Trying the KitKat Chunky Caramel

By on March 24, 2012 in Calorie Cost, Shopping, Snacking

Nestlé have been running a bit of a campaign lately, bringing back the much-loved KitKat Chunky with Peanut Butter (the original snack behind the start of Pimp That Snack), and while they’re doing that they’re playing with a few new flavours. The snack market is so fickle. the chances are these new variations won’t be around for too long, so anything like this needs to be tried at the earliest opportunity.

I handed over a rather expensive 69p (blame my local rip-off WHSmith) for this KitKat Chunky Caramel, and set about it.

KitKat Chunky Caramel

A beefy 261 calories in this humble bar. Giving it a Calorie Cost of 378 calories per £1.

I’d initially anticipated biting into the bar to have a very gooey caramel start leaking out, so I was rather surprised when that didn’t happen.

KitKat Chunky Caramel Cross-section

The consistency of the caramel is rather like the KitKat Chunky Peanut Butter, almost like soft-fudge, and very sweet. It doesn’t taste like regular caramel but it’s close enough for you to know what it’s supposed to be. Having said that, while the bar itself is nice enough it’s not exactly bursting with a distinctive flavour, and unless you’re an absolute caramel fiend you won’t find much of a reason to pick this up instead of a regular Chunky or it’s peanuty cousin. I don’t think is a flavour that is here to stay.

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I’m a Total Food Geek

By on November 28, 2011 in Delicious, Snacking

Recently I have joined the new and existing food blogging collaboration that is Total Food Geeks Edinburgh; a collection of local foody fanatics that get together once a month for a themed meal (The theme for November is ‘From the tree’, and for December:’Eating Standing Up’), and then go off afterwards and write an article along a similar theme from their own food and baking experience.

It’s an experience-packed group of people who take a food concept and show it to the world in a dozen different perspectives. You can Meet the Geeks on the site and read their profiles (including mine, erk!).

My dismal attempt at baking my first lemon tarte is now charted in all it’s terrible glory, go and have a look! :)

 

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Pimp That Pacman

By on October 30, 2011 in Comedy

Yesterday I went to an awesome halloween party. A few friends of mine got together a couple of weeks ago to try to decide what costumes to wear. As the purveyor of giant snacks with a healthy appetite, there was really only one choice:

It took us a good 10 hours over two weekends, but we went as Pacman and his ghosts. Somehow I was nominated (and therefore obligated to make the costume for) Pacman, the results of which you can see!


And let’s not forget those ghosts….

A great, great night was had! :)

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Gourmet Gaming

By on October 28, 2011 in Delicious, Pimped Snack

The delightful Gourmet Gaming blog is one I stumbled across recently, and I love its concept. The author, while playing games both modern and retro, identifies tasty looking examples of food from each game, and then makes them!

Examples include the Cake from Portal:

Portal cake And a faithful recreation of a cake block from Minecraft:

Minecraft CakeAll complete with recipes and instructions. So if you ever played the original Golden Axe and thought the meaty health-restoring food looked tasty, look no further! We greatly approve :)

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Triple-layered Cake

By on October 20, 2011 in Delicious, Snacking

On my way home from a trip, I passed through a little called town called Pitlochry and stopped for some tea and cake at Hettie’s Tearooms.  I spotted this on the menu:

Hettie's TearoomsHettie's Tearooms Signature cake

It had to be done!

Triple-Layered Cake

Strawberry Sponge, followed by chocolate sponge, followed by vanilla sponge. It was awesome!

 

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The Milkybar Cakes are on me!

By on October 14, 2011 in Delicious, Pimped Snack, Snacking

A little while ago I was sent this fabulous pimp of a giant Milkybar Cake, although only the final image of the final cake was taken. Nevertheless, full credit to Sam Farrow for this spectacularly authentic effort!

Milky Bar Cake

Sam’s tale of how they made a cake fit for twenty Milkybar kids:

  • In preparation, I measured a milky bar wrapper and using my best high school maths, I multiplied the size up.  Then I painstakingly drew a stencil with all the different elements of the wrapper design
  • I took 2 8in sandwich tins (that’s all I had) and baked 4 white chocolate flavoured cakes.
  • I painted a board with blue paint as the background then had the other half cut me a smaller board which I covered with tin foil to put the actual cake on so it wasn’t touching the painted board.
  • Using the stencil as a guide I cut the cakes to size.
  • Next I covered the cakes in white chocolate ganache made with white chocolate and single cream
  • After the chocolate had set, I covered the cake in shop bought yellow icing
  • Then again using the stencil, I cut out the red part of the wrapper in shop bought red icing and stuck that on.
  • Then I used the stencil to cut out the writing and stuck the letters on (with a dab of water).
  • I carried on with the stencil building up the different elements of the milkybar and then used a brush and gel colours to paint the small details and used royal icing to stencil the small nutrition information writing at the bottom.
  • Hey presto, one milky bar cake!!

