Foodie Friday On A Saturday - No Bake Chocolate Caramel Cheesecake

This post is typical I suppose of how this year has gone, I don't post a Foodie Friday post for eons, and then when I do it becomes a Foodie Friday On A Saturday post instead. Ha! Ha! life fail in the extreme seems to sum up my year! Anyways I hope that you will agree, that this recipe was one worth waiting for.

I love cheesecake, I crave cheesecake on a regular basis, but as you probably know a lot of the ones that you buy in the supermarkets just don't cut the mustard - they are okay in an emergency but when you want the real I am, you can't beat a homemade dessert.

Baked cheesecakes scare me and as a vegetarian throwing gelatine into something isn't really an option so this no bake, vegetarian friendly number fits the bill perfectly. The recipe is very loosely based on a No Bake Raspberry And White Chocolate Cheesecake that a lovely lady that used to blog shared many moons ago. As long as you stick to the basic filling mix then you can use what every chocolate you like, and you can play with the flavours and the filling be it fruit, or even more chocolate. I made this recipe last week for my mam's birthday and I'm going to be honest this isn't one for the faint hearted - it's hugely calorific, very rich and very sickly, if you like your sweets to be sweet, then this is the dessert for you.

No Bake Chocolate Caramel Cheesecake

For The Base

100g Ginger Nuts

100g Chocolate Digestives

75g Butter (More For Greasing)

397g Tin Carnation Caramel

For The Filling

500g Full Fat Cream Cheese (Room Temperature)

50g Caster Sugar

180ml Whipping Cream

600g Milk Chocolate

65g Butter

1/2 Tsp Vanilla Extract Or Vanilla Paste

Large Bar Of Caramel Filled Chocolate or Soft Caramel Filled Buttons Or Chocolates

For this cheesecake you will need a very well greased, loose bottomed or spring form cake tin, around 23cm across, don't worry if it's a little bit smaller but if it's any bigger you might need to make a bit more of the base.

1. To make the base all you need to do is to crush your biscuits, either in a sealed bag with a rolling pin or if you have one, use a food processor, it's way easier on the arms and you get a more consistent crumb. Melt your butter and then add it to the crumb mix with a tablespoon of the caramel, and give it a good stir.

2. Now it's time for one of the grossest pictures that you will probably ever see on my blog ;) It doesn't look good but the combo of butter, caramel and biscuit crumbs, tastes fantastic. Try not to eat it though, because a cheesecake is nothing without it's base. Pour the crumb mix into your well greased tin, and then press it down evenly and firmly with either the back of a spoon or a potato masher to create a compressed, even crust.

Then either pop it into the fridge or put it in a cool place for around an hour to firm up

3. While your base is setting it's time to start on the filling. Put your chocolate into a large bowl, with your butter and your vanilla, and pop it over a bowl of boiling water, gently stirring until it's melted. Try not to get any water into your chocolate mix and make sure that your chocolate mix doesn't get too hot.

4. While your chocolate mix is melting, put your room temperature cream cheese into a large bowl, and then add the cream and the sugar, then mix it all together until it's smooth.

5. You don't have to add any more chocolate but I love the texture difference in my cheesecake so you can either add some ordinary chopped chocolate or you can do what I've done here and chopped up a large bar of soft caramel filled chocolate (this is Cadbury's Caramel), or you can use individual soft caramel filled chocolates. Pop the chopped chocolate into the fridge until you're ready for it.

6. By now your chocolate mix should be fully melted, give it a good stir to make sure that there are no lumps or solid pieces. It will be a bit thicker than normal melted chocolate due to the addition of the butter so don't panic if it looks a bit thick. Leave it to cool for a minute or two.

