My visitors are still in bed, so I thought I'd quickly share one of the treats we made on Saturday, before I start getting the requested full English Breakfast on the go. I know N likes a full English, but I'm not to sure how it'll go down with L. We'll see, if everything fails L will have to just have fried egg on toast with baked beans.
Okay, back to the Easter treats. The girls made them on Saturday together with my friend's daughter V. Easter Nests are really easy to make and I'm sure most people have had them before or at least seen them around. They are very similar to rice crispie treats, the only difference being that they use cornflakes instead of the crispies and that they get topped with chocolate eggs for Easter.
Easter Nests (makes 16)
125gr milk chocolate
100gr dark chocolate
50gr butter
2 tbsp golden syrup (or corn syrup)
100gr cornflakes
16 paper muffin cases
Melt the chocolate and butter in a large pan over medium heat.
When it has melted, stir in the golden syrup and mix well.
Add the cornflakes and carefully stir them in. Make sure they get coated evenly with the chocolate mix and try not to crush them.
Place the paper liners in a muffin tin and divide the cornflake mixture between them.
Using the back of a teaspoon, shape them into a nest by making a little dent in the middle of each of them.
Place into the fridge for 30 minutes to chill and set.
When set and cool, place coloured chocolate eggs into each nest to finish.
Monday, 13 April 2009
Easter Nests
Thursday, 12 February 2009
French Pear and Almond Tart
It was my friend J's birthday on Monday and for a while now I seem to have been established in the role of the birthday cake baker at work. So of course I baked a cake for J. I wanted to try something different and new, which can be a bit risky if you're baking for somebody else, especially for somebody who loves baking themselves, and who is very good at it. I didn't let that put me off though.
Trawling my cookbooks and the web for inspiration I came across Dorie Greenspan's recipe for French Pear and Almond Tart, which had gotten rave reviews from all the Tuesday with Dorie Bakers, so I figured that I couldn't really go wrong with it. I didn't (go wrong with it, that is).
I like pears and I like almonds and as far as I knew so did J., so combining them in a tart seemed like a clever idea. The result was really good. Sweet but not overly so. Moist from the frangipane filling. Crumbly around the outside, because of the rich buttery pastry. But why don't you try it for yourself. You can find the recipe here.
Wednesday, 14 January 2009
Starting the year with a bang or at least a Yoghurt Bombe
I'm back in England, back at work, back to grey January skies. Our students are also back and I am already counting the days until the Easter holidays. That's bad, isn't it? I'm sure it'll get better again, but I kind of wish that at least January and February were out of the way at least, they are probably my two least favourite months of the year.
I've got a great dessert recipe to share. My mum made it while I was home, it's easy and quick (if you don't count the resting and chilling time), no cooking involved and it looks pretty too. M. reduced the amount of cream by half and just increased the amount of yoghurt to make it less fattening and it worked just as well and was just as good. I've printed the original recipe with the original amounts here though, so you can try it out and make your own adjustments. This is lovely in winter because it tastes fresh and fruity, but it is also lovely and light for the warmer months.
If you try it really do make sure to tuck the cheesecloth safely into the bowl underneath, otherwise the liquid that drains from the yoghurt mix will make a mess in your fridge. I speak from (my mum's) experience!
Yoghurt Bombe (Joghurtbombe)
serves 4
500gr natural yoghurt
120gr sugar
2tsp vanilla sugar
200ml whipping cream
250gr mixed berries or other fruit
fruit coulis (optional)
In a bowl mix the yoghurt, sugar and vanilla sugar.
Whisk the cream until stiff and mix in with the yoghurt.
Line a fine meshed sieve with a clean cheese cloth or dish towel and place over a larger bowl, making sure that the ends of the cloths are safely tucked into the bowl (otherwise you'll find a huge mess in your fridge the next day).
Pour the yoghurt/cream mix into the sieve and chill over night.
Remove from fridge and place a plate upside down over the sieve. Quickly turn everything over and carefully remove the sieve and the cheesecloth.
Garnish with fruit and coulis.
