Sweet Saturday - Macarons

Today another easy recipe for some gorgeous biscuits. I like the chewiness of these biscuits. Here the recipe is with ground almonds, but I think you can use cocos or another ground nut just as well.

Macarons


250 gr ground almonds
240 gr icing sugar
35 gr flour
4 egg whites
1 sachet vanilla sugar 


Preheat the oven to 180°C.
Add the ground almonds, icing sugar, vanilla sugar and flour to a bowl and mix. make a little hollow in the mix for the egg whites, mix all slowly.
Cover a baking tray with baking parchment, make little (approx 3cm) balls of the mix and divide over the paper. bake for about 15-20 minutes until the macarons are golden brown.

Sweet Saturday - Sweet Potatoe Pudding

After the last Sweet Saturday recipe I was left with 5 egg yolks as I only needed whites to make the meringue. On searching what to do with those I found this lovely site: how to use up egg yolks and as they say: "If life hands you egg yolks, you can't make lemonade". But they give a lot of nice suggestions, sweet or savoury to do with your eggs yolks, nicely divided in 1, 2, 3, .... and so on egg yolks. I chose to make a Sweet Potatoe Pie, but as I could not find in sweet potatoes in this tiny village I froze the egg yolks until I did get sweet potatoes. I whipped the eggyolks with some salt before freezing them and they defrosted just fine, gave them a little whisk before using them in the recipe below.

Ready to go into the oven.

Sweet Potato Pudding

• 600 gr sweet potatoes, peeled and cubed
• 250 gr plain soft cheese or yoghurt
• 120 gr dark brown sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon of cinnamon
• 1/4 teaspoon of nutmeg
• 5 egg yolks
• salt to taste
• handful of toasted almonds or pecan nuts
• maple syrup

Steam the sweet potato cubes for 20-25 min until soft.

Place the steamed cubes in a bowl and mix to a pulp. 
Add yogurt, brown sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, yolks, and salt to taste, and beat until well combined. 
Pour this batter into an oven dish. 
Sprinkle nuts on top and drizzle with maple syrup.

Bake for 50 to 55 minutes at 165°C  (180°C for a traditional oven + preheat). 
Remove from oven and cool. Serve cooled and if any is left over, keep it  in the frige.


Bon apetit!

Sweet Saturday - Pavlova

I'm a sucker for meringues but don't have them as much as I used too. When I lived in Ireland  I would go to the local bakery to have my lunch and 99 out of a 100 times it would be a brown sandwich with tuna and corn followed by a meringue. Well 2 meringues stuck together by a dollop of cream and a little dot of red fruit jelly on top....hhhmmmmmm

I tried making meringues myself before but to no great success and I have not tried since. The meringues they sell here are just not the same, so today I will venture to make a meringue once more as part of pavlova.

PAVLOVA

For the meringue base:

• 5 egg whites
• 100 gr of icing sugar
• 120 gr of fine casting sugar
• 1 sachet vanilla sugar or some essence
• 1 teaspoon of balsamico vinegar
• 1 tablespoon of corn starch/flour

For the topping:

• 250ml cream
• sugar to taste
• 250-500 gr of red fruit (may be frozen)

Preheat the oven (not fan, just under and bottom heat) to 130°C.

Wisk the egg whites with the sugars, than add the vinegar, keep wisking and when it starts to get ticker add the corn flour. Keep wisking until you can pull nice peaks that stay in shape from it. 

Cover a baking tray wit baking parchement and spoon the mixtures unto this, roughly in a 20 cm diameter. I was amazed by it's lovely silk sheen, which I could not tell so well when it was till in the bowl.

Pull up the sides to give it more of a base shape and bake for 1-1,5 hours. I switched the oven of at 1 hour 15 min when it had a tiny bit of colour. Leave in the oven with the door closed too cool.

Whip the cream with sugar to taste, add vanilla or cinnamon for an extra touch. 

Transfer the cooled meringue unto a nice big plate.

Spoon the whipped cream on top of it and finish with the fresh or defrosted red fruits, defrosted raspberries in my case. By than everyone will be in the kitchen eye-balling this feast of fluffiness. I think I may be proud and say this time the meringue worked out fine, light as a feather, lots of taste and just perfect with raspberries and cinnamon cream.

Bon apetit!

