Category: Sweets

Cherry PomPoms

Hello friends! Today I am sharing a recipe for a super easy sweet vintage treat. The recipe for Cherry PomPoms comes from the 1986 book 250 Quick and Easy Recipes. And as the name suggests they are quick and easy, not to mention absolutely delish!  They also look adorable. And I absolutely 100% did not pick this recipe as it was another food with a double name.  😉


Cherry Pom Poms

For my Australian readers, the cherry pompons are reminiscent in taste to a Cherry Ripe Bar.  It also contains many of the same ingredients – glacé cherries, coconut, and dark chocolate.  

There is very little cooking involved in making these, just some chopping and melting of chocolate.  These would be a perfect recipe to cook with kids – they could roll the cherry coconut mix into balls and help with dipping the pompoms into the melted chocolate.  Mind you, if making with little people you might want to leave out the booze and swap out the dark chocolate for milk chocolate!

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Cherry Marnier?

The recipe calls for something called Cherry Marnier.  The only Marnier I had ever heard of before this was Grand Marnier.  I found out that there was once a liqueur called Cherry Marnier, made from Morello cherries, but it is now discontinued.  If you wanted to add a cherry-flavoured liqueur you could substitute in Cherry Brandy or Kirsch.  I went the other way and used Malibu to vibe with the coconut. Alternatively, you could leave the booze out altogether and use fruit juice. 

I would caution against anything too sweet, particularly if you are teaming your pompoms with milk chocolate.  The condensed milk and the glace cherries are sweet – this could get sickly very quickly if you don’t balance out that sweetness somehow.  

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Cherry PomPoms – The Recipe

 

Cherry Pompoms (1)

Cherry Pompoms2

When I first saw this recipe, my eyes did a funny thing where I read it as “Cheery Pompoms” wihch is accurate as who wouldn’t be happy with such a quick and easy recipe! And then I realised there is another interpretation to cheery pompopms -so why not get your pompoms out and give a cheer for this recipe?

Have a great week!

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Chocolate Coconut Truffles

I was in dire need of comfort food this week.  And not just any sort of comfort food – I was after the kind of comfort tthat only chocolate and condensed milk can give! It was definitely time to make Chocolate Coconut Truffles! 


Chocolate Coconut Truffles1

These little babies are a stalwart of the school fete or bake sale because they are not only delicious but have only four ingredients and are incredibly easy to make!  Now that’s a win – win – win!  It really is a marvel how anything with just four very simple ingredients can taste this good!  Mind you, they are a pretty good four ingredients. 

Chcocolate coconut truffles 2

The love of condensed milk runs deep in my family.  I have been known to eat it off a spoon directly out of the tin.  The biggest lover of condensed milk in my family was my grandfather.  When he passed his bar exam, his parents were, of course delighted and said that he could have anything he wanted as a present.  They were thinking trip abroad, motorbike or some other big-ticket item. Papa thought long and hard and then asked if he could have a can condensed milk all to himself. 

 Isn’t that just the sweetest (no pun intended) thing you have ever heard?  All that sugar didn’t hurt him either.  He went on to be a Supreme court Judge in Sri Lanka and in his spare time discovered a species of fish.  

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Sweet Treats For a Sh*tty Week

Why I was in need of chocolately, coconutty comfort food this week?   At the moment, we are allowed outside of our houses for one hour each day for exercise.  One measly hour.  So, during one of these hours, I was walking through the local park with the fussiest eater in the world and the dogs.  All of a sudden I felt the most terrible pain in my head. I was being attacked by a wasp!!!!  The worst thing, apart from the blinding pain, was that it got all tangled up in my hair so the FEITW couldn’t even get it away from me for AGES during which it just kept stinging me!!!

Then, on top of that I had an episode where I couldn’t breathe – might have been the mask I was wearing, might have been a panic attack, might have been a result of the sting as I have had allergic reactions to bee stings before.

All up, it was an incredibly painful and terrifying experience.  I had to go straight to the doctor and  I am still taking medication to bring the swelling down and have had raging headaches, bouts of sleeplessnes, and dizziness.  

