Tuscan pine nut cake

I was having a dinner the other evening for a few neighbourhood friends and in anticipation of our trip to Sienna this fall I decided on Tuscany as a theme.  I found this recipe on yummly.com It was from a food blog called Jul's kitchen, Recipes and stories from Tuscany. This is a blog I think I will be returning to. I also made it for Easter dinner as there was something about it that reminded me of Easter, maybe all the eggs, and it was very very good.

• 180 g of butter at room temperature
• 150 g of sugar
• 3  eggs
• 180 g of  flour
• 10 g of baking powder
• 1 handful of shelled pine nuts

For the custard:

• 3  egg yolks
• 4 tablespoons  flour
• 500 ml of  milk
• 2 tablespoons of raisins, soaked in Vinsanto, Tuscan sweet wine or sherry

Make the custard first as it needs to be cool when you add it to the cake. Heat the milk in a saucepan until it starts to simmer, whisk the egg yolks with the sugar and flour, then pour in the hot milk in slowly whisking continuously with a whisk. Put the custard on a low flame and stir constantly until it begins to thicken: remove it from the heat, add the raisins and let it cool. I did not have a raisons or vinosanto unfortunately, so I used dried cranberries soaked in sherry and it worked just fine.

Preheat oven to 180°C.

Whip the butter at room temperature with the sugar for a few minutes until it becomes creamy and light. Add the eggs gradually, one after the other, waiting for the first to be completely mixed before adding the second. Stir in the flour sifted with the baking powder.

Grease and flour a 23 cm wide spring form pan

Separate the dough into two equal parts put half the batter into the prepared tin and level the batter off.

Spread the cold custard over it.

Pears poached in red wine

When shopping on the weekend we found these beautiful little pears.  They were about half the size of a normal pear, and we thought it would be a good idea to poach them for dinner. This was really easy and spectacularly good.

1 pear per person, we cooked 7 for 5 people as they were small

Equal quantaties of red wine and water I used 2 cups of each

1 cup of sugar for 4 cups of liquid

1 cinimin stick

5 cardamon pods

1/4 cup of toasted almonds to serve

Peal the pears leaving whole and the stalk on the top. I sliced a little off the bottom of some of the pears so that they would stand upright for serving.

Mix all the ingredients in a deep sided pot and bring to a boil.  Add the pears and turn down to a simmer, there should be enough liquid to cover the pears, though they do tend to float.

Cook until a sharp knife slides easily into the pears, they should be cooked through and soft but not falling apart.

The pears will now have taken on a beatiful red purple colour as well as absorbing the flavours form the poaching liquid.

Take out the pears and place on the serving dish, to cool down.

Crank up the heat under the poaching liquid and simmer down to about 1/2 cup of syrup.  You really need to watch at the end as it can go too thick very quickly. Pour the syrup over the pears.

Just before serving sprinkle with toasted slivered almonds these not only look good, but add a crunchy texture to a soft desert.

This would be delicous with vanilla icecream, but as we did not have any we served it will vanilla greek yogurt and actually that was very good too.

Els's mess

There is a traditional English dessert called Eton Mess, which consists of crumbled meringue whipped cream and strawberries.  Very easy and actually rather good. This variation on the Eton Mess was done by a new friend who I met whilst staying with a friend on my quick trip to England.  We were having a small dinner party one night and Els offered to make her signature dessert. She did not have a name for it, but due to it's resemblance to Eton Mess we called it Els's Mess.

Very quick and simple but it really needs to be put together at the last minute or the meringue will go soggy. Hard for me to give quantities here as really you can make as little or as much as you want depending on the number of people for dinner, but here are the basic ingredients with proportions.

Pre made or bought meringue (about one nest per person)
Greek yogurt (If you use 0% this is actually quite a light dessert)
Lightly whipped cream (equal quantity to yogurt)
Lemon juice (juice of one lemon to about a cup of yogurt)
Frozen raspberries and blueberries (about a 1/4 cup per person)


Earlier in the day crumble half the meringue in to the bottom of the individual serving dishes we used cut glass tumblers.

