Tag Archives: dessert

Chocolate Tart

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Last night for dinner, I decided to try a new recipe and made Chocolate Tarts. They turned  out great, so I decided to share the success.

Ingredients

Pastry:
1 cup flour
2 Tbsp cocoa powder
2 Tbsp icing sugar
pinch of salt
50g butter
1 egg yolk
2 Tbsp cold water

Filling:

1 1/2 cups of chocolate chips
2 Tbsp butter
100g greek yogurt
100g sour cream
1/4 cup cream
1 Tbsp rum

In a bowl place flour, cocoa, icing sugar and salt. Add pieces of the butter to the flour and use fingers to rub the butter into flour until its appearance is like crumbs. Lightly beat the egg yolk and add to the flour with a folk. Add 1-2 Tbsp of cold water to finish the pastry.

Place pastry in the fridge wrapped in plastic wrap for 20 mins. Heat oven to 375 degrees F (190 Degrees C). Roll the pastry out – I used individual pie dishes but you can also use a 22cm spring form. Place pastry in the pie dishes, cover with baking paper and pie weights. Place back in the fridge for 20 mins.

Place into oven for 15 minutes, after 15 mins take off the backing paper and bake for an additional 5 mins. Take out of the oven and leave in tray, cool.

In a bowl which is sitting in a pot containing about an inch of water, melt the chocolate and butter over heat. Once melted use a metal spoon to stir in greek yoghurt, sour cream and cream. Place about 1/3 cup of filling into each pie crust.

Leave in the fridge for 4 hours. Serve with a dollop of whipped cream and slice strawberries.

Never fail cupcakes

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I am still recovering at home from my sinus surgery. This week has been a little more painful than usual, which makes it a little hard to do all the things I wanted to accomplish this week. I have wanted to make updates to posts, with regards to craft projects and the new backyard project, but first I have to finish them somewhat to take photos. After all a photo speaks a thousand words and that is not happening this week unfortunately.

So in the meantime, its been a week or so since I posted recipes. I have recently been trying out some recipes for cupcakes – one specifically for my son’s 5th birthday. Cupcakes, I find a lot of fun as you you can experiment a lot with them and usually end up something all will like.

I have a never-fail recipe I use as a batter starter and from there I get creative. This recipe is very easy to double if you want more than 12 cupcakes.

Vanilla Cupcake Batter (from New Zealand Edmonds Cookbook)

125g butter
1 tsp vanilla essence
1/2 cup sugar
2 eggs
1 cup all purpose flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/4 cup milk

Cream butter, vanilla and sugar until light and fluffy. Add eggs  one at a time, beating well after each addition. Sift flour and baking powder together. Fold into creamed mixture. Stir in milk. Place 12 paper cupcake cups in a muffin tray. Spoon mixture into the paper cups. Bake at 375 degrees F (190 C) for 15 minutes or until the cakes spring back when lightly touched. Transfer to a cooling rack. When cool decorate as desired.

Chocolate cup cakes
Omit 2 Tbsp of flour. Replace with 2 Tbsp of cocoa (unsweetened).

Here are some of my creations using this batter.

Lemon Cupcakes with Lemon Cream Cheese Frosting

Use the Vanilla Cupcake batter above. Once cupcakes have cooled, use a corer (like an apple corer) and take out the center. Fill the center with lemon curd. To make the Lemon cream cheese frosting:

Mix in a bowl, 2 Tbsp of melted butter, 1/4 cup cream cheese, 1 cup icing sugar (confectionary), 1/2 tsp grated lemon rind, 1 tsp lemon juice.

Frost the cupcake.

Dinosaur Cupcakes (my son’s 5th birthday party cupcakes)

For this recipe, I again used the vanilla cupcakes but I switched out the all purpose flour with white whole wheat flour and added 1 cup of milk chocolate chips. This made a chocolate chip cupcake.

 

From there I made vanilla frosting and sprinkled that with green sugar or chocolate frosting with hundred’s and thousands (colored sprinkles). I purchased little dinosaur cupcake toothpicks for decoration.

  

By the way, I loved this double cupcake tin from Crate and Barrel – it provides a way of carrying 24 cupcakes.

Peanut Butter Chocolate Cupcakes

For this recipe, I used the Chocolate flavored cupcake batter above. I placed the batter into the cupcake cups and before baking pushed a mini Reeses peanut butter cup into the center, then spooned ~1 tsp of batter over the peanut butter cup. Bake following the directions above.

