I am super excited for tomorrow's blogger meet up at Rococo chocolates for the Let's Make Christmas gift swap arranged by the lovely Vanessa Kimbell.

As part of the event we have been asked to bring one chocolate recipe of our own and one inspired by owner of Rococo chocolates Chantal Coady's new book. I have been lucky to have a sneak peak at Rococo: Mastering the Art of Chocolate and it is a beautiful book. It has gorgeous illustrations, is beatifully bound and tells Chantal's story of discovering chocolate and setting up Rococo.


For tomorrow I have made these Christmas Spice Truffles as my own recipe. They are the ones I blogged a few days ago but this time made in chocolate moulds and with a dusting of 100% edible gold glitter.

My second chocolate make was inspired by Chantal's recipe for Chocolate Slabs. Chantal encourages us to be creative so I have made (from left to right) white chocolate, coconut and apricot; dark chocolate and cranberry; white chocolate lemon and strawberry.

I have had fun playing with chocolate over the last few days but have found it tough to temper chocolate on a small scale.

I am really looking forward to meeting everyone tomorrow and watching the experts at Rococo work with chocolate.

Disclaimer: I was sent this slow cooker to review as part of the Morphy Richards Innovater scheme. I was not required to write a positive review.

I have never owned a slow cooker and have always thought that it would take up too much precious counter space in my little flat. I have heard friends talk about loading up the slow cooker in the morning and coming home to a lovely smelling house and a dinner already made. 

As the dark cold wintery nights draw in, the idea of coming home to a warm, hearty stew or casserole was becoming more appealing. I have a super busy schedule - I work full time, blog and go to the gym most nights and I often find that I get in starving but with nothing for dinner. When Morphy Richards offered me the chance to review a slow cooker I was very pleased.

I was sent the 6L partitioned slow cooker -probably a little too big for my needs as a two person household, but I have set to using it with gusto. I have been reading up on all the different things you can make in a slow cooker. According to the internet the slow cooker not only produces amazing stews and casseroles but can also make mulled wine, candles and brownies.

I have just stuck with stews and casseroles and have been very pleased. The idea of the partition is that you could cook two meals at the same time. This works really well if you are bulk cooking or adapting things for vegetarians or kids.  However the cooker does not allow you to cook two completely different flavoured dishes or something sweet and savoury at the same time as the steam escapes into both parts of the cooker.

The meat is so succulent and tender when using a slow cooker. Up until now we have been having a lot of casseroles with chewy meat! Another thing to note when using a slow cooker is that you don't need to add much liquid at all as non of the steam can escape. The slowcooker has definitely become one of my favourite appliances.

My favourite meal that we have had so far is a beef red wine stew in one side of the slow cooker, with potato dauphinoise in the other side. A complete meal in one slow cooker. It was lovely!

After testing the slow cooker for a month or so I have a few pros and cons.
Pros:

• Lovely melt in the mouth tender meat.
• Makes the flat smell lovely when you get home and it is great to come home to a cooked, warm dinner.
• I believe it uses less energy than making a stove top casserole.
• Very non stick and therefore easy to clean.
• Packaged well and sent quickly.
• Comes with a recipe booklet which focuses on pairing dishes so you can cook two at the same time.
• This slowcooker is great for batch cooking.

Cons:

• This is a 6 Litre slow cooker and so is rather large and very heavy, however Morphy Richards have a variety of slow cookers to choose from.
• It can be quite hard to get all the stew and juice out of each side, especially if you don't want to tip it up because you have something different in the other partitioned side. My ladle doesn't fit into the partitioned sides. It would be nice if it came with a specially shaped ladle or the ability to lift one side at a time out.

If you would like to purchase a slowcooker for yourself or as a Christmas gift here is a 30% discount code for the Partitioned Slow Cooker - Model 48762. Go to www.morphyrichards.co.uk and use the SC62BLOG 

All the recipe books encourage you to cook your onions, garlic and seal your meat before putting into the slow cooker but as I say this is a lazy version and I found it worked perfectly fine. There are probably a bunch of reasons why this is not acceptable in the foodie world but it was a very quick way for me to have my dinner when I get home!

Serves 4 
2 braising steaks
2 onions
4 bulbs of garlic
root vegetable
2 glasses of red wine
1 tablespoon of tomato puree
Mixed herbs, salt and pepper to taste
1 stock cube
Other vegetables

1. Cube the beef and place evenly between the two partitions.
2. Add the chopped onions, garlic and chopped root vegetables.
3. Share the stock cube between each side.
4. Add a glass of wine to each side together with tomato puree, mixed herbs, salt and pepper.
5. Cook on slow, medium or high depending on when you want the stew to be ready.
6. Add any other vegetables such as mushrooms, broccoli etc near the end so they don't go mushy.
7. Serve with rice.

