Hotel Chocolat Easter Giveaway - **COMPETITION HAS CLOSED**

Like I’m sure most people do, I love chocolate, and in particular good, dark chocolate. A day is not complete without chocolate in some form! You can now imagine my glee when this beautiful ‘The Serious Dark Fix’ Easter Egg from Hotel Chocolat arrived, it certainly beats getting hospital letters in the post!!

My dad also shares my taste in chocolate, and so after a sneaky peek in to the box (and several sniffs!!) I then very patiently waited for him to come over for dinner and help me try them out, aren't I a good daughter! Universal decision was that we are now addicted to Hotel Chocolat’s dark chocolate! I also know now what to get Dad for his birthday for once!

‘The Serious Dark Fix’ consists of two extra thick, dark chocolate shells which hide a selection of dark chocolates, including my all time favourite ‘House Praline’. The chocolate is deliciously dark, silky smooth and just melts in the mouth, the praline leaving a lasting nutty, chocolaty impression on your tastebuds, a real chocolatey treat!

It would be very greedy though for me to keep all this deliciousness to myself, and I rather excitingly have another one to give away to one lucky UK based winner! The competition closes on the 25th March, so enter now to be in with a chance of winning!

To enter the competition, all you have to do is leave me a comment below letting me know your favourite Hotel Chocolat Easter treat, you can see their full Easter range here. (If you are leaving an anonymous comment please leave a contact e-mail incase you win!)

Additionally, to maximise your chance of winning, you can gain an additional three entries by either:

Re-Tweeting this competition, using the T button at the bottom of this post
Following me on twitter @anneskitchen
And by liking my facebook page

Please leave me a separate comment below for each entry you make, if you already ‘like’ or follow me, you can also leave a comment notifying and it will count as an entry.

A winner will be picked using an online randomiser and notified by email, and also here on my blog when the competition closes on the 25th March, so don’t forget to come back and check if you have won!

With thanks to Anurag and Hotel Chocolat

Good luck!

Trifle Trouble for Comic Relief!

Red nose day is on Friday 18th March, and this year Sainsbury's staff have been very busy getting silly, to help raise money for Comic Relief and capturing it all on film. The more Red Noses that Sainsbury's sell, the more silly films they will release. So don't forget to buy your Red Nose now and see what further silliness they get up to!


You can see a very messy Customer Services Manager Brenda on the video below, attempting to make the worlds fastest trifle, whilst being driven around in racing track in a high speed car! I think I would be scared enough just being in the car, yet alone attempting to make a trifle!




Red Nose day helps to raise funds to support those living in difficult circumstances both in the UK and Africa.  You can see the difference that it has made to peoples lives on this link

If you want to help raise money for Comic Relief 2011, you can find lots of funny ideas to help you along, including several food related ones - why not try holding a scrumptious bake sale for your colleagues or even having a baked bean bath! 




This is a sponsored posting on Annes Kitchen

Thai Spicy Red Bean and Baby corn Curry

The Thai New Year is coming up soon, 13th to 15th April and to help celebrate, Thai Taste sent me a pot of their Red curry paste. A few years back when I first started getting into cooking I completed a cookery course on Thai cookery at a local college, and whilst some of the Thai dishes were just not for me, I did find a few favourites, including this recipe, that I have made some minor tweaks to. This recipe also converted me into liking green beans!

I really love the slight creaminess, and gentle spiciness of this curry and hope you enjoy it too! Be careful with your pastes though, as I find brands do vary greatly in spice levels, it is always easier to add than to takeaway! Thai Tastes paste was quite mild, so you can use a teaspoon quite safely!

Some ingredients can be hard to track down depending where you live and so good quality, ready made curry pastes are very handy. Thai Tastes’ paste contains no nasties and made of all natural ingredients, just how you would make at home. D is not keen on spicy food either so having the paste on standby is ideal for when I want to whip up something just for me to feast upon!

Easy – 10 minutes
Serves 2-4 as a side dish

400g mix of green beans, trimmed and baby corn, halved (you can use just green beans if preferred)
1 tsp red curry paste (see above guidance)
1 garlic clove
100ml coconut milk
4 spring onions, thinly sliced and roughly split between whiter and green parts
2 tsp Nam pla (also known as Fish sauce)
1 tbsp ground roasted peanut, optional
1 stick lemongrass or 2 tsp dried, soaked in hot water
S&P to taste (Nam Pla is quite salty tasting, so best to taste before adding any salt)
1 tbsp sunflower oil
1 tbsp mint and coriander leaves

Blitz together the curry paste, garlic, lemongrass, fish sauce and coconut to make a smooth paste

Blanch the vegetables, refresh in cold water and drain

Heat the oil in a wok, add the whiter spring onion parts and fry for 2 minutes, add the paste and reduce by half, add the vegetables and simmer for 3 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Serve immediately, garnish with peanuts if using, remaining spring onions and a scattering of fresh mint and coriander leaves.

Alongside our curry, I roasted cod fillets, with a topping of finely grated ginger, garlic, lime juice and zest, red chilli, spring onions and a bit of s&p:

And some red pepper and aubergine tempura. Whilst they were nice, and all were eaten, the batter was not as light as I’d hoped. Not sure if it was the recipe or me though! I did manage to accidentally forget to put the first batch actually into the batter after flouring and only realised when I wondered why they looked so pale!

