I love Lindt's, all sorts of flavours of Lindt's. I know there are better chocolates, but within my budget, especially when they are on sales, it's good.
The only thing is, when it goes on sales, you don't get the full flavour range, sometimes, however, it's a good time to sample the different flavours of chocolate and choose what to do with them.
This time, Lindt's orange creme filled milk chocolate.
Chocolate Orange Flavoured Cupcakes with Ganache
makes 12 medium size cup cakes
For the cupcakes:
75g Lindt's dark chocolate 70% cocoa
50g Lindt's orange creme filled milk chocolate
1 tbsp Cointeau
150g Self Raising Flour
2 tbsp dutch cocoa
2 eggs
100g softened butter
100ml room temperature milk
For the Ganache:
30g Lindt's dark chocolate 70% cocoa
20g Lindt's orange creme filled milk chocolate
50ml cream
50g icing sugar
20g butter
Decorate with a few pink jewels or hundreds and thousands and chocolate sprinkles...
My family must have loved oranges so much... we use oranges a lot and one of our family old favourite is the Duck in Orange sauce.
Instead of the trendy duck bread pan seared version, we actually prefer the whole roast duck version with crispy skin...
However, when I was about to make it, I can't seem to find my favourite recipe, so I cooked this with my memory plus some common French cooking knowledge, and it has got more herbs? My version that is.
1 x sz 16 Free Range Duck
2 Orange Peels
1 Orange
1 lemon
3 Sprigs of Parsley
1 sprigs of rosemary
2 Bay Leaves
Couple of black pepper
1 onion
2 Shallots
2 cloves of garlic
2 tbsp dry herbs
1 tbsp all spice
2 tbsp salt
30g butter
1 tsp salt
½ cup raw sugar
½ cup white wine
¼ cup white wine vinegar
½ cup chicken stock
Method:
1. Pre-heat oven to 130C.
2. Clean duck, cut off neck and wing tips, rub outside and inside of the duck with the mixture of 2 tbsp dry herbs, 2 tbsp salt, 1 tbsp all spice, put in orange peels and "sew" up duck with a metal skewer,
3. Juice the Orange and Lemon, keep the skin, cut in slices.
4. Put duck on rack, in oven and set time for 1 hour.
5. Meanwhile, add a bit of cooking oil to pan and add sliced shallots, onions, garlic and brown.
6. Add the neck and wing tips and head, and caramelize all sides.
7. Deglaze with wine and white wine vinegar, add chicken stock, add rosemary, parsley, orange & lemon peels, bay leaves and black pepper, and simmer for 15 minutes.
8. Drain sauce through sift, retain sauce, and discard the onion, herbs etc, and add to a smaller saucepan. Add sifted orange & lemon juice and bring it to boil. add butter and raw sugar and the 1 tsp salt, more if needed, adjust salt and sugar amount slightly to personal taste.
9. Add butter, and reduce sauce to 2/3 - or the thickness as desired.
10. When duck is cooked for 1 hour, heat oven upto 230C and set for 20minutes each side.
11 Cut duck into portions, and serve with sauce…
We had it with mashed potato and beans...
I got my new book - I love Macarons and I decided to have another go at the family's new found fav...
This time, orange coloured macaron shells with dark chocolate and orange flavour...
Macarons:
300g Icing Sugar
200g Almond meal
150g Egg Whites
80g White Sugar
1 drop of red food colouring
1 drop of yellow food colouring
Ganache:
150g Lindt’s Orange 70% Dark Chocolate
100g Cream
2 tbsp Marmalade
Method:
Sift icing sugar and almond meal.
Whisk egg whites (separated 3 days ago) to firm peak, slowly add in white sugar till glossy.
Add in food colouring and keep whisking.
Blend in sifted almond meal and icing sugar, put in piping bag and pipe onto baking trays lined with silicon baking matts.
Wait for 1 hour for crust to form.
Heat oven to 200C and then reduce to 140C
Bake for 23 minutes.
Make ganache:
Boil cream, pour over chopped chocolate and mix well.
Wait until room temperature and add in marmalade.
da da.....
Really glad that the liquid food colouring worked well this time, I do have the powdered colourings, and next batch, I'm thinking, maybe the green tea powder... something oriental?
Anyway, these ones do disappear very quickly...
