Apple, Parsnip and Ginger Beer Cake

This is both a birthday cake to myself and a blog anniversary cake albeit a slightly late one. Thanks to everyone who has visited this site and taken the time to post comments (not that being a lurker is a bad thing- I am a natural lurker myself).

I am hoping that as my commuting time is about to halve that I will soon be back to blogging again on a regular basis. For the time being though here is a lovely cake that is adapted from Harry Eastwood's Red Velvet Chocolate Heartache. It is gluten free, dairy free and virtually fat free but serve it to guests and they will never guess. This is what I class as a pudding cake in that it can also be used as a dessert with soya custard or cream. The original recipe calls for cider but I switched this for ginger beer as it is something that I definitely associate with summer days plus almost everybody in my family is a bit of a ginger fiend. Although this picture makes the cake look elegant it also managed to carry off the animal shaped candles I had later in the day!

Tapas Party Menu

After we spent an enjoyable week in Spain last month I really wanted to have a go at making my own homemade tapas and what better way to eat tapas than with friends. Over the holiday period with numerous parties and entertaining then why not try something different and throw a tapas party instead of the normal canapes or as alternative to christmas dinner. Below is my Tapas Menu (click on the links to go to the recipes) which has the benefit that most of the dishes can be prepared in advance leaving you free to mingle with your guests and glug some sangria.

• Bread with Olive Oil & Balsamic Vinegar
• Olives, Toasted Almonds & Cubed Almodovar Cheese
• Platter of Serrano Ham & Chorizo
• Manchego with Tomatoes and Olive Oil
• Garlic Mushrooms
• Spinach & Chickpeas in Tomato Sauce
• Spanish Tortilla
• Patatas Bravas
• Patatas Alioli
• Garlic Prawns & Chorizo (I followed this recipe but added a good squeeze of lemon at the end)
• Pork Meatballs in Tomato Sauce
• Merguez Sausages (from our wonderful local sausage shop)
• Red Wine Sangria with Nectarines
• Dairy-free Egg Custard with Caramel Bananas
• Pine Nut & Almond Cookies

Baked Apple with Tea Infused Dried Fruit

I had been making bara brith, a welsh tea bread for my partner's snack lunches when I found myself with too much dried fruit soaked in tea so I decided to stuff it into an apple and bake it with some brown sugar and nuts. An easy peasy autumnal dessert which is also very quick to make in the microwave  Cooked in the microwave they aren't as pretty and are more inclined to slump like the one below though but hey dessert doesn't always have to be pretty.

Coconut Pot de Creme with Caramel Bananas

Can you call this dish a pot de creme if it is dairy free? I am not sure either but to honest the lack of cream really doesn't make this any less rich and creamy and can be served with any manner of tropical fruits including caramelized bananas. The caramelized bananas are great on there own as well so this is really two decadent dessert recipes for the price of one!

As you can see I had a little go at sugar craft for the photos as I really wanted to try making spun sugar. Alas, it all went a little wrong, culminating in a pan of hot sugar falling off the stove and splattering around the whole kitchen. Luckily I was over the other side of the kitchen when it happened so thankfully I have no sugar burns. I fear though that I am going to find sticky patches around the kitchen for a while to come. In the end I took the easy option and drizzled molten sugar over parchment paper and allowed to cool in the fridge. Super simple and looks pretty good as well. When I tried to take the photos of this dish I learnt a new fact for the day. Caramel does not like 80% humidity or contact with saucy desserts (crazy caramel!) and quickly started to melt, giving me only a couple of minutes to set up the shot and snap away. So if you wanted to make this dish for entertaining and want to include the sugar swirls then assemble at the last moment. If you want to have a go at the sugar work try the cooking4chumps website.

Lemon & Blueberry Almond Slice

What do you do when you find you have arrived at the airport 24hrs too soon to pick up your guest and you just baked a cake that morning for the occasion. This is the situation that I found myself in on Tuesday, muppet that I am, but better then 24hrs too late, hey? Anyway with this dessert cake there was no need to worry that it wouldn't still be great a couple of days later. It is rich and dense and moist and will keep for days without drying out (I have been keeping mine in the fridge and it is still ok).  I am not sure if my recipe should really be described as a cake as it is more suited to a pudding. It only uses eggs as a raising agent and so really isn't light and fluffy like a cake. Serve warm or cold with yoghurt if you can have dairy otherwise try it with summer fruits such as fresh blueberries, raspberries or strawberries.

 

Watermelon, Ginger & Mint Granita

I have to admit that, until I came to Singapore,  I really couldn't be bothered with watermelons. I thought they were watery with a one dimensional taste compared to other varieties such as honeydew. But now, having quaffed many a refreshing watermelon juice from hawker centers across the island I have to say that watermelon has become a favorite. I am not sure whether the watermelons in the UK are just not that fresh or ripe or whether, more likely, that the weather almost never gets hot enough to fully appreciate its cooling properties! 