Can you spot my chilli flower in the picture? This has also been entered over this months Create and Carve event, this month being held over at Fuss Free Flavours, don't forget to check back there at the end of the month for the the round-up!

To end our mini Thai feast, I also made these Thai Coconut custards. Whilst the recipe was successful, I am not entirely sure I would make them again, can’t decide if I liked them or not! Neither could my Dad!

Thanks to Clementine at Storm Communications.

Mingle Muffins

After setting out to make some sort of cake for dessert with the new bag of sour cherries I randomly picked up last week, I then stumbled by accident across this recipe on the Good to Know website and decided to make muffins instead! Still need to use those cherries though…

These are amongst the easiest muffins I have made and they taste great too! The top of them reminds me a little of that lovely crackle you get on good brownies! They are soft textured and smell so delicious when baking, I could barely wait long enough for them to cool down, just so I could test one of course….the remaining muffins didn’t hang around long!

I was also happy in that I finally got to use my beautiful new gingham muffin cases that I picked up recently from Sainsbury's:

The original recipe calls for plain chocolate chunks but after eating our way through far too many Mingles (mint chocolates) since Christmas, we were left with lots of the dark red ones, which are fondant filled and I decided to use them instead. They worked a treat in the muffins, adding a delicious minty twist and I am now looking at the tub of Celebrations with a curious mind….

Ingredients

250g self-raising flour
25g cocoa powder (I use extra dark Polish cocoa)
2tsp baking powder
125g caster sugar
50g light muscavado sugar
175ml milk
2 large eggs, beaten
100ml sunflower oil
12 Mingles, roughly chopped into small chunks
1tsp vanilla extract

Preheat the oven to 170ºC/ 150o fan (375ºF, gas mark 5).
Makes 12

Line a 12-hole deep muffin tray with paper muffin cases.

Sift together the flour, cocoa and baking powder; stir in the sugar. Add the remaining ingredients and mix lightly together - do not over beat the mixture

Spoon the mixture into the prepared cases. Bake for approximately 20 mins or until golden and springy to the touch. Leave for 10 minutes in the tray and then transfer to a wire rack to cool down.

I’ve also submitted this recipe to the Bake Off over at the Versatile Vegetarian Kitchen, you can see the full round up here on the 11th March.

You can also see my muffins over at Sweets for a Saturday along with a whole host of delicious sweet treats.

Bulghar Wheat with pesto

This was my delicious easy lunch today, firstly cover 75g bulghar wheat with boiling water, cover and allow to 'cook'.

Meanwhile quickly pan fry in olive oil 4 sliced white mushrooms with a little diced onion until golden, stir in a heaped tbsp of your favourite pesto (I used a roasted vegetable one) and some sliced green olives, add the cooked wheat, stir through fresh coriander leaves and season with black pepper, decant into your favourite bowl and grab a fork :)

I had planned to finally use a jar of roasted aubergines with it but on opening, and tasting I quickly abandoned the idea! Have popped it in the fridge but think they will be going in the bin unless someone has a better suggestion?! They are kind of smokey and very soft...

I am also testing my new phones Blogger function so no idea how this will appear!

Apple and Blackberry cake

Every week that passes, I am getting more stronger and last week I felt like doing some baking again, I still had a small tub of blackberries stashed in the freezer which I'd picked last summer and after a quick google, I made slight adaptations to this recipe from the National Trust.

This makes a large cake, perfect for partnering with lots of lovely custard or cream! The cake has a really lovely texture and perfect for afternoon tea or for pudding. I thought I'd taken a picture of it dusted all nicely with icing sugar but can't find it..My pictures are also a bit small at the moment, I've just switched mobile phones and not worked out how to upload them in a better size yet!

The original recipe states a 20cm loose bottomed tin, though when I looked at my finished mixture and my 20cm tin it didn't look right, so used a 23cm instead. I wonder if its meant to be a deeper tin, as there is no way it would fit a sandwich tin! 

Firstly, line the tin, I recently picked up a tip from watching Jamie's 30 Minute meals - scrunch up the baking paper under a running tap, then use it to line the tin. It feels so wrong to do but it really works a treat, getting into all the corners and certainly cheaper than me buying the ready made liners!

Ingredients

2 eating apples, peeled, cored and grated + 1 for decoration

Big handful frozen blackberries

250g butter (I used Stork)

250g Self raising flour

1/2 tsp baking powder

4 eggs

1 tsp vanilla extract

150g caster sugar

100g light soft brown sugar + 1 tsp for finishing (recipe states golden caster sugar but had run out)

1 tsp ground cinnamon - optional

Icing sugar to dust

Pre-heat oven 160 fan/ 180o/ Gas 4

Cream together the butter, sugars baking powder, cinnamon and flour, beat in the eggs and vanilla, stir in the apple.

Spoon roughly a third of the mixture into your pan, add a scatter of blackberries, repeat and top with remaining mixture

Take the remaining apple, cored but unpeeled, carefully cut thin slices and use to decorate the top of the cake, placing any remaining blackberries in the middle and sprinkle over a little of the brown sugar and a little dust of cinnamon

Bake for 30 minutes, or until golden, cover tightly with foil and bake for a further 35-40 minutes. Dust with icing sugar and cool in the tin

Cut into 12 slices and serve, preferably still slightly warm from the oven