Sweet Saturday - Baked Mango cheesecake

First of all very best wishes to all of you for 2011, 

enjoy every minute of it in good health, good company and good humour.

Here a recipe for baked mango cheesecake. I love the baked ones much better than the none baked ones. I made it the day before, so it could cool overnight and it was just the perfect dessert to top off 2010, not too heavy, even nice and fresh with raspberry sauce, mango sorbet and fresh mango on the side.
This recipe is the right amount for a 24 cm/9 inch baking tin.

• 75 gr butter melted
• 200 gr of digestive biscuits in crumbs
• 500 gr mascarpone 
• 500 gr soft cream cheese
• 150 gr sugar
• a tin of mango slices
• 4 eggs
• 1 mango
• raspberry sauce
• mango sorbet

Mix the melted butter and the biscuit crumbs and press firmly into the baking tin. Leave this than to coll for minimum on hour in the fridge.

Drain the mango slices and mix these, you should have about 200ml of mango purée. 

Preheat the oven to 150°C or 130°C if you have a fan oven.

Mix the cream cheese, mascarpone, sugar and mango purée. Beat the eggs and add these too. Pour all on top of the biscuit base and bake for 1,5 hour. 

Leave to cool with the door closed for another hour or the cake will crack. When cool enough put it in the fridge and leave it overnight to cool.

Dress the plates or the cake whatever you prefer with fresh mango and raspberry sauce, some mango sorbet on the side and enjoy!

Sweet Saturday

Apple's with Bailyes cream liqueur in a filo wrapping

I made this after reading another recipe with apples and Baileys. But I did want something wrapped in dough, which was not the case in the other recipe, as I wanted to hand these out as treats. I did not take measurements of the ingredients so these are guesses.

• 5 small apples
• 50 gr of dark brown sugar
• 50 gr of butter
• dash of baileys
• 50 ml cream
• ground cinnamon to taste
• ground ginger to taste
• ready bought filo dough

As I'm writing these down I can imagine raisins soaked in the Baileys first would go well with it too.

Take a baking tray for scones or muffins, fill each cup with 4 layers of filo dough, I just tore these into roughly the shape I wanted. I did not butter the tray.

Preheat the oven to 180°C.

Cut the apples and fry them in the butter in a pan, I added them apple by apple, so you have very soft pieces of apple and some with a bit of crunch in the end. Add the sugar, spices, cream and Bailyes too.

Once this is ready add a spoon full to each filo filled cup in the tray. And put in the oven for about 12 minutes.

Enjoy!!

PS Best served warm.

PS If you don't want to bother with the filo, I'm sure this apple-baileys mix will go real nice with some ice-cream.

Sweet Saturday

Yesterday was my birthday and I baked myself this nice cake in a special cake-tin which I had given to myself a few weeks ago. With it came this lovely recipe for a chocolate and raspberry cake.

Chocolate & Raspberry Cake

• 250 gr of dark chocolate
• 250 gr of butter 
• 4 large eggs
• 1 sachet of vanilla sugar 
• 350 gr of white sugar
• 350 gr of flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 100 gr of ground almonds
• 150 gr of raspberries fresh or frozen

Melt the butter and the chocolate in a pot, once melted leave to cool. 

Meanwhile preheat the oven to 180°C. 

Mix the eggs, sugar, vanilla sugar and a pinch of salt (unless the butter is salted than leave salt out).

Mix the flour, baking powder and the ground almonds and add this to the egg mix.

Spoon the now lukewarm chocolate/butter mix through it carefully, followed by the raspberries.

Spoon into the baking tin (buttered!) and bake for about 45 minutes.

Leave to cool in the tin and than transfer to a plate.

I will decorate it later with icing sugar, raspberries and cream, just before serving it.

Sweet Saturday

Nearly no Sweet Saturday, as I missed some ingredients for the recipe I wanted to make, than thought of something else, but same problem. I really need to go grocery shopping with desserts and cookies in mind again :-)
But I still had all the ingredients for ShortBread, well more or less, I adjusted the amounts to suit the amount of flour I had left, but still have 3 baking trays of cookies, so plenty. I also used salted butter, well some as I did not have enough unsalted butter and added some vanilla scented/flavoured sugar too.

