Tag Archives: baking

Prune and Ricotta Cake

17 Sep

I recently saw a recipe in a magazine for a Pear and Ricotta Tart, the pictures looked beautiful and I thought I’d give it a go. So the next time I went out to the supermarket I stocked up on ricotta (a whole kilo of the stuff) and pears. When I got home again and had another look at the recipe, it didn’t quite have the same appeal as it did the first time – maybe I was super-hungry when I first saw it or something. The other thing is, I’m not a fan of desserts with pastry…so I really don’t know what was going through my mind that day.

So now I have a kilo of ricotta and no recipe. That’s when I remembered a recipe book that I have called “The Dairy” and thought I’d see what cakes were in there that used ricotta. I’ve had this recipe book for over a year and even though I’ve bookmarked a few of the recipes I’ve never actually made any…until now.

There was a recipe in there for a Prune and Ricotta cake, it sounded nice enough, but there were no pictures to accompany the recipe. I don’t usually like to make recipes unless I’ve seen the picture. Anyway, I’m glad I did make this cake because it was delicious! It has such a light texture, the only flour it has in it is cornflour. So it would be great for those who are gluten-intolerant.

Make sure you set aside enough time to make this one, it takes two hours to bake.

Here’s how to make it:

Ingredients
150g pitted prunes, chopped
2 tablespoons marsala
500g ricotta cheese
250g caster sugar
3 eggs lightly beaten
125ml pouring cream
60g cornflour, sifted
60g grated chocolate

Method
Preheat the oven to 160°C (the book doesn’t say if that is for a fan-forced oven or not, my oven is fan-forced so I baked the cake for about an hour at 160°C, then turned it down to 150°C for the last hour). Grease a 23cm round cake tin and line with baking paper.
Combine chopped prunes and marsala in a small saucepan. Bring to the boil, reduce the heat and simmer for 30 seconds, or until the marsala has been absorbed. Allow to cool.
Using electric beaters, beat the ricotta and sugar in a mixing bowl for 4 minutes, or until light and creamy.
Gradually add the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Add the cream and beat for another 2 minutes. It looks like custard at this point. Gently fold in the cornflour, prune mixture and chocolate with a metal spoon.
Spoon the mixture into the prepared tin and bake for 2 hours or until firm and cooked. Test with skewer. I cooked mine for an hour and half and then it was starting to brown too much, so I loosely covered with foil for the last half hour.
Leave in the tin for 15-20 minutes before gently turning out on a wire rack to cool.

Serve with a dollop of double cream and enjoy the yumminess!

The two-hour wait was worth it, this is now one of my favourite desserts!

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Raspberry and Coconut Cakes

5 Dec


I got this recipe from one of the girl’s cookbooks. It is from the Australian Women’s Weekly “Cupcakes” cookbook, they are called Frou-Frou cakes.

I’ve made them a couple of times, but this time I think they turned out much better than my first attempt.

These are quite fiddly to make, so I’m not in a huge hurry to make them again. Having said that, they do taste amazing, and they are definitely worth the effort! I think they look really pretty too.

Recipe makes 12 cakes.

Raspberry Coconut Cake
125g butter, softened
1 cup (220g) caster sugar
3 eggs
½ cup (75g) plain flour
¼ cup (35g) self-raising flour
½ cup (40g) desiccated coconut
⅓ cup (80g) sour cream
150g frozen raspberries

Cream Cheese Icing
60g butter, softened
160g cream cheese, softened
2 teaspoons coconut essence
3 cups (480g) icing sugar (I would only add about 1 or 1½ cups)

Decorations
1 cup (50g) flaked coconut, toasted
fresh raspberries halved (I only had frozen)

Method
1. Pre-heat oven to 180°C or 160°C for fan-forced oven. Line standard muffin pan with paper cases.
2. Beat butter, sugar and eggs in a small bowl with electric mixer until light and fluffy.
3. Stir in sifted flours, coconut, cream and frozen raspberries. Divide mixture among the 12 cases and smooth surface.
4. Bake for about 40 minutes. Remove from tin and cool.
5. Make the cream cheese icing.
6. Remove cakes from cases and spread with icing – this gets rather messy!  I found the best way to do this, without getting your fingerprints all over the icing, is to sit the cake on top of an upside-down bowl and ice it, turning the bowl as you ice. There is probably a better way of doing this, but I haven’t worked it out yet.

