Banana and chocolate bread
Posted: September 16, 2011 Filed under: Chocolate, Dessert, Snacks | Tags: Banana, Cake, Chocolate, Sugar 1 Comment
What do to feed the 11-year-old for breakfast? Well, easy answer: banana and chocolate bread. He even agreed to by my sous-chef, raised for the occasion and thanked profusely. The original recipe is by Bill Granger, found during a totally random google search.
Banana and chocolate bread
Ingredients
- 250g of all-purpose flour
- 2 teaspoons baking powder
- 125g unsalted butter, softened
- 250g caster (superfine) sugar (I used regular sugar)
- 4 ripe bananas, mashed
- 2 eggs, lightly beaten
- Seeds of 1 vanilla pod
- 175g good-quality dark or milk chocolate chips
Method
Preheat the oven to 180°C. Sift the flour and baking powder into a large bowl.
Mix the butter, sugar, banana, eggs, vanilla seeds and chocolate chips in a separate bowl.
Add to the dry ingredients and stir to combine, being careful not to over mix.
Pour the batter into a non-stick, or lightly greased and floured, 19 x 11 cm loaf tin and bake for 1 hour 15 minutes, or until the bread is cooked when tested with a wooden skewer.
Leave to cool in the tin for 5 minutes before turning out onto a wire rack to cool.
Baked peaches with thyme and ice cream
Posted: September 2, 2011 Filed under: Dessert | Tags: Herbs, Ice cream, Peaches, Sugar, Summer Leave a comment
Peaches are long gone, but this dessert will be staying. I saw it on Scarlet Pippin, but the original recipe seems to be by Gordon Ramsay. And, then, I tweaked it a bit more… hopefully, it will become a viral dish because it an ideal dessert for a Summer dinner.
Baked peaches
Ingredients
- 4 whole white peaches.
- 50g icing sugar, 50g caster sugar (I just used 100 of sugarcane sugar)
- 1 vanilla pod
- 25 unsalted butter, melted
- 1-2 teaspoons Cointreau or Grand Mariner (I used prune Schnapps)
- 1 teaspoon of fresh thyme leaves (stripped from stalk)
Method
Mix the icing and caster sugar together and roll fruits in them to coat. Sit peaches in a shallow ovenproof dish. Mix the vanilla seeds with the melted butter and trickle over the peaches.
Bake the peaches uncovered at 190 oC for 5 mins. Remove and spoon the caramelised liquid that has formed in the dish back over the peaches. Return to the oven to bake for 10 mins (spooning over the juices a few more times).
About 5 mins before the peaches are ready, spoon over the liqueur and sprinkle over the thyme. Remove when ready and allow to cool until warm.
Thyme ice-cream
Ingredients
- 250ml of creamy milk
- 250ml double cream
- 3 sprigs of fresh thyme (OR two strands of saffron OR two sticks of cinnamon)
- 6 free range egg yolks
- 90g caster sugar
Methods
Heat the milk and cream in a large saucepan until the liquid starts to creep up the sides of the pan (i.e. boil). Then stir in the thyme sprigs, remove from the heat and leave to cool.
Put the yolks and the sugar in a large bowl and whisk until thick and creamy (ideally with an electric whisk).
Reheat the milk and cream mixture and, when the mixture rises up again, pour into the yolk mixture whilst slowly mixing. Whist until well blended. Strain back into the pan through a sieve (discard the thyme). On the lowest possible heat, stir until the mixture coats the back of a wooden spoon. Cool the custard, stirring occasionally to stop a skin forming. Churn in an electric ice-cream maker if you have such things, or otherwise take out of the freezer to stir regularly as it starts to freeze.
Red velvet cake
Posted: August 12, 2011 Filed under: Chocolate, Dessert, Pastry and Baking | Tags: Cake, Chocolate, Nigella, Sugar, Vanilla 1 Comment
By a strange coincidence I started this blog a few days before my birthday. Actually, one of my first posts was about the ice cream cake my Mother used to do every year around my birthday . This year, however, for some reason, I was not really in the mood for a creamy cold cake… I kept seeing red velvet cakes appearing on different TV shows and food magazines, much to the joy and delight of those who ate them. The New York Times described it as “a cake that can stop traffic”. If even the NY Times said it and Nigella had the recipe on her book and website, why not give it a go and try it for the dinner party?
