Fairtrade Fortnight: Hot Chocolate

An end to the frantic excesses of the last two weeks: a steaming mug of hot chocolate with squirty cream and giant buttons. Both the hot chocolate and the buttons are Cadburys. Cadbury's have a few products that are Fairtrade which is sightly good/bad news as far as my shopping trips are concerned. Bad news because having a cheap, ubiquitous Fairtrade chocolate means that some places have discontinued selling other Fairtrade brands or only put them in bigger shops which means I can't get some favourite products locally now, even ones that haven't been 'replaced' by Dairy Milk. 

But overall I think it's incredibly positive that I can get Fairtrade chocolate from almost any corner shop. Places that probably couldn't have afford to stock Fairtade without one of the biggest, most popular chocolate companies switching over. So now I can walk down to a local business and buy some Fairtrade chocolate. Which is slightly incredible. I've not been grown up enough to do my own food shopping long but back in 2005, when I left home, I didn't see this one coming.

Still though a lot of the things we've bought this fortnight have been bought on special visits and long bus rides. I really hope that it will be just as easy to find Fairtrade golden syrup and pasta in the future.

Fairtrade Fortnight: Beyond Chocolate

When I first though that I could blog about 14 different products and the recipes they work in for Fairtrade fortnight I should have thought that it would quickly become two weeks of chocolate. And it's not that I haven't had any chocolate today but I have miraculously found something else to blog about.

Oxfam have some fabulous Fairtrade cards available online and in some shops. With mother's day coming up I bought this one for my Mum. Now I'm hoping she doesn't read the blog.

Fairtrade Fortnight: Nuts

To hold off on the sugar coma I thought I'd give some Fairtrade nuts a try tonight. I went for the fabulous brand Liberation who make these fabulous Oven Baked Cashew Nuts & Peanuts: Lemon & a hint of Chilli as well as other bits of nutty awesomeness like peanut butter and Harry's Nuts.

The chilli and lime variety are pleasantly zingy with a hint of heat that comes in at the last moment. Delicious and incredibly addictive. I only ate half the pack and I think I now have to go back for more.

Fairtrade Fortnight: Chocolate

You would be forgiven for thinking that we eat nothing but cake if you had only been reading our blog for Fairtrade Fortnight. But don't worry, this post has some fruit content. Freeze dried raspberry granules to be exact. These sparkly little crunches of taste are embedded in the fabulous 70% Dark Chocolate with Raspberries from Divine.

I don't think you can really beat Divine in terms of an eating chocolate and when you read into how the company is set up it really sounds good. They also do an adorable advent calender but untill the season comes around again try the 70% Dark Chocolate with Raspberries.

Fairtrade Fortnight: Pancake Day

Today is Pancake Day, and in keeping with Fairtrade Fortnight we sprinkled Fairtrade sugar over our pancakes.

Fairtrade Fortnight: Golden Syrup and Parkin Adventures

Sundays are just awesome, even more so when Time Team is on because something about Time Team demands a big heart meal followed by a beautiful cake. Okay so this is probably one of those associations that my brain comes up with that is hard to explain to anyone else but trust me Time Team on a Sunday afternoon requires hearty food and cake.

What better excuse to showcase another Fairtrade ingredient from our pantry. We switched over to Rayner’s golden syrup from the more traditional tinned kind. Cynics may think that, in my case at least, this has more to do with my need for jam jars than it's organic, fairtrade credentials. They would only be slightly wrong. Yesterday I used it in Parkin. I'm toying with veganising the recipe from our new bible Cakes (River Cottage Handbook) I've had good, but not perfect results so far and I'll let you know as soon as I perfect the recipe. We also use this syrup in Stephen's Praline Cake. We get it from the Occombe farm shop but a quick google shows it's on sale at Goodness Direct.   

Fairtrade Fortnight: Banana bread

Green & Black’s Ultimate Chocolate Recipes: The New Collection is my favourite cookbook at the moment, and my favourite recipe from it is the farmhouse chocolate and banana bread. It’s easy to make, and a great way to use up over-ripe bananas.


A word of warning though: the recipe calls for 50 g of chopped chocolate to be pressed into the top before baking. The result is a chocolate crust which serves only to make the cake a little bitter. I omit this step, as has clearly happened in photograph accompanying the recipe.