Mix the yogurt and cream together and add the lemon juice.  I think I would add some lemon zest as well to punch up the flavour even more.  Keep the yogurt/cream mixture in the fridge until ready to assemble.  I think you could make this with just yogurt as long as you had a good quality Greek yogurt, then it would be almost a diet dessert!

Meyer lemon custard

Over 20 years ago I went to Greens restaurant in San Francisco for the first time and we ordered the meyer lemon custard.  I had never had meyer lemon and you could not possible get them up here in Canada.  But that custard sticks in my mind as being one of the best desserts I can remember having.  Meyer lemons are rounder than regular lemons and though they have a lemon flavour they are not nearly as sour. Any way when I found 3 meyer lemons in the fridge at Pender Harbour I had to try and recreate that memorable custard. If you are not lucky enough to stumble upon meyer lemons in your fridge or the store, then you could use oranges or regular lemons just up the amount of sugar.

2 of the 4 of us are lactose intolerant and so I used lactaid milk and it was fine, I am sure I could not tell the difference. You could make these richer (and higher in calories) by using coffee cream.

 4 eggs
1/2 cup of sugar
3 cups milk
3 meyer lemons

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C).

Whisk eggs and sugar in a bowl until lightly beaten.

Add milk, the zest of one lemon and the juice of all three then beat until incorporated. Pour mixture into six  ramekins or 4 ramekins and one larger dish if that is all you have . Arrange  in a roasting tin and pour enough water into the roasting tin to cover ramekins halfway up the sides.

Lime and blueberry pavlova

I am not a big dessert person and I rarely make one unless I am entertaining and sometimes not even then.  But I had some lime curd left over from making the coconut lime cake last week and it seemed a pity to see it go to waste.  Cooking for an appreciative audience is always a pleasure and I knew if I made a meringue based dessert I would have an appreciative audience in Nancy who loves meringues and pavlovas.

And so a dessert is born

4 egg whites
1 1/2 cups icing sugar

Lime or lemon curd, you could buy this if you did not want to make it.

1 small carton of whipping cream whipped

Preheat oven to 250. Place the egg whites in the bowl of an electric mixer and beat until stiff peaks form. Gradually add the sugar, when it has all been added beat for 5 minutes until the mixture is thick and glossy. 

You could just dollop this on to a parchment paper covered cookie sheet, or, as I did pipe it into two equally sized oblongs. I had marked out shapes on the paper and then turned it over.

Ecuadorian chocolate brownies

When we were in Ecuador we visited a chocolate factory and we brought home a large puck of unsweetened chocolate so for our Ecuadorian reunion I had to use this to make dessert.  One because we had bought it in Ecuador, but two because it was a lot of chocolate and would make dessert for a large crowd.

Luckily this came with a recipe on the package, or it would not have known how to use it.

The quantaties were large and the directions a little cryptic, but I think this could be used by halving the amounts and using unsweetened chocolate to replace the large puck which comes in a more conventianal bar.

I melted the butter and chocolate over a very low heat, my stove has a melt setting on one of the burners, and I got to use it for the very first time.

While this was melting I whisked together the eggs and added the vanilla.  I also added one tablespoon of chili powder.  In this quantaty of chocolate this did not make them hot but just added a little depth of flavour.

Chocolate molten centre cakes

Part of the joy of the annual girls weekend for me, is fulfilling my friends visions of food.  This year Hugette mentioned that she wanted chocolate molten centred cakes for her birthday dinner, so that is what I made.  I am afraid due to low light the pictures are not as good as they could be, but this was really easy and worth every minute.

The recipe I found was from Anna Olsen on the food network I liked the idea of placing a ball of ganache in the centre of each cake rather than timing to under cook it so the middle was still runny.  I have to say it worked like a charm. This recipe is for 4 cakes so I had to double it and then it made 12 the size of a large muffin tin.


Ganache
1/4 cup whipping cream
2 ounces bittersweet chocolate, chopped, chocolate chips

Molten Cakes
1/2 cup butter, cut into pieces
4 ounces bittersweet chocolate, chopped, or chocolate chips
2 large whole eggs
2 large egg yolks
1/4 cup sugar
2 tablespoons of flour
icing sugar, for dusting (not done but it would have looked nice)
Assembly



For the ganache, heat the cream until it just begins to simmer and then pour this over the chopped chocolate. Let this sit a minute, then gently stir until the chocolate has fully melted and the ganache is smooth.