As its own name says, the red velvet cake is red. Red in an unnatural shade of red. In case doubts that it should be red persist, it is layered with white frosting, to make the red go even redder. It is supposed to have a slight taste of cocoa and vanilla, and a velvety texture given by buttermilk. The red color is allegedly the result of the presence of anthocyanin in the cocoa, which becomes red in the presence of an acid, explaining the necessity of adding unusual ingredients in a cake like vinegar and buttermilk. Strictly speaking, the cocoa might turn to a reddish shade and become dark-red-brown…. To get the extra bright red, abundant food dye has to be added. No one knows for sure where the recipe comes from, whether it was created on the South of the United States or it was an experiment gone mad in a Canadian department store. For sure, it seems to be a New World creation, as it is hardly ever seen on European cookbooks. In fact, I cannot remember ever seeing it for sale on this side of the Atlantic patisseries.
As this was a birthday cake, an elaborate decoration was expected. I had planned to do a flamenco style polka-dot pattern, being the number of red dots being equal to my age (approximately and vaguely equal- to avoid sticking candles on the cake, any excuse was worth trying). But… the butter cream was a bit more runny than it should have been, and though I had a perfect cylinder of marzipan to start with, cutting it in thin slices didn’t do any favors to its shape. It ended up as a Dali interpretation of a rustic Seville-olé red velvet cake (picture here). Per se, the name didn’t conceal the less-than-optimal decoration, but I earned a lot points for imaginative and rhetoric culinary speech.
But, it all comes down to taste. And it tasted good. Very good, in fact: a very rich taste (not totally cocoa, but also not totally vanilla), with a moist and sensuous texture. A pleasure as sinful and guilty as only cake can be.
Ingredients
Cake
- 2 cups shortening (=226g; I replaced it with butter)
- 3 cups of sugar (=600g)
- 4 eggs
- 4 ounces of red food coloring (I used 20ml in total)
- 1 tablespoon of cocoa
- 2 teaspoon salt
- 5 cups flour (=640g)
- 2 cups butter milk (=500ml)
- 2 teaspoon baking soda
- the seeds of 2 vanilla pods
- 2 tablespoons vinegar (I used white balsamic, for no reason in particular. I just happened to have it on my cupboard).
Butter cream (frosting)
- 10 table spoons flour (I used Maizena, as I like its flavor and consistency better than regular flour)
- 2 cups milk (=500 ml)
- 2 cups unsalted butter (=226g)
- 2 cups sugar (=400g)
- the seeds of 2 vanilla pods
Method
Cake
Preheat oven to 180oC. Butter and line 3 9″ baking pans with parchment paper (I used 3 squared trays)Place melted butter and sugar in bowl and beat until light and fluffy (about 10 minutes). Add eggs one at a time, beating after each addition.
Make a paste of the food colouring, cocoa and salt (I never got a paste, as 20ml were not enough to bind with the cocoa). Add to butter mixture.Mix vanilla with buttermilk. Dissolve baking soda in vinegar, add to butter milk (it gets a bit fizzy – you might want to consider to use a larger bowl).
Sift and measure flour; add to creamed shortening alternating with buttermilk mixture ending with flour. Mix until smooth approx. 4-5 minutes.Pour into pans. Bake 35-40 minutes. Remove from oven, cool 10 minutes, then invert cakes onto cooling rack and to cool completely before frosting.
Frosting
Make a paste with flour and a small amount of the milk. Add remaining milk gradually, mixing until smooth. Cook in a double boiler at medium heat until thick (do not forget to stir while cooking to avoid burning. If it gets to hot, remove it from the heat and stir to cool it a bid. It should be a very slow simmer. At the end, it will be a very thick mixture at end, but if you can see lumps it is pass it through a fine sieve). Let cool.
Cream butter with icing sugar and vanilla. Beat until fluffy. Add cooled flour mixture 1 spoon at a time, beating well between additions.
