sweet Archives - Page 7 of 19

Blood Orange Hazelnut Frangipane Tart

7|08|2017

Until last year Blood Orange was this exotic, stunning looking citrus that I had only seen in pictures. Once I figured out where and when to find them, I’ve literally waited, keeping an eye out for them this year. Who else is crazy about fresh produce like me? And really how amazing is the world around us! Well, now that they are here and the season is fleeting I have a few recipes to share. Personally I find the best pair with citrus are nuts so a frangipane tart was a must. The tart didn’t disappoint at all. Bright, bold, nutty, buttery and so delicious bursting with the flavour of hazelnuts and a punch from the slightly sour blood oranges.

When Blood Oranges arrive in Australia, there is something else to look out for. The cherry blossoms. So yes, Spring is coming. We made it!

Blood Orange Hazelnut Frangipane Tart
Makes a 6 inch round tart (serves 6)

Shortcrust tart shell, store bought or home-made (use this recipe)
For the frangipane filling
100 g unsalted butter, softened
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 egg
1 cup hazelnut meal
1/4 cup plain flour
1 tsp powdered cinnamon
2 tbsp finely grated blood orange zest
1/2 cup orange marmalade
2 fresh blood oranges, thinly sliced, to serve
Fresh mint leaves, to serve

Preheat oven to 200 degrees C (180 degrees C for fan forced )In a medium bowl, beat the butter and sugar together until pale and fluffy. Add the egg and beat to combine. Add the hazelnut meal, flour cinnamon and blood orange zest and mix to combine well.

Spread the frangipane filling evenly on the tart shell. Bake for 20 minutes or until the top is slightly puffed up and golden. Remove from oven. Spread orange marmalade on the warm tart. Cool to room temperature.
Top with blood orange slices, fresh mint leaves and edible flowers. Enjoy!

Churro Bowls with Baileys Ice Cream

19|07|2017

Delicious scoops of Baileys Original Ice Cream served on warm Churro Bowls that have been dusted with Cinnamon sugar and topped with warm chocolate fudge sauce. Ice Cream Sundae has a new definition!

Winter is the perfect time to indulge in comfort food. Food that makes you warm and fuzzy from within and winter a little more bearable. Food that gives you reason to stay indoors, snuggle up near the fireplace or a heater and satisfy those innermost cravings. Food that is a sensational mix of hot and cold, sweet and spicy, crunchy and melt-in-your mouth. Get ready to be blown away people! Ice cream Sundae has a new definition. This is Baileys Original Ice Cream Sundae that is a luxurious blend of Baileys flavoured swirls on velvety smooth Baileys liqueur infused Ice Cream served on warm, bowls of Churros dusted generously with cinnamon sugar.

If you love Churros, you can imagine how incredible this dessert would taste. I am one of those people who believe that Ice cream is not restricted to a season or reason to enjoy. Paired with this Spanish classic, this is a dessert you will remember forever.

The bowls are not difficult to make as long as you follow the measurements correctly. In the end, we are looking for a dough that is stretchy enough to pipe. If you haven’t used a piping bag before, do not worry. They are quite forgiving and in the end it’s all about the taste. All you need to ensure is that there are no gaps in between the swirls. So if you have a few, just mend them with wet fingers pushing the dough to fill in the gaps.

Once piped, they would need to be in the freezer for a few hours. The great thing about this is that you can actually make a large batch and store in the freezer for up to a week. Each time a craving strikes, fry them and fill them up with Baileys Ice Cream. If you want to make a big Sundae use regular muffin pans so they will have room for at least two large scoops of ice cream. If you want a smaller treat, go for a mini muffin pan that would yield smaller Churro bowls (the one pictured above are the mini ones).

If you have leftover dough, or perhaps feeling lazy to take out your piping bags or just love it the traditional way, we’ve got you covered (just fry them straight away like regular Churros). It’s Baileys Ice Cream! Dip, drizzle, lick, eat or drink, IT IS INCREDIBLE!

