Chocolate and Raspberry Pie

I promised you a Chocolate Pie and here’s what I conjured up!  A Chocolate and Raspberry Pie!  Oooh… Ahhh….  (rich chocolate and juicy raspberries are a match made in heaven!)

In most cases I like to promote healthy food and healthy living (blah blah blah) because it’s awesome, but healthy recipes don’t have to be boring and sometimes you can throw a curve ball and have a treat.  Life is boring without treats, right?

The great thing about healthy eating is making things yourself and ‘controlling’ what goes into it – i.e. in supermarket bought prepackaged stuff, is sometimes full of weird stuff and packed with sugar, salt, additives, preservatives etc… (you get the drill).  So when you make something yourself you know exactly what’s gone into it and you can also make sure the freshest ingredients are part of it too.  (This goes for treats too.)

This chocolate tart is pure wonderment.  It’s like, so beautiful - if it were a movie star it would be on the red carpet at the Golden Globes wearing an Vivienne Westward gown. And the best thing is that it takes hardly any ingredients and no time at all to prepare. It’s the perfect dessert for dinner parties (not that I’ve had a dinner party for a LONG time.. hmm maybe it’s about time I had one!)

If you use the 70% dark chocolate (instead of the milk chocolate) and fresh from the field raspberries, there’s some goodness in this scrumptious pie for you too.

Serves about 6

Ingredients

150g plain chocolate (if you like rich dark choc use 70% solids or if you want it sweet, use regular milk chocolate)

250g fresh raspberries

50g butter

100ml double cream (and an extra 100ml left over for serving mixed with 1 tbsp sugar and 1 tsp vanilla)

1 premade sweet short crust pastry case (I got mine from Tesco for 79p, yes really)  but you can make shortcrust pastry yourself, I use Ina Garten’s recipe).

…Chop the chocolate and butter up into squares (makes it quicker to melt).

…Put into a bowl with the cream and put the bowl over s saucepan simmering with boiling water (this will warm the bowl and melt the chocolate) - Stir until just melted.

…Don’t over-stir or over-melt otherwise the chocolate will burn and split.

Take it off the heat when it’s almost all melted and let it rest for 30 mins or so.

…After 30 mins give it a stir again and pour into the pastry case.

…Lay the raspberries neatly around the top.  Ahh so pretty!

…Then pop into the fridge to set for a wee while, so that the chocolate sets. 

…When it’s ready, slice it up and enjoy with a dollop or whipped double cream (whisked up with 1 tbsp sugar and 1 tsp vanilla) you’ve got left over.

Simple.  Delicious.  Not so healthy, but it’s been a rainy dull week, so treat yourself girlfriend!

Chocolate saves the day!

Yesterday it rained.  And then it rained some more.  Seriously, is this supposed to be summertime?

So in a desperate plea to cheer up the rainy day, I decided that there was only one thing for it; make a chocolate pie. So that's what I did.

As if I needed an excuse to make something chocolately, right? Well my excuse was that I had some chocolate bars left over from a cake I made and the best before date was July 2012. So I needed to save these lovely chocolate bars from going over fast!

The method and more photos are coming up... just to wet your appetite, here are the ingredients and a photo of the ingredients pre-pie.

Kitchen Crushes

I have to put my hands up and admit I quite have a thing for kitchens... and the whiter they are, the better!  My kitchen is white, but it's not as groovy as these, no way.  So I thought I'd share my kitchen crushes with you this week.

1.  I totally love this oven glove by Rachael Taylor designs, you can them buy here at the Bouf store, so cute!  2.  A lovely white kitchen via Pinterest - I love the way the hob is on the breakfast bar so you can chat to your friends and family while you cook!  (if you know the source please let me know!)  3. Another cool white kitchen from freshome here.  I could see myself standing at the bright window here drinking a cup of tea, while soaking up that all that sunshine!  ...and 4.  the groviest kitchen 'thang' I've seen in a long time - the Kitchen Bull from Torolengo here

Tell me your kitchen crushes!!

I also have a crush on a juicing machine and an espresso machine at the moment.  It's such a tough choice which to buy!  Do I give in to coffee or healthy juices?  In the cafe I used to work at we made this amazing breakfast juice which was more of a smooth juice mixture - we called it a 'Smuice'!  It was so creamy and smuicey! Mmm, so refreshing too....

I think the new addition to my kitchen appliance family will be a juicer!