A couple of weeks ago I came across the new recipe book series “30 Best Loved Recipes”  in my local Morrisons. It looked a great bargain, the first two books in the series were only 99p especially as one of them featured Cadbury’s Dairy Milk, the very bar which makes my mouth water at the thought of it.

A couple of the recipes I wouldn’t have called recipes at all, especially the one featuring the chocolate pretzels. A nice idea but Cadbury’s already sell bags of ready made chocolate pretzels.  To me, it was more of a serving suggestion or tip. I still loved the book though as there were lots of other delicious chocolatey recipes to tempt me.  I just had to rush out and buy two large bars of Dairy Milk to bake something straightaway from the book.

I bought the chocolate from a local village shop on the way home from work as I just couldn’t wait to get started. However I had to wait until I’d got my dog walked in the cold, snowy weather. As we walked back along the lane, my dog charging along with a massive stick in his mouth, my thoughts strayed constantly to the Dairy Milk book and what I could enjoy baking from it!

I didn’t have far to look for inspiration for which recipe to choose, I was tempted to bake the chocolate muffins from off the front cover so I looked in my muffin case stash.  I loved the idea of using purple cases as was shown on the front cover like the Dairy Milk wrapper colour.  The cover had purple cases with white spots, I didn’t have spotty ones but had some plain purple ones left over from an order last summer.  They would be perfect.

So, on with baking the recipe.  The recipe for Dairy Milk Muffins needed 150g of Dairy Milk chocolate in it, my bar was 200g in size. I bet you can guess what happened with the other 50g!  Yes, it slipped down rather too nicely.  The actual 150g needed was chopped up into large chunks before they ended up going the same way!

The oven was switched on and was preheating away as I prepared the rest of the muffin batter.  First of all the wet ingredients like vegetable oil, milk and a beaten egg as well as a spoonful of vanilla extract were whisked together.  In another bowl I weighed out sifted self raising flour.  After that the ingredients were folded together with a metal spoon and finally in went the chocolate chunks.  The batter was a little bit lumpy and I had to take great care spooning it into the muffin cases so I didn’t spill it all over the tin.

Once the muffins were safely in the oven I went off to make a cup of tea. I love my post dog walk cuppas and usually sit down for about half an hour with a magazine or read a book on my Kindle before my children get in from school.  I had about 25 minutes before the muffins were ready. The smell coming out of the kitchen was too much to bear.

As soon as the muffins came out of the oven I couldn’t resist eating one straightaway. They weren’t even meant for me, they were meant for my children. My son is always hungry at the moment and is going through a teenage growth spurt. He likes to have something when he gets in from school and although he likes fruit, he seems to need something else as well.

The muffins were simple to make, great to make with all the family and took about 45 minutes from start to finish.  It took even less time for them to disappear into everyone’s mouth!

Later on, I decided to make another recipe from the Dairy Milk book, this time I made the Chocolate Chip cookies which were staring at me asking to be made and eaten.  Cookies in any shape or form go down really well in our house.

First of all I got flour, bicarbonate of soda and salt and sieved it into a large bowl. In another bowl I creamed together melted butter, sugar along with a beaten egg and a teaspoon of vanilla extract. The contents of the two bowls were combined but I needed to fold in a few chunks of chopped Dairy Milk chocolate.  The recipe suggested using 200g Dairy Milk but also adding in 100g white chocolate. I didn’t have any white chocolate so we had 300g Dairy Milk instead.  I was surprised that there was so much chocolate in the recipe but lots of gorgeous chunks would work well.  I was also massively surprised to see that the recipe only made 8 cookies. they must turn out like giant flying saucers! As I was copying the recipe to the letter I stuck to making 8 big cookies, though double that would have been better.

The cookies spread like wildfire in the oven and it was a good thing I followed the instructions to leave a massive gap between the cookies so that they wouldn’t merge into one another. This did mean I had to bake the cookies in two batches though.  When they did come out of the oven I wanted them to maintain their chewiness. They were massive!  They covered a small plate!

The cookies ended up disappearing as fast as the muffins. I was going to put the cookies in the freezer but when they were cooled enough to do so I noticed four had gone!  By the next morning there were none left, my kids must’ve snaffled them to take to school for break!

Happy Baking

Love Sam xx