Chocolate Tart with Nougat

A very easy, quick dessert.
My younger daughter came yesterday. She is a chocaholic, so dessert had to be something chocolate. Recently I was given a bar of pistachio nougat so decided to use this with the tart, but any nougat would work as it's only the topping.

I made a sweet pastry using 200g of flour, 120g butter and 70g of caster sugar, binding it together with a beaten egg. Put in the fridge for 30 mins.

Preheat oven 190C/gas5 and grease a tart tin or flan dish.

Roll the pastry out to fit the tin/dish and bake blind in the oven for 20 mins. leave to cool.

Grate 200g of dark chocolate finely. Bring 20cl of single cream to the boil, take off the heat and add the chocolate. Carefully mix together and leave to cool. Spread it over the pastry case and smooth it out. Put in the fridge for about 20 mins. 

Chop up 100g of nougat and use it to sprinkle over the chocolate tart.

Sorry, am still having problems with my camera, so photo is a bit blurred! It's an easy basic chocolate tart to make, and it can have whatever topping you fancy - chopped up Mars bar, Maltesers, rosettes of double cream, little Easter eggs at Easter etc. -  the sky's the limit!

Tiramisu Cookies

                                      Merry Christmas and a very Happy and Healthy New Year.

These are a nice treat to have if anyone pops in for a coffee or a hot chocolate over the festive period. The recipe makes about 14 cookies. The biscuits have a chocolate filling with a coffee mascarpone topping.

Preheat oven 200C/gas6 and line 2 baking trays with baking paper or silicone sheets.

For the biscuits you cream together 60g of softened butter with 90g of caster sugar till nice and fluffy. Add 1 beaten egg and mix in, then fold in 60g of plain flour. Spoon the mixture into a piping bag with a 1cm plain nozzle and pipe 28 blobs on the baking paper, spacing them a bit apart.
Bake for 6-8 mins till firm in the middle and beginning to go brown at the edges.

For the filling - put 150g mascarpone cheese in a bowl; stir 1/2 tspn of instant coffee powder into 1 tbspn of dark rum and stir till the coffee is dissolved, then add to the mascarpone together with 1 tbspn of light muscovado sugar. Cover this and put in the fridge to chill.

For the topping - melt 90g of white chocolate with 1 tsbpsn of milk and stir it till it's nice and smooth.

To assemble the cookies - spread a little of the filling over half of the cookies, put the other halves on top and spread over the white chocolate topping.
To finish them off, break up a couple of  Flake bars and sprinkle over the cookies.

These are very moreish

White Chocolate Mousse Cake

I made this as my dessert contribution to my OH's family's Christmas get together. I had a couple of bars of white chocolate in my baking cupboard, so these were the basis for the cake.
I wanted to make a chocolate sponge base with a light topping, and I'd made a similar topping for a cake before, only using a 50% dark chocolate. It's a bit of a faff to make, as it uses gelatine [not my favourite ingredient], but the results are worth the effort. Hope you think so too!

Preheat oven 180C/gas4
Grease and line a 20cm springform cake tin with baking paper.

To make the sponge base, whisk 2 eggs with 60g of caster sugar till thick and creamy. Add 60g plain flour and 1 tbspn cocoa powder into the batter and fold in. Gently add 30g of melted butter and mix together.
Spoon or pour into the tin and bake for 20-25mins till firm to touch.

For the topping, sprinkle an 11gm sachet of gelatine over 3 tbspns of cold water and leave to sponge.
Melt 200g of white chocolate carefully and add 60g butter. Stir in the yolks of 4 separated eggs.
Whisk the 4 whites into stiff peaks and also whisk 284ml of double cream into soft peaks.
Melt the gelatine over a pan of hot water, then stir into the chocolate mixture.
Fold in the double cream and then the whisked egg whites.
Pour this over the baked sponge base and chill for at least 4 hours, but better still, overnight, till the mousse has set.
Take the cake out of the tin, peel off the baking paper and put on a serving plate.
The mousse cake will keep in the fridge for 2 days, but don't recommend you keep it any longer than that.

I piped some rosettes on top of the cake to make it look more festive. I know it's not a dessert for the diet-conscious, but it is Christmas! It really just melts in your mouth.

Holly Christmas Biscuits

This is such an easy recipe, but I like the holly decoration on the top. It's a bit fiddly to do, but I think they look Christmassy and a bit different from other Christmas biscuits. The basic biscuit recipe is one I've had for years, and I saw the holly and berries idea in a baker's shop window. I went in and bought some bread and asked about the holly biscuits and the kind lady explained how they were done. So easy, and adaptable to other designs and cutters.
The recipe makes about 12 biscuits.

75g butter
50g icing sugar
grated rind of a lemon
1 egg yolk
175g plain flour
pinch of salt

Decoration:
2 egg yolks
red and green food colouring

Preheat oven 190C/gas5

Lightly grease 2 baking trays.