Sunday, 26 October 2008
Chocolate Mud Cake
As I said in my last post I baked two cakes last weekend, but I've been so busy all week that I'm only just getting around to writing about the second one. Last Saturday I was invited to an informal dinner party and I promised to bring the dessert, so the night before I went through quite a few of my cook books to decide on what to make. In the end I decided to go with a tried and tested recipe for a wonderful chocolate cake, because I was pretty sure that most people do love chocolate cake and I wasn't wrong.
The coffee and dark chocolate in the cake means it is not overly sweet and thanks to the orange juice it is also wonderfully moist. Of course using all that butter and sugar means it is not the kind of cake you want to eat while on a diet (if there is such a cake at all), but it definitely makes for an indulgent chocolate cake, which is worth forgetting the calorie count for once in a while. Don't let the childish name of the cake fool you, it's without doubt a cake that will also please the grown-ups!
Chocolate Mud Cake
1 1/4 cup strong coffee
1/4 cup orange juice
175gr good quality chocolate, 70% cocoa solids (I use Green & Blacks or Lindt)
250gr unsalted butter
1 3/4 cup sugar
2 cups flour
1 tsp baking soda
2 eggs
1 tsp pure vanilla essence
In a sauce pan bring the coffee and orange juice to a simmer and add the butter and broken up chocolate. Stir until both have melted.
Add the sugar and stir until it has dissolved. Remove from heat, set aside and allow to cool.
Sift the flour and baking soda into a large bowl and make a well in the middle.
Beat the eggs and vanilla essence and stir into the cooled chocolate mix.
Pour the chocolate mixture into the well you have made in the flour and using a wooden spoon stir until combined.
Pour into a well greased and floured 24cm springform pan and bake in a preheated oven at 140C/275F/Gas 1 for 1 1/2 to 1 3/4 hours or until a wooden skewer inserted into the middle of the cake comes out clean.
Allow to cool for 20 minutes, before removing the springform pan's ring.
Thursday, 26 June 2008
It's all peachy - Peaches and Cream Pie
All my baking pans and trays are already in the bottom of one of my kitchen boxes and I have got other things than baking cake on my mind, but luckily I can just say: 'Here's one that I did earlier.....'
Peaches and Cream Pie
1 pie crust (shop bought or made using a basic shortcrust pastry)
3 cups peeled and chopped peaches (fresh are best, but tinned work well, too)
1 cup caster sugar
1/3 cup plain flour
1/8 tsp salt
2 eggs, beaten
1/2 cup sour cream
1/2 cup caster sugar
1/2 cup plain flour
1/4 cup butter
Preheat oven to 180C/ Gas 4.
Place the peaches into pie crust.
Mix 1 cup caster sugar, 1/3 cup flour with the salt in a bowl.
Add the beaten eggs and sour cream and mix well.
Pour the mixture over peaches.
Combine 1/2 cup sugar, 1/2 cup flour and the butter until you get a crumbly mixture and sprinkle it over the pie.
Bake for about one hour, until golden on top.
This can be eaten warm, but I think it's even better when it has been in the fridge for a good few hours or overnight.
Monday, 10 March 2008
Apple Crumble
Anyways, back to British puddings...
Since moving to England ten years ago, I have come to love all the different warm desserts here. Yes, sometimes they are bit stodgy, but I guess that's what also makes them so comforting. Sticky Toffee Pudding, Jam Roly Poly, Bread and Butter Pudding and of course all the various crumbles - rhubarb, apple or cherry - I could eat them anytime, not just after a meal. To make it perfect I need some custard or sometimes I like the hot/cold thing and have them with some ice cream.
Yesterday, I never got around to post the Apple Crumble I made for pudding on Saturday. I got the recipe from a Farmer's Market cookbook last autumn. I had been picking Blackberries and was looking for different ways of using them, so the original recipe has a mixture of apples and blackberries, but of course you can use just about any fruit or combination thereof. It's really all about the crumble topping and this is the one I have come to use all the time.
Apple Crumble (for 6-8 people)
5 large Bramley or other cooking apples, peeled, cored and chopped
3-4tbsp dark brown sugar
1tsp cinnamon
1 lemon, juice off
1 cup + 2tbsp (= 18tbsp) brown sugar
9tbsp flour
1 cup + 2tbsp (= 18tbsp) porridge oates
1 cup +2tbsp (=18tbsp) sliced almonds
1tsp vanilla extract or almond extract
175gr butter, cut into cubes
Preheat oven to 180C/Gas 5.
