble and almonds to the egg and sugar mixture and mix well.

When cool enough to handle, cut the oranges open and remove any pips, then puree the oranges, including the peels, in a food processor. Mix the orange puree into the batter and divide between the cupcake cases - about 2 tablespoons in each, which will come up 2/3 of the way.

Bake for 20 minutes, rotating the tins at half time. Let cool before decorating with chocolate decorations or segments of chocolate orange or chocolate dipped orange peel or whatever, glued on with a dab of marmalade.

Nanny's Summertime Squares

Sharing recipes makes you immortal. Every time your recipe is passed on, people say your name. People who never met you know who you are. It's one of the most powerful things about food.

A Canadian pal of mine has a special fondness for these bars, which her Nanny used to make. It took a while for her to get hold of the recipe, but now she has given me permission to share it. They are fudgey and gooey and quite delicious. And oatmeal, so it's clearly health-food.

Nanny's Summertime Squares (makes... depends on the size of the square and the pan. I cut it into 16 pretty substantial bars)

2 cups sugar (Nanny specified white, I used golden caster)
3tbs cocoa
115g butter (Nanny used 1/4lb margarine)
1/2 cup milk
1/2 cup peanut butter
1tsp vanilla
3 cups instant oatmeal

Put the first four ingredients in a saucepan, bring to a boil and boil for a minute. Stir in the peanut butter and vanilla, and mix until the peanut butter melts, then remove from heat and stir in the oatmeal. Mix well and scrape into a tin lined with baking parchment. Chill to set and cut into squares.

Clearing the freezer and pastures new

It has a roof now

There were definitely times when I wondered if it would ever happen, but we've finally, after 11 years of marriage and several ups and downs, bought a house. We've bought off the plan in a new development in a very pretty town a bit north of London, and in the next month to six weeks we will be moving.

I bloody hate moving.

We've lived in this house for 9 years, which is about as long as I have lived anywhere, and have accumulated all the possessions that you would imagine a pair of packrats would accumulate over that time.  So the process of sorting through our stuff and figuring out what actually needs to come with us is underway. Part of that process is, of course, clearing out the freezer and pantry.

Flapjacks, waiting for another layer of oat mixture

My cooking is likely to become increasingly eccentric over the next few weeks as I try to run down stocks of things. But this weekend it is relatively sensible. Barbecued pork ribs (with a glaze incorporating a couple of sad apples and the remnants of a jar of jelly), flapjacks (reducing stock of various baking bits) and soup (using up all the odds and ends of poultry wings and giblets in the freezer).

Flapjacks ready to eat

My flapjacks are based on this recipe from Sue from Mainly Baking. I kept the amount of butter, sugar and golden syrup the same but used 130g unsweetened dried sour cherries, 200g oats and 40g desiccated coconut. I pressed half the mixture into the tin, scattered with a few chunks of leftover dark chocolate Easter egg and then added the rest of the mixture. Very successful.

We've tried barbecuing pork ribs before, but I think these are the most successful so far. I made up a rub of salt, pepper, fennel seeds and smoked paprika and let them sit in that for a couple of hours, then we slowly smoked them for 3 hours before adding the apple puree mixture.

While they cooked for another couple of hours the apple dried down to a thick, rich glaze without burning. The racks unfortunately were not the same size - the smaller rack was perfect but the larger could have done with another hour. Of course, they were so good that Paul now wants a rematch, which will necessitate buying more of the ingredients I was trying to see the back of.

The leftovers, pulled off the bone and chopped, are providing me with very nice lunches.

When I started ferreting in the freezer for poultry bits for making stock, I had no idea quite how much there was. Chicken, cockerel and duck giblets, chicken wing tips, cockerel backs. Loads of stuff. It made a very good broth. And tonight I flavoured some of the broth with lime juice and fish sauce and cooked pork meatballs and some veg in it, then added coriander leaves, chopped chillies, slices onions and more lime juice.

Peanut butter chocolate birthday cake

I hadn't been asked to make a birthday cake for my young friend The Hurricane since 2012. I had assumed that her growing sophistication meant she was well and truly too grown up for my extremely rudimentary decorating skills.