Clafouti

For dessert for French Bastille Day day dinner clafouti was requested. Clafouti is a very traditional french dessert, usually made with cherries, but other fruit in season such as plums and blackberries can be used.  But we are in cherry season so we used cherries and in honour of Julia Child's 100th birthday on August 15 this year we stuck pretty close to Julia Child's original recipe.

Recipe for 6 servings

1 1/4 cups milk
2/3 cup sugar, divided
3 eggs
1 tablespoon vanilla
1/8 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup flour
3 cups cherries, pitted
powdered sugar, for garnish


Preheat oven to 350, combine the milk, 1/3 cup sugar, eggs, vanilla, salt and flour. You could use a blender, but I used a whisk and a bowl.


Lightly butter deep pie plate or some other similar baking dish, and pour a 1/4-inch layer of the blended mixture over the bottom. Set remaining batter aside. Place dish into the oven for about 7-10 minutes, until a film of batter sets in the pan but the mixture is not baked through. Remove from oven (but don’t turn the oven off, yet).

Distribute the pitted cherries over the set batter in the pan. I have to say thank you to Helen for pitting all these cherries, we had to make two dishes and that was a lot of cherries.

Individual pavlovas

My good friend Nancy's favourite dessert is pavlova, or in fact any dessert made with meringue, when she heard that I had made a hazelnut meringue with nutella cream she was sorry she had missed it, so I decided to make a meringue based dessert last Saturday over at her house.

4 egg whites
1 cup of white sugar
1 teaspoon of vinegar

Whipped cream and fruit

Whisk the egg whites until stiff peaks form, then start adding the sugar a 1/4 cup at a time whisking well between each addition.  After the sugar has been combined continue to to whisk for about 4 minutes, the meringue should be stiff and glossy and the sugar should be dissolved completely add the vinegar and whisk for a further minute.

Plop the meringue on to a parchment paper lined cookie sheet and shape into rough nest shapes.

This made 6 nests, but you could of course just make one large one.

A close up of one of the nests

Hazelnut meringue with nutella cream

For Easter dinner I wanted to make a special dessert, and I had 4 egg yolks in my fridge left over from making custard, so a meringue dessert was in order.  I got the inspiration for this from the Donna Hay on line magazine, which I highly recommend.  The pictures are beautiful, and the lay out of the magazine is innovative, and works as a resource so much better than taking the printed version and converting the pages to screens. I changed the recipe a fair bit and my pictures are not nearly as beautiful, but it tasted great any way

4 egg whites
1 1/2 cups of sugar
1 tablespoon of cornstarch
1 cup of ground hazelnuts
2 cups of whipping cream
2 heaped tablespoons of nutella


Whip the egg whites until stiff peaks form, then add the sugar 1/4 cup at a time. Then continue to whisk for 4 or 5 minutes until the mixture is thick and glossy.

Add the cornstarch and ground hazelnuts.

Grandma Naylor's sherry trifle

Grandma Naylor is my maternal grandmother and she was a wonderful simple basic English cook.  Sadly she died when I was quite young, but there are three dishes that I make that are from her, meat and potato pie, yorkshire puddings and her sherry trifle. Every family in Britain probably has their version of trifle, but this is the trifle of my childhood and therefore in my estimation the best.  My grandmother always made it with canned loganberries, which are a cross between a blackberry and a raspberry.  But these are not easy to find here so I use frozen raspberries of which there is an abundance, and they give the same effect.

This is a dessert that can be made ahead, in fact it should be made several hours ahead to let the fruit and sherry soak into the sponge. I am not sure what custard my Grandmother used, but I expect it was birds instant custard, and that is a good alternative to scratch made custard, but really it is hardly any more work to make it from scratch and I do prefer it.

I used an old bowl that I had inherited from my Mother, but actually I do not remember which side of the family it came from, but it is a beautiful bowl and just the right size for trifle.