Disclaimer : This post is brought to you by Baileys. As always all opinions expressed in this post are entirely mine!

Baileys Churro Bowls Ice Cream Sundae
Makes 4 large Churro bowls or 8 small bowls

1 cup (250 ml) water
100 g unsalted butter
1 cup (150 g) plain flour
¼ tsp salt
3 eggs, lightly whisked
Vegetable Oil to deep fry
2 tbsp castor sugar
1 tsp powdered cinnamon
Baileys Original Ice Cream, to serve
Chocolate Fudge Sauce (recipe below), to serve

Chocolate Fudge Sauce
75 g dark chocolate, roughly chopped
¼ cup single cream
1 tbsp brown sugar

Combine water and butter in a medium saucepan over medium heat and bring to a boil. Cook until butter melts. Remove from heat, add the flour and salt. Stir with a wooden spoon until flour is incorporated into a dough that comes away from the sides of the saucepan.

Leave dough aside for 10 minutes to cool slightly, then add the whisked eggs little at a time whilst beating the dough with a hand mixer (or an electric mixer). Beat until dough is smooth and glossy.

Scoop into a piping bag fitted with a fluted nozzle (a round nozzle will work as well). Using the back of a muffin pan (or a mini muffin pan) that has been greased well, pipe in circles around the elevations/moulds. Make sure you space them apart so they don’t stick to each other. It is best to pipe around alternate muffin moulds. Place the muffin pan in the freezer for 4-5 hours.

When ready to serve, remove the pan from the freezer. Gently release the piped dough from each mould. This should come away easily. In a shallow plate mix the castor sugar and powdered cinnamon to make cinnamon sugar. Deep fry the churro bowls till crisp and golden brown. Using a slotted spoon transfer the churro bowls on to a plate lined with a paper towel. Dust them with cinnamon sugar. Cool for 10 minutes. Top with Baileys Original Ice Cream. Serve with chocolate fudge sauce, crushed honeycomb and cherries (or seasonal fruit).

To make the Chocolate Fudge Sauce, combine all the ingredients in a microwaveable mug and microwave in short bursts of 10 seconds, then stir to blend until mixture is smooth.

Raspberry and Pumpkin Mini Cakes

13|07|2017

Autumn came and turned into winter and winter is half-way through. I realized that I haven’t made any pumpkin desserts this year. Last Autumn, I discovered the deliciousness called pumpkin in sweeter recipes and had begun to acknowledge its hype around colder months in the Northern Hemisphere. I really wish we had access to pumpkin puree in Australia. Perhaps that is one of the reasons pumpkin cakes are not so popular here. Making the puree took me longer than creating a dessert with it. Well, I am sorted for now, having made a big batch of butternut squash puree yesterday. Gives me a solid reason to take out some every other day and make a pumpkin something.

These easy peasy pumpkin mini cakes have nothing complicated or extravagant about them. Just mix and bake. The raspberries were a last minute addition since I was slightly unsure how the pumpkin alone would taste. (Oh goodness, it’s been a year since I tasted pumpkin). Logically speaking, chocolate can save any disaster but berries come a close second. So instead of chocolate chips, I threw in a few raspberries.
The next few days hopefully you will see a bit more of me on the blog. I have a huge pending list of recipes to share that I can easily turn into a cookbook:-) School holidays will be over and I am planning to spend more time documenting my kitchen experiments rather than posting photos on Instagram which has become quite the bad habit for me. Anyone else, doing the same thing?

Have a great week everyone and catch you soon!

Raspberry and Pumpkin Mini Cakes
Yields 12 mini cakes

11/2 cups plain flour
3/4 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp ground ginger
1/2 tsp powdered cinnamon
1/2 tsp powdered nutmeg
90 g unsalted butter, softened
1 cup brown sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
3/4 cup pumpkin puree
1 tbsp vegetable oil
2/3 cup warm milk
1/2 cup raspberries (fresh or frozen, slightly crushed with a spoon.

Preheat oven to 180 degrees C. Grease a mini bundt pan well (I use cooking spray instead of butter for bundt pans).

