Chillies 2025

Soon the cranberries will be in the shops and I will make my sauces. Most will have chillies added and some just ordinary. This is also the time of year to make my hot pepper jelly, fire and ice wine jelly too. The jars make very welcomed Christmas gifts. So the chillies don't go to waste. You won't catch me eating this stuff though because I'm not keen on spicy foods.

 

Chocolate and Chilli Cake?

Chocolate and anything!

 

@Goldenlily26 do you actually bake that kind of cake or are you taking the mick? I really do make spicy cranberry sauce and wine jellies. If you do make the cake, would you share the recipe please?

 

I picked all the red fruit from my single Chenzo plant today. That makes about 3 dozen in the freezer now, which is probably as many as I eat in a year.

There's still plenty in the black state, and the plant is flowering again.

 

I have never made or eaten Choc. and Chilli cake but know it is very much the 'in thing' at the moment. I have just done a quick dip into Dr Google, typed in 'recipes for Chocolate and Chilli cake' .
There are several different recipes to choose from. Maybe this will be the year for me to try one out. Chocolate, Chilli, Lime and Sea Salt Cake sounded intriguing.

 

There's been some naughty things going on.
Regular jalapeno...


And I think this one has been playing with the Shineybrids I've never seen them pointing skyward before this

 

maybe cross pollinated with one of the ornamental ones. you can confirm it if its especially hot!

 

The Shineybrids are the only ones that point to the sky that I have grown to date so I believe their strong genes were delivered by the bees to last year's jalapeños. I save seeds every year and it's turning into an interesting development.

 

I have further dipped into Google and compared the recipes for Choc./Chilli cake. I am not a fan of choc. sponge cake, I find it is often too dry in texture for my liking, the only exception is Black Forest Gateau, which is really moist because of the fruit and cream. There were two choices, the creaming method and the melting method. I would op for the melting method and be very careful how much Baking Powder to use as that often makes a dry texture. On my second attempt of exploration I found some recipes for Mexican Choc/Chilli cake, it seems to be a traditional recipe, which looks like a strong contender for me to try out, especially the one using coffee in it.
Chocolate and coffee cake, now you are talking!
This year, I grew 5 varieties of chillies I have never grown before, the fruits are doing all sorts of things. Some are sticking up in the air, others hanging down, one has purple, yellow, green and red fruit on the same plant and they are different shapes and sizes .My Ring of Fire is still producing very long skinny fruit . I have one which is supposed to be fruity in flavour and can be eaten raw, I assume milder, so that is the one I will use when/if I make a cake of some kind.

 

@shiney I will do a better job of keeping the chillies from socializing but I must admit that the upward growing pods are much nicer to harvest. You don't have to search under leaves for them!

@Goldenlily26 I don't think I'll be making chocolate cake. I do not like spicy foods and I would be unhappy with having made a chocolate cake I could not eat. I don't mind sharing my canned jellies and sauces but I usually use them as gifts and my other baked breads are not too expensive to share but chocolate is quite dear here and not affordable as a lark/experiment.

 

@Goldenlily26 Snap !! that's how I used to dry my Chillies ( Cayenne ) . Very decorative as you say.
Listening to something on the radio recently but didn't catch it all. A chap here in the UK who has a Chilli Nursery and is of Jamaican heritage went to Jamaica recently to investigate the origins of the Hottest chilli ever. Unfortunately the bit I missed gave the name of the chilli and precisely where it grew

 

According to the guinness peopke, tge Carolina Reaper is the hottest on record averaging at 2.2 million scoville. I have three varieties of those. Regular, Red and Chocolate.

 

I am not sure a cake made with chocolate bought in Canada would taste as good as one made with English chocolate Lori. When I visited my son the only chocolate I could find to buy was some dreadful Hershey's. It is awful! My son always stocks up on Cadburys family sized slabs when he visits the UK, to take home.

 

Do you really think we bake with chocolate bars packaged for individual retail sales? That is really insulting! Do you think there is only one brand of chocolate here and we don't have cocoa? I have been over there and found the chocolate fine but not much difference than the brand I buy here. I've had the feeling, by reading thousands of posts, specifically those by fairly new forum members, that the GW consensus is that we are somehow barbaric or backwards over here. I'm finished with this nonsensical discussion because it is clear that I should never have sophisticated resources as those available in England and not be qualified to understand just how poor the quality of things over here!