Despite the unpredictable weather we’ve had this summer, there have been some truly glorious berries and fruit available. Succulent strawberries have been a particular favourite with us and this strawberry soup, inspired by Aran’s recipe, is a great way to showcase them.

I love the purity of the soup as Aran served it, but I wanted to gently spice it to further enhance the flavour. Not enough to be able to pick out the flavours of the individual spices, but enough to give a hint of the Orient with each spoonful.

The soup is endlessly versatile. Reduced, it makes a fantastic sauce for ice-cream sundaes or other plated desserts. You can add some gelatine and create beautiful summer-berry jellies, or go all Heston and create tiny cubes of strawberry jelly to scatter over salads with some gorgonzola. I’ve played with textures a little and added a sprinkle of crunchy strawberry granita for a bit of contrast.

This is the perfect dinner party dessert. Everything is prepared in advance and all you have to do is tumble a few berries into deep soup plates, add a scoop of frozen yoghurt, sprinkle granita on top, and then pour the ruby red soup around.

Beautiful.

This post is my entry for this month’s Waiter, There’s Something… event, hosted by Jeanne. The theme is Berried Treasure.

(more…)

This month’s Daring Bakers challenge, hosted by Deborah of Taste and Tell and Elle of Feeding My Enthusiasms, is Cheesecake Pops. Or, as I like to think of it, cheesecake-onna-stick.

My love of cheesecake is legendary and of course, I’m more than a little fond of chocolate, too. Alas, I’m firmly back on the Weight Watchers bandwagon, so making the cheesecake pops, while great fun, was absolutely tortuous. Still, I valiantly baked and dipped my pops without sneaking any “little tastes.” I did taste all the different pops after dinner, and as they’re very, very more-ish, I shall be packing the rest of them off to work with Dave tomorrow morning!

I made three-fifths of the cheesecake batter and baked my cheesecake in an 8×8-inch ceramic dish for 40 minutes and it set beautifully. It had just gone from jiggly to firm in the centre when I pulled it out and this meant that when it came to scooping the balls, it rolled really well.

It definitely pays to think up flavour/topping ideas before you put the cheesecake balls in the freezer. I came up with some fun ideas for the centre of each ball by which time the pops were solidly frozen, and pressing chopped stem ginger into the balls would have been much easier before they were frozen!

Stem ginger pops

I love the combination of hot ginger with smooth dark chocolate, so this one was a real winner for me. Next time round I’ll press even more minced ginger into the cheesecake as I found myself wanting it to be really hot.

Limoncello pops

First dipped in a limoncello-spiked lemon jelly, then in white chocolate, these pops had a great flavour but the jelly had a disappointingly icy texture. Still quite delicious, though.

Toffee pops

Dipped in dark chocolate and quickly rolled in chocolate-toffee pieces, these were awesome. I had wanted to use Dime bars, but couldn’t find any, so instead substituted Cadbury Chomp Bars which are similar but chewy rather than crunchy.

Classic cheesecake pops

Dark chocolate and a roll around in crushed Digestive biscuits equals classic cheesecake flavour in my book. The biscuits were salty in comparison to the cheesecake and chocolate, making this my absolute favourite of the bunch.

Overall, these were a huge success. I reckon that they’d make the perfect party dessert for kids and adults alike, so I’ll definitely be making them again. Thanks for choosing such a great recipe, Elle and Deborah!

(Please excuse the photo. I forgot to take one before it started being devoured. Think of this as an action shot, if it helps.)

A few weeks ago a friend of ours invited us to her birthday BBQ/garden party. Dave suggested that it would be a good idea to make her a cake as a present, to which I agreed readily. Ten minutes later a feeling of dread stole over me: a memory of someone saying that she couldn’t eat pasta. (Bear with me here.) Another ten minutes later and I’m on the phone to her boyfriend who is half-way through dismantling a tent for some reason.

