Nainoma Bars

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I’ve been baking a lot lately, the kitchen is my space to be creative, away from work, Uni and other stressors. I love finding a new recipe and trying it out. Especially ones that are a little bit different, like this one.

If I’m honest, I would say that the first thing that attracted me to this slice was the name of it. Nainoma Bars, where did that come from? The recipe tells me that the slice is also known as Continental Fudge, but I like Nainoma Bars much better. My Mum had a couple of recipes books out on the coffee table, and I was flicking through them and came across this slice. I’ve been a little obsessed with the chocolate-coconut combo lately, to the point where I’ve developed my own ‘Chocolate Rough’ muffin recipe. I’m still in the developing stages of this, but it is tasting pretty good. Anyway, this slice also had custard in it (another winner in my books) so I had to try it out.

This slice is quite sweet, so you only want a small piece at a time, but it went down a treat with my family. I cut my batch into 60 pieces, so there’s plenty to go round. Another thing I like about this recipe is that it involves no actually cooking time, which means that you can make it as you have time. I made the first two layers, had to go out for an hour, then came home and finished it off.

Nainoma Bars (aka Continental Fudge)

Base

115g butter

¼ cup sugar

3 Tbsp cocoa

1 egg

1 tsp vanilla essence

200g crushed malt biscuits (though I imagine wine biscuits would work too, throw them into the food processer to do this quickly)

Filling

55g butter

2 cups icing sugar

2 Tbsp custard powder

2 Tbsp hot water

Topping

150g dark chocolate (I used 62% cocoa)

1 Tbsp butter

1.     Line a shallow 30cm x 21cm tin with baking paper.

2.     For the base: Melt the butter and add sugar and cocoa, mixing together. Add the beaten egg, then the vanilla essence, crushed biscuits and coconut. Press into prepared tin and refrigerate for 30 minutes.

3.     For the filling: Cream softened butter with the sifted icing sugar, custard powder and hot water. Spread over the chilled base and return the refrigerator.

4.     For the topping: Melt and chocolate and butter in the microwave (30 second bursts at medium) and spread over the custard mixture.

5.     Refrigerate for another hour and cut into small squares. I recommend a hot knife to avoid cracking the chocolate topping. I cut mine into 60 squares, but you can make them bigger or smaller according to your own preferences. Store in the fridge.

Recipe taken from Ladies, A Plate: Traditional Home Baking by Alexa Johnston.

So if you have a bit of a sweet tooth I would recommend trying this one out.

Happy baking!

H xo

The Art of Food - Part 3

Several years ago I left the cold and rainy New Zealand winter for the hot and dry USA summer in Colorado. While I was there I had the privilege of meeting and staying with friends of my grandparents near Denver. Their son-in-law was an artist, who specialized in still life paintings. I loved his work straight away, and had to share some of his works in the third part of this series.

Scott Fraser lives and works in Longmont, Colorado. Check out his website here.

And here are a couple of my favourites…

Scott Fraser, Metropolis, 2003

Scott Fraser, Study in White VIII

Scott Fraser, Thread

Have a great weekend!

H xo

The Heritage Hotel

Date of Visit: 2 September 2012
Location: Heritage Hotel, 35 Hobson Street, Auckland
Website: http://www.heritagehotels.co.nz/auckland/restaurant-bar/
Cost: $32 pp

GrabOne strikes again, I went to High Tea at the Heritage Hotel for my Mum’s birthday with my family. Although the high tea was nice, the general consensus was that it was nothing spectacular.

Again, we made the reservation well in advance, and the initial day that we wanted was fully booked.

There was a large selection of teas on offer, all of which were from the Harney & Sons range. I had the Paris tea, which I really enjoyed. It was a black tea blend that had carmel, vanilla and black current flavours. Definitely a good tea selection. My sister opted for a hot chocolate but she wasn’t very impressed.

The table setting was clean and uncluttered.

The food selection was ok. I’ll start with what I liked. Chocolate dipped strawberries – always a winner. I also loved that all of the sandwiches were freshly made and they tasted great because of that. I wasn’t a huge fan of the sultana scones. To me, they tasted like sultana buns, they didn’t quite have the right texture for a scone.

The service was good and quick but not as attentive as I would have liked. It would have been great if the waiter serving the high tea had described what was being served for high tea as a menu was not provided. However, other than that, I don’t have any complaints.

What I did like about this high tea was the high ceiling of the restaurant, which was lit by natural light. Natural light is a lot softer than artificial lighting and makes the environment a lot lighter. Apparently the Heritage Hotel is what used to be the old Farmers building, and my parents spoke fondly of the place. I however, have no memory of its former occupants.

A brief review, but I feel like that basically sums up this high tea. It was ok, perhaps they are just offering high tea because it’s a current trend? For $32 I think it's a little expensive for what you get.

Service: 3.5/5
Food: 3/5
Tea: 4/5
Atmosphere/Ambiance:  3.5/5
Layout (of restaurant): 4/5
Setup (of table):  4/5

Overall: 3.5/5