This recipe came about as an after tennis cooler that doesn't undo all the good exercise karma. I have been learning to play tennis with the help of J and I actually seem to be getting better. I had always thought that my lack of hand-eye coordination meant that I could never really play racket sports, but I was wrong, yay! I loved some sports in school but have bad memories of spending more time running around trying to catch the ball that I had whacked out of the court or missed during tennis coaching, than actually hitting the ball back. This tennis experience has really opened my eyes to the possibility that just because I struggled with somethings as a kid, doesn't mean that I will always be bad at it! Take languages, I have always described myself as linguistically challenged, but what if I just need a different way of learning. I mean I have accidentally picked up a few bits and pieces of Malay (admittedly mainly in relation to food), so why not try to learn a language from scratch? So ciao for now.

Vegan Spiced Pumpkin 'Ice Cream'

I had been planning on making a dairy free pumpkin cheese cake but when it cam down to it I just plain fancied ice cream. The idea of a low guilt ice cream was one that I couldn't resist. I have tried the one ingredient banana ice cream which was doing the rounds a while back and it really is difficult to believe that it just takes some blended frozen bananas to make something so rich. The step by step instructions, with pictures, to make banana ice cream on the Kitchn.com are awesome and I recommend you have a look if you have never made one ingredient ice cream before. I took this recipe one step further and added homemade spiced pumpkin puree instead of the peanut butter that I normally add.

Dairy Free- Indian Style Rice Pudding- Kheer

This recipe came about as I had been attempting to make rice milk and ended up with a big pile of partly blended, soupy cooked rice. I was wondering what on earth to do with all this. First off I used a small amount of it as congee for breakfast but that still left a fair bit left sat in the fridge. I decided to try to make a creamy Indian style dessert as J loves these even though they are often dairy based which he cannot eat. I used coconut cream to add richness and flavoured it with cardamon and cinnamon. I topped it with sultanas and chopped nuts and served cold.

Gluten Free Lemon Pudding with Black Pepper Strawberries

This pudding is basically strawberries marinated with sugar and black pepper and sandwiched between two thin lemony sponges. This is a real summery dish which makes me think of bbqs and sunny afternoons in the park. Serve with cream or a dairy free cream substitute. If you have a thick cream you could mix the strawberries with it before sandwiching between the sponges. Now all you need is a sunny day with beautiful blue skies and a gentle breeze to chase the clouds and mental cobwebs away.In fact I think I have posted this a month too early and I should have waited for Wimbledon to start before sharing this recipe. 

Ginger Steamed Egg Custard

Some of the desserts found in Singapore, Malaysia and Hong Kong are unusual to European tastes as they cross what I like to call the the sweet savoury divide. By which I mean they use ingredients such as sweet potato, yam, red beans and sweetcorn which are almost always associated with savoury dishes in Europe. It took some getting used to but I have to say I am now a convert and  I won't look at a kidney bean or sweet potato in quite the same way again.One of my favourite desserts in Singapore is Steamed Egg Custard served warm with a ginger jus and I regularly have cravings for the smooth rich velvety texture and delicate flavour. I like this dish for breakfast, weird I know, but don't knock it until you have tried it. I am also looking forward to getting my hands on some rhubarb to poach and serve with this.

Lemon Drizzle Cake

I am posting two recipes here. One is your classic crunchy sugar topped light sponge made with wheat flour and the other is a gluten free lemon drizzle cake with an interesting ingredient. The wheat sponge is a slightly adapted version of Mary Berry's lemon drizzle from her book Ultimate Cakes which is an excellent book if you want to start baking classic teatime cakes. You can buy the book from Amazon or most book stores seem to stock her as she is such a prolific writer not to mention domestic godess. If I ever want to bake a cake I look up her recipe first.

The gluten free recipe comes from BBC GoodFood and despite having mashed potatoes in it makes a really wonderful cake. It is dense and moist and could be served as a dessert. If you prefer to follow the recipe on the bbc the link is here although in my recipe I use more lemons as a prefer a zestier cake. The photos here are of the wheat flour lemon cake but the link has an accurate photo of what the gluten free cake looks like. My advice with this cake is to not tell people what the unusual ingredient is until after they have tasted it.

Both of these recipes make a pretty lemony cake so reduce the lemon juice in the drizzle if you prefer a less zesty cake.  

Vegan Strawberry & White Chocolate Ice Cream

My OH cannot eat dairy and one of the things he misses is ice cream. After eating at VeganBurg he couldn't resist trying their brown rice chocolate ice cream which he declared was divine and that it tasted just how he remembered it should. This set me to thinking about how easy it would be to create something similar at home using some of his favourite flavours. Hence this recipe came about.

You can add different flavours to the basic recipe although I think you need quite strong flavours to mask the mild beany taste from the tofu. There is vegan white chocolate out there otherwise you could make your own like bittersweet's recipe. This version is also gluten free.

If you prefer you can add less milk to this mixture and it makes a moussy/pudding which I only found out because I couldn't wait to try this before I froze it!