Frost with Peanut Butter Frosting. Freeze 12 mini Reeses cups for 10 minutes. Use a fork or a rolling pin and break up the mini cups. Top each cupcake with one of the broken peanut butter cups.

A few of my favorite things: Rhubarb and Apples

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When thinking about my food creations and how to discuss them, nothing better described it than Sound of Music’s “A few of my favorite things” (I know, I know – I blame the Christmas TV special tradition for that reference 🙂 ).

One of my favorite things growing up was rhubarb and apple crumble, which to this day I enjoy. However, if I am feeling a little more creative and have time on my hands, I take it a step further making individual rhubarb and apple pies.

The individual pies came about while “window shopping” in one of my favorite stores, Crate and Barrel. I discovered a pie tray to make individual pies which I purchased there on the spot…..I love this equipment – http://www.crateandbarrel.com/individual-mini-pie-pan-set/s550322.

So once purchased, I had to prove to the hubby the value of the purchase – so why not make some pies. Here’s how….

Rhubarb and Apple Compote:
10-15 sticks of Rhubarb (cut into ~2 in. pieces ~2 cups)
2-3 x Granny Smith Apples (Peeled, Cored and Sliced ~2 cups)
1/4 cup of white sugar (add to taste)
1/4 cup of water

Add all ingredients into a sauce pan, medium heat. Heat the ingredients, making sure you stir frequently. You don’t want the fruit or sugar to burn on the bottom of the pot. Once fruit starts to soften I turn the heat down to low-medium heat. Continue checking and stirring the ingredients as the rhubarb and apples become soft. This process takes ~15-20 minutes.

Take compote of the stove top and allow to cool.

Some pointers:

  1. I like my stewed fruit a little tart and also somewhat think – so add the initial the water and sugar but you should add to it to get your desired result. Just remember the Rhubarb and Apples will produce their own juices as well.
  2. I use a fork to help my pulp along – I use the folk to “mash” bigger pieces. Again this is a personal preference, I like my compote to be a little chunky.
  3. I usually have enough compote to split into containers and I store extras in the freezer. Make sure it is cold when placing in the freezer and in a airtight container.

Pastry (note for individual pies I double (x2) this recipe):
1 1/4 cups plain flour
1/4 cup of icing sugar (in the US this is confectionary sugar)
90g (3/4 of a stick of butter in the US) butter cut into pieces
2 egg yolks, lightly beaten (don’t throw away the egg white)
1 Tbsp of iced water (I use water straight from my fridge dispenser)
Egg white
4 tbsp of white sugar

Sift flour and sugar into a large bowl, add butter. Rub the butter into the flour mix until it looks like crumbs. Make a well in the center, add yolks and mix flour mixture and eggs with a fork. Add water to the mixture with your fork. In the bowl, you should now be able to form a ball of all the dough. Place the ball of dough into plastic wrap and place in the fridge for 20 minutes.

Preheat oven to 415 degrees F (or 210 degrees C). Brush rim of pie dishes with melted butter.

Once 20 minutes has past, I take additional plastic wrap and place two pieces down on my countertop, place the dough on this “sheet” and flatten slightly. I add two additional strips of plastic warp on top. Roll out your dough (you want it to be less than 1/4 of an in. thick but not to thin). Cut the circle for the individual pies and press each pastry piece in place.

Putting the pies together:
Measure out ~1/4 cup of rhubarb and apple compote and place into the pastry. For each pie, cut strips from the left over pastry – I use 7-8 strips about 1/3 in. (1/2 cm) wide. You may need to recall pastry and re-roll several times. On a board, you want to lay down 4 of the pieces parallel to each other with a gap in between each strip, then with the other 4 pieces lay them on top perpendicular. Now interlace the pastry strips creating a lattice.  (This can be a little tedious).

Lift the lattice and place over pie. I use a fork to push edges of the lattice pastry together with the bottom. Trim the edges. To finish brush top of lattice with egg white and sprinkle with 1 tbsp of sugar.

Place in the oven and bake for 30 minutes or until golden. Take out of oven and let cool for 5-10 minutes. Remove from pan.

Serve with vanilla ice cream or cream. Each individual pie can be split into two and shared, if you want that is.

Modification + Rhubarb and Apple Crumble recipe:
If the lattice pastry topping is too much, you could top with crumble instead. If this is the case, cut back to only making a single portion of the pastry. I use my Edmonds Cookbook for crumble recipe – specifically the rolled oats crumble http://www.firstsearch.co.nz/fruit-crumble.html. Now with this link you have a Rhubarb and Apple Crumble recipe, as well.