This is great for batch cooking for two. As I say I am no slowcooker expert so I direct you to my pinterest slowcooker board where I have collated recipes from the experts!

Thank you to Morphy Richards for the slowcooker.

I absolutely adore the smells and tastes of Christmas - oranges, cloves, cinnamon, mixed spice and alcohol. I tried to pack these flavours into these little balls of chocolatey goodness.

I have a really exciting week of chocolate creating. I am off to a Green and Black's chocolate workshop today and on Friday as part of Vanessa Kimbell's Let's Make Christmas I am getting to visit the famous choclatier Rococo Chocolates.

These truffles came about with a little experimentation but I am very pleased with them. Feel free to adapt them to your needs and tastes. Cover in a differet type of chocolate or roll in cocoa powder, nuts or icing sugar if you are in a hurry.

These make 10-12 truffles
100ml cream
1-2 teaspons ground cinnamon
1-2 teasponns ground cloves
1 teaspoon of mixed spice
1 tablespoon of Grand Marnier or other preferred liqueur
100 grams good quality, at least 70% cocoa dark fair trade chocolate

This is part of my general chocolate experimenting but I think I will be entering these as part of Vanessa Kimbell's Let's Make Christmas which is being held at Rococo Chocolates.

This is one large, indulgent chocolatey alcoholic cake and so I am offering it up as my entry to the Tea Time Treats challenge which is this month 1 year old.

This is a very indulgent cake and uses a 4 egg cake mix to fit the large bundt tin. Adapted from Eric Lanlard's orange and chocolate cake recipe.

Ingredients

• 1 1/2 orange
• 140g plain chocolate, broken into pieces
• 4 eggs
• 325g golden caster sugar
• 300ml sunflower oil
• 40g cocoa powder
• 325g plain flour
• 2tsp baking powder
• 1 tablespoon Cointreau

For the ganache

• 200g plain chocolate, broken into pieces
  
• 50g unsalted butter
• 200ml double cream

• 1 tablespoon Cointreau
  

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 180°C/.
   
2. Thoroughly grease your bundt tin.
   
3. Pierce the orange with a skewer and cook in boiling water for 30 minutes until soft. Blitz the whole orange in a food processor until smooth and then allow to cool. Make sure you take out any pips.
   
4. In a heatproof bowl either heat the chocolate over a bain marie or in the microwave on low checking that you do not overheat the chocolate.
   
5. In a large bowl, beat the eggs, sugar and oil. Gradually beat in the puréed orange then stir in the cooled melted chocolate and Cointreau. Sieve in the cocoa, flour and baking powder then mix well and pour into the tin.
   
6. Bake in the centre of the oven for 35-40 minutes, or until the cake springs back when lightly pressed in the middle. 
   
7. Allow to cool for 10 minutes in the tin, mine needed a bit longer and then turn out on to a wire rack to cool completely. Don't worry if bits of it don't come out the icing will cover any bad bits!
   
8. To make the chocolate ganache, put the chocolate, butter and cream into a heatproof bowl. Bring the cream to the boil and leave for 2 minutes, then stir until smooth. 
   
9. Add the Cointreau and then spread over the cake.

If you have any leftover ganache you can make these Chocolate and Cointreau truffles.

Tea Time Treats, a monthly blogging and baking event that is hosted by Karen from Lavender and Lovage and Kate from What Kate Baked on alternate months. 

This month's theme is cake. Why not join in!

The recipe used for this was the one by the Hairy Bikers here. I changed the quantities so that I only made half the amount and used Ndali Vanilla extract throughout and used different homemade jams for the filling.

Makes 10 complete biscuits
Ingredients
4 and half oz very soft butter
1oz icing sugar, plus extra to decorate
4 and half plain flour
1oz cornflour
½ tsp pure vanilla extract

For the filling
1 and half oz soft butter
3 and half oz icing sugar, plus ½ tsp for dusting
½ tsp pure vanilla extract
jam 

Method

1. Line a baking tin and put the oven on to 180 C
2. Put all the ingredients in a mixer and mix together.
3. Pt the mixture into a piping bag with a big star nozzle and pipe onto the baking sheet.
4. Bake for 5 - 10 mins until lightly golden.
5. Whilst the biscuits are cooling mix up the buttercream using a mixer.
6. Put jam on half of the biscuits I used, vanilla and mandarin, elderflower and gooseberry, plum jam and blackberry and apple jam.
7. Pipe the buttercream on top of the jam.
8. Gently place on the second biscuit and dust with icing sugar.