7. Then add your melted chocolate mix to your cheese mix, and carefully mix it together until it's smooth and full combined

8. Then mix in your caramel filled chocolate until it's evenly distributed throughout the filling mix.

9. Now it's time to start building your cheesecake, start off by putting a few dollops of caramel sauce on to your chilled cheesecake base

Then start spooning in your cheesecake filling mixture, alternating it with spoonfuls of caramel

Keep a little bit of caramel for the top and swirl it through your cheesecake mix. Then put it in a cold place or in the fridge for at least 12 hours, I left mine for around 24 hours to be on the safe side. Make sure that you put your tin onto a baking sheet or a plate and you can sometimes get a little bit of liquid escaping from the tin, and make sure that you cover the top to avoid anything dripping into the mix

10. Unlike a baked cheesecake or one containing gelatine, this cheesecake will never set completely solid. After leaving it to set though you will notice a definite difference in the texture. It will feel firmer to the touch. Then I guess you just need to be brave, run a palette knife around edges to loosen it, and then either unclip the side of your tin, or push it up from the bottom, and your cheesecake should come away easily.

11. If it doesn't come away evenly it's not the end of the world, it will still taste great even if it doesn't look it. If it comes out great well done you, smooth the edges off with a palette knife, and if you don't think there is enough chocolate or caramel in it already, then decorate it with a bit more, I used Cadbury's Caramel Nibbles here x

Then serve in small slices, it will be gooey as hell, that's just the way it is. Pop it back into the fridge in between ravishings where it will keep for a couple of days, if you can leave it alone that is.

Tips And Suggestions

• As I say providing you stick to the basic chocolate, cheese ration you can use what ever you like, the original version uses white chocolate and raspberries and white chocolate buttons in the filling instead of the caramel, and the milk chocolate and it's amazing. I'm also envisaging a milk and white chocolate swirled cheesecake, a chocolate orange one for Christmas, and maybe white chocolate with strawberry or passion fruit, or a chocolate and peanut butter version or a white chocolate version with crushed Oreos, or even a dark chocolate and salted caramel version, just use your imagination!
• If you think this version is too much then you can of course leave out the extra chocolate in the filling on the top and just use the caramel.
• Instead of Carnation Caramel you could also obviously make your own caramel or toffee sauce, or use a jar of Dulce De Leche, a salted caramel sauce or even something like Cadbury's Caramel Spread.
• I've made this with a combination of gluten free chocolate digestives and ginger snaps but you can use what ever biscuits that you like - digestives are obviously the preferred biscuit for cheesecakes but ginger snaps, bourbons and Oreos also work really well
• It's really important that your cream cheese is at room temperature, it just won't mix in well enough if it's too cold. It's also important that you use a decent cream cheese for this recipe you don't want anything low fat, and whilst supermarket brands do work don't go for their budget or value cream cheese, it just isn't creamy or thick enough.

Obviously this cheesecake isn't something that you would eat all the time, it's way too calorific and expensive to make every day but for a treat or for a special occasion it's well worth indulging in a yummy slice of homemade cheesecake. If you have any questions please leave me a comment and if you try this out I'd love to see your creations x 

Happy 10th Birthday LouLouLand! - Reflecting On 10 Years Of Blogging

You can't celebrate a birthday without cake, but unfortunately for me or should I say unfortunately for my stomach, all I could get my hands was these yummy and super sweet Tesco cupcakes.

It isn't my birthday of course, but it's the 10th birthday of something that's slowly become to define me, and become a part of me, my blog! It's hard to believe that 10 years ago today I made the decision to sign up to blogspot and I decided to start sharing my life and my loves online.

Since I started celebrating my blogging birthday I've posted quite a few of these Happy Birthday posts now and they all say something pretty similar - I usually talk about how much blogging has changed over the years, and how grateful I am for all of the opportunities that have came my way, and to be honest today, my feelings are exactly the same. I've been very lucky over the years, I've worked with some amazing brands and I've met some lovely people ,all through farting about on the Internet as one of my relatives describes it!

As I've said before though, blogging really has become my lifeline, it's given me something to focus on and something to do when various aspects of my life on turmoil, it's helped me meet new people, it's helped me learn lots of new skills, and I'm now lucky enough to class as a part time job.

