It was a warm pudding we made a couple of weekends ago, after our normal Saturday roast dinner. Just like all things, the renovation and the flu and cold in the family had the best of me, and I haven't been doing much cooking and updating on the blog in the recent weeks. Updating things slowly.
I made a ginger bread peach cobbler using one of the recipes from Super Food Idea's Magazine, a simple food magazine with a lot of easy everyday recipes. This chocolate Ginger & Peach pudding / cobbler is just the adaption from that.
Chocolate Ginger & Peach Pudding / Cobbler
50g Dark Chocolate (Lindt's 70% Cocoa with Ginger)
50g Milk Chocolate
2 eggs
1 tbsp good cocoa powder
150g sour cream
200g SR flour
1/2 tsp bi-carb soda
100g room temperatured butter
150g brown sugar
1/2 tsp ginger powder (The ginger flavour from Lindt's is pretty strong, if use normal dark chocolate, use a bit more ginger powder)
815 can of sliced peaches
Cream butter and sugar.
Beat in eggs, one by one.
Melt chocolates with sour cream, let it cool to room temperature.
Mix the wet ingredients together, mix well.
Sift in the dry ingredients.
grease a baking dish, I used my 10" ceremic quiche dish.
Put in the peach slices (drained syrup).
Spoon on the batter. Bake in 190C oven for 30 - 38 minutes, dust with icing sugar.
Spoon out and serve with fresh double cream.
I made it a while ago and didn't have time to post it.
Since Febuary this year, we have been talking to the builder, the draftman and the pool builders, and kitchen makers to negotiate our home renovation. Although cooking is stress relief for me, sometimes, I just didn't have the energy any more after going around and look at different colours of paint, designs and spending whole afternoon in the hardware stores.
In a couple of week's time, I will be living without my kitchen, new one will be in, but old will be out. We are in the mode of packing, reducing pantries and fridge items, and all of the renovation dos and don'ts.
I haven't put this tart on the blog before, it was a bit of reminder of our wedding cake, a big chocolate mud cake with profiteroles filled with chocolate creme pattiserie and lots of chocolate curls.
A dark chocolate tart based on this recipe from Epicurious Website:
Chocolate Glazed Chocolate Tart
The only thing I did different was using Arnott's Chocolate Ripple Biscuit instead of chocolate graham crackers (I'm not sure if I can find it here).
Added profiteroles filled with vanilla creme pattiserie and drizzled with spun sugar, caramel to stick the profiteroles together.
Voila....
This were made last weekend? I bought some strawberries from the sales rack, not the best quality, but it's so nice on desserts, and I've promised the children something chocolate. I was playing around with a couple of things, and as usual, chucking in bits and pieces from the pantry, and I got this:
Chocolate Walnut Cake with Strawberry Butterscotch Sauce
Cake:
150g SR flour
1 tsp baking powder
100g walnut (lightly toasted in pan and grounded)
50g ground almond
50g butter
100g olive oil
100g white sugar
100g brown sugar
100ml cream
50ml milk (extra if needed)
2 whole eggs - Beaten
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp all spice
100g dark chocolate
50g cocoa
Strawberry Sauce:
80g cream
50g butter
150g strawberry
1 tsp cream sherry
Juice from Half of a Lemon
50ml water
150g white sugar
Method:
For the Cake:
1. Heat up the cream to just boil with butter and pour over broken dark chocolate piece and white sugar, stir till smooth.
2. Wait until cool a bit, add in brown sugar and eggs and mix well.
3. Sift in flour, and spice mix together and mix well till smooth, mix in the nuts.
4. Add in milk and stir through to check consistency, add a bit more if needed to be.
5. Pre-heat oven to 190C and line and grease a 20cm cake tin.
6. Bake for 1 hour and check if skewer is clean when stick in.
For the Syrup:
1. Make sugar syrup with water and white sugar.
2. Add Strawberry and cook till liquid is pink. Add Lemon juice
3. Add sherry.
4. Take strawberry out, add butter, stir through till mix well.
5. Add cream and cook till creamy and mix through.
To serve: Add sugar strawberry on top of cake and pour sauce around cake.
Luke didn't get chocolate cup cakes to bring to school, so I promised him a very chocolate birthday cake. He's into simple things, so, a fudgy chocolate cake he chose from the library book Epicure Chocolate.
Fudgy Double Chocolate Cake
120g butter
250g Lindt's dark chocolate 50% cocoa
2 cups self raising flour
2 eggs
1.5 cup sugar (I used 1 cup white sugar, 0.5 cup brown sugar)
3/4 cup milk
1/2 cup warm water
1/2 cup cocoa powder
Preheat oven to 180C.