Beat the butter, sugar and zest together till fluffy; beat in the egg yolk and add the flour and salt. Mix to a smooth dough. Wrap in clingfilm and put in the fridge for about half and hour.

Roll the dough out on a floured surface to about 3mm thick, then using a 6cm cutter cut out round shapes. A good tip is to flour the cutter so it doesn't stick.
Put the biscuits onto the baking trays.

Mark the tops of the biscuits lightly with a 21/2 cm holly leaf cutter for the leaves and the tip of a 5mm plain piping nozzle for the berries. Chill again for about 10 mins till the biscuits are firm.
For the decoration - using 2 egg cups, put an egg yolk in each one and mix red colouring into one cup and green into the other. Using a small paint brush, paint the colours on the leaves and berries.
Bake for 10 - 12 mins till the biscuits start to colour round the edges.
Cool for a bit on the tray and then finish off on a wire rack.


     

I've bought a new set of Christmas cutters, and am going to try out this icing and painting technique with a small snowman and a bell.

Orange and Almond Cake

My friend came for tea yesterday and she loves anything with almonds, so I made this cake for her. It's simple but delicious. The recipe comes from my friend who has the little cake shop, so has been well tested!


240g ground almonds
120g caster sugar
6 eggs
50g of plain flour
the juice of 2 medium oranges
zest of 1 of the oranges
1 tspn baking powder
pinch of salt
20g butter
icing sugar to decorate

Preheat oven 180C/gas4
Grease a 23cm springform tin well, and line the base.

Mix the flour and baking powder together in a large bowl.
Separate the egg yolks and whites, then beat the yolks with the caster sugar until white and fluffy. Gently fold in the flour.
Add a pinch of salt to the whites then beat them into stiff peaks with a beater.
Add the ground almonds to the batter mixture and stir in gently, then pour in the orange juice and zest.
Add the egg whites little by little very gently till it's all mixed in, trying to keep the air in the whites.
Spoon into the tin then bake for about 50 mins till golden. Cool on a wire rack.

As you can see, I used a stencil to make a pattern on the top with icing sugar. This just made it look a bit more festive. The cake has a lovely almond flavour, complimented by the orange. It has quite a firm texture from the ground almonds, and the oranges make it a lovely moist cake.

Pain d'Epices au Miel - Honey Gingerbread.

I was inspired by a recent post on the excellent Strong as Soup blog          http://asstrongassoup.blogspot.co.uk/2013/11/black-sticky-gingerbread-random-recipe.html  to look for a recipe my neighbour gave me for a gingerbread made with honey. This is a very different gingerbread from the dark moist one on Phil's blog.
The method is unusual in that you put the dry ingredients into a bowl, then heat the honey and pour it over.
It's got a good spicy flavour and as Phil said in his post, gingerbread is great for taking on an Autumn walk, or with your afternoon cuppa, or even as a dessert with some custard.
The original French recipe used 'quatre epices' but I don't think there's much difference between that and our mixed spice, and I found some ground aniseed in a local deli, but you could leave it out if you don't like it.

250g runny honey
250g plain flour
100g caster sugar
1 tspn baking powder
1 tbspn vanilla sugar
1 tspn ground aniseed
1 tspn grated nutmeg
1 tspn cinnamon
1 tspn ginger
1 tspn mixed spice
2 eggs
10cl of warm milk

Preheat oven.160C/gas3

Put the flour, baking powder,sugars and spices in a bowl.
Heat the honey in a microwave or in a saucepan then pour the hot honey over the flour mixture.
Mix together with a wooden spoon then add the eggs a little at a time, then the warm milk and mix together.
Grease and flour a 900g loaf tin then pour the mixture in and bake for 1 to 1hr 15mins till golden.
Leave to cool in the tin and wait 24 hours before eating.

This cake keeps well, up to a week, if you wrap it in foil, so a useful standby for Christmas. Maybe a little cinnamon or ginger icing would make it look more festive? But with this cake, it's all about the flavour - spicy with a lovely honey flavour too.

Spicy Christmas Trees

We have a houseful for Christmas this year, including 2 lovely people from Poland, so thought I'd try out a few family biscuit recipes from the French friend I mentioned recently. The first one is spiced Christmas trees.
G's paternal family live in Alsace, so she's grown up with the lovely spicy biscuits and bakes they make at Christmas. I'm going to try out a few and have my grandsons help me, and then they can choose their favourites [as they're going to be here for Christmas anyway].
My daughter and dog came up for the weekend, so we roped her into helping us. She loves decorating cakes and biscuits, so she helped the boys with their trees, and the photo is of her creations. The boys didn't want their efforts put on here, so they ate them!
I expect every family in Alsace has their own recipe for Christmas biscuits, but this is the translated Ruff family one, but the decoration is the boys' idea - they wanted garlands on the trees and baubles!


