Individual Apple Upside Down Cake - Pudding

We only have Bianca around every second weekend, and that's usually the weekend I make some desserts after dinner.

We love our sweets, but not the sizes of our waistline so we usually move the cakes and cookies to afternoon snacks, smaller portions and hopefully eating at a earlier time will help us burn some of those calories off.

It's winter, so out of abundance of fresh apples, I decided to make another apple dessert.

Individual Apple Upside Down Cake - Pudding
Make 6
1 large granny smith, braeburn or pink lady apple, skinned, sliced.
6 tbsp sugar
2 tbsp water

Place water and sugar in a small clean saucepan and slowly bring it to boil.  Wait until caramel is getting a little bit blonde and add apples.   Cook until apple slices are getting a bit transparent.

Grease 6 ramekin moulds with a bit of butter.  Share the apple with the caramel to each mould.

For the Cakes:
80g softened butter
150ml milk
100g self rasing flour
1 tsp cinnamon powder
1 tsp vanilla essence
50g white bread crumbs
1 tbsp maple syrup
4 tbsp castor sugar
2 eggs

Cream butter and sugar until pale and fluffy.  Beat in eggs, one by one.
Sift flour, cinnamon powder into another clean bowl.
Beat in room temperatured milk with the butter mixture and vanilla until smooth.
add flour, mix well and fold in bread crumbs.

Share into the moulds and bake in 150C oven for 45 minutes.

Serve with whipped cream, or, chocolate mousse?

Moist Apple Tea Cake

Hmmm.. I know something is playing my mind... what was I thinking.  I mean earlier on, I bought some condensed milk.  They have been sitting on the shelf for a while and I never really liked them as they were just too sweet.

And after the Masterchef's cans and frozen challenge, I thought, might find some way to use up some.

After using up some for pancakes, I found myself using the rest of the condensed milk, stewing some apples.  Big mistake.  It looked... funny.

Anyway, to rectify what I've done to the apple and condensed milk, I made this Apple Tea Cake, which is actually quite moist...

Apple Tea Cake

150g Self Raising Flour
2 eggs
50ml milk
150ml sweetened condensed milk
2 large apples (pink lady) sliced
1/2 tsp cinnamon powder
1/2 tsp all spice powder
100ml canola oil
1 tsp vanilla essense

First of all, of course, stew the apple with condensed milk until apple pieces just cooked, set aside to cool.
Whisk eggs and slowly add in oil, vanilla essense whisk till smooth.  Add milk and whisk till smooth, then sift in flour, and spices.   Add in the apple condensed milk mixture.
Bake in a greased loaf tin (I used my silicon tin) in a preheated 190C oven for 40-45 minutes or until golden brown. 

It's a very moist cake and does take time to cook..

Spiced Triple Chocolate Love Heart Cake with Macarons

It was Bianca's birthday a week before, but we didn't have her over until last weekend.  She told me after Monique's birthday cake, that she'd like to have a love heart cake, that kid, since she was little, she's always full of love, and loves to feel love.

My initial plan was a white chocolate mousse cake with strawberry jelly, use the strawberries to form a love heart.  But the cake wouldn't survive a trip down to Mornington in 30C heat as we decided to bring the cake down to Mother in Law's, and share the birthday cake with her.

So I made a cake that family love, and would survive a car trip of over an hour in a hot day.

I used a 20cm round spring form and a heart shaped mini tin.

Spiced Triple Chocolate Love Heart Cake with Macarons

100g milk chocolate
100g dark chocolate (70% cocoa - I used Lindt's)
5 egg yolks
1 large egg
50g dark chocolate chips
1 tbsp golden syrup
1/2 tsp all spice powder
1/2 tsp ginger powder
1 tsp cinnamon powder
200 g Self Raising flour
100ml whole milk
2/3 cup brown sugar (firm packed)

Preheat oven to 160C, line and grease the spring form, grease the heart tin.
Melt the chocolate.
Cream butter with sugar, beat in egg yolks and egg till smooth. 
Add chocolate and syrup to the mix, keep beating.
Sift together spices and flour into the mix, add milk and mix till smooth.
Fold in the chocolate chips.
Scoop batter into the pans and bake cakes, 20 minutes for the small one in heart shape tin and 40 minutes for the big one, cool on rack.

Put the cakes into the freezer.

And.... make the macarons...

Go out for dinner.  The cake need to be chilled before it can be shaped.
Make the chocolate butter cream - the same batch used in the macarons.

Shape the round cake using the shape of the small one, slice the top of the cake to be level.

Apply the chocolate butter cream. 

Add the macarons on top, sides and the writing...

Lemon & Coconut Cake - Olive Oil and Fat Free Yoghurt Version

We've got some guests this week, and time for me to get baking again.

Apart from the baked cheese cake, the naughty snack, I had to bake some thing a bit healthier.