However, this year she asked if I would. Of course I said yes. We brainstormed over drinks (prosecco for me, water for her). Chocolate was a given. I offered ideas for additional flavourings and she scorned all thoughts of raspberries or apricots but decided that peanut butter and caramel would be good.

Peanut butter buttercream swirled with caramel

It was always going to be the Be-Ro Milk Chocolate Cake. It's obedient, reliable, sturdy enough to slice and decorate and not overwhelmingly chocolatey. The Hurricane may be an unbearably grownup a-couple-of-days-from 12 year old, but she still doesn't like too much intense chocolate.

The rest was assembly really. The layers were sandwiched with Perfect Peanut Buttercream (astonishingly good. I used a smooth, organic peanut butter with salt but no added sugar), swirled through with some Carnation Caramel, then covered with more of the buttercream. I'd thought about putting some chopped peanut brittle in with the layers, but I thought The Hurricane's parents and orthodontist wouldn't thank me at all if I buggered her braces two weeks before Christmas.

Chocolate mirror glaze

Then I topped it with John Whaite's chocolate mirror glaze. I got the consistency a bit wrong with this one - I cooled it so it wouldn't melt off the butter cream but then it was too thick to flow easily. I liked the result of the dribbles showing the underlying buttercream though, so let's call it deliberate. It does have a gorgeously shiny finish though, and a rich chocolate flavour.

The final decoration was a bunch of gold sugar stars, white and dark chocolate stars printed with gold stars, and gold star sprinkles. Simple, but effective. When I delivered it, she was pretty darn pleased. I did have to issue a warning that the glaze would show if she attempted to eat any of the chocolate stars off it.

I asked them to send me a picture of the cross section - the lairs (as Mary Berry says) have held their definition very well. And they ate an impressive amount!

Sour cherry, pistachio & coconut fridge cake

Paul was very generous with the Lindt bunnies this Easter. So generous that we actually got a bit tired of eating delicious, smooth milk chocolate by itself.

And I had a day of dance workshops requiring a portable high-energy snack, so I delved in the cupboard for things that would be nice with chocolate. I came up with lovely unsweetened dried sour cherries, sweetened coconut flakes and shelled pistachios. I thought about adding some crumbled shortbread as well (tiffin/fridge cake things usually have some biscuit mixed in) but the only ones we had were Walkers shortbread Scottie dogs, and while I have no qualms about biting the head off a biscuit, I thought maybe melting down bunnies was enough animal carnage for one recipe.

It's incredibly easy, and adaptable, but this really was a very good combination.

Sour cherry, pistachio and coconut fridge cake (makes about 12 pieces)

200g milk chocolate (2 bunnies worth)
50g dried sour cherries
50g coconut
50g pistachios

Gently melt your chocolate in a heatproof bowl over simmering water.

Line a loaf tin with baking parchment. Combine the cherries, coconut and pistachios and place in an even layer in the loaf tin.

When the chocolate is melted and smooth, pour it into the loaf tin and give everything a bit of a wiggle with a spatula to make sure the chocolate gets through to the bottom.

Set in the fridge for an hour or so.

Häagen-Dazs Chocolate Salted Caramel

Saying "yes" to the offer of sampling the chocolate salted caramel ice cream from Häagen-Dazs was pretty obvious. I think it's been clear over the years that I really like Häagen-Dazs as a brand and I really like ice cream under most circumstances.

I said "yes" and a couple of vouchers arrived in the post a day or so later. Getting to the shops took a bit longer. It meant I totally missed National Chocolate Week, which was the whole point of them offering me the product to try. But as I know that for many people every week is chocolate week I don't feel too bad about that time slip.

So I knew I really liked their regular salted caramel ice cream and I thought I'd better get a tub of that as well as the chocolate to do a side by side comparison. Definitely for research purposes. And not at all just for me because it is delicious. I also picked up a tub of vanilla for Paul. His choice. I'm generous like that.

