With Bonfire Night just around the corner I wanted to find a recipe I could make to use two things I bought on holiday in America: toffee apple (or candy apple) flavour popcorn and caramel apple flavour Oreos.
In the UK we have only ever been able to get chocolate Oreos - with Golden Oreos recently launching over here. But in the US there are a whole host of limited edition flavours at different times of the year, and I've never been able to get hold of any of them before, until now. The caramel apple cookies have a part green, part caramel colour filling and are very sweet and quite different but do taste quite nice!
I wanted a recipe that would allow me to use both the cookies and the popcorn and the obvious thing seemed to be a 'fridge cake' - basically melted chocolate mixed with broken biscuits, and often marshmallows like a rocky road, but this time I was going to use popcorn instead.
To serve, you can cut or break it into pieces and eat it as it is, or make into a dessert as I did. I was sent some vouchers for Haagen Dazs ice cream to celebrate National Chocolate Week and I used one of the vouchers to buy some of their pralines and cream ice cream. I actually thought pralines were something to do with chocolate - and it often is. Pralines are frequently chocolates containing small pieces of nut though in the case of the Haagen Dazs ice cream it was 'smooth vanilla flavour ice cream, crunchy praline pecan pieces and sweet caramel swirls'. Either way the ice cream was absolutely delicious.
I served a few scoops of the ice cream and a few pieces of the chocolate fridge cake in a tall sundae glass which made a very good dessert. Here's the recipe for the fridge cake
Toffee Apple Oreo Popcorn Chocolate Fridge Cake
an original recipe by Caroline Makes
400g plain chocolate
50g butter
250g caramel apple Oreos
100g candy apple popcorn
to serve: Haagen Dazs ice cream
Melt the chocolate and butter in a large pan and remove from the heat. Add the popcorn and broken up cookies (into large chunks - not crushed). Stir in gently until well combined.
Line a small oven tray or serving dish with greaseproof paper and spoon in the chocolate mixture. Leave in the fridge until set.
Remove from the fridge at least half an hour before you want to serve or the chocolate will be too hard to cut or break. Remove the ice cream from the fridge about 15 mins before serving so it softens a little.
I found it easiest to break up the fridge cake using a dinner knife (that is, not a particularly sharp one) - do be careful! I then alternated pieces of the fridge cake with scoops of ice cream in this dessert. The ice cream was lovely - very creamy and luxurious. It was very popular in my house!
Thanks to Haagen Dazs for the ice cream vouchers