The last few years have been hard for me personally in a lot of ways, and unfortunately I feel as though my blog has suffered, I haven't spent as much time and effort on it as I would have liked, and as I've said previously my posting and my content has suffered, but you're still here and you're still with me. So I want to say a huge, huge thank you to every single person out there that's read or followed my blog over, and I'd also like to say a huge thank you to the brands and companies that I've worked with, and I'd also liked to thank all of my follow blogging friends both new and old, if it hadn't been for all of your support and encouragement there is no way I would still be prattling on 10 years after that first not very exciting post x

After a couple of frustrating months I'm just about ready to get back to where I want to be - I have lots and lots of plans and ideas for the future and I'm looking forward to my blogging future with both optimism and enthusiasm. As I say I can't thank you all enough for your support so as a way of expressing my gratitude I will be hosting another high end beauty giveaway on the blog which should be live in the next few days x So Merci Beaucoup again and I hope you enjoy the rest of your weekend xx

Foodie Friday - Phil Vickery Seriously Good Gluten Free Vanilla & Raspberry Cupcake Mix

I love cookery programmes and celebrity chefs but being gluten free more often than not I'm left frustrated by their wheat laden offerings. Over the years I've learnt to adapt recipes but I still find it frustrating that so few celebrity chefs cater for people with food and dietary intolerance's.

There are exceptions though and one chef that 's probably done more than more for raising awareness of gluten intolerance, than anyone else, is Phil Vickery. A regular on ITV's This Morning, Phil Vickery has written 3 best selling books, full to the brim with gluten free recipes. I only own one of his books Seriously Good Gluten Free Cooking, but there some really good recipes in it ranging from main meals, to smoothies and of  course cakes and desserts.

I love baking from scratch but as you can see sometimes from Great British Bake Off sometimes baking isn't as easy as it looks. Although I've pretty much perfected my gluten free sponge, believe you me, me and Mummy Lou have has our disasters over the years. Baking and especially gluten free baking in my opinion takes practise, and patience but what if you don't have that patience? Well you could go the supermarket and buy a ready made cake or you could by a box of cake mix.

Packet cake mixes are ideal for beginners and there a great way of teaching young children how to bake. It's not the same as making a cake from scratch but at least you have the satisfaction of saying "I made that". If you're gluten free or dairy intolerant though, it's sometimes not that easy to go into a shop and buy a packet of free from cake mix. Thankfully as times change, and allergy awareness increases, it's much easier than it was, the selection  though still isn't amazing and more often than not you need to visit a specialist health food store or a large supermarket.

For choice I still buy a lot of food online and recently whilst searching for gluten free food I discovered  that the Phil Vickery (the chef not the rugby player obviously :) has introduced has own range of gluten free baking mixes. I decided to give them a go and ordered a couple of boxes of cake mix and some cookie mix. I'm going to review them all for you but I thought I'd start with some cupcakes.

Phil Vickery Seriously Good Gluten Free Vanilla & Raspberry Cupcake Mix, is both gluten free and dairy free (more on that later), and vegetarian, they do contain eggs though and the manufacturers can't guarantee that they're nut free.

The box makes 12 cupcakes, and contains 12 silver cupcake cases, a packet of sugar mix, a packet of vanilla sponge mix, and a packet of raspberry fondant icing mix, and a tub of glitter sprinkles.

The box comes with full, easy to follow instructions. All you need to do is add some eggs, some vegetable oil, and some milk, to the sugar and cake mix sachets. If you're dairy intolerant you can use whatever milk you  normally use, for example soy, coconut or almond, but I just used normal semi skimmed. Then you just fill up you cases and pop them in the oven for around 20 minutes.

When their done you just leave them to cool, and mix the icing sachet with some boiling water and then spoon it over your cakes, and top with your sprinkles.

Okay my decorating skills leave a bit to be desired but it's all about the taste, isn't it? The sponge is probably the fluffiest and lightest gluten free sponge that I've ever eaten, it had a light vanilla flavour and it wasn't too sweet, which was in direct contrast with the icing. The super sweet, bright pink icing contained real raspberry powder which gave it a subtle, real, raspberry flavour.

These cakes were yummy and even Mummy Lou couldn't tell that they were gluten free, The instructions were really easy to follow, and they came out perfectly. I love baking and I'd like to think that I'm pretty good at it, but even a complete beginner could make these cakes and enjoy them.