100g butter at room temperature
85g soft brown sugar
250g plain flour
125g honey [I used some local honey, not the runny sort]
1 tbspn rum [opt]
1 tspn lemon zest
1 tspn baking powder
1 tspn ginger
1 tspn cinnamon
2 pinches of salt
To decorate - icing sugar and silver balls.

Preheat oven 180C/gas4        Grease and flour a baking sheet.

 Cream the butter and sugar together, then add the honey, lemon zest and rum.
Beat well together.
Add the spices, baking powder and salt to the flour, then mix gently into the batter to get a nice dough.
Make into a ball and cover in clingfilm and put in the fridge for 2-4 hrs.
Roll the dough out on a lightly floured surface as thinly as possible. Use a Christmas tree cutter to cut out shapes and put onto the baking tray.
Bake for 8-10 mins till lightly golden and cool on a wire rack.
Make up some thickish glace icing then pipe garlands on the cooled trees. Decorate with the silver balls to look like baubles.

 You could cut the biscuits out with any Christmas cutters and decorate them as you like. It's a good basic spiced biscuit to have in your repertoire.

Crumbly Plum Cake

We love plums, but despite this being a bumper year for fruit, I've only managed to find 3 lots of British plums. Victoria's are my favourite and I wish we had the room for a tree in our small garden.
I succumbed to a BOGOF offer in the supermarket and bought some Italian plums. I decided to make a cake, one with a crumbly topping and use them as a layer in the cake. The idea for the recipe came from this recipe on the Good Food site, but I used bits from several recipes in my folder to make the final cake.

If the plums aren't very ripe, I like to roast them first to add to their flavour.

Put 450g of plums cut side up in a tin, sprinkle with 2 tsbps of granulated sugar and bake them in oven 180C/gas4 for about 20 mins till they've become soft. Take out, but leave the oven on.

You need a 20cm springform tin lined with baking paper.

It's an all in one cake, so put 175g soft brown sugar. 175g butter or margarine, 175g sr flour, 2 eggs, 1/2 tspn baking powder and 1 tspn vanilla extract in a bowl and beat together till nice and creamy.
Pour the batter into the tin, then put the plums in a layer on top and pour in the juice [shouldn't be much].

Make the topping by melting 50g butter, then take it off the hob and add 50g flour, 1 tspn cinnamon, 25g oats and 25g flaked almonds. Stir them together, then sprinkle over to cover the plums.
Bake 180C/gas4 for about an hour or so till the top is nice and golden.

The idea was a crumble topped cake, but when the cake was cooked, a lot of the topping had sunk down into the cake, and the cake itself had a flapjack type of taste with a nice chewy top. You could use apples, or any fruit of choice instead of the plums. A good versatile recipe for a dessert or a cake for tea.

Pear and Almond Cake

My friend gave me some pears from her tree, so I had to use the ripe ones quickly. Pears are one of my favourite fruit, but there seems to be such a short time between being unripe, ripe and too ripe.
Another flavour we love is almond, and pear and almond go well together.
When living in France I went on several cookery courses, and the lady who ran them became a friend. Her recipes were family ones, and she's kindly let me use any of her recipes on my blog. This is one of them.
It always impresses guests because it looks like something you'd buy in a patisserie [at least I hope mine does too!], but is easy to make. I've used British cake tins and temperatures and translated her recipe.

Grease and line a 20cm springform tin and preheat oven 180C/gas4

Cream together 175g butter and 175g caster sugar and 1 tspn vanilla extract till nice and fluffy, then beat in 3 eggs. In a bowl add 175g sr flour, 50g ground almonds and 1/2 tspn baking powder. Mix together then add to the batter.
Peel and core a large ripe pear [about 300g unpeeled], then thinly slice a quarter and chop the rest up finely.
Fold the chopped pear into the cake mixture with about 2 tbspns of milk to make a nice dropping batter.
Spoon the mixture into the tin and arrange the pear slices on top, pressing them down gently so that they lie in the batter but you can still see them.
Bake for 1-1/4hrs till golden. Brush the top with a tbspn of apricot conserve or jam which has been warmed, then leave the cake to cool in the tin.

It's a good mix of textures, the almond flavoured sponge and then the softness of the pear chunks. We ate ours as a dessert with some creme fraiche, but it would be equally good with a cuppa.

Nutmeg Cake

This is a very plain looking cake, but it's full of flavour. It comes from Indonesia and has been influenced by the spice traders who passed through during the centuries. I love spices, but haven't made a cake with nutmeg before - the odd grated bit in a cake, but this one has 2 tspns of it.
It's made by the rubbing-in method and a half the crumbs are put into the base of the cake tin then covered with the rest of the crumbs which has been mixed into a batter mixture.
The recipe has been adapted from one I found in 'Bake Your Cake', a book I borrowed from the library a while ago. It's by an Australian author, but I forgot to write down her name!