For the base
1 bought light sponge cake (I often buy the kind that are supposed to filled with berries)
1/4 cup (or more) medium to sweet sherry or port
3 cups of frozen raspberries

Layer the sponge and the raspberries in the bottom of a bowl, this is often made in a glass bowl to show the layers. Douse liberally with sherry, I gave an approximate measurement of 1/4 cup, but really I have never actually measured it. The raspberries can be still frozen or partially thawed as mine were or canned , if I was using fresh I would mash them a little first or even heat them slightly to get the juices running.

Sticky toffee pudding

There are some (probably the French) who say "If you want to eat well in England then eat breakfast for every meal." Though the British do make a mean breakfast I contend that where they really shine is dessert (or pudding).  I further contend that Sticky Toffee Pudding is the one of the best of all those delicious sticky dense rib sticking puddings.

This iconic British dessert is dense and moist on one hand but almost light on the other and a wonderful toffee sauce is poured over the top when warm which soaks into the rich moist cake.  I did not make my mother's recipe as I could not find it, so I used (with a little alteration) a recipe I found on Rock Recipes a blog from Newfoundland They suggested making it in muffin tins which I think is a great idea and I am going to try some day, but as I did not want to be fussing at the last minute I made it in a spring form pan.

8 ounces chopped pitted dried dates

1 1/2 cups water

1/3 cup butter

1 cup firmly packed brown sugar

2 tsp vanilla extract

2 large eggs

3 tbsp molasses

2 tbsp golden syrup (or substitute dark corn syrup)

1 2/3 cups all purpose flour

1 1/2 tsp baking powder

1 tsp baking soda

Place the dates and water in a small pot and bring to a boil and simmer over low heat for only a couple of minutes. Let stand for a few minutes while preparing the rest of the batter.

Chocolate pecan pie

Every year at American Thanksgiving a good friend, who happens to be American, hosts a Thanksgiving feast for our neighbourhood friends.  This started many years ago when our children were all small, and many were picky eaters. They are all now grown with the youngest graduating from high school this year, and so the volume of food has ramped up. Including all "kids" parents and even a couple of grandparents there were 32 for dinner and two 20lb turkeys!  

We are a group very bound by traditions, and every year we each bring the same dishes, my allotted dish is pie.  This year someone else was bringing pumpkin pie, which is an essential part of the Thanksgiving feast and so I was going to bring Pecan pie, another pie that completes some peoples vision of Thanksgiving dinner. Last year I made a  Straight forward Pecan Pie so to shake it up a little this year I made a chocolate pecan pie.

I found this recipe on Joyofbaking.com and I hardly changed it at all. The pastry that I made is my version of shortcrust pastry I made the pastry and lined a pie plate with it and let it rest while I made the filling.

Pecan Filling:

1 1/2 cups pecans toasted and chopped

2 ounces  unsweetened chocolate, coarsely chopped

3 large eggs

1 1/2 cup  granulated white sugar

1 cup  light corn syrup

2 tablespoons  butter, melted

1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract or 1 tablespoon rum or bourbon

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup  whole pecan halves toasted

Summer pudding - English food at it's best

Summer pudding is one of dishes that you can only really make at this time of year.  You can make it in the winter using frozen berries, but it is not the same.  Right now all the berries are at their height, and in the Pender Harbour IGA we even found red currents which are an important ingredient to make it authentic.

Not only are all the fruits at their height, but the weather finally feels a bit more like summer, so a no bake dessert is a welcome treat.  Traditionally these are made in a large bowl, but in the interests of time and cuteness, I made individual ones.

Per Portion

1 cup of fresh berries (raspberries, red currents, blue berries, black berries, black currents)
1 tablespoon of sugar
1 tablespoon of water
3 slices of soft white bread

Mix the berries together in a pot and add the sugar and water.

Simmer until the fruit is just giving off its juices, you do not want to cook the fruit as you want to keep the fresh fruit flavour.

Gooseberry fool

On Sunday my Father and I went out to Hopcotts market to pick up an organic chicken and see what was in season.  Much to my delight they had gooseberries.

gooseberries

This is a taste of my childhood, gooseberries were only in season for a short time and my Mother would make gooseberry fool a couple of times each season, it truly was my favourite dessert growing up as I really did not like chocolate that much (that has changed with age I fear) and have never liked really sweet things, and gooseberries like rhubarb is naturally quite tart. In fact you can make rhubarb fool exactly the same way.