7. Decorate cakes with coconut and raspberries.

For the icing:
Beat butter, cream cheese and essence in a small bowl with electric mixer until light and fluffy; gradually beat in sifted icing sugar.


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Date Cupcakes with Maple and Cinnamon Icing

7 Nov Date Cupcakes

We were invited out for dinner the other night and I wanted to take a dessert, so I looked online for some inspiration and found these beautiful date cupcakes at Your Cup of Cake.

Apparently the recipe is originally an Australian one, so it’s come full circle. Welcome Home!

I have made some adjustments to the original recipe.

Cupcakes:
1 ½ cup pitted, chopped dates
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 cup water
1 cup buttermilk
110g butter
⅔ cup brown sugar (as always, I have reduced the amount of sugar…it was 1 cup)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 eggs
2¾ cups flour
½ teaspoon salt
1¾ teaspoon baking powder

Caramel Sauce:
⅔ cup brown sugar (see note on sugar for cupcakes)
1¼ cup cream
½ teaspoon vanilla extract
110g butter

Directions:
1. Pre-heat oven to 175°C and line muffin tin with cupcake liners.  Makes about 20 cupcakes.
2. Bring water and buttermilk to boil. Place chopped dates into a bowl with baking soda. Pour boiling water and milk over dates, briefly stir, then let sit for 20 minutes. I was a bit disturbed by how this looked and smelt (I’ve never boiled buttermilk before), it was all curdled and not at all attractive, but it turned out fine.
3. In a separate bowl, beat butter and sugar until creamy, about 4 minutes.
4. Add eggs one at a time and vanilla.
5. In a separate bowl, mix flour, salt and baking soda together.
6. Slowly add the dry ingredients and the date mixture (alternating between the two) to the butter and eggs. (⅓ dry, then ½ dates, then ⅓ dry, ½ date, ⅓ dry.)
7. Fill cupcakes liners ⅔ full and bake for 13-16 minutes, or until cooked through.
8. While the cupcakes bake, make the caramel sauce. Place all ingredients in a saucepan over medium heat and bring to a boil, stirring constantly, then reduce heat to low and let simmer for 2 minutes.
9. When cupcakes are out of the oven, use a squeeze bottle to insert caramel sauce into each cupcake, or cut out a small hole on the top of each cupcakes and pour the sauce in using a spoon – I used a teapot with a small spout to fill the holes, I think that was easier than using a spoon and I don’t own a squeeze bottle.

Maple Cinnamon Icing:
110g butter
250g cream cheese
approx ½ cup maple syrup*
¼ cup icing sugar* (original recipe said 4 cups!! This can’t be right, can it?)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 ½ teaspoon cinnamon
some cream (optional, I added a bit of cream to mine)

Beat butter and cream cheese for 4 minutes. Then add maple syrup, sifted icing sugar, vanilla, cream and cinnamon.
Pipe onto cooled cupcakes and sprinkle with some extra cinnamon.

* Taste the icing and adjust sugar/maple syrup to suit your tastes

How did they taste? They were beautiful – so delicious and moist!

G-Man says they were better than the Chocolate and Zucchini Cupcakes. I’m not sure about that, I still prefer the chocolate ones, but these were definitely up there!

What I’ve learnt from making these: I need to buy a squeeze bottle and I must work on my piping technique!

Update on the piping technique: I picked up this great tip on how to fill your piping bag, amazing! I wish I knew this sooner.