Fairtrade Fortnight: Tradecraft Pasta!

My stomach is being a little temperamental today so we're going for simplicity with today's Fairtrade Fortnight product review. I had pasta with tomato sauce for supper which, while always being very lovely and filling, isn't the most impressive dish. However while we were in Totnes today we bought some of this lovely pasta by Tradecraft. It's 80% durum wheat, 20% fairtrade quinoa which makes it sort of half way between plain white pasta and whole wheat in taste and texture. It's a little more substantial then your average pasta and incredibly filling. Perfect food after a long day.

Fairtrade Fortnight: Quick and Fair Snaks

I suppose our love of Green & Blacks had been made obvious by now. The plain chocolate and the cocoa powder are pantry staples in our house, good for all kinds of delicious treats. But there are some treats that are quicker than others and with some ready made puff pastry you can be eating these two awfully quickly.

Back in MoFo I made some quick chocolate Croissant which is made with a packet of puff and a bar of good chocolate. But if you last bar of chocolate just got turned into a Brownie and you still need pastry covered nibbles these chocolate twists are made with cocoa powder and icing sugar. The recipy is in the The Vegan Boulangerie.

Fairtrade Fortnight: Praline cake

Praline cake is the closest I have to a family recipe: my paternal grandmother made it for my dad, my dad made it for me, and now I make it for my workmates. Despite the name, praline cake doesn’t contain nuts, presumably due to its origin during the rationing of the Second World War. The original recipe combined margarine, sugar, drinking chocolate, ‘syrup’, and sweetened biscuits (my grandmother used Rich Tea), topped with an icing which my dad found too sweet. Over the course of a few experimental batches I modernised the recipe, using metric units and Fairtrade and organic ingredients.


Recipe

400	g	digestive biscuits (organic from Doves Farm)
100	g	water
100	g	butter (organic from Yeo Valley)
4	tbsp	golden syrup (Fairtrade and organic from Rayner’s)
4	tbsp	cocoa powder (Fairtrade and organic from Green & Blacks)

Crush the digestive biscuits with a rolling pin. Put the water, butter, golden syrup, and cocoa powder into a saucepan and heat, while stirring, until the butter has melted. Combine the liquid with the biscuit crumbs and then press down into a flan tin. Cut once cooled.

Fairtrade Fortnight: Fair Beans

A couple of weeks I go I got a craving for baked beans. I generally only have beans on camp or as part of a breakfast so I really have no idea when I bought and cooked baked beans last. I'd seen a couple of organic brands and figured I'd try one of those out rather than the traditional Heinz. Looking on the shelves I was pleased to find these Fairtrade beans from Geo Organics. They are about 30p more expensive than your Heinz and around 60p more than your basic but we're happy to (and lucky to be able to) spend a bit more for Fairtrade beans.

Well, that is, if they taste nice! The beans themselves are a little larger which I think looks better on the plate. The beans where crammed into the can and the sauce was thick. No watering down going on here. And they did taste lovely. They weren't overly sweet like some baked beans can be, just a good basic tomato sauce with some pretty beans in. I split the can in two, my first half I had on a jacket spud, the second for a fry up.

And I'm very happy to hear, from this Waitrose press release, that sales of the Fairtrade Geo Organics beans are up. Rock on!

Fairtrade Fortnight: Scones

Balance foods make a Fairtrade Rice Milk that is my favourite non-dairy milk. I use it often in baking. After the break is my recipe for vegan scones made with rice milk. We top them with chocolate spread (not vegan), jam or marge. This recipe is adapted from one we used in the kids cookery club at Occombe farm.

Fairtrade Fortnight: Hazelnut and Chocolate Spread.

Today is the start of Fairtrade Fortnight so well be blogging for fourteen day about our favourite Fairtrade products, places and food including a couple of recipes of things to cook with Fairtrade ingredients.

First up is something much loved by both of us: Essentials Organic Hazelnut and Fairtrade Chocolate Spread. Yes, hazelnut and chocolate. The food combination of kings. It's absolutely delicious, creamy and chocolatey without being overwhelmingly rich. I love to use mine to top scones (and the recipe will be posted tomorrow, giving you time to go out and buy some!)

We get ours from Occombe farm but it's easy to find online. Greenlife in Tones have some for sale.