I have cheated a little, basically fools are just stewed fruit mixed half and half with whipped cream, but frankly the cream in Canada really does not hold a candle to the cream in England so I decided to use Liberty full fat Mediterranean plain yogurt.

To stew gooseberries you have to top and tail them, take off the hard bits on each end with a small sharp knife.

Gooseberries that have been topped and tailed

Place in a sauce pan with enough water to not quite cover them and add some honey or sugar to taste for this many gooseberries I added about 1/4 of honey.

ready to stew

Rhubarb and blueberry crumble

Crumble was what my Mother used to make most sundays for dinner, the fruit would vary with the season, but the topping was always the same.  She really did not like making pastry very much so this was an easy way out.

Monday night I was feeling a little lazy myself and thought crumble would be an easy way out for me too. I was stewing some rhubarb to freeze and I added some blueberries that I found in the freezer left over from last year. So while the fruit was stewing, I made the crumble topping.

1 1/2 cups of flour
1/2 cup of brown sugar
1/2 cup of butter.

Beignets - New Orleans Doughnuts

When Dave and I went to New Orleans last year I fell in love with the city and thoroughly enjoyed myself, but one of the highlights was  Beignets at Cafe Du Monde . When I decided to do a New Orleans dinner I had to try to recreate them

Eating Beignets in New Orleans

I used the recipe from John Besh's "My New Orleans" cookbook and for once I did not deviate at all.

1 cup of lukewarm milk
1/2 cup of sugar
1 package of dried yeast
4 cups of all purpose flour
1/2 cup of melted butter
1/2 teaspoon of salt
1/2 teaspoon of vanilla
4 - 6 cups of canola oil
1 cup of icing sugar (I used way more)

Royal wedding cup cakes

I decided to stay up and watch the Royal wedding on Thursday night (3:00 am Friday Morning on the West Coast) it could hardly have been a worse time. The question was whether to stay up all night or go to bed and get up early.  Well the answer was go to bed at 10:00 and wake up at 1:00 am, my internal clock decided I wanted to see everything including a whole lot of filler and inane chatter from commentator's with nothing much to say.

Having said that I am glad I watched it live, and it really was a beautiful ceremony, the music was wonderful and bride was beautiful she reminded my of Grace Kelly, a wonderful role model for Royal brides.  I felt we had to celebrate at work so decided to make some cupcakes and decorate appropriately for the royal wedding.

A cupcake sitting on my Mothers English Minton China

I have based this on a recipe by Ina Garten I changed it slightly based on what I had on hand and the recipe for the icing seemed to be far too much. I was correct even with the smaller amount I made there was quite a bit left. This made 24 cupcakes

Steamed coconut pudding

Pudding has several meanings in England. Over here in north America it means a type of custard, but in England pudding is used in the same way as we use desert. It also means a dish that is steamed in a bowl this could be savoury like steak and kidney pudding or sweet like treacle pudding.

Steamed coconut pudding is one of my fathers favourite old time recipes, I don't remember my mother making this that often but when she did I always enjoyed.

Like parkin this is one of the recipes I found in the little hand written note book of my mothers recipes, and I had never made it before, in fact I don't think I have ever steamed a pudding of any sort before.  My mothers instructions as ever were cryptic at best, but I vaguely remember watching her make it when  I was young.  (I hung out in the kitchen a lot when I was little)

Parkin

A good friend in England who I have known nearly all my life was asking for my Mothers Parkin recipe she remembered how good it was.  It was something that I had not thought of in a long time but I too remember my Mothers parkin fondly, but I could not find the recipe.

But the other day when I was looking for something else,  (which I probably did not find) I came across a small notebook with my Mothers handwriting in it.  I think it was the recipes that she took from her Mother when she got married in the very early 1950's.  What a treasure, and lo behold in it was the recipe for Parkin.

I looked Parkin up on Wikipedia and this is what it said. Parkin or Perkin is a soft cake traditionally made of oatmeal and molasses,^[1] which originated in Northern England. Often associated with Yorkshire, particularly the Leeds area.  My Mother grew up in Tingly a small town very close to Leeds in Yorkshire, so Wikipedia seems to be very accurate in both the source and the ingredients.