In a mixing bowl mix the dry ingredients together (flour, baking soda and spices.) In a different mixing bowl, cream the butter and sugar together till light and fluffy. Add the eggs and vanilla and mix well. Stir in the pumpkin puree, vegetable oil and milk. Add the flour mixture and mix till just combined. Fold in the raspberries.

Spoon into prepared pan till hall full. Bake in the preheated oven for 15-20 minutes or until a skewer inserted in the middle comes out clean. Remove from oven. Leave aside for 5 minutes. Loosen gently with a blunt knife and turn onto a wire rack to cool. Dust with icing sugar. Serve warm or at room temperature.

White Chocolate and Strawberry Tart

20|06|2017

Delicious White chocolate and Strawberry tart with a cookie crust and an orange infused white chocolate ganache filling. No baking and easy to put together.

Posting after a while now. How has everyone been? I had a lot going on these past few weeks, the first being a house move which I was totally unprepared for. We were renting this place for almost 3 years now when the owner just sold the property. The new owners wanted to move in quickly and we were asked to vacate. With a huge number of commitments and client work already scheduled for the beginning of June, I had no choice but to book the closest available house and move my entire setup into a new place. Since, I could only afford to take the weekend off from work, I figured out that there was no way I could bubble wrap all my stuff, box them and unwrap them later. So I made close to 30 trips back and forth loaded with props, backgrounds and a hundred other things so I could place them in shelves (in the new place) just the way they were before. By Monday, I couldn’t move. And then realizing the greatest fear of all, food photographers would relate to. Light!!! The angle and direction of light was entirely different and I spent a few frustrated days trying to figure out the best solution.Finally, things have settled down…well, sort of, and life is getting back to normal again.

In the middle of all this chaos, the oven in the new house gave me a bit of trouble as well so I just gave up temporarily and started creating no-bake recipes. Always think positive, right? When it comes to desserts, there are enough options, thankfully. Yay! This White Chocolate Tart has a cookie crust made with digestive cookies. I’ve experimented with a number of cookies before and digestive cookies were on my mind for some time, just to find out if they would be a lighter version of the rest. Oreos are generally the best bet when it comes to a no bake cookie crust but I didn’t want a chocolate crust for this tart. The filling is white chocolate ganache infused with freshly grated orange zest that balances out all the sweetness. The idea initially was to create an orange tart until I discovered on that day that our winter strawberries had hit the markets. We are so lucky to have two strawberry seasons in Australia. Look how big, juicy and red they are! The White Chocolate and Strawberry tart comes together quickly and needs no special skills to make. If you’ve always hesitated to make a tart the traditional way, give this a go for sure. There is hardly a thing that could go wrong here. Play around with seasonal fruits that are available near you or simply decorate with grated white or dark chocolate.

White Chocolate and Strawberry Tart
Makes a 14 x 5 inch rectangular tart or a 9 inch round tart.

250 g pack of digestive cookies
100 g unsalted butter, melted
250 g white chocolate, roughly chopped
130 ml heavy/thickened cream
40 g unsalted butter, roughly chopped
1 tsp finely grated orange zest
Fresh strawberries to top

Process cookies in a food processor until fine crumbs form. Add the melted butter and mix till well blended.

Press the cookie mixture into the bottom and edges of a rectangular tart pan (14 inch x 5 inch) with a removable base. Use the back of a spoon (and your fingers where necessary) to evenly spread out into a neat tart crust. Place the tart pan onto a plate (this makes it easier to move the tart in and out of the fridge.). Refrigerate for 30 minutes or until crust is firm.

While the crust is in the fridge, heat the cream in a medium saucepan over low heat until it just comes to a a boil (do not boil). Remove from heat and add the chopped white chocolate. Leave aside for 5-10 minutes until chocolate melts. Add the butter and the orange zest. Mix.

Cool the white chocolate mixture slightly and pour onto the prepared crust. Refrigerate until set (about 2 hours). Serve with fresh strawberries and fresh basil leaves.

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