chocolate Archives - Retro Food For Modern Times

06
Sep
2023

Not Quite A Hershey Pie-Pieathalon X

categories: 1960's recipes, Desserts, Pieathalon

Hello friends and PieLovers! Welcome to Pieathalon Ten. And welcome to my Not Quite A Hershey Pie! For new readers, Pieathalon is the time of year where food bloggers all over the world, lead by the lovely Yinzerella swap recipes for all sorts of weird and wonderful pies. This year, I was sent a recipe for Hershey Pie by Kari from The Nostalgic Cook. And I’m going to start right off by saying that this was a delight. It was so easy to cook, it looked absolutely gorgeous and tasted like a little piece of heaven.

Having said that, it was not without some problems. Notably, this was a very American pie. And as the name suggests, this pie called for Hershey Bars. Six Almond Hershey bars to be exact. So what, I hear half the world (The American half) exclaim. Well….Hershey’s is not the chocolate of choice in Australia. It’s not impossible to get Hershey bars but you either have to buy them off the net or go to a shop that sells American candy. And both of these places charge like wounded bulls. Luckily, Cadbury which is our chocolate of choice does a Milk Chocolate and Roast Almond Block which I was able to sub in for the Hershey’s. And if Hershey’s are hard to find….Graham Crackers? Impossible. I have never even seen these for sale here. So another substitution. Marie Biscuits for Graham Crackers this time.

I won’t even begin to enter the mathematical saga of if 6 Almond Hershey bars weigh x ounces and 2 Cadbury Family Size Blocks of Roast Almond weigh y grams, how much chocolate do I need for the pie? Or the trauma of how big is a large marshmallow?

Somehow, I managed to convert a SIX ingredient recipe into an international, mathematical, imperial to metrical brain scramble.

Having said that. The Cadbury / Hershey Pie was….wait for it…

It was so good.

First, it looked gorgeous!!! As I was mixing in the marshmallows, I noticed that they created a marble effect which I thought was quite beautiful. I kept some of those streaks in the finished pie. I also sprinkled some of the leftover crumb crust on top. Then the taste!!! It was like a little bit of heaven. Very rich, very sweet but utterly delicious!!! Personally, I found a tiny bit of salt sprinkled over the top helped to cut through the sweetness. The Fussiest Eater in the World liked it as is.

Hershey Pie – The Recipe

The Pieathletes

Here is a list of the other Pieathletes. Why not pop on over and see their creations? I wonder who got my Villa Pie?

(For early readers, I’ll update the links once each recipe is posted)

S.S.made a Microwave Peach Pie

Dr Bobb made Anthony Hopkins’ Four Star Shepherd’s Pie

Poppy Crocker made a Coconut Cream Pie

Surly made a Hot Fudge Pie

Kari, who sent me the delightful Hersjey Pie made an Aspic Salad Pie. Oh dear….

Camilla made a Ballymaloe Chicken Pie

Cathy made a Delicious Apple Pie

Jenny made Anthony Hopkins Beef and Hash Brown Pie. Goodness, Mr Hopkins is getting about this Pieathalon!

Thanks to Kari for the wonderful recipe and to the wonderful Yinzerella for organising! Have a great week…I’m off to eat some more of that yummy, yummy, pie!

13
Sep
2020

Chocolate Coconut Truffles

categories: Chocolate, Classic Recipes, Sweets

I was in dire need of comfort food this week. And not just any sort of comfort food – I was after the kind of comfort tthat only chocolate and condensed milk can give! It was definitely time to make Chocolate Coconut Truffles!

These little babies are a stalwart of the school fete or bake sale because they are not only delicious but have only four ingredients and are incredibly easy to make! Now that’s a win – win – win! It really is a marvel how anything with just four very simple ingredients can taste this good! Mind you, they are a pretty good four ingredients.

The love of condensed milk runs deep in my family. I have been known to eat it off a spoon directly out of the tin. The biggest lover of condensed milk in my family was my grandfather. When he passed his bar exam, his parents were, of course delighted and said that he could have anything he wanted as a present. They were thinking trip abroad, motorbike or some other big-ticket item. Papa thought long and hard and then asked if he could have a can condensed milk all to himself.

Isn’t that just the sweetest (no pun intended) thing you have ever heard? All that sugar didn’t hurt him either. He went on to be a Supreme court Judge in Sri Lanka and in his spare time discovered a species of fish.