Beat egg with sugar until ribbony and at the meantime, melt chocolate and butter.
Mix the liquids once chocolate and butter cool a little, and add water and milk last.
Sift flour and cocoa powder together into a clean bowl, and then add to the liquid.
Fold and mix well. Line and grease a 20cm spring form tin (it's higher than normal cake tin) and bake the cake for 45 minutes.
The cake might still be a bit gooey in the middle, that's fine. Cool and then chill in fridge before apply icing.
Chocolate Ganache
100g Lindt's dark chocolate 50% cocoa
100ml thickened cream
30g butter
Luke didn't like other icing, but I had to explain to him that with out another colour, I can't write on the cake... the yellow icing was the bit of left overs from his cup cakes...
Lots of chocolate for the sponge roll....
That's how we like it? Made it for the morning tea at work.
Recipe adapted from Chocolate Indulgence Magazine.
Sponge:
2 eggs
75g caster sugar
45g cake flour
5g good quality cocoa powder
pinch vanilla salt
25g unsalted butter, melted
Filling:
250ml cream
1 tsp vanilla essense
100g Lindt Dark Chocolate 100% Cocoa
100g Lindt Milk Chocolate Orange Creme
25ml Water
Method:
The Sponge:
Preheat oven to 210C.
Grease and line a 15x30cms rectangular tin.
Beat egg and sugar over bain marie, until all sugar has dissolved and mixture ribbony, light and fluffy.
Sift together flour, cocoa and salt into the egg mixture, fold gently to create a light batter.
Mix a couple of spoons of batter into the melted butter, and then carefully fold the butter mix back into the egg mixture.
Pour the batter in the prepared cake tin, and smooth out.
Bake for 10 minutes or until it's just firm to touch. Remove from oven when ready.
Sprinkle a bit of caster sugar on a clean tea towel, lift the sponge still in baking paper and turn upside down and place the sheet sponge onto the tea towel, roll up and set side to cool.
The filling:
Whip the cream with vanilla till soft peak and set a side.
Melt the chocolate, and add water to make a smooth mass.
Fold a small amount of cream to the chocolate, and then fold chocolate back to the remaining cream, chill in fridge for 10 minutes.
Assembly:
Unroll the sponge, Evenly spread about half of the filling leaving a bit of gap along the long edge, carefully roll up.
Chill in fridge for 10 minutes.
Apply some of the left over cream fillings on the outside, and as finishing touch, I warm up the rest of the filling a bit to return it to a smoother glaze, let cool and drizzle over the roulade...
Submitting this swiss roll - chocolate roulade to Aspiring Bakers #9 - Swiss Rolling Good Times ....
I love Lindt's, all sorts of flavours of Lindt's. I know there are better chocolates, but within my budget, especially when they are on sales, it's good.
The only thing is, when it goes on sales, you don't get the full flavour range, sometimes, however, it's a good time to sample the different flavours of chocolate and choose what to do with them.
This time, Lindt's orange creme filled milk chocolate.
Chocolate Orange Flavoured Cupcakes with Ganache
makes 12 medium size cup cakes
For the cupcakes:
75g Lindt's dark chocolate 70% cocoa
50g Lindt's orange creme filled milk chocolate
1 tbsp Cointeau
150g Self Raising Flour
2 tbsp dutch cocoa
2 eggs
100g softened butter
100ml room temperature milk
For the Ganache:
30g Lindt's dark chocolate 70% cocoa
20g Lindt's orange creme filled milk chocolate
50ml cream
50g icing sugar
20g butter
Decorate with a few pink jewels or hundreds and thousands and chocolate sprinkles...
I haven't made brownies for a while. Everyone loves brownies, but last time I made them, I think they were too dry and didn't came out right.
It did take a long time before I wanted to do it again, and this time, instead of other recipes I use, I just based on my gut feelings and what it should be.
So this is totally mine on the go
Dark Chocolate Espresso Hazel Nut Brownie with Rich Chocolate Ganache
For the Brownie
150g Lindt's Dark Chocolate with 50% Cocoa
100g Milk Chocolate - Chunky Hazel Nut
2 egg yolks
2 eggs
150g Self Raising Flour
150g butter
1 tbsp Kahlua
2/3 tbsp Moccona Instant Espresso
2/3 cup dark brown sugar
2 tbsp golden Syrup
200ml milk
Whisk eggs, egg yolks and sugar, until ribbony. Whisk in golden syrup and slowly incorporate in room temperature milk until smooth.
