Crispy Mint Squares

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Crispy Mint Squares

I was looking through all my recipes the other day and came across this one from my Gran’s old Cookbooks, one I hadn’t tried before. So with the wet weather to day was that day I was going to try these. Back in the day my gran always used margarine for baking, personally I think butter is a much better flavour so this was the 1 thing that I changed & I added in some pistachios to the base to give it a bit more crunch.

Mint Square

Makes about 16-20 squares (depends on how big a slice you want…lol!)

For the Base:-

200g Digestives, crushed

120g Butter

50g Light Brown Sugar

1 heaped tbsp Cocoa Powder

1 tsp vanilla extract

2 heaped tbsp desiccated coconut

40g Chopped Pistachios

1 egg beaten

For the Peppermint Centre:-

50g Butter

3 tbsp milk

1/2 tsp peppermint extract

230g Icing Sugar

Green Food Colouring

For the Chocolate:-

140g Milk Chocolate (55% cocoa) I use Lindt, definitely my favourite.

40g Dark Chocolate (70% cocoa)

1 tbsp butter

  1. Use a 9″ square baking tin and line with baking paper or foil
  2. In a saucepan over a low heat melt the butter, stir in sugar & cocoa powder, bring off the heat and whisk in the beaten egg, return to heat and whisk until thickened, this only take a minute or 2. Remove from heat, stir in the vanilla extract, digestives, pistachios and coconut, mix together so everything is coated well. Using a spoon, spread the biscuit base mixture into you baking tin and smooth. Refrigerate for about 1 hour until hardened.
  3. Using a mixer, stand or hand whichever you have, beat the butter until smooth. Add the icing sugar, milk, peppermint essence and food colouring and mix until blended. Smooth this mixture over the top of your biscuit base and return to the fridge to set for about 30 minutes.
  4. Meanwhile, melt your chocolate with the butter in a glass bowl over a pot of simmering water and allow to cool slightly. (about 5-10 minutes)
  5. Pour chocolate over the buttercream and smooth, return to the fridge to allow chocolate to harden. (about 30 minutes).
  6. Once chocolate has hardened you can now decorate (if you wish), I just drizzled some green icing over the top and returned to fridge to set.
  7. To prevent the chocolate from breaking when cutting into slices, remove from fridge and bring to room temperature. I made that mistake of slicing too soon and my chocolate cracked.
Step by step process
Mint Squares
Crispy Mint Squares

Homemade Butter

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Homemade Butter

Since watching James Martin on his Saturday morning show making his own butter, I have longed to try this. Just like JM himself I am a fan of butter, loads of it too. It looked easy enough to do and it was, I urge you if you have ever fancied trying this, you must do. My next batch I will add some flavours to try, thinking herbs & chilli.

Step by Step process:-

1 x 500ml double cream – good quality (makes 250g Butter)

General rule is whatever quantity of cream, you get 1/2 amount butter.

  1. In a Mixer pour the double cream & whisk on medium to high speed until it resembles a whipped cream.
Step 1 – Whipped Cream

2. Keeping whisking, it will look like you’ve over whipped, but keep going……..

Over whipped cream

3. & keep whisking, soon enough you will see the butterfat start to separate from the butter milk. (sorry forgot to mention, cover top of your bowl with a splash guard or if you don’t have one a Tea Towel, as you can see if tends to splash everywhere)

Buttermilk being separated

4. Now that it has separated, drain the buttermilk through a sieve and keep to use later in another recipe.

Draining buttermilk

5. Return the butter back to the bowl and you want to add about 200ml ice cold water and mix for about 20 secs, then drain again. This is to ensure to rinse away any buttermilk. Do this process 2 or 3 times until water becomes clear.

Rinsing Buttermilk from butter

6. Using a spatula remove the butter from the whisk and put into a muslin or clean tea towel and squeeze, just to make sure you have removed all liquid. Place onto a sheet of greaseproof (baking) paper and using the paper as a guide roll up into a stick of butter…..yay! You’ve made butter! You can now store in your fridge. This will keep for up to 3 days. If you add salt, it will keep a little longer, about 2 weeks in fridge.

Rolling up butter to store
Ready to use Butter