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Planning your St. Patrick’s Day menu? Below you will find an easy dessert that consists of just four ingredients (more, if you like add-ins like raisins and nuts), and requires no baking. It’s a bit lumpy and bumpy which makes me love it all the more; it’s Irish biscuit cake, a popular favorite in Ireland and the groom’s wedding cake for the royal wedding of Prince William and the lovely Duchess Kate.

Before we dive into the biscuit cake, here are a few ideas for your St. Patrick’s Day feast.

Guinness Beef Stew

Irish Brown Bread

Guinness Ice Cream Float

Smoked Salmon Dip

Irish Whiskey and Brown Sugar Salmon

As long as you don’t call anything a car bomb, you’ll be all set.

Back to the biscuit cake, which could not be easier. I used a recipe from Kerrygold, omitting the hazelnuts because I forgot to buy them.

chocolate chips

First you’ve got chocolate.

golden syrup

And then there’s golden syrup. I got this in the Irish section at our local grocery store. I am guessing that grocery stores across the US don’t have Irish sections (which makes me even happier to live in Dorchester), so you can also use honey or corn syrup. I’d recommend finding golden syrup though, as it has a lovely, slightly burnt caramel flavor. Someone had to lick the spoon. . .

golden syrup

The final two ingredients are Kerrygold butter and rich tea biscuits. Thankfully, the recipe only used about half the sleeve, which means we have biscuits for tea for the rest of the week.

rich tea biscuits

To make this dessert, you simply need to melt the butter, chocolate, and golden syrup together, either in the microwave or over a double boiler, then fold in broken biscuits. You can also add nuts and raisins, depending on your preferences. It’s that simple.

Once the ingredients are combined, pour into a wax paper lined container, and let cool until completely firm.

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Cut into bars, and enjoy this sweet little tea treat.

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Are you planning on any St. Patrick’s Day recipes this week?

Tags: chocolate, dessert, easy dessert, easy recipe, Food, Ireland, recipes, St. Patrick's Day

Happy day before Christmas Eve! I hope you are enjoying a cozy weekend with friends and family. We had a traffic-free drive to New Jersey yesterday and are now pondering what we should do with the day. It will definitely include some last-minute shopping!

It’s a time of year for sharing our homes, our hearts, and our delicious kitchen creations, so I thought I would pull together a few of my favorite treats from the past three years of blogging, even if they didn’t make for the best photos. Please feel free to share a link to your own favorites in the comments!

Peppermint Frozen Hot Chocolate Martinis

peppermint chocolate

 

White Chocolate Pretzel Peppermint Bark

white chocolate pretzel peppermint bark

Sachertorte

Sachertorte

 

Godiva Coffee Martinis

Baileys coffee martinis

Easy Chocolate Mousse

chocolate mousse

Guinness Ice Cream Floats

Guinness

Tags: chocolate, Christmas, cocktails, dessert, Food, recipes

Wine and Chocolate

With storms out at sea this past  weekend, our boating plans were put on hold for another day. This weekend also happened to be the first since June that we didn’t have family visiting from Ireland. With an open Saturday stretching ahead of us, we weren’t sure what to do so we decided to just head out and figure something out along the way. A quick check of our mailbox before we left revealed a postcard from Travessia Urban Winery where we are club members, telling us that we were missing a wine club event at that very moment!

In less than an hour, we were at Travessia, ready to taste their newly released Trapeze and excited to find out that there were chocolate pairings involved.

Grasiela from Brigadeiro Barn was at Travessia, sharing samples of her homemade Brazilian truffles.

Brigadeiro Barn

Brigadeiro Barn truffles are all hand made by Grasiela with local and organic ingredients whenever possible. Available flavors change with the seasons, and truffles can be ordered for all sorts of special occasions.

Brigadeiro Barn

Brigadeiro Barn chocolates

We started our tasting with Travessia white and rosé wines, wines we tasted on our last visit and needed to stock up on after a hot summer. We eagerly looked forward to the reds and the chocolate pairing portion of the tasting.

Travessia Urban Winery

First up was the just-released Trapeze which is made from 100% Washington state Pinot Noir grapes. The Trapeze was paired with one of Brigadeiro Barn’s raspberry truffles, made with fresh raspberries. We were instructed to taste the truffle, then the wine, then the truffle.

We were both struck by the smooth, gooey texture of the raspberry truffle and the way the berry flavors in the wine and berry flavors in the truffle brought one another out.

Travessia Trapeze

Brigadeiro Barn truffle samples

The second pairing was Travessia’s Bandit, a blend of Tempranillo and Touriga Nacional, with a classic Brigadeiro chocolate truffle. We thought the raspberry truffles were amazing, but the classic chocolate won us over even more. Brigadeiro Barn’s chocolate is not sweet, just rich, creamy, and silky.

Brigadeiro Barn truffles

The classic chocolates are rolled in Belgian chocolate flakes making for a simply melt-in-your-mouth treat.

We really enjoyed speaking with Grasiela about her chocolates and all the fun she has trying new flavors and wine pairings with a sommelier friend. She mentioned a white wine and truffle pairing. . . I would love to try that!

It was also great to see Travessia’s owner and winemaker Marco who has recently started winemaking as a full time job. He is doing great and has a few exciting things going on that we loved hearing about. Travessia has a few events coming up, including an Oktoberfest event we are hoping to check out. If you live in the Boston area and want to taste some great locally made wine, check it out!

What seasonal truffle flavor would you love to have made for you?

Tags: buy local, chocolate, local business, local food, New Bedford, wine

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