"Chocolate ice cream with a decadent salted caramel swirl and salted caramel brittle". The chocolate wasn't too sweet, which I really liked. The salted caramel had enough salt to stand up against the chocolate - I had wondered about that, because chocolate can be such a brute - although I thought the chunky bits of caramel were more chewy than brittle. It's very good, and I am sure lovers of grown up chocolate flavours will absolutely fall for it, but it's not quite enough to make chocolate my first choice of ice cream flavour. Not in a world with salted caramel, and dulce de leche, and macadamia nut brittle, and pralines and cream.

St Clements Brownies

Just like the T1000 melting at the end of Terminator 2.

I know some people laugh at the notion of "leftover chocolate", or even "chocolate you haven't eaten yet", but around Easter I realised I had some chocolate left from Christmas and wanted to use it up. It was dated best before October this year (better not to think about what they did to it to give it that shelf life), so I could have kept it for longer, but I felt that it was time.

I also had most of a packet of Marks & Spencer nuts which had sounded really tempting at the checkout but didn't really float my boat as a snack. They were very sticky and the pack wasn't re-sealable and it was all a bit messy. Plus after about a minute I found the random use of italics on the pack irritating.

The milk chocolate was too sweet for me, so I added 100g of very dark chocolate to it as it melted, poured it over the nuts and let it set. It made a fantastic, sustaining snack for a long day of dance workshops.

But then I still had quite a lot left over of that. And for a couple of weeks it sat in the cupboard, never quite tempting me. So, since it had been ages since I sent anything in for the gannets Paul works with, I turned it into brownies. This is fairly typical of the way I approach leftovers - I try really hard to avoid food waste and some things go through a couple of different incarnations on the way.

St Clements Brownies

125g butter
300g St Clements chocolate, chopped (or any dark fruit & nut chocolate, but without the orange and lemon bits it won't be St Clements)
3 eggs (I actually used 2 whole eggs and 1 yolk, because I wanted the white for something else)
100g caster sugar
200g plain flour

Preheat the oven to 180°C. Line your favourite brownie-baking tin with baking parchment.

In a double boiler, or heatproof bowl set over a pan of simmering water, melt the butter and chocolate. Remove from the heat and allow to cool slightly.

In a separate bowl, beat the eggs and sugar until pale and fluffy. Beat in the cooled chocolate mixture. Fold in the flour. Pour into the lined tin and bake for 20 minutes or until the top is firm and the inside is still a bit soft. Cool in the tin before cutting into squares.

Definitely delicious - I kept some back for myself

Salted almond truffles - a work in progress

I had what I thought was a pretty good idea for a salted almond chocolate for Easter. A tempered dark chocolate shell filled with a salted almond praline held together with white chocolate ganache. I bought some Easter-y chicken chocolate moulds and set about it.

Pink Murray River salt crystals

Almond praline in progress

... and then discovered that while the tempering worked pretty well, there wasn't then enough room for a decent amount of filling. It just all got a bit too difficult. So I dumped the rest of the filling mixture into the rest of the dark chocolate and rolled it into balls.

They taste good, but aren't what I had in mind. Back to the drawing board! Probably next Easter.

Cherry, chocolate, cinnamon & brown sugar cake for IHCC

This month's I Heart Cooking Clubs Mystery Box challenge is to utilise any three of chocolate, cherries, cinnamon, rolled oats, couscous, pomegranate, curry, coconut milk, lentils and hot peppers/chiles in a dish from one of the IHCC cooks.

As my preserves cupboard is still groaning from August's harvest, I knew I had to incorporate cherries in some form. So that was one... and once you are settled on cherries chocolate is obvious.

I found this recipe from Diana Henry for a brown sugar, chocolate and sour cherry cake, and decided to add some cinnamon to it to meet the brief and deepen the flavours.

When I actually came to making it though, I was a bit freaked out. 400g sugar to 125g flour and 150g butter? That was so far off any cake ratio I have ever seen! It's usually much closer to equal amounts flour, sugar and fat. As I was intending to serve the cake to company, I decided that I didn't have the courage to follow the recipe and went with 150g dark muscovado sugar instead, knowing that it would be edible if not correct.

Instead of dried sour cherries and kirsch I used a combination of my homemade glace cherries and cherries preserved in rum, using the preserving liquid as my booze component. And I added 1/2tsp of cinnamon when I was creaming the butter and sugar. And I baked it in a 1lb loaf tin.