Me: “I’d like to bake your missus a cake for her birthday, but I seem to remember that she’s gluten intolerant?”
Him: “Yeah. But she’s wheat intolerant too…”

A short pause ensued while I mentally swore.

Him: “Oh, and she’s lactose intolerant, too. So no cream or the like.”

Hereupon there was a longer interlude as I swore robustly.

Me: “But… what does she eat?”

Spluttering phonecalls aside, this was a real challenge and one I took to with relish. I googled the heck out of food intolerances, read vegan recipes, researched soy products, investigated the Food Intolerance/Allergy aisle in the supermarket–did you know that regular baking powder contains gluten?–and generally obsessed. If I’m going to make a cake for someone, then aside from the ultimate goal of having it taste fabulous, I’d quite like to ensure that the recipient’s health won’t be placed in dire straits.

In the end, I had two options. An almond cake flavoured with lashings of lemon or an eggless, dairyless, gluten-free chocolate cake. While the almond cake would have been easier to prepare (and with a more predictable outcome) I decided to take the plunge and try the chocolate cake, despite all the unfamiliar ingredients. Lemons, as much as I adore them, simply don’t say birthday! to me. (Well, unless it’s a lemon cake filled with lemon curd and whipped cream, but that was out of the question.)

(more…)

Chocolate brownies are always a hot topic of discussion among foodies. Which makes a better brownie? Melted chocolate or cocoa? Are fudgy brownies better than cakey ones? All very good questions, but impossible to answer. Brownies are, I think, the most individual of cakes and desserts.

These chocolate brownies are cocoa based, nigh on perfect, and amazingly quick to make. They took me right back to the days when I made a huge pan of brownies on a weekly basis for my friends at university! Brownie classification is rather arcane, so I can only say that the brownies around the edge of the tin were slightly cakey, but in the middle of the tin they were fudgy and delicious. This suits our household very well; Dave likes the firmer cakey outsides, and I love the fudgy goodness of the middle. The top of the brownies baked to a delicious crackly crust that shimmers and crunches slightly as the knife slides into the pan.

(more…)

I love chocolate chip cookies, and I’m always eager to try variations on them. These Korova Cookies have been sitting in my bookmarks for a few months now, and seemed the obvious choice when I was looking for something easy to bake.

I haven’t made refrigerator (or ice-box) cookies since I was a little girl, so I’d completely forgotten the joy of making a quick dough, squishing it into a roll and then leaving it to chill until you want cookies. Slice ‘n’ bake. I’m sure Dave thought I was insane when I started babbling to him about this. So, I shall babble here instead! Despite the effort which you’ve put into the cookies hours or days previously, it feels positively magical to just slice rounds of dough and pop them into the oven. Bliss.

The dough for these cookies will take you about five to ten minutes, less if you use a mixer. I didn’t want to dirty my food processor to chop the chocolate, so I gave myself an extra few minutes of work by chopping the chocolate which was surprisingly time-consuming. Well, most of the time was actually used in retrieving chunks of chocolate from where they’d pinged across the worktop.

These are very adult cookies. I’d hesitate to serve them to children in case they fell in love with them and ate the whole batch as they’re very dark and slightly bitter. These are the sort of cookies I’d bake if I needed to impress someone; they’d go along with the tiny coffee cups that I’d unearth from the back of the cupboard. They’re chewy, buttery, and thoroughly studded with chunks of good chocolate. One is a delight, taking a second in a moment of gluttony is overkill.

I’ll be experimenting with more refrigerator cookies over the next month–I discovered an article on them in an old Cooking Light annual with some lovely-sounding recipes. And since they’re from CL, they must be very virtuous and healthy! Therefore I can eat more….

(more…)

Wow, it’s been quite a while since I last blogged, eh? January has been a bit of an odd month food-wise… I’ve been relying on old favourites—you know the sort of thing—that I can cook in my sleep. Innovative and experimental cooking has completely gone out of the window. Maybe I’ll get back into the groove, and perhaps not. I guess we’ll see.