ShortBread

• 400 gr of plain flour
• 200 gr of corn flour
• 200 gr of icing sugar
• 400 gr of butter (I used 225 unsalted and 175 salted)
• 1 sachet of vanilla sugar

Mix or sift the flours and the sugar into a bowl. Rub in the butter until you have a soft ball. Roll this  out to a thickness of about 1cm on a lightly floured worktop, preferable a cool stone top. Cut out in whatever shape you want; since all my cookie cutter have ended up in my atelier they are not really suitable for food any more, so I used a small cup ;-)

Place them on a baking tray lined with baking parchment and leave to cool for at least 30 minutes. Preheat the oven to 180°C (160°C for a fan oven, as I have one and the cookies have gone to soft and than cooked too quick to look like shortbread). Bake them for about 1 hour, leave in a rack to cool. So here they are a bit flatter than usual for shortbread and not so long in the oven either, but they taste fine :-)

Sweet Saturday

This Sweet Saturday a recipe for cinnamon rolls.

Ingredients:

• 450 gr of white flour
• pinch of salt
• 50 gr of sugar
• 50 gr of soft butter
• 200 ml milk
• 22 gr of dried yeast
• 1 egg

Filling:

• 100 gr soft butter
• 100 gr brown sugar
• 1 teaspoon of ground cinnamon (or a bit more if you really love cinnamon :-)
• 1 egg

Sieve the flour and mix with the salt and sugar, than rub in the butter. Heat the milk until warm, blood temperature and mix with the yeast, add the egg. Combine the 2 mixtures, using the dough hook or by hand, until springy and smooth. Cover and leave to rise for about 30 min in a warm, draft free place. 

Mix the butter, brown sugar, cinnamon and egg to make the filling.

Knead the risen dough lightly and roll out a quarter to form the base of a cake-tin (diameter about 23cm). Roll the reminder into a large rectangle. Spread the filling over the rectangle and roll up. Leave a strip on one side filling free. Roll the rectangle up towards the free strip, egg wash strip if need be to make it stick, but usually a bit of water works too.

Slice the roll into 8 slices, set these on the base, well divided. Bake for about 30 minutes at 180°C.

Enjoy!

Sweet Saturday

We have 2 apple trees in our garden, so here a quick and easy recipe for an apple pie. Most of the work is in arranging the slices of apples neatly on the pastry.

Here (in the back) as part of the dessert buffet for a family BBQ

Apple and cream on puff pastry

• ready made puff pastry
• 2-3 apples depending on size
• 200 ml cream
• 3 tablespoons of sugar
• 1 sachet vanilla sugar
• 1 tablespoon of flour
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon

Preheat the oven to 180°C (hot air with extra heath from underneath if possible)  

Roll the pasty on to a low baking tin and prick holes in the bottom with a fork all over. Peel the apples and slice them, lay them like rooftiles neatly on the puff pastry. 

Mix the cream, sugar, cinnamon and flour and pour this over the apples. Bake for about 25 min at 180°C

Enjoy!!

Sweet Saturday

For this Sweet Saturday I made for you a recipe with rhubarb. This comes from a book written by Anouck and Joris, who run the lovely B&B 'la maison blanche aux volets bleus' in Bretagne, France. They give cookery courses too, just check out their site to know more.

Rhubarb Pie/Cake - Tarte au Rhubarbe

• 125 gr soft butter
• 125 gr sugar
• 3 eggs, split in whites and yolks
• 125 gr self-raising flour (or plain flour + 2 teaspoons of baking powder)
• 250 gr of rhubarb or 2 stalks
• 10 gr coarse sugar

Preheat the oven to 180°C. Mix the soft butter/molten butter and the sugar, add the egg yolks and flour. 

beat the egg whites until white peaks form and spoon this carefully through the mix. Butter a baking tin with a diameter of about 25cm, I dust it than with flour so the cake will come loose even easier.

Put the mix in the tin.

Cut the rhubarb into thin slices and spread these over the mix. Sprinkle the coarse sugar over the rhubarb.

bake for 30-35 minutes in a 180°C oven.

Enjoy - Bon Apetit!

Sweet Saturday

Stewed plums - Plum sauce

• 4 large plums or approx 250gr
• 1/2 teaspoon of cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon of ground star-aniseed
• 2 tablespoons of sugar

Peel and half the plums. Mix in the sugar and the spices and stew for 10-15min in a pot on the hob or in an oven of 180°C. Serve cooled with whipped cream, vanilla ice cream or yoghurt ice.