So here it is:

Lemon & Coconut Cake with Olive Oil and Fat Free Yoghurt

Ingredients:

200g Self Raising Flour
3 Large Eggs
100g white sugar + 30g for egg whites
80g Desicated Coconut
100ml Extra Virin Olive oil
1 Lemon, zest and juice
1 teaspoon of vanilla extract
100g Fat free plain yoghurt
Icing sugar and some slivered almonds.

Method:

1. Seperate the eggs.  Cream yolks and sugar, and until is pale and silky.
2. Add olive oil, whisk until it's silky.
3. Add lemon zest, vanilla extract and yoghurt, whisk well until mixture is silky.
4. Whisk egg whites till soft peak, gradually add sugar to form meringue.
5. Fold egg whites gradually with the egg yolk mixture, sift in flour, mix well till smooth and fold in coconut, add lemon juice, mix well.
6. Bake for 30-35 minutes in a pre-heated 190C oven (my oven is a big uneven and unpredictable, baked a bit over today!)
7. Dust with icing sugar and some lightly toasted slivered almonds.

Healthy cake for a some what guilt free treat!

Chocolate & More Chocolate & Other Baking

Weekend is definitely the time to bake...
Well... I did prepare the dough in the morning...
I've made some sourdough ciabatta loaves for dinner, didn't really turned out to be exactly how I liked it to be, but I didn't have ricotta and thought I could use Greek Yoghurt, and did put it a bit too much salt...

Anyway, it still went alright with my Beetroot dip, which is:

3 big Beetroot, boiled and cooled.
Greek Yoghurt - around 250ml
2 cloves of garlic
2 tbsp of honey
salt to taste.
bit of home grown mint and basil (well, basil is not really part of the deal but I just want to finish off that sprig so I can plant it somewhere else and start a new plant, and it sort of went alright in the end)
and Beville Wizz to help out...


Main is the claypot chicken, bit boring eh? so can't be bothered to describe here.. I got a bit of hoisin & charsiu marinate left and just added some wine and canola, in the claypot and childen loved that dish.
Because hubby was away this afternoon and children were playing by themselves - hide and seek and DVDs... I had sometime to bake more..
So I've been thinking, what can I do...
I know my son love chocolate.. Daughter will gut anything sweet, and I haven't made them cup cakes for a long time, so I baked them some chocolate cupcake with chocolate sauce glaze, pretty simple, but they like it...

cream 150g sugar with 100g butter.

Beat 2 eggs and mix with the sugar and butter.

Sift in 180g SR flour and 60g dark cocoa (dutch processed)
3 tbsp greek yoghurt (well, I had to finish the yoghurt so it's in everything I made today)

150ml milk and I added 1tsp of vanilla essense, 1/2 bi-carb soda

and I baked them in 185C oven for about 18 min.

Iced with chocolate glaze, made up from dark cocoa, icing sugar and melted butter.

Pink is my colour, so this is her afternoon tea...

At the meantime, I thought, since I'm going to heat up the oven, why not more chocolate cake, a more adult version for hubby...

so there is the Flourless Chocolate Cake...

Melt 200g Dark Chocolate, 70% Cocoa together with 165g Butter. (you can decide how you melt it, microwave, double boiler, I melt mine in a tiny pot over low heat using a defuser, lazy person's double boiler, I did use to use double boiler)

Mix in 100g brown sugar and set aside to cool.

Separate 4 Eggs, beat egg yolks with 50g white sugar and one mashed ripe banana.

Add in 2 big Tbsp of Greek Yoghurt, add 1 tbsp of Kahlur (or any creamy liquor - I was actually looking for Baileys..)

In a bigger bowl, beat the egg whites till firm peak (I actually didn't use the mixer, I thought I need a good work out before all the calories in the baked goods!) and then gradually beat in 100g castor sugar (well, basically it's a French meringue)
Gently mix the egg yolk mixture with 2/3 cups of almond meal and mix it together with the cooled chocolate mix.
Fold the chocolate egg mixture and mix well with meringue until you can't see any white bits.
Line a deep 20cm Cake Tin (not spring form) and bake in 185C oven in water bath for approx 1 hour.
Set in fridge for 3 hours or more once cooled...

Normally family will never wait for me to dress up the cake, but I insisted with this one, and managed to spoon on the left over chocolate glaze from the cup cakes, dust with icing sugar, and even found some sour cherry jelly in the fridge....

Hubby loved it... and finally I used up all the yoghurt...

and I do have too many bananas, so targeting bananas tomorrow again? One might say, why you put the banana in the chocolate cake - well, last time I made it with orange zest and orange juice and cointeau... this time, I found I don't have so many oranges but heaps of ripe bananas, it doesn't need to be there and neither does the Greek Yoghurt, can be easily replaced by cream or just leave it out for a dryer cake....

I'd better get on the cross trainer and do some more running before tomorrow, more baking on the plan! ah.. I will plant some trees if I can find the ones I want from Bunnings, after all it's mother's day and I get to do what I want to do... which is shopping and baking.