These truffles are really easy to make and are always demanded as gifts by my family every year.

For the truffles:
200g dark good quality chocolate
150ml double cream
50g butter
2 teaspoons of Cointreau or more to taste ( or any other liqueur)

To make:

1. Melt the butter and chocolate on low in the microwave. Be patient and cool on low to avoid burning and check the chocolate regularly. When the chocolate still has its shape but is soft, take out of the microwave and stir.
   
2. Stir in the Cointreau and cream until smooth.
   
3. Leave overnight to harden.
   
4. The next day use a melon scoop or teaspoon to take little lumps of the mixture and mould into a ball using your hand.
   
5. Roll the ball in cocoa powder or icing sugar.
   

Enjoy!

From now on my blog starts to take on a very 'make your own christmas' theme. This flavoured vodka is just one of the homemade gifts I will be giving this year. It tastes delicious a little bit like bottling up Autumn. The flavour of the apples comes through at the beginning and is quickly followed by the sweetness of the sugar and blackberries and finished off with the sharpness of the vodka. I think it works really well and will be making this again next year. If you just want blackberry vodka just leave out the apple and if you want to try something a bit sweeter try adding some vanilla.

I am entering this into the No Waste Food Challenge, which this month is being hosted by Elizabeth from Elizabeth's Kitchen and the theme is apples. I used leftover apple and blackberry pulp from some recent blackberry and apple jelly/jam I had made. However you could use some apples heated until soft and stuffed into the vodka bottle together with some blackberries. If you start now you will have enough time to let this stand and bottle it up for Christmas presents. 

To make your vodka buy a bottle of cheap vodka. I bought a bottle of Sainsburys basics vodka and for another bottle had some leftover Smirnoff.

In the Smirnoff I put my blackberry and apple left over pulp. Weigh the amount of pulp you are adding and add the same amount of sugar to the vodka. Place the bottle in a dark place and keep shaking daily until the flavour and colour has seeped into the vodka.

With the Sainsbury's own vodka I just added blackberries. Again add the same weight of sugar as fruit. Wait 4-6 weeks and then strain and bottle the vodka. I used a clean J- cloth over a sieve for the straining.

I've also popped this on the Thrifty Christmas website where you can get lots of other ideas for home made Christmas gifts.

Yep! I mentioned the Christmas word, but I have a very busy few months leading up to Christmas and so am having to plan my time. Along with this I am thinking about what I want to make this year for Christmas as presents for family and friends.

I worked up a good list of homemade tutorials last year, many of which I plan to make again but I will also be adding new items as I make them. I have highlighted a few from last year below to get you started.

Do check out the full list on the Homemade Christmas page and think about subscribing to stay up to date. 
This year I am hoping to add homemade chocolates, sweets, more cakes, homemade soaps and some little sewn trinkets. I would love to know what you are planning to make for Christmas?

I love pomegranate and have become a little obsessed with them this month. They are sparkly, juice and tasty. They are a little fiddly to get out but I just cut the pomegrate into quarters and the start to turn them inside out. All the seeds drop out ready to be eaten.

I made this pavlova for fireworks night. I always have friends round for a bit of food and plenty of mulled wine before we walk to the fireworks. We then come back, consume some more mulled wine and yummy food and settle down for a movie. It's my way of embracing the dark winter and celebrating it's little moments.

This is perfect to share with friends and can be made with any fruit on top. I really wanted to add pomegranate to the pavlova as it is a really nice way of showcasing the colours and the juice really compliments the stickyness of the meringue.

I made my pavlova using the recipe on Good Food and it turned out a really decent size.

I am entering this into the one ingredient challenge which this month features Pomegranate.

This month the one ingredient challenge is hosted by Nazima at Franglais Kitchen and Laura at How to cook good food.

Lots of you participated in my No Waste Food Challenge that I started this year but you may have noticed I quietly tailed it off..... I was struggling to think of themes and finding it hard to stick to monthly deadlines in collating the posts.

I am constantly impressed by the kindness and friendliness of the online food blogging community and was super lucky to have the lovely Elizabeth from Elizabeth's Kitchen kindly offered to help me resurrect the challenge. Elixabeth will be hosting this month and next month's challenge.

This month Elizabeth has chosen apples and I would love it if you would join in. If you would like to host in the future do let me know.