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I told one of my friends this tale and after the requisite sympathy she said “There you are minding your own biz and something comes out of the blue and totally f*cks everything up. If that isn’t a perfect metaphor for this year, I don’t know what is.  It would only be better if it stung you in the arse”  I think she has a point.  

The point of both of these stories is that sometimes, the simple things are all we need to bring us joy. 

And wasps are arseholes.  

 

Here’s the recipe!

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Chocolate Coconut Truffles

A tasty treat that is simple to make and delicious to eat!  Perfect for a bad day or an emergency bake sale!

 

  • Author: Taryn Nicole
  • Prep Time: 15 min
  • Total Time: 15 minutes
  • Yield: 20 1x

Ingredients

Scale
  • 250g plain biscuits. I used Morning Coffee but any plain biscuit will do.
  • 395g can of condensed milk
  • 1 cup dessicated coconut
  • 2 tbsp cocoa
  • Extra coconut for rolling

Instructions

  • Crush the biscuits into crumbs
  • Combine all ingredients except the additional coconut into a bowl and mix together.  
  • Roll mixture into walnut-sized balls. 
  • Roll balls in extra coconut.  
  • Place in fridge for half an hour to firm. 
  • Enjoy!

Notes

The mixture will not stick to your hands if they are damp when you are rolling the truffles into balls. 

Have a great week friends and bee safe!!!!  

PS.  This probably comes close to what I looked like in the park as I was being stung!

 

via Imgflip

 

Cowgirl Cookies for Cowboy Day

Giddy up people of the internet and Happy Cowboy Day!

Having said that, this year we are celebrating with two posts celebrating Cowgirls!  First up some OMGZ so delicious Cowgirl cookies.  These are amazing.  So good – as they should he when they are pretty much 2 types of M&M’s, choc chips and nuts held together by butter and sugar.  They also contain oats so they are also (almost) good for you!  

We celebrated Cowboy Day a little early this year because a few weekends ago I found myself entertaining children.  This does not happen very often at Maison de la retro food so initially, I was at a loss of what to serve.   

My go to’s of cocktails and canapes didn’t seem appropriate plus I wanted something I could whip up pretty quickly on a Saturday morning.  A quick flick through the interwebs and yee hah!  Cowgirl cookies to the rescue!

I’m not a big cookie maker so I was a little nervous about making these.  However, a few minutes after these went into the oven that delicious aroma of sweet baking began to fill the house and I was pretty sure I was onto a winner!

Tasting one  (well maybe three or four) fresh out of the oven I became even more certain but the proof of these cookies were not in my eating.  So I was mildly nervous when the oldest of the kids, nine-year-old Christian approached me, cookie in hand.

“Did you make these?”

“Yep”

“When?”

“This morning”

“Huh…..that must be why they taste so good”

Season 2 Usa GIF by American Gods - Find & Share on GIPHY

Yippee Kay Yay!!!!

I used this recipe from Bakerella

And I can recommend it highly. As can the little humans who I made them for.  

Child-friendly post over, but stay a while because coming right up is an adults-only tipple and a teeny peek into the life of a real-life Rhinestone Cowgirl.

See you there!

ANZAC Biscuits – Chewy or Crispy?

In commemoration of ANZAC Day, which is today, April 25, I made Anzac biscuits.

Anzac biscuits are made primarily from rolled oats, golden syrup and coconut.  They first appeared in recipe books in 1921 but are thought to have been sent to the troops in WW1 by mothers at home worried about the nutrition of their sons.  Because they are eggless, they were able to survive the months-long trip to the front from Australia and New Zealand.

Anzac Biscuits

They are now a teatime staple.  But the debate rages – should an Anzac biscuit be crispy or chewy?

Up until now, I was firmly in the crispy camp.  I like my biscuits to have some crunch to them.  But this month in the Tasty Reads book club we are doing the Relish Mama Family Cookbook and Nellie Kerrison’s recipe is for chewy Anzacs.