The one drawback is the price these usually retail at £5.95 a box, but they are currently on special at £3.57 from Squires Kitchen. However, you can get the Phil Vickery Seriously Good! Gluten-Free Bumper Baking Kit which was the kit that I got. It's currently on special for just £7.93, and contains a box of Vanilla and Raspberry Cupcakes, a box of Very Lemony Cupcakes, and a packet of Chocolate Chip Cookie Mix. I'll been reviewing these other two mixes soon but in the meantime if you're looking for some easy gluten free baking options then these Phil Vickery kits could be something to try. You can view the full range online at Squires Kitchen and you can find out more about Phil Vickery here. If you have any questions let me now and I hope you all have a nice weekend x

Foodie Friday - Squidgy Gluten Free Chocolate And Caramel Brownies

There seems to be awareness and promotional weeks for pretty much everything these days from charities to illness, to food stuffs. At the moment we're in the middle of National Chocolate Week. Probably the best substance ever invented - I admit it I'm a chocoholic - milk, dark, white, or somewhere in between, whatever it is I'm all over it. So in celebration of National Chocolate Week I present to you my recipe for Squidgy Gluten Free Chocolate And Caramel Brownies. What categorises these brownies is the almost undercooked, sticky squidginess. They're a cross between a brownie and brownie pudding really, but they are super easy to make, and you can rustle them up with pretty much whatever you have in the cupboard.

Squidgy Gluten Free Chocolate And Caramel Brownies

200g Chocolate, Milk, Dark, Or A Combination Of The Two

185g Butter 

100g Gluten Free Plain Flour

50g Cocoa Powder

3 Eggs

300g Caster Sugar 

1 tsp Vanilla Extract

2-4 Normal Sized Bars Of Cadburys Or Galaxy Caramel

1. Preheat your oven to about 180 C and well grease a square brownie pan. I'm using silicone here but I'm still using a bit of oil spray here, and pop your caramel bars into the fridge if they aren't already.

2. Break up your chocolate into a large bowl, I'm using Galaxy here x and add your butter.

Put it into the microwave and cook on high for 30 seconds, then give it a stir and repeat till both the chocolate and butter are melted. Then put it to one side and leave it to cool.

3. In another large bowl break your eggs and add your sugar. I using golden, unrefined caster sugar here that's had a vanilla pod added to the jar.

Then using an electric mixer beat it till it foamy, full of air bubbles and almost mousse like, and add your vanilla extract

4.Then fold in the cooled chocolate and butter mixture.

5. Then weigh out your flour and cocoa powder

Then sieve it in to the rest of your mixture

and fold it in, until it's all combined. The mixture will be very runny but don't worry.

6. Pour it into your prepared brownie pan, it's pretty self levelling so the hardest thing will be scraping out your bowl.

Then break up your caramel bars into the chunks and scatter them evenly into the brownie pan.

7. Pop it in the oven for about half an hour. When it's done the top will be crispy and cracked but the inside will still by pretty squidgy when you test it with a skewer.

8. That's it x Leave it to cool for as long as you can, marking it into squares while it's still warm. 

It will be very squishy and fudgy inside, it will firm up slightly as it cools. You can either eat when it's soft and warm, or leave till it's cool and more fudge like.

The caramel chunks sink to the bottom slightly and some of them burst leaving chocolate caramel trails throughout the brownies. 

If I were you I would probably use four caramel bars - I only used two here (I ate them what can I say) so you can't see them that well in some of my pics

You can of course eat this on it's own but since it is quite pudding like, it would also be lovely with some pouring cream or some ice cream.

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This is the recipe that I use for my Creme Egg Brownies, but I can imagine that it would work equally well  with with Fudge, Rolos, or even chocolate chips, chocolate buttons, nuts or dried fruit. It's not a conventional cakey brownie it's a lot more indulgent and rich than that and makes the ideal dessert, or comfort food. Happy National Chocolate Week :) Will you be joining in? Leave me a comment and let me know what you'll be treating yourself too xx 

Foodie Friday - What I Ate In September

Ah September and food, where do we start? Well for at least a quarter of the month food was the farthest thing from my memory but we've been through that enough already, but I didn't cook as much as I hoped and I certainly didn't try any new dishes, well apart from the epic cake I made for Mummy Lou's birthday.