Sweet Saturday

Sweet Saturday is here again with another recipe for plums:

Plum under a Cake

• about 1 kilo of plums
• 3 tablespoons of sugar
• 1 sachet of vanilla sugar
• 4 tablespoons of water
• 125 gr sugar
• 125 gr soft butter
• 2 eggs
• 125 gr self-raising flour

Preheat the oven to 180°C

Half the plums and take the peel partly off, put these in a buttered baking tin. I leave a bit of peel on cause it gives such a nice colour. make a syrup by boiling the water, sugar and vanilla sugar down. When you draw a stripe in it and it stays for a bit it is ready. Pour this over the plums.

Mix the soft butter with the sugar, add the eggs and than the flour. Spoon this over the plums. 

Bake at 180°C for 25 minutes until golden brown.

Enjoy!!

Sweet Saturday

Another recipe with plums:

Pie with plums and hazelnuts

• puff pastry (I use the ready made ones from the supermarket)
• 1kg plums (firm)
• 50 gr melted butter
• 50 gr sugar
• 50 gr of ground almonds or a mix of almonds and hazelnuts
• 1 egg
• 1 dessert spoon flour
• dash of amaretto
• crushed hazelnuts (I used the sugared ones which you can buy to put on ice cream)

Roll the puff paste into a low pie dish and prick with a fork holes in the bottom. Mix the melted butter, egg, sugar, flour and amaretto and poor on to the base. Half the plums and make 2 small slices in the back so the peel will come off in pieces when you eat it later. Arrange the plums, skin side up on the mixture. Sprinkle with a handful of crushed hazelnuts and bake for 20-30 min in a (preheated) oven of 180°C.

Enjoy!

Sweet Saturday

Used some of the last cherries we had ourselves this year to make:

Cherry Clafoutis

• 1kg cherries
• 2 eggs
• 1 egg yolk
• 125gr sugar
• 1 sachet vanilla sugar
• 75 gr melted butter
• 75gr flour
• 125 ml milk
• 125 ml cream
• dash of amaretto

Butter a baking tin or dish. Put the cherries in without their stems all around the bottom of the tin.

Mix the egg, egg yolk and sugar until it's white and foamy, add the melted butter and flour followed by the milk, cream and amaretto. Poor this mixture over the cherries and bake for 30°C in an oven of 180°C.

Remember to warn beforehand that the stones are still in the cherries. 

But they add to the flavor, so worth it ;-)

Enjoy!

Sweet Saturday

With lovely plums ripe in our garden and lovely lush lavender what else to make than:

Lavender Roasted Plums with Lime Mascarpone

•  2-3 plums per person depending on size
• 1 stalk of lavender per person
• brown sugar
• amaretto
• mascarpone 225 gr
• 1 dessert spoon of icing sugar
• fine zest of 1-2 limes 

Preheat the oven to 180°C. Halve the plums and thread them onto a lavender stalk. Cover the end with foil else they'll burn. Put on a baking tray and sprinkle with brown sugar and amaretto. 

Place in the oven for 15-20 min, depending on the size of the plum, you want them to hold shape.

Mix the mascarpone with the zest and the icing sugar and cool.

Serve the plums warm with a dot of mascarpone on each halved plum.

Enjoy!!!

Sweet Saturday

Banoffi Pie


The first time I tasted this dessert was in Ireland. I lived there for 3 years and Banoffi Pie is one of the things I will always associate with my time there. Whenever I go back and I see Banoffi Pie on the menu I get one.


This is the first time I made it myself at home. I found the original recipe here: http://www.hungrymonk.co.uk/pages/banoffi.htm. Sometimes you find it spelled Banoffy or very often Banoffee (I guess the bananas and toffee (or coffee) in the recipe made people think it was spelled this way.


I have made my own variation, using other receipies I found as inspiration. Most of these other recipes have an easier base, using biscuits instead of a base you have to bake first. I decided to try 3 types of biscuits for the base. Shortbread, Digistives and very low countries, good old speculaas.