Place the chopped apples in a large rectangular oven dish.
Drizzle with lemon juice and sprinkle with dark brown sugar and cinnamon. Mix well so all the apples are coated.
In a bowl mix the rest of the ingredients with your hands. Cutting the butter into the mixture until you get a crumble topping.
Spread the topping fairly evenly over the apples.
Bake for 25 minutes or until the fruit is bubbling and the top is golden.
Serve hot with custard or vanilla ice cream.
Thursday, 28 February 2008
Another Birthday, Another Cake
There hasn’t been much cooking going on again this week and I have to admit that on the seat next to me I have a carrier bag containing two M&S pizzas, because all I want to do tonight is sit down on the sofa and watch the Masterchef Final and Ashes to Ashes.
The only thing worthy of mentioning this week so far is that one of my colleagues turned 50 on Sunday and since I seem to have become the resident cake baker at work, I made him a ‘Bayerischer Apfelkuchen’. It’s not complicated to make at all, but tastes great and the cheesecake-like layer in the middle makes it quite rich and moist, so definitely good enough for a birthday cake.
I love all kinds of apple cakes, apple pies and apple crumbles and one of the great things is that they easily available all year round.
Bayerischer Apfelkuchen (Bavarian Apple Cake)
125gr soft unsalted butter
200gr 75gr caster sugar + 45gr sugar +75gr
150gr plain flour
1tsp vanilla extract
3tbsp seedless raspberry or apricot jam
225gr cream cheese
1 egg
4 medium sized tart apples
1tsp cinnamon
1 large handful of sliced almonds
Preheat your oven to 230C/Gas 8. Line the bottom of a springform baking pan with baking paper and grease the sides.
In a bowl cream the butter with 75gr sugar and 1/2tsp vanilla extract. Add the flour and mix until combined, the mixture will be a bit crumbly. Press firmly into the bottom of your springform and spread with the jam.
In a clean bowl mix the cream cheese, 45gr of sugar, the egg and 1/2 tsp of vanilla. Pour over the jam,
Toss the sliced apples with the remaining 75gr of sugar and the cinnamon until well coated and spread over the top of the cream cheese mixture, making sure they get distributed evenly.
Sprinkle with the sliced almonds.
Bake for 10 minutes and then reduce the temperature to 200C/Gas 6. Place the pan on a baking tray, to avoid any of the melting butter to leak into the bottom of your oven and smoke out your kitchen. (I'm speaking from bad experience.)
Bake until golden on top and the cheese mixture has set. Depending on your oven this should take 30 to 45 minutes. You can test it with a wooden toothpick.
Allow to cool before serving.
Wednesday, 6 February 2008
Lemon Drizzle Cake
This is my friend Karen's recipe. It makes a wonderfully moist cake, with a sticky lemon and sugar syrup coating. The best thing about it is that it is really quick and easy. It's so simple it should be called foolproof, unless of course you are like me. I don't know what's wrong with me today, but when I checked on the cake after about 30 minutes I realised it hadn't risen quite as much as it usually does, which was entirely my fault for not turning the temperature of the oven high enough. No real harm done though.
Easy Peasy Lemon Squeezie All-In-One Lemon Drizzle Cake
CAKE
5 oz self-raising flour
1 tsp baking powder
4 oz butter, softened
4 oz golden caster sugar
2 tbsp good quality lemon curd
1 large lemon, rind of, grated
2 eggs, whisked
1 tbsp water or lemon juice
SYRUP
1 juice of large lemon
4 oz granulated sugar
Preheat your oven to 175 C/Gas 3-4
Grease and line a 2 lb loaf tin or round cake tin.
Put all the cake ingredients together into a large bowl & mix thoroughly with a wooden spoon and then a hand held mixer for a maximum of 3 minutes.
Pour into the prepared loaf or cake tin & bake for 45-50 minutes or until a skewer inserted comes out clean.
While the cake is baking, make the syrup, by mixing the lemon juice and sugar together.
On removing the cake from the oven, pierce all over the top with a fine skewer or fork - keeping the cake in the tin.