Coconut and zucchini bread
Posted: August 8, 2011 Filed under: Dessert, Vegetarian | Tags: Cake, Coconut, Courgette, Food blogger recipe, Sugar, Zucchini 4 Comments
I saw it on Canela Moída, whom had seen it on The Novice Housewife, whom had seen it on Thru The Bugs On My Windshield, whom had seen it on Meet the Swans whom had seen it on Cooking Light Comfort Food Cookbook. Somewhere along the way, the bananas in the original recipe were replaced by an equivalent amount of zucchini (= courgette=calabacin). The combination of flavors sounds a bit iffy – Zucchini? in a cake?? with coconut??? But, have not prejudices: the result is scrumptious. Not only it passed the 11-year old test, but also the 8-month eat it all with gusto and impatience. If he only knew those green dots belongs the same family than the green soups he spits all over himself…
Some bloggers made a Coconut Rum Lime glaze to put on top of it. I am not a big fan of sugary things and excessive ornamentation of cakes, and skipped it. Keeping on sugar matters, this cake is not at all sweet. If you have a sweet tooth, you might want to add more sugar than the quantity I used. Or replace the zucchini by an equivalent amount of bananas.
Coconut Zucchini Bread
Ingredients
- 1/4 cup butter (about 60g)
- 1 cup sugar (about 200g. You might want to increase the amount, if you like yours more sweet)
- 2 whole eggs
- 1 1/2 cups ripe zucchini, grated (about 1 medium size
2zucchinis,app 120g) - 1/3 cup plain yogurt (I used a whole small pack, with about 180g, minus 1 table spoon))
- 1 teaspoon rum (I used Malibu – maybe a little more than a 1 teaspoon)
- The seeds of a vanilla pod (or 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract)
- 2/3 cup grated coconut (about 100g)
- 3/4 teaspoon baking soda
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 2 cups flour (about 250g)
Methods
Pre heat the oven to 180 oC . Grease a loaf pan with butter and powder it with flour.
Cream butter and sugar until the mixture is white and fluffy. Then beat in the eggs, one at a time, mixing well.
Add the zucchini, the yogurt, the vanilla seeds and the rum. Beat until well blended.
Fold in the coconut and all the dry ingredients, and mix until just blended (do not over stir).
Spoon the batter into the loaf pan previously buttered.
Bake for about an hour, or until toothpick comes out clean from the middle of the bread.
Cool in the pan for about 10 minutes and then transfer to serving plate.
Coconut Rum Lime Glaze
Ingredients
- 3 cups sugar
- The seeds of a vanilla pod (or 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract)
- 1 teaspoon of rum or rum extract
- 3 teaspoon of freshly squeezed lime juice
- Milk as required to get the glaze to the right consistency (you can use coconut milk, in case you have that in hand)
- Roasted coconut to taste
Method
Mix all ingredients except the milk in a medium bowl. Add milk until it becomes a thick but smooth glaze. Set aside.
Toast coconut under the broiler until just browned. Set aside.
Drizzle glaze over bread. Top with toasted coconut and lime zest.
Rice Pudding with Orange Jewels, Tarragon and Puffed Rice
Posted: July 17, 2011 Filed under: Dessert, Grains, Jams and confits, Rice | Tags: Dessert, Gary Mehigan, George Calombaris, Masterchef Australia, Milk, Orange, Rice, Sugar 2 Comments
I cannot make rice pudding the way my Mother does. No matter how many times I have watched her doing it or how scrupulously I follow her instructions, it is not the same thing. It doesn’t taste the same, it doesn’t feel the same and it doesn’t do her recipe any justice. It seems just impossible to reproduce her pudding rice. For a while, I tried other recipes, like the one Spanish chef Juan Maria Arzak has in one of his books, to less than optimal results.
A few days ago, while watching season 2 of Masterchef Australia, I saw how Gary Mehigan and George Calombaris did this rice pudding during one of their masterclasses. It looked delicious, packed with different flavors and textures, and they comprehensively explained how to cook it. And, I decided it to give a another go to rice pudding. Anyway, what sort of expectations would you have on an Australian rice pudding recipe? It was worthwhile the effort. In fact, there was a respectful silence around the table while people eat their desserts… Do not feel tempted to remove the tarragon, on the pretenses that no rice pudding has green stuff on it. With the orange, it is a delicious combination.