It was very nice, but not earth-shattering. Given how much I deviated from the recipe I can't possibly blame it for my disappointment (although I still can't see how the stated proportions could be correct). We only ate half, so the second half is in the freezer waiting to be turned into trifle or rum balls or something at some point when a sweet treat is called for.

Eatori's Flourless Espresso Brownies

When this post goes live I will be completing the first hour of a 3-day dance intensive. 18 hours of dance. And there is an evening performance as well.

I've made a batch of Tori Haschka's Flourless Espresso Brownies, which are a slow-carb treat, to sustain me through a lot of dance and three days of pub food. No added sugar: the sweetness is from banana and dates, with almonds and coconut instead of wheat flour. I used decaf coffee, because I'm leaving some for Paul and he doesn't tolerate too much caffeine these days. I've just tried that little piece on top there, and it is lovely. The perfect brownie texture, with a super-intense bitter chocolate flavour.

Have a lovely weekend!

Date Night Friday: Hawksmoor Seven Dials

Paul occasionally gets bees in his bonnet. He will desperately crave a food and eat versions of it at every opportunity until finally he has one that meets his mental image of it and then he can move on to something else. He's been ordering big portions of fish in restaurants for over a year because nothing is quite what he had in mind. For the last couple of months he's been wanting "A really big steak", so I've been buying him various steaks, none of which have quite satisfied. So on Friday he took matters into his own hands and announced that Date Night was going to be at Hawksmoor Seven Dials.

We had a wander about the less-crowded bits of Covent Garden - which is looking much more attractive these days, with some really up-market shopping - and then sat at the bar for a drink. Paul's co-workers had all buggered off at 4pm, so he'd had a chance to do some uninterrupted work and scrutinise the drinks menu. It's unusual for him to choose a cocktail, but something about the vaulted ceilings, exposed brickwork and brass lamps give the bar a speakeasy vibe, which cries out for a mixed drink. He had the Hawksmoor Collins - Beefeater 24 gin, Campari, orange bitters and lemon, lengthened with soda.  I had a Shipwreck sour - Shipwreck cider brandy, cognac, ginger wine and lemon. Neither drink put up a fight, and I think I could have quite happily propped up the bar and had several more drinks and some snacks, but our table beckoned.

I toyed with the idea of having a couple of starters, but as the aim was for Paul to get the big steak of his dreams, we shared a 1kg prime rib, with side orders of beef dripping fries, salad and roasted mushrooms.

The steak was absolute perfection. Beautifully cooked, beautifully rested, and carved into nice big chunks. I think Paul's eyes actually rolled back in his head as the really big steak itch was scratched. The fries were perfectly fine, but an error of judgement: we were caught by the lure of beef dripping and didn't notice on the menu that these were going to be fries, not chips. Next time we'll have to remember to order the triple cooked chips instead. The salad was, of course, the salad of English lettuce and herbs which I maintain is the best green salad in the world.

We both ordered glasses of whiskey to finish on - Paul had bourbon, I had rye. Which led to the only glitch in (the charming, accomplished, attentive) service for the evening, as Paul's drink was delivered to the next table. We were able to retrieve it with no harm done. The smooth, caramelly whiskies were just the thing with the justifiably-famous salted caramel rolos. And actually, I wonder if whiskey isn't under-appreciated as a drink match for chocolate?

Edited to add: Paul was very disappointed that I didn't mention the wine. It was lovely. In my old age I am developing more of a taste for the French wines, and I thoroughly enjoyed this.

Spiced chocolate caramel peanut popcorn

 

This is yet another version of sweet, salty and spicy popcorn, this time inspired by the Snickers bar. It features chunks of turrón, salted peanuts and a spiced chocolate caramel. It's very hard to resist! The key to it keeping its crunch for a couple of days is that it's slowly baked after coating, which also helps get an even distribution of the caramel.

I made this as a snack for a three-hour dance class, and as a thank you to Kavey for a jar of her homemade kimchi, but the leftovers were still good three days later (and a little softer but still tasty the day after that).

