My four favorite ingredients: chocolate,almond, orange, and ginger

This weeks baking was on my mind all week, even at work where I was in a meeting nibbling away at one of my favorite chocolates, Lindt 'ginger intense'. My colleague had mistakenly bought it instead of  Lindt 'orange intense', which is also up there for the top dog of chocolate. So either way I would have been happy!That night I was dreaming of fudge and once again the theme of the choc-orange and choc-ginger was prevalent. This then got me to thinking of my favorite cupcake, 'orange and almond' by Ghermez cupcakes which I think is just a mini chocolate version of the Jewish passover cake made of whole oranges and almond meal. So there you have it my four key ingredients for this weeks' baking, chocolate, almond, orange and ginger. It took a little further research for recipes to try and come up with the right combination. Although I didn't find exactly what I wanted, I did come up with two recipes that I thought I could adapt to what I wanted.

So on Friday I decided to tackle the first idea, choc-ginger and almond fudge. I never realised how easy it can be to make fudge with chocolate fudge being the easiest. Chocolate fudge is a simple combination of chocolate, butter, condensed milk and a splash of vanilla which is all melted together and poured into a slice tin to set in the fridge. More melting rather than cooking! Anyway this recipe easily lent itself to being adapted with any of your favorite lollies, fruits, nuts or spices, in my case ginger and almonds. So here it is!

Choc-ginger and Almond Fudge

500g dark chocolate

75g unsalted butter

400ml tin condensed milk

1tsp vanilla essence

2-3Tbsp ginger, fresh finely grated

150g almonds roughly chopped

1. Line slice tin with baking paper

2. In a medium saucepan or microwave, melt chocolate and butter, mix until combined. Stir in condensed milk and vanilla. Then add ginger and almonds, mix until well combined.

3. Pour into prepared slice tin, cover and refrigerate, until well set. Cut into small square and store in an airtight container in the fridge to be eat cool. Yum!

That was all the baking I intended for the day as I also wanted to head over to Leichhardt to check out a new shop that had been profiled in Tuesdays' Good Living - "Healthy Feast" a bakery dedicated to gluten free baked goods! I decided it was research mission to go check out there products and to get ideas for future baking challenges. Its a busy small little shop front with a wide variety of gluten free treats made on the premises and sold around Sydney at various fresh produce markets. I came away with two litte custard filled profiteroles, a raspberry and almond tart and a steak and vegetable pie. The profiterole didn't last long - a very tasty mouthful. Neil and I shared that tart that night after dinner.  Not too bad but it needed a bit of cream or ice-cream to go with it. And the pie was mine for lunch the next day. Ah so that's what good gluten free pastry tastes like! Firm, buttery and definitely not crumbly! Hmm I'm definitely going to have to give pies another go sometime soon. That and profiteroles too! Here's the link to check out the store and their products. http://www.healthyfeast.com.au/

Saturday morning dawned and I was up early to take the second idea of choc-orange and almonds to bake up my version of choc-orange almond cupcakes. These cupcakes and some of the fudge were destined to be consumed by a gaggle of women at a friends baby shower. Everyone likes chocolate based treats don't they? And at least that way I'd know that there'd be something gluten free that I could eat. Inspiration for this recipe came from Maeve O'Maera's Food Safari cookbook and recipe by Batia Slater  for Orange and Almond cake. It only needed a couple of tweaks to add chocolate and convert it to cupcakes rather than a cake. In addition, I intended to use LSA - linseed sesame and almond meal instead of almond meal as I didn't have the later. Anyway here's the recipe I came up with.

Choc-orange almond cupcakes (Adapted from Orange and Almond Cake, by Batia Slater, Food Safari)
Makes 12
1 orange
125 g caster sugar
3 eggs
100g dark chocolate melted
2Tbsp cocoa
125g almond meal/LSA
1/2tsp baking powder

1. Simmer orange in boiling water for 2 hours, drain, cool and puree whole orange.
2. Preheat oven 190C, line 12 hole muffin tin
3. Beat eggs and sugar well, until thick, light and fluffy. Stir in orange puree and mix well. Add melted chocolate and mix well. Followed by meal, baking powder and cocoa.
4. Spoon into prepared muffin tray and bake for 15mins. Cool on rack.

I'm a bit lazy, so I only dusted the cupcakes with icing sugar to finish them off but they could easily be made extra special with an orange ganache. Maybe another day, maybe when I had more time and  chocolate. Not to mention, when I turned up at the baby shower and there were copious quantities of lovely treats including several gluten free options for me - chocolate meringues, cheese balls made with tapioca flour and little cornflour sweet biscuits. Yum! So the ganache wasn't missed. To balance the sugar hit I'd also made up a Moroccan spice carrot dip to eat with rice crackers. Tasty indeed. Anyway a good time was had by all and I even got a few new ideas for future baking experiments!

Well that's about it for this week. Let me know if you've got any comments or suggestions. Happy baking.