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So chewy Anzacs it was.  Ever the sceptic, and thinking there was no way they could be as good as a crispy Anzac, I tried one, still warm from the oven.

And then another one. Just to check I hadn’t been mistaken in thinking the first one was so good.

Then a third.

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I ate eight of them the first night.

I would now like to point out that this in no way reflects greed but a strict adherence to the scientific method of testing a hypothesis several times to ensure that the results of an experiment can be duplicated.

This was the first recipe I have made from this book.  I am looking forward to many if they are the standard of the Anzacs.  Here it is:

Chewy Anzac Biscuits Recipe

And there is one from the 1930’s for the crispy kind:

http://www.abc.net.au/radio/recipes/anzac-biscuits-crispy-version/8926926

I will leave you today with some images from the National War Memorial in Canberra because, after all, more than biscuits that’s what today is about!

Canberra War Memorial

lest-we-forget-war-memorial

Have a great week!

 

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REPOST FROM 2016 – Two Turtledoves

Sometime last year I became obsessed on Pinterest with an American candy called a turtle.  I went from never having heard of them in my life to seeing them all over the internet.  And holy moly did they sound good!  For those of you, like me, who have spent our lives in ignorance of this delight, just listen to this:

  • A chocolate base.
  • Toppped with pecan nuts
  • Topped with caramel
  • Topped with more chocolate

There is no way on God’s green earth that they could be bad.  Supposably.  As Joey Tribbiani would say.  And depending on your definition, they were really good.  Well, they tasted delicious.

Before we get into them, just a word of explanation.  The recipe I used called them turtledoves because they used Dove Chocolate.  We used to have Dove Chocolate here – apparently not anymore.  I wonder when that happened?

My turtledoves started really well.

TurtledovesIt all started to fall apart with the caramel.  I could not get it to sit on the pecans the way I wanted it too.  I wanted it to be a perfect dome, surrounding my pecans but leaving a little bit of chocolate on the base visible.  Not ONE of them looked like that.

Turtledoves2And the more I tried to meddle with it, the worse it got.  In the end, I thought. “Nevermind.  It will all be covered with the rest of the chocolate.  It will be fine”.

Not so.  I was already on a slippery slope and the only way was down.  The final chocolate layer was a disaster!  I could not get it smooth, it was a hot day and the second I touched it, it would either melt or crack.

Before I show you the wreck of the Hersperus that was my effort, let me show how these babies should look  (The Spruce Eats)

And, oh Lord, here are mine….

Turtledoves3I know.  I’m sorry.  Two fails in a row.  Although these tasted delish, my turtles may not have been teenage or ninjas but they were mutant. Technically they weren’t even turtledoves because I could not find Dove chocolate.

They did taste good.  Really good.  Even the fussiest eater in the world was a fan.

Turtledoves4But you know food blogging can be very much style over substance so that sometimes I think it doesn’t matter how things taste as long as they look good.  In retrospect, I should have not tried to cover them entirely but just done a little splodge of caramel and one of chocolate over the top.  Next time….

But I wanted to have something that was a success, of only to soothe my wounded self-esteem.  Two fails in a row is no way to write a food blog.  So I needed a turtledove.  Fast.  Guaranteed success.

Hmmmm….

  • Chocolate
  • Caramel
  • Nuts

How about something like this?

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  • Baileys
  • Frangelico
  • Butterscotch Schnapps

Now that’s my kind of Turtledove!

And it brought F.Scott out of the funk caused by the Bobby Dazzler.

Turtledove6Normality has resumed in Chez Retro Food.  Well, as close as we can get ’round here anyway!

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Turtledove

A cocktail shooter that mirrors the flavours of the classic American turtle candy – chocolate, caramel and nuts

Ingredients

Scale
  • 30ml Butterscotch Schnapps
  • 30ml Frangelico
  • 30ml Bailey’s Irish Cream

Instructions

  1. Pour the Butterscotch Schnapps and the Frangelico into a shooter glass.
  2. Measure out the Bailey’s and pour very slowly over the back of a spoon into the glass.
  3. Enjoy!

Have a wonderful week!

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