Snickers-inspired spiced chocolate caramel peanut popcorn

1tbs vegetable oil
120g popping corn
100g roasted salted peanuts
100g nougat (I used soft turrón de Jijona which has a texture similar to halva, but hard, Alicante-style turrón duro would be better), chopped into small chunks
Pinch chilli flakes (I used chile de arbol)
Pinch Maldon salt (i.e good quality seasalt)
Pinch ground cinnamon
Pinch ground nutmeg
2tbs good-quality cocoa powder
100g salted butter
100ml golden syrup
125g sugar

Heat the oil in a large saucepan with a lid, and add the popping corn. Cover, and shake until the corn has popped, then pour into a large, baking parchment-lined roasting tin, holding back any unpopped kernels if possible. Scatter over the peanuts and chunks of nougat.

Combine the salt, cocoa powder and spices in a little ramekin or bowl. Give it a stir to make sure the cocoa powder doesn't have any lumps, and have it standing by while you make the syrup. In a heavy-bottomed saucepan, combine the butter, sugar and golden syrup over a medium heat, and swirl gently until the sugar dissolves and it comes to the boil. Boil rapidly for a few minutes, or until it changes colour to a rich golden brown.

Take the caramel off the heat and tip the cocoa quickly into it. Keeping your fingers well clear, stir with a silicon spatula until well combined and pour the caramel evenly over the popcorn. Stir it through. It won't coat all of the popcorn but that is part of the charm - every bite is different.

Place the roasting tin in a slow oven - mine only goes down to 120C, but if yours does 100C that would be better - and bake for an hour, giving it a stir every 15 minutes. Allow to cool and harden before packing in an airtight box or gift bags.

Plum, ginger and hazelnut tart with a nutella crust

The other day, I was over at a temporarily-housebound friend's house, when one of her neighbours popped by with a huge bag of plums from their tree. When I left, some of the plums came with me.

I thought I'd do a crumble, but Paul demanded a tart. Specifically, a custard tart.

I'd planned to use the very simple melted crust recipe from Elly's apricot and almond custard tart, but when I got the ingredients out, realised that I had no wholemeal or spelt flour and not enough butter. I had a bit of a ferret in the cupboard and decided to use plain white flour and make up the amount of butter with nutella. As the butter was being melted, I didn't need to worry about the nutella being too soft for a normal shortcrust.

I blind-baked the crust and sprinkled it with a layer of chopped hazelnuts, then arranged the halved, stoned plums on top. Some were quite firm and slightly unripe, some were explosively ripe and juicy, but they all went in together.

Then I beat together two enormous eggs (those chickens must have been walking like John Wayne for the rest of the day) with about 120ml single cream, a couple of spoonsful of caster sugar, a grating of nutmeg, a small slosh of cider brandy and a good teaspoonful of freshly grated ginger (which was Paul's suggestion).

After I poured the custard over the plums, I sprinkled the surface with another couple of spoonsful of sugar. I find that because of the tanin in plum skins, they tend to cook more tart than you expect from eating them raw, so I put more sugar in cooked plum desserts than I do for other stone fruits.

Baked at 180C for about half an hour, then allowed to sit for 10 minutes to set a little more before slicing. The nutella enhanced the hazelnut flavour and gave a subtle milk chocolate hint, while the pastry was nice and short. It's useful to know that it works! I'd imagine that nut butters would be an equally useful substitution - which could be very helpful if there is a vegan around (although obviously an egg custard filling wouldn't be a good idea for them). The fresh ginger was absolutely beautiful with the plums, and the rich custard meant we didn't need any other toppings. Didn't need it, but I had a scoop of ice cream, and Paul had a slosh more cream.

Showstopping nutella, fig and fennel blumenbrot

I decided not to do this week's Great British Bakeoff technical bake. It was ciabatta - which was a quite a challenge and I am sure it was delicious, but not really the sort of thing to win a stunned silence from Paul's colleagues. If I am going to bake things that I am not going to eat myself, I want plaudits, dammit. The rye roll signature bake was also uninspiring. I decided on a showstopping blue cheese, fig, fennel and hazelnut couronne centrepiece, with a little rye in the dough.