Meanwhile, melt the chocolate with butter, and add the instant espresso, mix well.
Mix the 2 liquids together, add Kahlua and mix till smooth.
Sift in SR flour.
The mix already contains a bit of crushed hazel nut from the chocolate bar, and can add a bit more if desired, however I do find adding extra nuts make the brownies drier.
Pour in 11X7 lined greased brownie pan and bake in 140C oven for 1 hour. The centre might still be a bit gooey, but let it cool.
Once cooled, make chocolate ganache using 80g dark chocolate, 30g butter and 100ml cream, add to the brownie.
Slice and share....
Cookies... they are always needed when you have growing children, great after school snacks.
Since they are no longer able to have peanut butter at school (so many allergies these days) I decided to make some cookies with peanut butter.
This is adapted from my new cook book, Home Baking Cook Book by Jacqueline Bellefontaine. I like the book because it has got all the basics, and the recipes developped on the basics.
The original recipe used peanuts and it was a Peanut Better Biscuit..
I've turned it into:
Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies
115g butter, softened
115g crunchy peanut butter
225g granulated sugar
1 egg, lightly beaten
75g dark chocolate chips
150g plain flour
pinch of salt
1/2 tsp baking powder
Method:
Beat the butter and the peanut butter together, gradually add in sugar and beat well.
Add egg, a little at the time, and beat, until well combined.
Sift in the flour, baking powder and salt into the mixture and fold in the chocolate chips, and form the dough.
Roll into a long log and cover by cling film, put in fridge for half an hour.
Preheat oven to 180C or 350F, grease 2 cookie sheets.
Slice up the cookies and place them on the cookie sheets, they will expand, so give them 5cms apart.
Bake for 15 minutes or until golden brown. Cool on rack.
I love the peanut flavour in the cookies!
Hubby always brings home some cooking magazines that I like, this month's Masterchef Mag, has got some really goooood chocolate recipes by Andriano Zumbo. They do look a bit complicated.
After rushing around for ballet mid year concert, and making pasta sheets for lasagne tonight, I thought I might just go for something easy on this mag:
Chocolate Pear Almond Pudding
Recipe adapted from May edition of MasterChef, quantity alterred to suit 5 x 1 cup ramekins.
30g unsalted butter, plus extra for greasing
1.5 Beurre Bosc Pear
100g self raising flour
100g brown sugar
20g almond meal
100ml milk
1 egg - lightly beaten
75g dark chocolate, 70% cocoa
Chocolate Sauce
40g unsalted butter
90g brown sugar
20g dutch cocoa
160ml hot water
Method:
Grease the ramekins, place sliced pear at the bottom of ramekins and pre-heat oven to 180C.
Place milk, chocolate and butter in a saucepan, on low heat, stir till smooth, take off heat and cool for 2 minutes.
Stir in egg, mix till just combined.
Sift in sugar, almond meal and flour. Mix till combined and share the mixture between the 5 ramekins over the pears.
Make the chocolate sauce, place all ingredients in a small saucepan and place on low heat and bring it to a slow boil. Stir till all melted and smooth.
Pour chocolate sauce into ramekins to fill up.
Bake for 15-20 minutes or until puddings have risen.
Dust with icing sugar, and serve with peach icecream....
I have always been wondering if I can make children's favourite after school snack in a less guilty form? Like, add in a bit more fibre?
This is just a play on the recipe, as I've never tried making cookies with wholemeal flour before. However, children love them, they couldn't taste if they have got some different flour in them... Shhhh... do not tell... I hope they are not reading my blog...
Wholemeal Chocolate Chip Cookies
100g fine wholemeal flour (I used Roti Flour from Indian grocery shop)
85g self raising flour
3 tablespoon brown sugar
2 tablespoon white sugar
1 tablespoon golden syrup
2 tablespoon fresh cream
2 egg yolks
125g butter
40g cocoa powder
50g dark chocolate chips
Icing mixture
Cream butter with sugars, until smooth and ribbony, mix in the egg yolks, mix in the cream - roti flour is dryer and the bit of cream made it a bit easier. Fold in golden syrup, and sift in flour and cocoa powder.
Mix in the dark chocolate chips.
Shape the cookies... It works best if it can be shaped in a long log and rolled up in cling wrap, sit in fridge for half an hour and cut into 0.5cm - 1cm slices, it will expand a bit so place the cookies on the baking paper a bit apart from each other.