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Snacks that don’t expire

By on October 10, 2011 in Calorie Cost, Snacking

This morning’s ill-advised snack:

As well as being a pretty lazy purchase in lieu of making my own chocolate cornflake cakes, it’s given me the idea to start classifying my snacks in terms of their calorie cost per pound. This strikes me as a handy way of seeing how much calorific bang I’m getting for my buck.

That makes today’s snack have a Calorie Cost of 376kcal per £1.

The second, slightly disturbing thing I noticed is that the before before date on these is the 17th December, more than two months from the date of purchase.

I find that pretty amazing, as I’m sure homemade crispie cakes don’t last like this. What the heck am I eating that keeps this humble snack viable for so long?

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Lemons, Almonds, and Poppy Seeds

By on October 7, 2011 in Delicious

Possibly due to a not-so-subliminal suggestion from my Loaf Slice last week, my eye was caught by Jamie Oliver’s recipe for an Almond Cake with Lemon and Poppy Seeds while browsing for recipes this week. It had to be tried!

It does call for a food processor to mix the butter and egg yolks, and since I don’t have one a bit of enthusiastic arm power was required to get the job done. Surprisingly just 60g of flour is added to the mix, and when in the oven it rises very little.

We added a little more lemon juice than strictly necessary which made the almond quite hard to detect in the final cake (it was still good!), and as is usual the recommended cooking time of 45 minutes was actually just 30 in my oven and browned the top quite substantially! Never blindly leave a cake in for the time the recipe indicates, always keep an eye on it and use the clean knife testing method!

What I will say is that 75g of poppy seeds is way, way too much. You’ll be picking them out of your teeth for hours afterwards and makes the rest of the cake very crunchy. If I make this again I’ll only be using half as many.

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Can Kate Really Bake?

By on September 29, 2011 in Calorie Cost, Delicious, Snacking

Somewhat unashamedly on mornings when I run to work (another 544 Fitocracy points in the bag!), I had this in lieu of a healthy, sensible breakfast.

Kate's Zesty Lemon Loaf SliceThis was a tidy 88p from Tesco. I was a little suspicious about the ‘Kate’s Cakes’ name, as I don’t trust big, lumbering supermarkets not to come up with a fake and fun brand that tries to convince you that your mass-produced snack was genuinely made in a kitchen by a lady called Kate.

I was pretty surprised to find that Kate’s Cakes are in fact an independent supplier that serves many clients, and they even have a rather cute website. In addition to four flavours of loaf slice (all of which I will now have to try), it seems they also do snack bars, full-sized cakes and muffins. My only criticism is that nowhere on the packaging is there a calorie breakdown (something I always look for), and checking on the website I see my inconspicuous little cake slice is an eye-popping 376 kcals! Definitely something I’d prefer to know as my usual cut-off is about 250. Also quite a fatty, sugary content, so a healthy snack this is not.

Cake slice nommed

Nearly 94 calories in that bite!

Pretty tasty on the whole, and I do like cakes with poppy seeds as it adds a little bit of crunch to the bite and makes me pause to savour it a little longer.

All in all, worth a try, but only if you’re prepared to exercise it off afterwards! Another snack chosen entirely at random next time :)

Calorie Cost: 427kcal per £1

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A Ferrero Rocher Cake that’ll truly spoil you

By on September 14, 2011 in Delicious

For no other reason than it being a Tuesday, a few friends came around last night and we knocked together a Ferrero Rocher Cake. We didn’t have the foresight to take any pictures of it as we went, so all I can show you is this final pic.

Click to enlarge (or bake to engorge)

It was delicious, but an eye-poppingly calorific snack. I thought you may appreciate a receipe for this, so here you go:

Ingredients:

  • 200g Butter (unsalted)
  • 200g Caster Sugar
  • 400g Plain Flour
  • 2 tsbp Baking Powder
  • 4 Medium Eggs
  • 100g of Milk/Dark chocolate
  • 12 pack of Ferrero Rochers
  • An enormous jar of Nutella

Method:

  1. Whisk 4 eggs together in a mixing bowl until nice and frothy.
  2. Melt butter over a gentle heat (or throw it in the microwave for 30 seconds like I did), and mix with egg, sugar, and baking powder.
  3. Melt the chocolate using a Bain-marie until nice and viscous, and add to mixture.
  4. Sift flour and fold into the mixture until nice and, erm, cake-mixturey.
  5. Grease a cake tin (we used a nice 21cm one), and pour in the mixture.
  6. Bake at about 160 degrees centigrade (320F) for 30-40 minutes. Keep poking it with a knife and stop baking it when the knife comes away clean.
  7. Leave cake to cool, remove from tin. Cut cake in half horizontally, spread a fat filling of Nutella across the lower half, then replace.
  8. Smear even more Nutella along the top of the cake and decorate it with any Ferro Rocher you didn’t eat while the cake was cooking.

If the Ambassador still held receptions, this cake would captivate the life out of his guests. Exchellente!

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