sweets for your sweet, sugar for your honey: valentine shortbread hearts!

Valentine shortbread hearts:
clementine and dark chocolate

Sweets for my sweet,
Sugar for my honey,
Your first sweet kiss thrilled me so.
Sweets for my sweet,
Sugar for my honey,
I'll never ever let you go.
(Doc Pomus and
Mort Shuman - 1961)

I am not sure whether it is worse to be single on Valentine's Day, or whether it is actually worse to be in a relationship, what with the neon-pink commercialisation that has vanquished all of the dewy-eyed innocence of earlier centuries. But hey ho, it's the thought that counts and this heart-shaped sweet treat works beautifully as a delicious gesture of love, whichever day it is.

clementine and dark chocolate chip shortbread stars

Clementine and Dark Chocolate Chip
Shortbread Stars

Shortbread is one of my favourite sweet indulgences. But I usually like it plain and think that shortbread really shouldn't be mucked about with. But recently a friend baked some chocolate chip shortbread biscuits and they were rather nice indeed. I am prepared to admit that I was wrong; I have seen the light! 

christmas baking: chocolate yule log biscuits

chocolate yule log biscuits

If you were to believe Charles Dickens, Washington Irving, Sir Walter Scott or any number of Victorian Christmas cards or advertising posters, England was awash at Christmas with snow dusted baronial halls, while well-fed and happy peasants lugged large oak logs towards welcoming roaring fires, watched over by benevolent robin redbreasts. (As something of a peasant myself, I certainly doubt the veracity of this picture of happy lugging!)

granola, hazelnut and dark chocolate cookies

granola, hazelnut and dark chocolate cookies

I am not much of a granola for breakfast type of gal, perhaps I should be. Mornflake's pouch of oatbran granola is full of good things - as well as the oatflakes and toasted oatbran, it contains a mix of nuts and seeds, including almonds, pecan nuts and sunflower and pumpkin seeds.

Since I don't much fancy nuts and seeds for breakfast, I thought the granola might make a rather good biscuit, and if I say so myself, I wasn't wrong. Big buttery crisp cookies full of crushed nuts, seeds and chocolate. Almost enough to make me feel healthy . . .

chorizo and nutella: a winning combination!

chorizo and Nutella party bites

When Spanish pigs graze on acorns and olives, the resulting jamón ibérico de bellota ham is the stuff that dreams are made of, with a higher fat content and more flavour than other types of ham. It occurred to me that slices of ham with some kind of nut mixture might be a winning combination. I like the idea of companion eating - serving meat with the kind of fruit or vegetables the live animal might have eaten - so venison with blackberries, or pork with apple. I like the way they complement each other both in nature and in the kitchen.

chocolate and cherry loveliness: black forest cupcakes

black forest cupcakes

I like to forage, mostly in green open spaces across London, although recently discovering new treasures at the bottom of my own garden. But I have also been known to forage in other people's kitchen cupboards, ferreting out interesting tins and jars that have languished forgotten, gathering dust and exceeding their use-by dates.

leftover easter egg brownies

leftover Easter egg brownies with
dried fruit and spices

I was given some chocolate eggs as Easter gifts. I am really grateful for the kind thought (it would be churlish not to be), but frankly there is just so much Easter egg I can eat. More of a nibble really. I am loath to say that they are wasted on me, but fortunately I had a good way of using up the chocolate.

oxtail stew with warming spices: a wonderful winter warmer

sticky oxtail stew

Where's the spring we've been promised by weather forecasters? London's weather is distinctly grey. As a result, I want a meal that is comforting and soothing; something a little dark and sticky, a bit like my mood. 

I need a meal that is a lttle wintery but lively enough to delude me that spring is around the corner. I have convinced myself that what I need is an oxtail stew of such unctuousness, it is like one of the cartoonist Martin Rowson's fat cat plutocrats caught in a nonchalant shrug with its paws caught in this country's till.

killer chocolate brownies

killer chocolate brownies

Grown men have wept for these chocolate morsels. They have fought over them. Wrestled with Tupperware containers and tried to hide the last crumbs. I have had duels conducted to force me to release the secrets of this chocolate heaven (though never successfully) and more offers of first-born children than I know what to do with. Thank god I am not the vengeful, sacrificing kind.

But the time has come to put this recipe for killer chocolate brownies out there. Not double chocolate, not triple chocolate. This is chocolate four-ways (quadruple doesn't really roll off the tongue). These brownies are, to my mind, perfection - dense, moist and intensely chocolate-y, unadulterated by nuts, just total chocolate.