However as I was watching the shows on TV, I just rolled them out into little balls and pressed down.
Dust with icing sugar and in the pre-heated 200C oven for 12-15 minutes.
Enjoy!
We do prefer fresh fruits most of the time. This year, we had plenty of peaches. However, as the season ends, I found maybe, I want a bit more of the peaches for dessert... Well, we always have the cans.
Anyway, this is a very simple gelati, that we enjoyed after dinner the Saturday night before and we used it on the banana pancakes the next day morning.
Peach Gelati:
825g Can of Peach in Syrup
250ml cream
4 tablespoon sugar
Put peach together with syrup in a medium saucepan with sugar, over low to medium heat, slowly bring it to boil, turn to low heat. Add cream and gently cook till gentle simmer, turn off heat.
The canned peach slices are not likely to break like the fresh ones, so need to mash it up when it's soft. Cool the mixture till room temperature, and chill in fridge 2 hours before serving dessert. Once cooled down a bit further, churn in icecream maker.
To serve, we used
Chocolate Sauce and Almond Flakes:
100ml fresh cream
80g milk chocolate
Warm up fresh cream, either in a small saucepan over low heat or use microwave. Pour over chopped up milk chocolate, stir and mix till smooth.
25g almond flake, toasted.
Banana Pancakes:
1 Ripe banana, mashed
2 eggs
200g self raising flour
4 tablespoon white sugar
300ml Milk
30ml canola oil
Bring milk to room temperature. Whisk eggs with sugar, slowly mix in the oil and milk, until smooth and add in the sifted flour and bananas. Leave the batter for around 30 minutes and make pancakes on non stick pans over medium heat.
Scoop gelati on pancake stacks and drizzle with honey.
Do we have hot cross buns for Good Friday? Of course, we have them for breakfast...
Children, the younger two, don't like the traditional fruit buns. Luke doesn't like saltanas, raisens, and Monique doesn't like peels.
So normally, I make a batch of chocolate chip ones for them, but this time, as I promised to make more fruit ones to MIL, we are only doing the chocolate chip ones for Good Friday.
I was playing around with the cross recipe and definitely the crosses are not the best for the buns, the stripes method didn't work.
For 6 Big Chocolate Chip Hot Cross Buns:
25g butter
7g dry yeast
300g plain flour
1 tsp ginger powder
2 tbsp cocoa powder
2 tbsp sugar
1 pinch of salt
220ml milk
2/3 cup chocolate chips (roughly)
Bring milk sugar and butter into a slow boil, cool to lukewarm and add in yeast and let it activate.
Put salt, flour, cocoa powder, ginger powder in a large kneading bowl, and make a well. Put frothy yeast mixture in there, and slowly to combine into a soft dough. Work the dough till elastic and fold in the chocolate chips. Set to proof under damp cloth or closed container.
Once double the size or more, shape them into buns and set to proof again, for around 30 minutes to an hour depending on room temperature. Pipe on crosses (mine was too stiff this time, it needs to be a runny paste, usually it's just plain flour and water, cocoa was added to make the chocolate cross)
Bake in pre-heated oven 190C for 20-25 minutes and brush on glaze when hot.
Glaze:
1 tbsp sugar
1/4 tsp gelatine
2 tbsp boiling water.
Enjoy a chocoholic Easter!
I have a whole family of chocoholics... the more the merrier. So I was quite confident that the pancakes would work, with a lot of chocolates as well.
Sunday lunch, always pancakes, because children really love their treats. Even though we have ballet lessons to go to, pancakes are still do-able and on the menu.
Triple Chocolate Jaffa Pancakes
80g milk chocolate - chopped into pieces
50g butter
200g self raising flour
1/2 cup dark chocolate chips
2 tbsp cocoa powder
zest of 2 oranges
1 tbsp orange juice
2 eggs
300ml milk
4 tbsp sugar
Melt milk chocolate with butter, let it cool a little.
Beat eggs with sugar till pale, and mix in the chocolate mixture.
Add room temperature milk, cocoa powder and orange zest and juice and mix well.
Sift in flour and form a smooth pancake batter.
Fold in the chocolate chips before frying in pan.
I must admit it's a bit tricky to work with the chocolate chips, I had to stir the batter after each pancake to make sure there are chips in each one of them...
I've had this book for a while, it's an old cook book, a basic one for making good pastry, it's Le Cordon Bleu's Home Collection - Tarts & Pastries.
