Well put two and two together of course :)
Chilli Chocolate Cake and Chilli Brownies.
I found Jamie Olivers Chocolate Chilli cake recipe and from now on that is my chocolate cake recipe (minus the chillies), and for the brownie, I converted Trina's Best Brownie Ever recipe by simply adding freshly bashed chilli juice to the mixture.
It is still baking right now, but I just had to share this fabulous story of making them with you.
So I started off making the chocolate chilli cake. The cake part was of course straight forward, but having never pulverised chillies before I took a couple of tries. Firstly I opted to cut it, then realised that would take forever. Second, I thought I'd use my fancy Tupperware onion dicer... it got it a little smaller, but still too chunky. So next I thought - blender - yeah, we got them a little smaller again. Lastly, I just had to give up an do it in the mortar and pestle. I'd been avoiding that, thinking it was just too time consuming. Actually bashing it to bits was rather fun.
Taste testing my favourite part - the batter - as we went along was rather pleasant, even after the chilli paste went in. Into the oven goes the cake, (double mixture - naturally).
Next on to Trina's fabulous brownie recipe, got it all together, poured it into the tray and then remembered I'm doing chilli brownies.
Bugger I thought... oh, no big deal, I'll just bash it straight from a chopped up chilli. BASH, SQUIRT, AAARRRRGGGH... you guessed it, fresh chilli juice in the eye. It was already a irritated and puffy from a piece of grit that I'd got stuck in there two days ago, as if that wasn't enough.
It appears that when you use the tupperware slicer and then the blender, that half the juice actually leaves the chilli before you start bashing it, and that infact there is a LOT of juice inside a medium sized chilli.
Geez... how am I supposed to fix this. Having been to the chemist this morning and sold a simple bottle of Johnson & Johnson's baby shampoo sensitive for eyes for my already puffy eye I ran to the bathroom, filled the sink with warm water and semi-blindly squirted some shampoo in. Grabbed a flannel, dipped it and threw it at my eye. AAAARRRRRGGGGGGH, WORSE... so it appears that water makes chillies more intense when its in the eye too.
Well if milk works in your mouth, why wouldn't it work for my eye. Completely blind by now, scrounging around in the fridge to find the milk, not thinking particularly well and taking what seemed an eternity to realise that the milk was on the bench in anticipation of being used in the cake (which didn't call for it). Finally, remembering and finding the milk I grabbed the nearest measuring cup (previously used for cocoa and sugar). Lucky for me, a little cocoa and sugar doesn't hurt the eye too much.
If you are ever in this unfortunate situation, please heed my words and use milk the first time around... for around 15 minutes... and then do what I am doing now. Sit down and relax your eyes, think of the battle you just fought and the victory over chilli you achieved. Then, email me and commiserate and share battle stories...
PS, when you finally look at your eye and see a whole pile of white stuff on it, don't stress - its not puss... remember, you just used milk on your eye... LOL
Actually, its hard to even see in the picture...