Yesterday was my birthday – twenty-one again, thanks for asking – and in keeping with my own personal tradition, I made a cake. This was a particularly greedy act this year as my in-laws had already given me a gorgeous chocolate-fudge cake, but it’s probably bad luck to break traditions, especially those which involve cake.

This year’s cake comes from Nigella Lawson’s newest book, Feast. I’ve had my eye on this particular recipe (Chocolate Malteser Cake) since the book came out; I can’t resist the kitsch aspect of replicating flavours, and I was also intrigued by the actual recipe. The sponge only uses 15g of butter and I wanted to know if it was possible to produce a good sponge with so little fat.

Having made the cake, I’m not convinced that you can make a really good sponge this way. It was okay, but I’ve definitely eaten better sponges in terms of texture. I’ve never personally made a good sponge—I don’t know why, but every sponge I make is sub-standard—but I’ve eaten plenty and this wasn’t a great one. The chocolate malted taste came though very nicely though.

A small tip: when making the malted milk, add the milk very slowly to the Horlicks so that you don’t end up chasing lumps around the saucepan. This also ensures that you don’t get lumps of Horlicks floating to the top of the sponge.

The buttercream was sublime though; more malted than chocolatey and very, very good.  Dave and I both commented that the cake was surprisingly un-chocolatey—the depth of colour in the sponge leads you to expect a very rich chocolate taste, but it’s nice and light. Like a Malteser, I guess. Speaking of Maltesers, they provided a great crunch, which is always good when you’re icing a cake with buttercream.

For me, the best thing about the cake was its looks; three different shades of brown, all layered together neatly. Brown is the new black!

(more…)

I am proud to present this year’s Christmas Cake! I had planned to make the Gramercy Tavern’s Gingerbread in my bundt tin; but when I spotted this recipe, posted by a friend on another website, I couldn’t resist making it.

Dave doesn’t like traditional fruit cake, so I hoped that this would be sufficiently different in order that we could both enjoy it. Alas, it was not to be! It smells like fruit cake, even though it tastes different. I think it’s the smell of dried fruit soaked in brandy that puts him off.

I made a few alterations to the recipe – I just can’t help myself…. In place of dried cranberries (I really couldn’t face a trip to the supermarket for them), I substituted natural glace cherries, chopped fairly roughly. I also increased the amount of white chocolate in the ganache to 200g. This gives a nice firm ganache which slices pretty neatly. It also stops it from spoiling too quickly. I wouldn’t keep it for more than five days with the ganache on top, though. Scrape it off and either replace it with fresh ganache or serve the bare cake with some brandy butter.

I wouldn’t advise making the cake whilst in a hurry, though. I was convinced that the cake would be ruined after I suffered a few mishaps when I made it. First the dark chocolate siezed whe I melted it – the water under the bowl boiled instead of simmering. Remember to turn the heat down after putting the bowl on top!! And then the butter softened too much by the stove, so I had a very liquid creamed mixture instead of soft, fluffy goodness. Still, it all worked out in the end!!

The cake is very dense, moist and boozy. Each bite is punctuated by small explosions of flavour from the soaked fruit and there’s a nice crunch from the brazil nuts. The dark chocolate flavour isn’t over-powering but provides richness, great colour and of course flavour, albeit more subtle than you’d expect. The ganache is smooth and creamy which provides a nice contrast to the dark richness of the cake.

(more…)

I’ve had a pack of pistachios lying around since the time I got an urge to make pistachio gelato (which came to nothing as I couldn’t find a good recipe). Anyway, whilst flicking through Sally Schneider’s “A New Way To Cook” yesterday, I came across a section on Nut Cakes. A pile of lovely, fragrant pistachio cakes suddenly seemed like a good idea.

