Category: Chocolate
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French cooking: Pain au chocolat
What are the first three foods that come to mind when you think about France? Take your time, I will wait. Ready? Let’s see – I assume baguettes are up there? Baguettes seem to grow like grass here. What about delicate pastries like eclairs? Or their 1600 cheeses? Basically, anything involving butter? France is pretty […]
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Peanut butter banana bread with caramel and chocolate
Finally, finally, after five years of writing this old blog, I bring you peanut butter banana bread. The fact that this is my first recipe for banana bread is honestly shocking. Considering that for years I have kept a stash of bananas in my freezer for the entire purpose of a regular supply of banana […]
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Pear, chocolate and hazelnut scones
There’s been a week’s intermission from blogging and from France, but I can offer you some pear, chocolate and hazelnut scones as compensation, dear reader. I don’t look like a French native. My cheeks are almost ruddishly pink – something even my dad pointed out recently in a fairly critical manner (‘why are your cheeks […]
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How to make babka: mocha cinnamon and apricot almond
I first tried babka at Honey & Co. In their little restaurant on Warren Street, its white walls and plants whisking customers away from smoggy London to a momentary respite of sun-dappled tranquillity, there is a counter laden with tempting cakes and pastries. After a memorable meal, stuffed to the gills and discovering a new […]
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Blackberry and bay brownies
During these endless days of lockdown it’s good to find the little joys. In the last few days I’ve been carrying vases of tulips around the house so I can see them wherever I go, it snowed and as I write this the garden is still topped in what looks like a blanket of fondant […]
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The 4 best sweet breakfasts
November in Toulouse is not nearly as austere as other parts of the northern hemisphere during late autumn. The sun glitters through next door’s hedge, the sky is a spotless azure (most of the time), the leaves are gently turning from green to red, and, in fact, it’s colder inside than out due to a […]
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Lockdown: Brown butter and Nutella cookies
Helloooo It’s mighty quiet out there. I can almost hear the echo reverberating around the hum of the internet. Even though normal life for many has come to a grinding halt, the buzz, the hyperactivity of the internet lives on, perhaps even more now millions of us are cooped up at home, with only the […]
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Gluten-free peanut butter cookies
The cookie is an unusual specimen here in the UK. You see, we already had the biscuit. They have their similarities – the crunch and chew as you bite into it, the crumbs spraying down your front, the urge to dunk an edge in your cup of tea – but when you compare the digestive, […]
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Chocolate orange hot cross buns
Two years ago I baked hot cross buns. I was immersed in the depths of good old Lent and, thanks to my trusty loophole, I was rubbing my hands together in glee – finally, my Easter weakness was within reach and none of that old, miserly Mr Lent and his habit of distributing guilt attached. […]
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Swedish chocolate cake
When I first moved in with Calum and two of his friends three years ago I would waste a lot of time pottering around their kitchen, whiling the time away between my two badly paid part-time jobs. Although one of these jobs was as a baker, the baking didn’t fulfil me as I would find […]