Ingredients

• 100 gr of melted butter
• 250 gr of crunched biscuits
• 1 can of condensed milk
• 2 table spoons of (brown) sugar
• 1 table spoon of butter
• pecan nuts
• 3 bananas
• 375ml cream
• sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon instant coffee (optional)
• chocolate to grate (optional)

In a lot of recipes you boil the can of condensed milk for at least 3 hours, keeping it submerged all the time. Once cooled you open the can and caramel comes out. Check the can every so often that it is still submerged!

While this boils you can crunch the 250 gr biscuits till the size of bead crumbs and mix with 100gr of melted butter. Put on a base, press it well and leave to cool in the fridge for 1 hour. I wrapped the base in cling-film first.  In this case I had the base divided in 3 one section for each type of biscuit I used.

The boiling of the can did not work for me, I probable have been to careful and let it simmer rather than boil. So instead I put the condensed milk than I  a pot adding 2 tablespoons of brown sugar and 1 tablespoon of butter. Bring to the boil and stir, stir, stir until it thickens and smells of caramel Leave to cool and keep stirring. Than spread the mixture over the biscuit base. I put of circle of pecan-nuts around the perimeter of the base. I let this cool more while I whipped the cream (with sugar to taste and the instant coffee). 

Slice the bananas and divide over the base, top with the cream (has a nice soft caramel color from the added instant coffee) and grate some dark chocolate on top of it.

Enjoy!

PS All bases are equally nice, the speculaas works well too :-)

Sweet Saturday

Today in Sweet Saturday:

Lemon and Almond Biscuits

• 155gr of melted butter
• 225 gr sugar 
• 1 egg
• zest of 1 lemon or 1/2 a teaspoon
• 6 teaspoons of ground almonds
• 170gr of self raising flour

Mix the butter and the sugar, add the egg, the zest of lemon and the ground almonds. Finally mix, in 3 steps, the flour in. Leave to cool for half an hour. Preheat the oven to 150-170°C.

Once cooled divide the dough in walnut size heaps on a buttered baking tray. Leave at least 5cm of space in between each heap, else you end up with one big biscuit ;-)
Place in the oven for 15-20 minutes until golden brown.

Enjoy!

Sweet Saturday

This will go real good with some vanilla or yogurt ice cream. It is a traditional red fruit crumble but the almonds in the crumbles make it different. Eating crumble always reminds of a day walking in Howth, Ireland, when we finished our walk in a pub eating a divine crumble.

Red Fruit Crumble

Ingredients for 4 persons:

• 500-600gr of red fruit  
• 50 gr sugar 
• cinnamon to taste
• 75 gr flour
• 75 gr butter, cold and cubed
• 75 gr ground almonds
• 50 gr sugar (incl some vanilla sugar)

Mix the fruit with the sugar and some cinnamon (last is an option). Place it in one oven proof dish or individual dishes, about 23 full.

Mix the butter and the flour, add the sugar and ground almonds, mix with your (cold) hands until crumbled. Cover the fruit with the crumbles and place it all in an oven of 180°C for 30-40 minutes until crumbles are golden brown. Leave to cool for a little, but serve still warm with some ice cream.

Once I was out of almonds and added some chocolate buttons to the crumble instead, this worked well too ;-)

Enjoy!

Sweet Saturday

Since I'm such a sweet tooth I love making desserts. I thought it would be nice to share one with you every week on Saturday, so we can all enjoy a Sweet Saturday :-)
I'll start with my chocolate mouse for which I'm rather famous with the family in law. I looked at many different recipes, combined these and honed it it further over the years.

Ingredients for 4 persons:

• 150 gr dark chocolate 
• 50 gr milk chocolate
• 2 egg yolks
• 2 egg whites
• 4 table spoons of icing sugar
• 2 dl of cream
• 1 sachet of vanilla sugar
• chocolate buttons or chopped dark choclate

Melt the 200 gr of chocolate au bain marie or use microwave, but be careful not to burn it.

Whip the egg yolks with 2 table spoons of icing sugar, than mix with the melted chocolate.

Whip the egg whites with 2 table spoons of icing sugar until stiff (white peaks) than SPOON through the chocolate mix. To make this easier mix a little through it first than spoon the rest through so not to loose the air so carefully trapped in the egg whites. 

Whip the cream with the vanilla sugar and SPOON this through the mix. 

Finally add some chocolate buttons for a little crunch. 

Put in one big bowl or individual bowls as you prefer and refrigerate for minimum 3 hours before serving.

Enjoy!