Sally gives lots of potential variations for nut cakes in the recipe ranging from the obvious one of varying the nuts (she also recomments almonds, pecans, hazelnuts) to adding wet and dry flavour enhancements (liqueurs, essences, zests, cocoa powder, espresso powder etc etc). I’m thinking that an almond cake with some orange zest and a drop of orange oil would be really, really nice next time….

I chose to add some cocoa powder as I really like the combination of chocolate and pistachio. The cakelets turned out really well. Both flavours came through really well but I think they would have benefited from the addition of some chocolate extract. I rememebered about the bottle in the cupboard just as they went into the oven! Don’t expect the cakelets to be fudgy though, they’re fairly dry due to the low fat levels. Still yummy though!

(more…)

Every November we go to a Firework Party at a friends house. It gets crazier and crazier each year; this year the highlight was an immense 150-shot firework which seemed to light up the entire city. It was probably best viewed from several miles away…. Next year we really should rent a field or something.

As we don’t bring along fireworks (we really couldn’t compete!), I usually bring along dessert. In past years I’ve brought brownies, tiffin, and my ultimate chocolate chip cookies. This year I wanted to do cookies again, but I was a bit bored with my usual choc-chip ones, so I thought I’d try something new. Jeanne made White Chocolate & Macadamia Nut Cookies for the first Sugar High Friday event which looked gorgeous. The recipe size was a bit too big for me though, so I made my own version based around the amount of butter I had in the fridge. I didn’t use any brown sugar as I wanted a very blonde cookie with both the chocolate and nut flavours standing out. This made for a crisper cookie (adding brown sugar to cookies is a great way to ensure that they’re chewy). I also added extra chocolate chips as I’m greedy.

The cookies were a big hit! We left with a box of twenty-five cookies and came back home with four. Alas, I forgot to take a picture of the big mound of cookies (it really was very impressive). Now I need to start thinking about holiday cookies for the next IMBB…

(more…)

For some time now, I’ve been trying to acquire a copy of Alice Medrich’s “Chocolate and The Art of Low-Fat Desserts” (a mouthful of a title, if I ever heard one!), but with no success. Renee has baked several very tempting recipes from the book and they all look incredible.

After searching fruitlessly for a cheap copy of the cookbook today, I noticed that Amazon.com had quite a large excerpt from the book online which I immediately pounced upon. The Chocolate Pound Cake seemed like the perfect cake to start with and in a happy coincidence, I’d just bought some buttermilk for another cake.

The batter was very easy to prepare; there were a few moments where I did worry a little though. The butter and sugar didn’t cream together as normal due to the small amount of butter in the recipe. Instead, it looked like fine crumbs of butter/sugar. However, once all the egg had been added the mixture looked pretty normal, albeit a bit thick. The mixture did curdle quite spectacularly after the first portion of buttermilk was added but it did recover by the time I finished with the batter.

Alas, it all went awry in the baking. I think I must have set the shelf in my oven one notch too low as when I opened the door after 50 minutes baking there was a thick crust on top and squidgy liquid below. I tried out Renee’s tea-towel trick for a flat top to the loaf and that did seem to work, but I can’t help wondering if that also extended the cooking time needed. And then when I went to take it out of the tin (after cooking it longer, until a skewer came out almost clean; and letting it rest for 10 mins), it came out in pieces. One very large piece with all the crust, a large chunk from one end and then the rest was stuck in the middle of the tin. I haven’t been this upset about a cake in a long time…. After throwing a hissy fit, I patted the two large chunks together and left them to cool down. I rather morosely ate the rest of the cake that was stuck to the pan – very yummy indeed.

The cake really was very good. The chocolate flavour was intense and we have devoured the rest of the loaf (which did stuck together again after cooling). It’s especially good with whipped cream! I’d definitely try making the cake again, but perhaps divide it into muffin tins for the ultimate chocolate cupcake – just imagine some ganache swirled on top!!

(more…)