I've used this book for short crust and puffed pastry, I don't like shop bought frozen pastry. They are so much better home made properly. I normally have other recipes for choux, but this time, it's the first time for me to use this book for choux.
We had team morning tea again at work, and I thought it would be nice to make mini eclairs, it will be good treat for those who want to watch their waist line, as they are small.
The recipe on the book make 12 eclairs, I made 20 mini ones.
For 1 quantity choux dough:
75g plain flour
50g unsalted butter
pinch of salt
2 tsp caster sugar
2 eggs (I use 59g large eggs)
Recipe called for 125ml water, I do use half milk half water in this recipe instead of just water.
sift flour into a clean baking sheet.
Place water, salt and sugar and butter into a pan, and slowly bring it to boil, remove from heat, add flour all at once. Mix well with a wooden spoon. Return to the heat and mix until a smooth ball forms and dough leaves the sides of the pan.
Remove from the heat and place the dough in a bowl, lightly beat the eggs in a small bowl, using a wooden spoon or electric beater, add egg to the dough a little at a time, beat well after each addition, until it's smooth, thick and glossy.
Preheat oven to 180C.
Pipe the dough onto a clean baking sheet (I used my silicon mat) and since I'm making mini ones, they are shorter than the normal 8-10 cms specified by the recipe. Lightly brush with a beaten egg, but don't let it drip down the sides. Gently press with a fork.
Bake for 30-35 minutes until crisp and golden - immediately remove and cool on rack.
Pastry Cream (Creme Patisserie)
250ml milk
1 tsp vanilla essence
2 egg yolks
60g castor sugar
1.5 tbsp plain flour
1.5 tbsp corn flour
Chocolate Ganache
75g chocolate, into small pieces
75g double cream.
To make the pastry cream, place milk and vanilla into small saucepan and slowly bring it into boil. In a clean bowl, whisk egg yolks with sugar until light in colour.
Sift in flour and corn flour and mix well until smooth.
Pour half of the boiling milk into the yolk mixture, mix well and return all back to saucepan, with the remaining milk, bring to boil, whisk constantly, for a minute. Remove from heat, put it into a shallow tray to cool quickly and cover surface with baking paper to prevent skin forming. Let cool completely.
To make ganache, boil the cream and pour over chocolate and whisk well till all melt.
The next thing to do, is to cut a small hole in the end of the eclairs and pipe cooled cream into it, and spread with ganache, on patty pans, and cool to let ganache set....
This is the cake with the lot, for the BBQ party last Saturday. And a lot of pain. Not from the Berry Macarons, not from the Joconde Imprime or the Milk Chocolate Bavarois, but the jelly, the easiest one to do!
Thanks to the Daring Baker's Challenge in January, my last cake of this type was a crowd pleaser in the last BBQ party. This time, we have a much bigger crowd so I'm thinking of a larger cake. I made the wrapping slightly taller and instead of the dark chocolate, I used milk chocolate this time, with a bit less sugar in the bavarois cream.
Another plan, well, initial plan was to make mixed berry mousse to set on top of the bavarois. I made enough berry coulis for the mousse and butter cream (of course the butter cream didn't work out). It was a last minute decision to make jelly instead of mousse.
For some reason, it went over the cake and spilled, leaked out of the cake... I'm not sure if it was because I forgot to line the baking paper inside the ring.... and I was sooo depressed at the time, the butter cream and the jelly, I almost threw the cake to the wall...
Hubby calmed me down. It might not be the prettiest cake because the joconde is soaked with jelly a bit, so part of the cake looked a bit more purple than the other, it was already late at night, I started the whole gig a bit too late in the afternoon, juggling between macarons, joconde, bavarois and dinner, the party is mid day the Sunday, there was probably not much time to make another one if I need to set the bavarois, jelly or mousse, or whatever.
And I needed some sleep, as hubby put it.
So, bright and not so early the Sunday morning, after a batch of pancakes for breakfast, I felt it's time, to get the cake up to something presentable.
I whipped some cream with a bit of cocoa powder and a bit of red and blue food colouring to cover the cracks and make some pattern, so the different colours of joconde wouldn't be so obvious, and there was some where to stand the macarons.
Temperred some chocolate (70% cocoa dark chocolate) with some of the berry butter cream melted together, and spread on silicon mat, made some patterns and got some chocolate bark...
It doesn't look so bad after all..
And no one at the cake suspected there was a major drama about the cake... They loved it, bavarois was light, macarons are nice, and not so heavy after so much meat from the Barbe... Have promised our friends will try harder next gathering...