Linking to:

Momma Hens Coop Lovely Crafty Home

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Chocolate and Zucchini Cupcakes

25 Oct ta da!

I have had it in my head for some time now that I should make some chocolate and zucchini cupcakes.  I’m not sure why, or where the idea came from.  I think it may have been that at one stage we had an abundance of zucchinis and so I started looking on the internet for different ways to use them up.

The nicest looking chocolate and zucchini cupcakes I came across were from a website called Dandy Sugar, they look amazing – like a work of art!  They were made using this recipe from the King Arthur Flour website.  Anyway, I finally got around to making some.  I had frozen some grated zucchini from when we had too much of it, so I used this for the cupcakes.

I adjusted the recipe slightly.   This recipe made approximately 30 cupcakes:

Cupcakes

½ cup, or about 110g butter
½  cup vegetable oil
1 cup caster sugar (original recipe uses 1 ¾ cups, I don’t think they need that much)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
2 large eggs
½ cup buttermilk (yoghurt or sour cream)
2 ½ cups plain flour
¾ cup cocoa
2 teaspoons espresso powder, optional but tasty (I did use this)
2 cups grated zucchini
½ cup chocolate chips

Mascarpone Icing

500g mascarpone cheese (I doubled the original recipe, I really don’t think one pack is enough)
¾-1 cup icing sugar (I used about half of this)
½ tsp vanilla extract

With an electric mixer blend cheese and sugar together until smooth. Stream vanilla in slowly until just incorporated.

Method

Preheat the oven to 170°C.

In a large mixing bowl, cream together the butter, oil, sugar, vanilla, baking soda, baking powder, and salt. Beat in the eggs.

Stir in the buttermilk alternately with the flour. Then add the cocoa and espresso powder, mixing unitl smooth. Finally, fold in the zucchini – I used frozen zucchini, which I thawed and drained, but not completely.

Spoon the batter into a muffin tin lined with cupcake liners. Top with chocolate chips. Bake for about 15 minutes or until cooked through.  Cool completely before icing. Once cooled, pipe on mascarpone icing. I finished mine with pre-made sugar flowers.

I admit it's not looking too appetising at this point

Linking to:
The Girl Creative
Momma Hens Coop

A Crafty Soiree

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Chai Cheesecake

13 Sep

Yep! It tastes as good as it sounds.

I found this recipe here, although next time I would change it a little.

For example, I wouldn’t use the chai sachets. Instead I would use a chai spice mix (equal quantities of ground cinnamon, ginger, cloves, nutmeg and cardamom) and vanilla essence. Also the gingernut biscuits were an absolute nightmare to process, so I would probably try and make individual cheesecakes using a muffin tin lined with muffin cases and place a single gingernut biscuit in the base of each muffin case, which means you won’t need the melted butter. Oh and instead of the caster sugar I would use maple syrup, or maybe half sugar and half maple syrup.

This is the recipe I used:

Ingredients
25g dark chocolate
250g packet gingernut biscuits
100g butter, melted
500g cream cheese, at room temperature
2/3 cup caster sugar
3 eggs
2 sachets vanilla chai latte
1/2 cup sour cream
1/4 tsp ground cinnamon
double cream, to serve

Method
1. With the back of a spoon, spread a teaspoon of melted chocolate into some parchment paper. Repeat until you have eight lines of chocolate. Place onto a tray and chill in the refrigerator until set.

2. Place gingernut biscuits in the bowl of a food processor, process to form crumbs. Add melted butter and process to combine. Press crumbs evenly into the base of a 19cm springform pan. Refrigerate for 30 minutes to chill.

3. Preheat oven to 160 degrees C. Place cream cheese and caster sugar in the bowl of a food processor and process until smooth. Add 1 egg at a time and pulse to combine. Add vanilla chai latte and sour cream and pulse to combine.

4. Spoon cream cheese mixture into the springform pan and smooth using a spatula. Sprinkle with cinnamon and bake for 55 minutes or until just set. Set aside to cool then serve cheesecake with double cream, topped with a chocolate swirl.

Linking to:

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