Sweet Treats For a Sh*tty Week

Why I was in need of chocolately, coconutty comfort food this week? At the moment, we are allowed outside of our houses for one hour each day for exercise. One measly hour. So, during one of these hours, I was walking through the local park with the fussiest eater in the world and the dogs. All of a sudden I felt the most terrible pain in my head. I was being attacked by a wasp!!!! The worst thing, apart from the blinding pain, was that it got all tangled up in my hair so the FEITW couldn’t even get it away from me for AGES during which it just kept stinging me!!!

Then, on top of that I had an episode where I couldn’t breathe – might have been the mask I was wearing, might have been a panic attack, might have been a result of the sting as I have had allergic reactions to bee stings before.

All up, it was an incredibly painful and terrifying experience. I had to go straight to the doctor and I am still taking medication to bring the swelling down and have had raging headaches, bouts of sleeplessnes, and dizziness.

I told one of my friends this tale and after the requisite sympathy she said “There you are minding your own biz and something comes out of the blue and totally f*cks everything up. If that isn’t a perfect metaphor for this year, I don’t know what is. It would only be better if it stung you in the arse” I think she has a point.

The point of both of these stories is that sometimes, the simple things are all we need to bring us joy.

And wasps are arseholes.

Here’s the recipe!

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Chocolate Coconut Truffles

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A tasty treat that is simple to make and delicious to eat! Perfect for a bad day or an emergency bake sale!

Author: Taryn Nicole
Prep Time: 15 min
Total Time: 15 minutes
Yield: 20 1x

Ingredients

Scale

250g plain biscuits. I used Morning Coffee but any plain biscuit will do.
395g can of condensed milk
1 cup dessicated coconut
2 tbsp cocoa
Extra coconut for rolling

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Instructions

Crush the biscuits into crumbs
Combine all ingredients except the additional coconut into a bowl and mix together.
Roll mixture into walnut-sized balls.
Roll balls in extra coconut.
Place in fridge for half an hour to firm.
Enjoy!

Notes

The mixture will not stick to your hands if they are damp when you are rolling the truffles into balls.

Have a great week friends and bee safe!!!!

PS. This probably comes close to what I looked like in the park as I was being stung!

via Imgflip

15
Jul
2016

Cowboys, Caviar, Casseroles and Cocktails

categories: Cheese, Chilli, Chocolate, Cocktail, Corn, Eggs, Kahlua, Salad, Vodka

Dear readers

I had such high hopes for this post. Then they were totally dashed by a twist of fate that…well…I guess if I’d seen it coming it wouldn’t be a twist would it? But I’m jumping ahead of myself. First, I was totally delighted when Greg from Recipes4Rebels asked if I would join in a cookalong for Cowboy Day! This event occurs on the fourth Saturday of July each year and is celebrated all over the world!

Obviously, this is not the fourth Saturday in July, however, as I will be sunning myself on the beach at Sanur in Bali that day, with Greg’s blessing I am posting my ventures into Cowboy Cookin’ early! And it’s a three course meal y’all. (Because 1 that’s how cowboy’s talk and 2 cocktails are a course aren’t they? This one is almost a meal! But again, getting ahead of myself!)

So now onto my foiled grand plans. My idea was that I would find a cocktail called a Bali Cowboy – possibly a more tropical version of this cowboy cocktail and I would make it for my post and then, on the day itself, I would tweet another picture of me in Bali with with my Bali Cowboy and it would in a glass as big as my head and it would be blue and loaded with umbrellas and pineapple wedges and all the other tropical cocktail paraphenalia.

A quick google soon showed me that there is such a thing as a Bali Cowboy. It is NOT a cocktail. Turns out that a Bali Cowboy is a male prostitute who hangs around Kuta Beach willing to sell his services to any rich (ie all) Western women who care to pay for them. So, whilst I’m not 100% ruling out a photo of me with a Bali Cowboy on Cowboy Day, the likelihood of it happening has dropped significantly!

So, new ideas had to be found. Starting with some caviar. Because we’re classy cowboys! It’s Cowboy Caviar of courseWhere has this salad / dip been all my life? If this is what cowboys eat, then I want to be a cowboy. It’s all kinds of beans and corn and tomatoes and avocado . Truly delicious! I loved this!

So, for the second course, I went straight to the top. And by that I mean Mr John Wayne himself.

