Spicy beef pizza; cookie, ice cream, chocolate fudge sauce
I don’t think that I’ve been wildly over-active recently – certainly my to-do list is no shorter than it was at the start of the week – but for the past few days I have been suffering with exhaustion to the point mum has commented on it, and pain to the point of resorting to morphine on several occasions. I therefore made a conscious decision to take it easy today.
I suspect by now y’all are familiar with what “taking it easy” means: I have only fixed a sticking door (thank you, WD40), made some chocolate fudge sauce (of which more below), entertained a friend of mum’s (who seems to be determined to become a friend of mine, which I guess is nice?), reassured mum repeatedly that another friend who will be taking mum to church on Sunday is most unlikely to just leave her there, cooked a couple of pizzas (of which also more below), did the washing up (what there was of it after eating supermarket pizza – two plates and a cutting knife was about it), and opened up a delivery of delights.
This was my delivery from a company called Snackeroo (#NotASponsor) which sells short-dated and out-of–season snacks for a very reduced price. For about £18 I got two big bags of Cheetos (my favourite crisps since I was about 10, but they’re frustratingly difficult to find in the shops not just on the Island but anywhere along the south coast), two big boxes of Scottish shortbread, four packs of mince pies, about a dozen chocolate bars of various types, two types of digestives, Mini Cheddars, and a couple of other things I can’t remember and cba to go and look for. 1This was my delivery from a company called Snackeroo (#NotASponsor) which sells short-dated and out-of–season snacks for a very reduced price. For about £18 I got two big bags of Cheetos (my favourite crisps since I was about 10, but they’re frustratingly difficult to find in the shops not just on the Island but anywhere along the south coast), two big boxes of Scottish shortbread, four packs of mince pies, about a dozen chocolate bars of various types, two types of digestives, Mini Cheddars, and a couple of other things I can’t remember and cba to go and look for. Most are things I haven’t tried before, so I can justify it as sourcing blog content, although mum is massively less judgy about what I eat than she was when I was younger (it’s no coincidence that both I and my late sister have always had a somewhat disordered relationship with food).
One example of this is the chocolate fudge sauce I made today, which was a highlight of childhood summers (not just ice cream for dessert, but ice cream with sauce!). In those days it was strictly a couple of spoonfuls drizzled over the ice cream, but tonight it was a generous blob of sauce for both of us.
By which you might correctly assume that the sauce wasn’t quite the texture it should have been, due to my attempt to make it an all-in-one bowl recipe; that definitely needs more work, although it’s delicious so maybe not too much more work.
Chocolate fudge sauce in the microwave
(Original measurements are imperial, because it’s an old recipe!)
In a large microwave-proof bowl, melt 5oz (142g) dark cooking chocolate, broken into pieces, with 5 tbsp golden syrup. In a separate bowl (this is the bit I didn’t do: if you do it all in one bowl you end up with a slightly less smooth sauce, but taste-wise it’s identical, so it’s up to you) melt 1oz (28g, or a very heaped tbsp) butter, then stir in 3 tbsp cocoa and 3 tbsp hot (not boiling) water. Stir the contents of the second bowl into the first, then microwave again for 30 seconds.
Warm, it’s easily pourable; at room temperature it’s spoonable; chilled, it’s firm enough to be rolled into balls like chocolate truffles.
So we had that for dessert, with more of the giant cookie2 and some vanilla ice cream. Main course was pizza, from the Tesco chilled department: spicy beef for me – a bit gloopy in texture and only mildly spicy, but tasty enough for something I just needed to put in the oven – and pesto vegetable for mum – “very tasty”, apparently.
And now it’s back to athletics and coffee, and probably some of the Crufts coverage in a bit when mum gets bored with the sport: she’s very generous in tolerating my love of various sports, but eventually boredom and passive-aggression set in, and I love dogs so I’m not too bothered about the prospect of another round of “which dog do we want most?” (Yesterday my award went to the Finnish elkhound, which looks like a hug on legs; mum, like the Crufts judge, went for the jack russell.)
If anyone wants to share photos of their own dogs on the Facebook page, I won’t be mad: we can have our own virtual dog show, where every entrant will be the winner. 🏆
Is it pineapple sponge today? 