It was an epic birthday meal all round, the main course was my immense Gluten Free Mushroom And Basil Lasagne, made with some of my homemade easy pesto sauce.

This is probably the most drawn out, excuse the use of the word again, but epic recipe ever. It's time consuming but so worth the effort for a special occasion.

The lasagne was hard work, but in typical LouLou style, I don't do things be halves and made an even more time consuming dessert.

Yes, it was a cake, a 6 tiered gluten free sponge cake to be precise (I used this recipe 3 times replacing the lemon with a splash of vanilla extract and some food colouring). It was supposed to be blue, yellow, and pink but as you can see the pink food colouring (Asda's) was erm, useless! I sandwiched the layers together with butter cream, and Carnation Caramel, and cut a hole in the middle of the middle 4 cakes to make...

a Pinata Cake! I then filled the hole in the centre with Peanut M&M's and Galaxy Caramel Bits, Before covering it in literally a mountain of vanilla butter cream, and white chocolate jazzies.

OMG it was the most stressful thing I've ever done, first of all there was the problem with cakes, would they turn out? and would they crumble when I tried to cut them? Then there was the food colouring issue - it kind of ruined the look with an insipid beige colour rather than the pretty pink I anticipated. Then of course it was slightly too high so I had to hold it steady with skewers because I thought it might tip over arghhhh. Yeah so by the time it came to cutting the cake I was a nervous wreck, thankfully though the look on my mums face made it worth while and it tasted amazing, but never again - this was a one off - lol

So the birthday meal was by far my September highlight but what else did I eat? Well the rest of the month was mainly spent trying to get my head around food again. I ate a lot of plain stuff for a week or so, a lot of plain pasta, lots of potatoes, and lots of eggs and toast. I'm lucky to have relatives with chickens so over the last month I've probably ate more than I have done in a long time. I'm a huge scrambled egg fan, and this was a version using some leftovers, mainly spring onion, a spare slice of cheddar and some cream cheese, all on top of an Udi's Gluten Free Bagel.

As well as the chickens, I think I've told you before, but both my uncles have a lot of land and last month we received some more bagfuls of homegrown produce.

Onions, parsnips, apples, green beans, beetroot, you name it we got it, things are now either blanched, or stewed and frozen or in a cool dark place for use later in the year. One of my uncles had also been blackberry picking and provided us with this mountain of berries that my mum swiftly converted into several zillion jars of jam.

When I want comfort food nothing hits the spot more than a bowl of soup. Despite the still relatively fine weather in September I've started on the soup early this year. First up probably my favourite, my mum's Leek and Potato.

This was the soup of my childhood, and the warmth and creaminess really takes me back. A newer favourite of mine is of course Broccoli and Stilton, well it would be a newer favourite, up until about 5 years ago I detested blue cheese, it's funny how your tastes change.

Stilton obviously isn't very popular is my little part of Co Durham as my local Tesco nearly always has some in the reduced section. We love it though and in September I also made a variant of my Broccoli, Stilton And Walnut Pasta, only this time I threw in a little bit of vegan chorizo, for a bit more of a kick.

Treats weren't high on the agenda in September but I must include the vanilla cheesecake shots, and the Glo Worm from the recent Candy Rocks Jewellery Event (read my post here to find out more).

Oh and I guess I could count this as treat too - I finally broke my Starbucks Pumpkin Spice Latte duck. I'm not a huge cinnamon fan but I give in, it is as nice as everyone says and I may have even had another one today :). If you do have one though I would  definitely recommend you get them to use the Guatemala Antigua origin espresso, it's about 25p extra but it has a sweet, warm, spicy taste that really takes a PSL to the next level.

So that was my September food highlights. I was worried that I wouldn't have a lot to show you but I think I managed to make a post out of it. In October I'm going to try and get back on the healthy eating bandwagon, and I'm going to try and experiment a bit more. I've got a few, new recipe ideas that I want to try and I want to play about with some old favourites, so hopefully I'll have some new things to show you soon. Thanks for reading and don't forget to let my know your September food highlights x