Turns out The Duke and I share a love of eggs, cheese and chillies. Now, just one thing about the John Wayne casserole…. To my mind, when you combine egg yolks to beaten egg whites with other stuff, in this instance cheese and chilli and you them put that in an oven and cook until it’s all puffed up and golden, that’s not so much a casserole as a soufflé.

You be the judge:

I’ll sit quietly over here and let my case speak for itself.

By the way, cooking this for an hour would be way too much. You are seeing about 35 minutes and I think it was over. I would cook this…half an hour max. Also, the tomato didn’t do much. I would actually leave it out and cook this for 20 minutes total.

The ~~soufflé~~ casserole was good but I think I was so blown away by the Cowboy Caviar that it kind of paled by comparison. I will definitely make it again though!

And now for my grand Cowboy finale, I am turning to to person who started all of this, yep, Greg. This cocktail /dessert is A-MAZING! So, so good. Cowboys and cowgirls, can I present, the Giant Martini!

There is no other word for this but absolutely divine! The giant in the Giant Martini doesn’t refer t to it’s size (but you could scale it up very easily) but to the fact that it was created on the set of Giant by Liz Taylor and Rock Hudson.

Git along little doggie, this cocktail is all mine!

And you too!

Ah yes, Greg’s site on the PC, a cocktail in front of me and The A-Z of Cooking behind it. Just a regular day round these parts!

Many, many thanks to Greg, this was so much fun! Thank you so much for including me! I always say this but you hear so much about the internet being a a horrible vicious place, I am always delighted and totally honoured to make new friends, like Greg, on here.

Ok, I’ve gotta go, 5:30am start tomorrow! But I’m loving and leaving you with some some super rhinestone cowboy singing!

Find out all about the Cowboy Day Cook A Long here. Hopefully my attempts will inspire you to bigger and better things on the day!

The recipe for Cowboy Caviar I used came from Cookie and Kate.

The Giant Martini recipe is here.

Kiss me and smile for me, I’ll be back here in a couple of weeks but if you can’t smile without me, I’ll be tweeting and instagramming from Bali throughout.

Loving you, leaving you, now!

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31
Jan
2016

REPOST FROM 2016 – Two Turtledoves

categories: Caramel, Chocolate, Cocktail, Nuts, Sweets

Sometime last year I became obsessed on Pinterest with an American candy called a turtle. I went from never having heard of them in my life to seeing them all over the internet. And holy moly did they sound good! For those of you, like me, who have spent our lives in ignorance of this delight, just listen to this:

A chocolate base.
Toppped with pecan nuts
Topped with caramel
Topped with more chocolate

There is no way on God’s green earth that they could be bad. Supposably. As Joey Tribbiani would say. And depending on your definition, they were really good. Well, they tasted delicious.

Before we get into them, just a word of explanation. The recipe I used called them turtledoves because they used Dove Chocolate. We used to have Dove Chocolate here – apparently not anymore. I wonder when that happened?

My turtledoves started really well.

It all started to fall apart with the caramel. I could not get it to sit on the pecans the way I wanted it too. I wanted it to be a perfect dome, surrounding my pecans but leaving a little bit of chocolate on the base visible. Not ONE of them looked like that.

And the more I tried to meddle with it, the worse it got. In the end, I thought. “Nevermind. It will all be covered with the rest of the chocolate. It will be fine”.

Not so. I was already on a slippery slope and the only way was down. The final chocolate layer was a disaster! I could not get it smooth, it was a hot day and the second I touched it, it would either melt or crack.

Before I show you the wreck of the Hersperus that was my effort, let me show how these babies should look (The Spruce Eats)

And, oh Lord, here are mine….

I know. I’m sorry. Two fails in a row. Although these tasted delish, my turtles may not have been teenage or ninjas but they were mutant. Technically they weren’t even turtledoves because I could not find Dove chocolate.

They did taste good. Really good. Even the fussiest eater in the world was a fan.

But you know food blogging can be very much style over substance so that sometimes I think it doesn’t matter how things taste as long as they look good. In retrospect, I should have not tried to cover them entirely but just done a little splodge of caramel and one of chocolate over the top. Next time….

But I wanted to have something that was a success, of only to soothe my wounded self-esteem. Two fails in a row is no way to write a food blog. So I needed a turtledove. Fast. Guaranteed success.

Hmmmm….

Chocolate
Caramel
Nuts

How about something like this?

Baileys
Frangelico
Butterscotch Schnapps

Now that’s my kind of Turtledove!

And it brought F.Scott out of the funk caused by the Bobby Dazzler.

