Happy New Kitchenaid!

Welcome to my personal blog! As you can probably tell from the name, this is all about food: cooking it, eating it, sharing it, my inspirations, and those delicious extras that are so important when exploring food (mainly booze). I absolutely love trying out new things, so this will be treated as more of a personal food diary that I've decided to share, and will include recipes and photos of my attempts at new things, old favourites, and the places, people, and meals that inspire me to try it at home.

Having grown up in the Norfolk countryside with parents that were amazing cooks my love of eating has always existed. I totally admit I am completely obsessed about food and drink. By no means do I think I am any kind of connoisseur or gourmet and do not proclaim to have any technical skills or abilities, just a basic love for everything you can eat. This basic love and grown over the years after leaving home and has become my main hobby. So here I aim to share the real and unadulterated ups and downs, attempts and fails of my cooking and eating infatuation.

So today I have been trying out my new Kitchenaid, an amazing Christmas present, and was tasked with making a pudding for a family meal so decided on salted caramel ice-cream and Kinder brownies. Salted caramel, along with the rest of the world, has become a firm favourite for me and has been used in many dished. however I will admit that caramel is something I have always found hard to make and I usually end up burning it but today managed to avoid that but trying out a different method.

Salted Caramel Ice-Cream

I adapted this recipe from an old Gary Rhodes book (More Rhodes Around Britain, 1995) which has some fantastic recipes in and, personally, I think a great ice-cream base recipe that is easily adaptable to make different flavours. To make this I used an ice-cream maker attachment on my Kitchenaid but it can be done by putting into a freezable container and stirring every half an hour until thick. 

For the ice-cream base:
300ml whole milk
300ml double cream
6 egg yolks
50g golden caster sugar
(1 vanilla pod - optional)

For the Caramel:
280g golden caster sugar
185ml double cream
2 tsp flaked sea salt (can be varied depending on how salty you like it)

I started by making the caramel by placing the sugar in a heavy saucepan and heating for a couple of minutes on its own, then adding the cream all in the go, giving it a good stir and then bringing it to the boil. I left this to simmer while making the ice cream base.

• First, I separated 6 eggs and placed the yolks in the mixing bowl then added the 50g caster sugar and put on a medium speed to whisk them together until the mixture was light and fluffy. While the eggs were mixing, I placed the milk and cream in a saucepan and brought to the boil. (For this flavour ice-cream I didn't add the vanilla pod, but if one wanted to add this as a favour just cut the pod lengthways, scrape it out and put into the milk and cream along with the scraped pod while bringing to the boil. Remember to remove the pod one boiled). 
• I stirred the caramel periodically and when it began to darken in colour, to a darker beige, I added the salt and removed it from the heat. At this point it became a sandy consistency which seemed a bit weird, but actually made no difference to the ice-mixture so it didn't matter at all.
• Once the milk and cream had been brought to the boil, I poured it into the egg mixture, with the whisk going, then added the sandy caramel mixture and whisked for 3-4 minutes to make sure it was all completely incorporated. 
• This then had to be left to cool to room temperature. I found this was speeded up by pouring the mixture into a glass dish and placing somewhere cold (a conservatory in the winter is great at cooling things down). 
• Once cooled, I placed it into the ice-cream maker and churned slowly for around 30 minutes until thick and came higher up the bowl. This was transferred into an airtight container and put in the freezer for another 4-6 hours or over night. 
• To serve, get out of the freezer 5 minutes before dishing up as it will be quite firm. 

Churning churning. You can use this time to wash up or dance

around the kitchen to your favourite cooking playlist. I did the latter.

I'm no photographer but this was the finished product.

Looks pale, but was a deeper colour that what is pictured.

Brownies

Simple and delicious, always a crowd pleaser. The recipe I always use is one I slightly adapted from good food. I use kinder chocolate in this because I love it and it's lovely and creamy.

185g dark chocolate

185g salted butter

85g plain flour

40g cocoa powder

3 eggs

270g golden caster sugar

1 tsp baking powder

100g kinder chocolate bars, chopped

20cm tin lined with baking parchment. Preheated oven to 160C fan.

• Start off by melting the butter and dark chocolate in a saucepan over a low heat. This shouldn't take very long and the heat can be turned off before everything is melted as the residual heat will melt any remaining pieces. Once melted, it needs to be left to cool to around room temperature, it doesn't matter if it's a little warmer.
• While this is cooling, whisk the eggs and sugar together until light and fluffy, and weigh out the flour, cocoa and baking powder into a bowl.
• Fold in the melted chocolate into the egg mixture being careful not to knock out the air, then sieve in the flour, cocoa and baking powder and again fold in. Once incorporated, mix in the chopped kinder, or other chocolate. 
• Pour into the tin and bake for 25-30 minutes in the middle of the oven. I can normally tell it's done if the top of the brownie has cracked a little. It should not wobble.
• Remove and cool in the tin. 

Finished brownies. Yum.

I served these two together, the brownie slightly warm with a dollop of the ice-cream on top, with the chopped strawberries on the side and topped with crushed gingerbread biscuits. 

It doesn't need to look good if it tastes good.

I'm not one for presentation. 

Finally, every good cooking session needs some good background music. Today, the cooking soundtrack was the lovely, and missed, Amy Winehouse.