Unfortunately I got home on Saturday evening to discover that Paul had eaten nearly all of my Stilton, and my long weekend plans didn't include going to the shops. Also, Lynne from A Greedy Piglet posted this clever nutella bread, twisted into a lovely flower shape. I decided to stick with the fig, fennel and hazelnut, but to take it into an unambiguously sweet direction with nutella and some extra chopped chocolate. Because those other elements add quite a lot of bulk, I only did two layers of dough, so it doesn't look quite as layered and flowery. But it is still pretty!

Then, also unfortunately, it was pouring with rain yesterday morning, and Paul couldn't balance an umbrella and a bag of bread at the same time. So I took it to my dance class so I a) got to see it appreciated and, b) got to taste it. Even though it isn't that rich a dough, it still ends up with a buttery, eggy, briochey taste, and the nuggets of dark chocolate and faint aniseed breath of the fennel keep it from being too sweet.

Nutella, fig and fennel blumenbrot (serves 8-12)

Dough

250g strong white bread flour
Pinch salt
1tsp fennel seeds, toasted and crushed finely
7g dried yeast
1tsp soft light brown sugar
50g butter, softened
100ml milk
1 large egg, lightly beaten

Filling

100g Nutella (or generic chocolate hazelnut spread of your choice...)
120g soft dried figs, chopped into small pieces
2tsp plain flour
50g dark chocolate, chopped into small pieces
65g chopped hazelnuts

To glaze

1 egg, beaten
1tsp runny honey

Put the flour into a large mixing bowl with a pinch of salt on one side of the bowl. Heat the milk for about 15 seconds in the microwave, until just warm, and add the sugar, fennel and yeast and allow to sit for 10 minutes while the yeast activates. Add the butter, milk mixture and egg to the flour and mix. Continue to mix until all the flour is incorporated and you have a soft, shaggy dough.

Knead either with a dough hook or by hand (if by hand, dust the surface with a bit more flour), working through the messy stage until the dough starts to feel smooth and silky. Put it into a lightly oiled bowl, cover the bowl with a tea towel and leave to rise until doubled in size. If your kitchen is as cold as mine was on Monday it'll take more than an hour.

While the dough is rising, combine the figs, plain flour, chopped chocolate and hazelnuts. Stir well so everything is dusted in flour.

Line a baking tray with baking parchment or silicone paper.

Turn the risen dough onto a lightly floured surface. Cut in half and return one half to the bowl. Roll out the dough into a 10" circle. Lift the circle onto the lined baking tray (it's hard to move when it's all filled and shaped). Warm the nutella for a few seconds in the microwave so it's a bit melty (or stick the jar in a pot of hot water on the stove if you are a microwave eschewer). Spread the nutella over the circle of dough, leaving a 1" border. Press the fig and hazelnut mixture onto it, aiming for an even distribution of fig and chocolate morsels. Roll out the other half of the dough to the same size and cover the first layer, pressing down around the edge to seal.

If you like things really tidy, you can cut around the edge at this point to make it a perfect circle. I don't like things that tidy, and I was using a pizza tray to keep things in line.

Put a glass or ramekin in the middle of your bread - this is to discourage you from cutting too far into the middle. Make 16 evenly spaced cuts from the edge of the ramekin to the edge of the dough circle - the easiest way is to go from 12, 3, 6 and 9 o'clock, then bisect those cuts, then bisect those cuts.

Gently lift a wedge and give it a couple of anticlockwise twists. Lift the wedge to the right of that and give it a couple of clockwise twists. Then go around the bread twisting it in alternating directions. Press the ends of each opposing pair together, vertically, so you have 8 petals that Georgia O'Keeffe would recognise and be proud of.

Put the tray in a clean plastic bag, or cover with a clean damp tea towel and leave to prove for 30-45mins, or until the dough springs back if you poke it gently with your finger.

A veritable labial kaleidoscope

Pre-heat the oven to 200C.

Brush with beaten egg. Bake the bread for 25-35 minutes, or until risen and golden-brown. Brush lightly with honey to glaze - if you do it as soon as the bread comes out of the oven it will melt on and spread nicely. Set aside to cool on a wire rack. Allow to cool before serving, but best eaten fresh.