Rice Pudding with Orange Jewels, Tarragon and Puffed Rice
Ingredients
Rice pudding
- 40g caster sugar (or sugar too taste )
- 700ml milk (the real thing, with all its fat)
- 135g Arborio rice, rinsed and drained
- 1 vanilla bean, split, seeds scraped
Candied orange peel
- 1 cup of sugar
- 1 cup of water
- the peel of 1 orange, pith removed, julienned in the vertical
- 1 orange, peeled zest, pith removed, julienned
To serve
- tarragon leaves,
- 1/4 cup puffed rice, toasted
- 1 orange flesh segmented
Orange jewels
- 15g caster sugar
- 1 ½ tsp agar agar powder (do not follow the instructions on the bottle, as they are aimed to get a gelatin consistency. The jewels need to be solid to be cut properly, so it is OK if you add agar agar in excess).
- 190ml freshly squeezed orange juice, strained (I used the juice of 2 oranges and topped with water until I had 250mL of liquid)
Method
Step 1: For the candied orange peel, place 1 cup of the sugar and 1 cup of water in a small saucepan over low heat, stirring until the sugar has dissolved. Increase the heat to medium, add orange peel and simmer gently for 45 minutes until syrupy. If you are not using it immediately, it is better to separate the peels and letter then cool).
Step 2: For the orange jelly, line a 500ml plastic container with cling film. Add ¼ cup water, orange juice and sugar to a small saucepan and bring to the boil. Sprinkle in agar agar and whisk for about 5 minutes until dissolved. Remove from the heat. Pour the mixture through a fine sieve into the lined container. Refrigerate for about 25 minutes or until set. Invert jelly from container onto a board and cut into 1cm cubes.
Step 3: For the rice pudding, add the milk, rice, vanilla bean and seeds to a non-stick saucepan. Bring to the boil and simmer uncovered for 30-35 minutes, or until creamy and the rice is tender, stirring regularly. Add the remaining sugar and stir for about 2 minutes until dissolved (I had to use the whole 1-L of milk, as the rice absorbed the first 700mL of milk).
Step 4: To serve, divide rice pudding between serving bowls. Arrange the jelly jewels on top, along with the orange segments, tarragon leaves, candied orange peel, a spoonful of syrup and some puffed rice. Serve immediately.
Cranberry sauce
Posted: May 1, 2011 Filed under: Jams and confits | Tags: Berries, Sugar Leave a comment
Cranberries are almost nowhere to be found in the Mediterranean cuisine. Specially not during Christmas next to your roasted turkey. But, this Felicity Cloake’s perfect recipe looked so luscious I decided to give it a go – if pork is so good with apple jam, why not having a cranberry sauce to go with the chicken? It is indeed very-very-very easy to make and full of flavors, which complement well the tender roasted meat.
(Note – This time, I am shamelessly using a stock photography. During the cooking frenzy, I forgot to take a picture, and after Christmas, cranberries could not be sourced).
Cranberry sauce
Ingredients
- Juice of 1 orange, plus zest of ½ orange
- 210g caster sugar
- 450g fresh cranberries
- 2 tablespoons port
Method
Put the orange juice and sugar into a small pan, and heat gently, stirring, until the sugar has dissolved. Add the cranberries, and bring to a simmer, then cook until most of the cranberries have burst, and you have a loose cranberry sauce. It will continue to set as it cools, so stop cooking when it still seems a little too liquid.
Stir in the port and orange zest, and serve, or put into sterilised jars.
Red onion confit, fresh thyme and goat cheese tartelettes
Posted: April 26, 2011 Filed under: Pastry and Baking | Tags: Finger food, Goat cheese, Herbs, Red onions, Snacks, Sugar 2 Comments
I first saw the onion confit and and goat cheese tartelettes on Mafalda Pinto Leite’s website (here, in Portuguese). It looked easy enough, but things went South when ready-made caramelized onion the recipe called for was nowhere to be find in Zurich. The only solution was to embark on a quest for the perfect red onion confit recipe. Finally, it was C’est moi qui l’ai fait who offered the perfect method for a luscious red onion confit. And, since they had gone through all the trouble of doing their own jam from scratch, it was only fair to give it a go to their tartelette. It was a good call – the whole batch was gone in less than a sigh.
Red onion confit, fresh thyme and goat cheese tartelettes
Ingredients
- 1 roll of puf pastry
- 1 pot of red onion confit (recipe here)
- 1 fresh soft goat cheese, crumbled
- 1 yolk
- 1 tablespoon of milk
- Fresh thyme
Method
Preheat the stove to 210oC
Spread a bit of flour all over the kitchen top, and lay the pastry roll. Mix the yolk with the milk, and brush it all over the pastry surface.
