Chocolate Custard Squares - Home Sweet Home Bake Along (5/100)

 

I have to say, hats off to Fred (of Tales of Pigling Bland - for more info on why she is "Fred," you'll have to go here and here (and read the comments)) for suggesting baking through a Hummingbird Bakery book. So many things I would have missed out on - the number of bakes in this book I would have skipped over, without a second glance, if it wasn't for the discipline of a bake-along.

This one is an excellent example - a bizarre combination at first glance, that somehow all comes together into a chocolate-y-vanilla-y-deliciousness.

I made a couple of substitutions: I replaced the cashew nuts with an equal weight of almonds because I realised too late I didn't have any and couldn't be bothered to buy more felt almonds were a nice alternative.

I also substituted amaretto for the Kahlua, because, despite finding 3 bottles of Chartreuse (seriously! What even is it?!) in the ancient family liquor cabinet, there was no Kahlua, and I ain't buying an entire bottle for the sake of 3 tablespoons. Plus, with the almonds, it complimented the base nicely.

These are seriously rich - the recipe suggests cutting into 12-15 squares, I cut into 16, and that still seemed an awfully big portion to me! However, they disappeared mighty fast at both PCC and work.

Ingredients:
Base (smooshed up in the food processor, then baked at 170C for 15 minutes):
100g amaretti biscuits
60g unsalted cashews (I substituted unblanched almonds)
40g cocoa powder (the recipe specifies, "sifted," I did not sift, as it then tells you to blitz it with the other ingredients in a food processor, and if a food processor cannot get out the lumps in the cocoa, then we have bigger problems)
100g caster sugar
150g unsalted butter
80g desiccated coconut
2 large eggs
Custard filling (basically a thick buttercream):
200g unsalted butter, softened
4 tablespoons custard powder
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
500g icing sugar
4 tablespoons whole milk
Chocolate topping
150g dark chocolate (I used a blend of ~75g 85% and ~75g ~70% - the filling is so sweet you need a nice bitter chocolate to cut through)
25g unsalted butter
3 tablespoons Kahlua (I used Amaretto instead)

In other news - the Laduree bake along is on hold, as it turns out finding barquette moulds and savarin moulds in the correct sizes is a) difficult and b) being debated as to its value - I'm not keen to buy things I will only use once/have one use for - kitchen space is limited, and likely to need packing up and moving at some point. I am sad about this, as I was enjoying learning patisserie, so will definitely return to it at some point. Now to find something else for the twice weekly baking...

Next up: Raspberry Jelly Roll (Swiss roll!)

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Edited to add: I'm entering this in#CookBlogShare