Normality has resumed in Chez Retro Food. Well, as close as we can get ’round here anyway!

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Turtledove

Print Recipe

A cocktail shooter that mirrors the flavours of the classic American turtle candy – chocolate, caramel and nuts

Author: Taryn Fryer

Ingredients

Scale

30ml Butterscotch Schnapps
30ml Frangelico
30ml Bailey’s Irish Cream

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Instructions

Pour the Butterscotch Schnapps and the Frangelico into a shooter glass.
Measure out the Bailey’s and pour very slowly over the back of a spoon into the glass.
Enjoy!

Have a wonderful week!

;

25
Oct
2015

The Dishiest Dish – Black and Blueberry Crumble

categories: Apples, Berries, Desserts, Dishiest Dish

Black berries, blueberries, dots of marzipan, almonds, choc chips, a splash of amaretto and, of course some custard? How could the Black and Blueberry Crumble not be the dish of the week?

Close second was Karen Martini’s Sausage, Ham & Egg Pizza.

Fail of the week? The Broccoli con Anchovy from The River Cafe Cookbook. I’m not sure what it is with me and this book. Last week the rotolo was a fail. This week, I didn’t even get to cook anything.

Here’s the thing. I put broccoli on my shopping list. I ticked it off my list meaning it had gone from shelf to basket. I should have had broccoli in my fridge. BUT I tootled off to twilight yoga on Sunday afternoon planning to have a healthy broccoli con anchovy supper on my return. Got home, had my aromatherapy bath, got into my jamies. And no broccoli. Not in the fridge, not misplaced in the cupboard. Not in the car. Just a black hole of broccoli.

And yes, I could have gone and bought some but I was already in my pyjamas and Doctor Who was about to start.

This week I am looking forward to cooking:

Tasty Reads is coming up, I am going to make the Chicken, Cheese and Corn meatballs and the Raw Tuna Meatballs from the meatball cookbook. I found the Turkey Cran meatballs I made a little too sweet for my taste. I will try these again but instead of the dried sweetened cranberries required by the recipe I will use fresh (frozen) cranberries. They will bring a much needed touch of tartness. Also place the balls in the freezer for maybe 15 minutes so the cheese doesn’t ooze out everywhere.

In Other News I Am

Listening To

I know I spoke about this last week but OMG Episode 3 of Limetown sent shivers up my backbone. The last ten minutes? Possibly the scariest thing I have ever listened to.
In the same creepy vein, Mark had never heard of Jonestown until this week. Reminded me of this other creepy, but this time true, pod.

Reading/Listening

I finished A Rush Of Blood on audio, It was ok. I think the author drew a long bow for the reasons for the murders.

Am about to start Life After Life.

Watching

We saw William Shatner’s Stage Show the other night. Briilliant. We have started marathon watching Boston Legal on the back of it. It’s still immensely watchable!

Also A Beautiful Lie on ABC. This is a modern day version of Anna Karenina which so far has been superb. Except for one teeny thing…the Vronsky character is not at all good looking. In fact, Mr Karenina is waaay more handsome. Despite this, absolutely loving it.

Print

Green Sauce – From Meatballs The Ultimate Guide by Matteo Bruno

Print Recipe

Ingredients

Scale

50g (a large bunch) flat leaf (Italian) parsley, leaves picked
50g (a large bunch) basil, leaves picked
1 clove of garlic
35g blanched almonds
10g anchovies
Juice of 1 lemon
120ml extra virgin olive oil
25 parmesan cheese, finely grated

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Instructions

Blitz the herbs, garlic, almonds, anchovies, lemon juice, olive oil and a pinch of salt and pepper in a food processor for around a minute or until a smooth sauce has formed.
Add the parmesan and blitz for another minute.

What’s going on in your life / kitchen? What was the best thing you made this week?

What are you looking forward to making next week?

What are you reading, watching, listening to?

Please share!

Have a fabulous week everyone!

Happy Cooking!

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Tag: chocolate

Hershey Pie – The Recipe

The Pieathletes

Sweet Treats For a Sh*tty Week

Here’s the recipe!

Chocolate Coconut Truffles

Ingredients

Instructions

Notes

Turtledove

Ingredients

Instructions

This week I am looking forward to cooking:

In Other News I Am

Listening To

Reading/Listening

Watching

Green Sauce – From Meatballs The Ultimate Guide by Matteo Bruno

Ingredients

Instructions