Let me tell you a little about my home country.  We are all about a ‘wee cuppa tae’.  In actuality, however, it’s not a wee cup – it’s a mug, and it’s not a singular cup, it’s gallons.

Should you go to visit anyone in Northern Ireland, they will immediately put the kettle on (sometimes making a pot, sometimes going cup by cup), they will pull a plate out of the cupboard and pile it high with some biscuits (custard creams, bourbon creams, jammy dodgers), chocolate treats (penguins, wagon wheels, kit kats etc) and, if you’re very lucky some ‘tray bakes’.

A Northern Irish tray bake, isn’t always quite what comes to mind when you think of a typical tray-bake.  For one, it’s not always baked – in fact, lots are non-bake tray-bakes (15’s for example), or one layer of the tray is baked (caramel squares) – but that doesn’t mean that they are not mind blowing – they are!

Last week, myself and three of my fellow Irish Expat friends here in Houston, got together and made a few of these treats from home – and I have a feeling, it’s going to become a regular occurrence.  We all enjoyed the ‘craic’, the ‘baking’ all turned out exceptionally well – and the husbands, at least mine, hit that Tupperware box of goodies like the Tasmanian devil – and, two of the four recipes made, were even gluten free! Bonus!

We embarked on three main recipes this time (one was split into two ‘flavours’ – so we ended up with four individual ‘things’).  Aero buns, raspberry ruffle buns, coconut balls and caramel squares.

Mint Aero buns/Raspberry Ruffle buns

• Blend, blitz (or beat to death with a can of something) the digestive biscuits.
• Set up a double boiler, or a heat-proof bowl over a pot of boiling water (or, use the microwave if you’re confident in your skillz) and melt the milk chocolate together with the butter and 4tbsp golden syrup.
• Mix in the digestives and the larger amount of your candy chunks – we left adding the Aero until the chocolate had cooled a little so it didn’t melt too much.
• Spread out evenly, in a baking pan (ours was a 12 inch long baking pan) and compact the mixture a little.
• Rinse double boiler, dry, and melt the white chocolate with remaining butter and golden syrup.
• Pour the white chocolate on top and spread evenly.
• Sprinkle over the remaining crushed candy, pushing it gently into the melted chocolate and put in the fridge for a few hours to let it set.
• Slice and serve with a wee cuppa tae.

Coconut balls