I've used Greek Coffee, and dried figs in this bread, but some how, I wouldn't really label this loaf as being "Greek", although I do cook a bit of Greek dishes and there are a lot of Greek influences in my food.
I read somewhere that Greek coffee is the finest and used in pastry, it can be quite nice, and dried figs is the type of snack that is always available at home.
Greek Coffee & Figs Loaf
250g dried figs
300ml water
1 tsp bi-carb soda
1.5 cup brown sugar
2 eggs
150g butter
150ml sour cream
2 tbsp Greek/Turkish coffee (medium roast, not dark roast)
3 cups of Self Raising Flour
Dice the figs and place figs and water in a small saucepan, bring it to boil and then take it away from heat. Add in the bi-carb soda and stir through, let it soften and cool to room temperature.
Meanwhile, cream butter with sugar, add in eggs, one by one.
Add the softened and cooled figs mixture to the butter and egg mixture. Stir in the sour cream.
Sift in coffee and flour.
Add to greased and lined loaf tin, bake in pre-heated 180C oven for 50minutes to an hour, or until skewer comes out clean.
It's a very easy recipe, and I actually used similar method making sticky date cakes so it's a blend of ingredients?
Pretty nice with a cup of Espresso (or Greek coffee) for brekky or afternoon tea....
I had 6 egg whites left after the Daring Kitchen Maple Mousse cup challenge, 2 egg whites from the cannoli shells and 4 egg whites from the mousse.
And it has been aged for a week in the fridge, I have been doing the Challenge a bit later again, but still, I managed to squeeze in the challenge just a week before I decided to use the egg whites to make macarons, what else can be better? When I do a bit of "busy" cooking, I tend to do it during the weekends when I don't need to be rushed.
Coffee Macaron Shells:
180g Aged Egg Whites
1/4 teaspoon salt
145g almond meal
287.5g icing sugar
90g sugar
15g fine instant espresso
10g cocoa powder
Process the espresso, cocoa powder, icing sugar and almond meal in the food processor until well combined and sift.
Whisk meringue, add salt to the egg whites and start bench top mixer on medium high, and gradually increase to high, and at the meantime, slowly add in all the white sugar. Until meringue is hard peak.
Blend in the sifted dry ingredients into the egg whites, prepare the pipng bag.
I prefer to use my trust worthy silicon baking mats for macarons so piping is rather free-lance as I can't really draw circles on the silicon.
Leave piped shells to form crust for an hour, and tap the bottom of the trays to let air bubble out. Bake in pre-heated 150C oven for 12-15 minutes.
Stand till cool, and remove.
Nutella Buttercream
125g butter
1 egg
1 cup nutella
2 heap tablespoons icing sugar (add more if desired)
Whisk egg with icing sugar till pale, and meanwhile, warm the butter (I used the microwave) to just melt. Slowly drip the very warm butter into the egg mixture and whisk vigoriously - to make sure the egg won't scramble. Once it's mixed, fold in the nutella, mix till smooth and silky. Leave in fridge to cool to just below room temperature and start to fill the macarons.
I freezes the macarons if I can't use them up and they do freeze well. Great to bring some to work the next day as treats!
Coffee flavoured pancakes are not hard to make. This one is super easy. I made them 2 weeks ago, and all because...
Hubby bought some Big M, iced coffee flavour, naughty him. He's the only Big M fan at home, or any type of flavoured milk, so buying a 2 litre bottle, was a struggle for him, he bought the big bottle because that was on sales. So, how to make the iced coffee milk accepted by everyone else? Pancakes.
Big M Iced Coffee Pancakes
180ml Big M Iced Coffee
20g butter
1 egg
100g self raising flour
1/2 teaspoon bi-carb soda
Monique loved it but she could only take 2,
and hubby loved it in stacks... With maple syrup.
Monique's kinder is having a Christmas party today, and all the parents are bringing food in for morning tea after the Christmas concert.
The children did a wonderful job performing a show of Santa in Aussie Bush!
We had a big food list, and I was very happy that I got the job of providing small cakes....
I was thinking about that for a week and couldn't decide what to bring, but I ended up with 2 types of cakes: Individual Coffee Mascapone Cream Chocolate Sponge and Big Profiteroles with Chocolate Creme Patisserie and Chocolate Glaze.
I must admit that the individual cakes are largely influenced by Tiramisu, which is one of the all time favourite in the family.
I used Margaret Fulton's Whisked Sponge cake recipe as the base recipe for the chocolate sponge:
3 eggs
3/4 cup caster sugar
1 cup self-raising flour, sifted
1 teaspoon melted butter
2 table spoons of boiling water
25g dutched cocoa powder - sift with flour
Line and grease a 20cm x 30cm swiss roll tray.
whisk eggs and sugar until thick and pale and leaves a trail when lifting up the whisk (hey, that's why I bought a new bench top mixer)
Fold in flour, cocoa powder, butter and water with a metal spoon, then turn into the prepared tray.
Bake in a preheated moderate hot oven - 190C or 375F for 20 minutes or until ready.
Turn over on another tray and cool, but cover with the baking paper to retain moist.
When the sponge is being baked, make the frosting:
250g mascapone cheese
250ml thickened cream
3 egg whites
60g caster sugar
Liqueur Coffee Mix:
1 shot of strong espresso coffee, either using perculator coffee, but if pressing time, use good instant espresso coffee.
1 table spoon of Marsala
Whisk egg whites until soft peak, gradually beat in sugar, 1 table spoon at a time, until it's glossy and peak form.
Use a seperate bowl, beat cream till soft peak and add room temperatured mascapone cheese, mix well.
Gently fold in the meringue, and add in half of the liqueur coffee mix.
Spread half of the liqueur coffee mix on the cooled sponge.
use a round cookie cutter (up to each individual to decide size), cut out a piece of the sponge, the sponge is very light and rose quite high, so I actually sliced it length ways into 2 disks.
Place the bottom layer of the sponge into the cup cake casing,
Pipe the frosting onto one layer and put on the top layer of sponge, pipe more frosting to cover the top and spinkle (sift) on extra dutched cocoa powder.
The good thing about these little cakes is that they are fridge friendly and better after setting in fridge over night, so I don't need to do any rushing around for the 10 am Christmas concert!
I will update a post about the big profiterole buns tomorrow.