250g plain flour
250g brown sugar
1 tbspn mixed spice
2 tspns baking powder
130g butter
1 tspn bicarbonate of soda
1 egg
2 tspns nutmeg
150ml milk
2 tbspns caster sugar

Preheat oven 180C/gas4
Grease the sides of a 20cm spring form tin then line the bottom with baking paper.

Mix the flour, brown sugar, mixed spice and baking powder together in a bowl, then rub in the butter till it’s like breadcrumbs.
Spoon half of this into the tin.
Whisk the egg, bicarb and nutmeg into the milk and add into the rest of the cake mix. Stir well to mix.
Pour this over the mixture in the tin and sprinkle the caster sugar on top.
Bake for about an hour till golden and nice and springy.
Cool in the tin for 5 mins then turn onto a wire rack.
That’s it! Enjoy!

iI has a crumbly texture and a lovely spicy flavour. It's also good as a dessert served warm with some cream.

Raisin, Pecan and Banana Upside Down Cake

Haven't been well lately, so no baking.
Had some family coming today so thought I'd better make and effort and make this cake. It's one I've made many times, using many different toppings, but as I had a lot of uneaten bananas thought I'd use them for a change. It's quite a big cake, made in a 26cm tin ,and served warm, makes a great dessert.
The original recipe was in a French magazine I bought when we lived there, but it's been adapted so many times that I'm going to claim it as mine!
If you like upside down cakes, this is one with a difference.

You make the topping first.
Melt 80g of butter in a heavy pan then sprinkle over 200g caster sugar and 100g brown sugar; add the juice of a lemon and 2 tbspns of boiling water. Bring this to the boil then simmer for 10 mins till a golden colour and like caramel.
Then slice 5 small ripe bananas into thick slices and add these to the pan with 100g pecans and 100g raisins. Cook for 3 mins over a high heat so that everything's coated in caramel. Spoon this into a 26cm springform tin which has been lined with parchment.
Preheat oven 180C/gas4
Beat 250g butter and 250g soft brown sugar together till creamy, then add 4 eggs. Add 250ml buttermilk or sour cream and mix together.
In another bowl sift 380g sr flour with 1/1/2 tspns baking powder, 2 tspns cinnamon and 2 tspns ginger, then add this to the batter. Mix together gently.
Pour over the nut mixture and bake for 75 mins till nice and springy.
Leave to cool in the tin for 5 mins, then place a plate on top of the tin and turn it over. Take off the sides, then the base and the paper. You should have an upside down cake!

Sorry, it's not a very clear photo, but the cake has gone so I can't take another one!

You can vary the topping to other nuts and fruit, or use different spices in the cake. It's got a good spicy flavour and a lovely contrast between the cake and topping. The bananas were a good addition and the caramel gave them a new dimension. As I said earlier, it's a great dessert with some cream or creme fraiche or even ice cream.

Hazelnut and Almond Gateau

Because we're now just 2 of us most of the time, I've decided not to join in any more challenges. I felt I was baking just for the challenges, and then we had to eat it. I know challenges are meant to do just that, but unless it's something that will fit in with us, I'm not going to join in.
So there will only be 'fancy' cakes as my Mum would say, when we have the children or visitors. But looking through my cookery books and great files of recipes, there are many simpler cakes I've never baked which we'd enjoy, so that's a challenge!
This cake came about because I found a packet of ground hazelnuts in my baking cupboard, and they needed using up. I've made this recipe before just using ground almonds, and replacing these with half ground hazelnuts worked fine; it made a slightly nutty cake. The filling is not the usual one for this recipe; It's a bit extravagant, but delicious.
It's such an easy recipe to do, and takes very little time to make. The filling is the longest part, and this could be changed to a simple chocolate butter cream or even Nutella!

Grease 2x18cm sandwich tins and lines them. Preheat oven 190C/gas5.

Whisk 4 eggs with 100g caster sugar till white and creamy. Fold in 50g ground hazelnuts and 50g ground almonds. Then fold in 50g plain flour. That's it - just spoon it into the tins, scatter 50g flaked almonds over the top and bake for 15-20 mins till nice and springy. Cool on a wire rack.

Filling:   Melt 100g dark chocolate, take off the heat and add 15g chopped up butter. Leave it to slightly cool.
Whip 300ml double cream till just holding its shape, then fold it into the chocolate mixture.Stir gently till mixed.
Put the cake without almonds on a plate and spread over the filling; put the other cake on top and chill for about and hour to let the filling set. Eat!

A nice light sponge with a nutty texture. There's a lot of filling, so maybe half the amount would be sufficient.
Nice contrast between the cake and the filling and the crunchy almond topping.