Whilst the cake is still hot, pour the syrup over the top of the cake. Leave it in the tin to cool.
The syrup will leave a crunchy residue of sugar and be sticky to touch.
The quantity above can be easily doubled for a larger family cake.
The cake can also be split and have lemon curd spread between the two layers - it is then called a Luscious Lemon Drizzle Cake....
...and that's excatly what I did as you can see from the pictures. Let's hope it makes a bit of money!
Wednesday, 16 January 2008
A day of cleaning
The problem was that my favourite recipe calls for two eggs and I only had one left in the fridge, so I went looking for a recipe that used only one. I finally found one and combined it with my usual recipe, to come up with this.
I hope you’ll like it as much as we did! It came as a nice treat after all those hours spend going through cupboards and cleaning stuff. I found quite a few things that I had forgotten about and of course those things you pick up on travels and at special markets that you are just fascinated by and have to buy even though you really have no idea what you’re gonna do with them. Well, they are at the front of my cupboard now and I’m planning to use them over the next couple of months before they go off.
I only had to chuck out some rather soggy wheat-a-bix, some black treacle and nori, as well as getting rid off some never used storage containers and salt & pepper shakers. Usually, I’m embarrassed to say, my once a year clear out unearths more things that have gone beyond saving.
Nutty Banana Bread
1 ½ cups of flour
¾ cups of sugar
75gr shortening, softened
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 tsp baking soda
½ tsp baking powder
½ tsp cinnamon
1 egg
3 very ripe bananas
1/3 cup roughly chopped toasted walnuts
Preheat your oven to 180C/Gas 4/375F.
In a large bowl mash your bananas.
Add all other ingredients except from the walnuts and mix using a wooden spoon.
Add the toasted walnuts and mix into the batter.
Pour into a greased loaf pan and bake in the middle of the oven for 50-60 minutes. It’s done when a wooden skewer inserted in the middle comes out clean.
Note: To toast your walnuts, spread them on a flat baking sheet and place them in the oven for about 5 minutes.
Monday, 7 January 2008
Fabulous Fudge
It might have been more fitting to post this recipe before the holidays as it makes a great home-made present (in fact I made it as a Secret Santa present), but who says that fudge is only for Christmas. I could eat this at anytime of the year. Using good quality dark chocolate (I use Green & Blacks) means that it is very rich and chocolaty. I found it hard to resist.
This is a recipe from Nigella Lawson's 'Nigella Express' book, therefore it is quick and simple and you won't need to fuss about with a sugar thermometer.
Chocolate Pistachio Fudge
350g dark chocolate (70% cocoa solids), chopped roughly
1 (397g) can condensed milk
30g butter
pinch of salt
150g pistachios, roughly chopped or bashed with a rolling pin
In a large heavy-based pan, melt the chocolate together with the condensed milk, butter and salt. Keep the heat low and stir continuously.
Once the chocolate is melted and has mixed with the other ingredients stir in the pistachios and mix well.
Pour the mixture into a 23cm square foil tray or a tray lined with baking paper. Smooth the top.
Let the mixture cool and then place it in the fridge until fully set. Once it is hard, turn it out onto a chopping board and cut into small pieces.
You can keep the pieces of fudge in the freezer and don't even need to defrost them before eating.
Friday, 2 November 2007
Halloween Graveyard Cake
Just bake your favourite chocolate cake on a large, deep rimmed baking tray and cover it with a chocolate frosting. To make it look more like it's covered with soil, place about six bourbon cream biscuits in a freezer bag and bash them with a rolling pin until you have a bag full of fine crumbs. Sprinkle those over the whole cake. All you have to do now is decorate it with gravestones and all kinds of other halloween sweets like winegum worms and bats, squirty skulls and sugar bones. You could also use marzipan pumpkins and ghosts, there really is no limit, just have a look what you can find in the shops.
I really enjoyed myself doing the gravestones. All you need is some malted milk biscuits, a glaze for the biscuits and some writing icing in adifferent colours. To make the biscuits look mor like gravestones just use a small sharp kitchen knife to carve one end into an oval shape. Glaze each biscuit and allow the glaze to dry before decorating them with the writing icing. Alternatively you can place some small Halloween sweets into the wet glaze, they will stick once the glaze has dried.