Cut it in squares (4cm side), and place them on the baking tray.
Drop a teaspoon of onion confit at the center of each square (the corners should be free, so they can puff). On top of the confit, put the equivalent of a small teaspoon of cheese. Sprinkle with fresh thyme.
It is now ready to put on the stove, for about 8min, or until the pastry is golden.
Red onion confit
Posted: March 30, 2011 Filed under: Jams and confits | Tags: Red onions, Sugar Leave a comment
When I decided to try a dish who called for onion confit, I was far to imagine that I would end up to go on a quest for the perfect recipe.
First, I tried the recipe that Joana Roque, a Portuguese food blogger and writer, had posted on her blog (here, in Portuguese). It looked all very serious, with loads of chefs and other food bloggers being quoted, with lots of flavors and texture, but… either I had a bad culinary day and executed poorly the method, or this recipe is really not good at all. I ended up with something with the consistency of brick and tasting as sugary as sugary can be. The confit is now languishing in the fridge, with the vague hope that it might be used for something else.
A few googles after, I found C’est moi qui l’ai fait [I did it myself], a French blog that offered a recipe that looked much more reasonable. And indeed, it was delicious, its caloric content was a fraction of the first attempt and it posed no diabetes risk.
Red onion confit
Ingredients
- 1Kg red onions sliced
- 30g butter
- 4 tablespoon sugar
- 1 dl balsamic vinegar
- salt and pepper
Method
Met the butter in big saucepan. Add the sugar and the onions. Give a good toss and let simmer for about 30 min, stirring every now and again.
Add the balsamic vinegar and simmer for another 20min, until the vinegar is totally reduced and the onions look well preserved. Salt and pepper to taste.
Put in a glass container and reserve in the fridge
Chocolat Carré
Posted: March 28, 2011 Filed under: Chocolate, Dessert | Tags: Chocolate, Sugar Leave a comment
A mousse au chocolat variation by Vollenweider Chocolatier. Absolutely decadent.
Pear and almond tart
Posted: October 24, 2010 Filed under: Dessert, Pastry and Baking | Tags: Almonds, Cake, Dessert, Pears, Sugar 1 Comment
I found this pear and almond tart recipe on my way home, on tram 11. Someone left behind a Food & Travel magazine behind, and curiosity made me pick it up to flip through. Two tram stops latter, I had already decided to try all recipes. As pears are at its prime around A.’s birthday, it has become her official birthday cake. Well, sort of.
Pear and almond tart
Ingredients
For the pastry
- 200g plain flour
- 2 table spoons caster sugar
- 100g cold unsalted butter cut into pieces
- a pinch of salt
- 100g unsalted butter
- 100g sugar
- 2 eggs
- 100g ground almonds
- 2 table spoons flour
- 3-4 ripe pears
To make the pastry, put the flour, sugar, butter and salt in a food processor, and, using the pulse button, process until the butter is broken down (about 5-10 pulses). Add 3 tablespoons of cold water, and pulse just until the dough forms coarse crumbs; add one more tablespoon of water if necessary, but do not do more than 10 pulses. Transfer the pastry to a sheet of backing parchment, form into a ball and flatten to a disk. Wrap in the paper and let stand for 30-60 minutes.
Roll out the pastry to the diameter of the baking tin (a tarte tatin or other round flame proof baking dish). Turn the tin upside down and on the rolled out pastry and press down and trace around the edge with a sharp knife.
Alternatively, just use pre made pastry. It might not be so good, but it does the trick.
Preheat the oven the 200oC. Prick the pastry all over, line with baking parchment, and fill with baking weights. Bake for 15min, then remove the paper and weights (I used beans), and bake for 10-15min more, until just golden. Let the tart shell cool slightly before filling.
To make the almond cream, put the butter and sugar in a bowl and mix with the electric mixer, until fluffy and lemon coloured (it takes some time and patience. I start with melted butter). Beat in the eggs one at a time. Using a spatula, fold in the almonds and flour until well mixed.
Preheat the oven to 190oC. Spread the almond cream evenly in the tart shell. Peel and core the pears, and slice into 8-12 pieces, depending on the size of the fruit. Arrange the pear slices on top of the almond cream. Bake for about 20-30min, until puff and golden. Serve warm.
Lucie Loves Food 
