Showing posts sorted by relevance for query caramel. Sort by date Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query caramel. Sort by date Show all posts

Wednesday, July 30, 2014

No-Bake Berry Cheesecake #NationalCheesecakeDay

Despite the richness of the ingredients, this no-bake cheesecake tastes light and fresh, especially with sweet summer berries on top and the crunchy oat-y crust underneath. 

Happy Cheesecake Day! Today I am celebrating with a fabulous group of food blogger friends and we have cheesecakes and cheesecake related recipes galore for you! Make sure to scroll to the bottom of this post to see all the links.

I don’t have a problem turning the oven on when it is summertime and temperatures are soaring. If I want to bake, I’m going to bake. (I offer into evidence, this week’s vibrant pink beet cornbread muffins. That said, when it’s not necessary to heat up the kitchen, I am grateful. This week I’m on Jersey, the largest of the Channel Islands and we are having brilliant summer weather. Some edibles are produced on the island, notably Jersey Royal potatoes and fresh super creamy dairy products from the famous Jersey cows, but much of it is imported from either France or the United Kingdom by ferry. A couple of weeks ago, one of the boats ran aground so supermarkets are struggling to fill their shelves with the now limited incoming stock. Such are the vagaries of island life but the shortage meant that I couldn’t find enough raspberries to cover my cheesecake. Feel free to increase the amount of berries and completely cover yours.

Ingredients
For the crust:
11 Hobnobs or other crunchy cookie or biscuit (6 oz or 170g by weight)
1/3 cup or 75g unsalted butter, melted and cooled
4 1/2 teaspoons sugar
Pinch salt

For the filling:
1/2 cup or 120ml heavy cream
8 oz or 225g cream cheese, at room temperature
1/2 cup or 60g confectioners' or icing sugar
1/2 cup or 125g Greek yogurt (full-fat)
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
Pinch salt

For topping:
1 cup fresh berries (or more to cover the cheesecake)
Optional garnish: one sprig of mint

Method
Put your Hobnobs or similar cookies in a plastic bag and use the side of meat tenderizing mallet or a rolling pin to crush them into fine crumbs.



Put them in a small mixing bowl and add 4 1/2 teaspoons granulated sugar and a healthy pinch of salt. Pour in the melted butter and mix thoroughly.



Cut a piece of waxed paper or parchment to fit your nine-inch or 23cm square springform pan.


Press the buttery crumbs evenly onto the bottom and up the sides.




Using the whisk attachment of your stand mixer or electric beaters, whip your cream until stiff peaks form.

Check out the color of my Jersey cream! It is so full of fat that it whips extremely quickly and is pale yellow, almost like butter.

If you are using a stand mixer, transfer the whipped cream to another bowl because you will need that one again for the next step. If you are using electric beaters, proceed accordingly.

Beat the cream cheese, powdered sugar, yogurt, vanilla, and a pinch of salt until smooth.



With a rubber spatula, gently fold the whipped cream into the cream cheese mixture.



Pour the mixture into the crust.


Spread it around evenly, making sure to get it right into the corners.

Cover and refrigerate until firm. Mine took just a couple of hours.

Top with fresh berries of your choice and perhaps a sprig of mint for contrast.

Carefully remove the sides of your springform and pour some Champagne for the celebration.


Cut into slices, making sure each person gets some side crust. Try not to fight over the crunchy corner pieces.



Enjoy!


Are you a lover of cheesecake? This is your day! Start celebrating!

Baked Cheesecakes: No Bake Cheesecakes: Cheesecake Beverages: Cheesecake Cookies and Bars: Cheesecake Desserts and Treats: Frozen Cheesecakes and Treats:





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Sunday, October 19, 2014

Profiteroles with Caramel Drizzle


Profiteroles is a fancy name for choux pastry, baked into little buns then split open and filled with custard or sometimes even ice cream. A drizzle of caramel or chocolate sauce finishes this fancy dessert that can be made with ingredients most people keep on hand. 

Budget Friendly Recipes
This week our Sunday Supper group is sharing a wonderful varied bunch of budget friendly recipes. As I was browsing through my cookbooks and the internet, I was suddenly struck by the idea of profiteroles because, despite their fancy looks, they are made of choux pastry with normal ingredients most folks keep on hand anyway– butter, flour, water and eggs - that don’t cost a fortune. And if you fill them with traditional custard, that’s just milk, flour, sugar, eggs and butter - more staples that won’t break the bank. You certainly don’t have to, but if you top them with homemade caramel sauce, that’s easily made by caramelizing sugar and adding milk! I find it quite amazing that we can take pantry and refrigerator staples – none of them expensive items - and transform them with heat and time into something as special as profiteroles.

Make sure to scroll down to the bottom of this post to see the links to all the other wonderful Budget Friendly recipes we are sharing today. Many thanks to our hosts for this great theme, T.R. of Gluten Free Crumbley and David of Cooking Chat.

Ingredients
For the vanilla custard:
1/2 cup or 100g sugar
5 tablespoons plain flour
1 good pinch salt
2 cups or 475ml milk
2 egg yolks, slightly beaten
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 teaspoons butter

For the choux pastry:
7 tablespoons or 100g butter
1 cup or 240ml water
1 cup or 125g plain flour
1 pinch salt
4 eggs, at room temperature

For the caramel sauce:
1 cup or 200g sugar
1 1/4 cups or 300ml milk
1/4 teaspoon salt

N.B. I won’t repeat the instructions for the caramel sauce since you can find them here on Confessions of a Bright-eyed Baker, whose recipe I used. Follow her directions to cook the sauce a little longer for a thicker caramel.

Method
Make your caramel sauce ahead of time to make sure you are not distracted by choux pastry baking in the oven or custard thickening on the stove. (See link in note just above.) It will require your complete concentration. Set it aside to cool.

Next comes the custard. In a small saucepan, either not on the stove or with the stove turned off, combine sugar, flour and the pinch of salt. Stir in your milk, a little at a time, whisking until smooth.

Turn on the stove and bring your mixture to the boil over medium heat, stirring constantly.

Boil 60 seconds and then pour about a 1/4 cup or 60 ml of the hot liquid into the two beaten egg yolks while you whisk constantly. This warms the egg yolks so they don’t cook when you add them to the saucepan.

Need a visual of how slow to pour and how fast to whisk? It’s not the best but it will give you a good idea.



Now add the heated egg yolks to the saucepan gradually, once again, stirring all the while and then keep stirring until mixture starts to bubble again.

Your custard should be quite thick now. Remove from heat and add the vanilla and butter. Stir well until the butter is melted and both are fully incorporated.



Put the custard in a bowl and cover the surface with cling film so a skin doesn’t form on top as it cools. Chill in a refrigerator.

Tip for making nice even profiteroles: Use a circle template or bottle cap that is about an inch or 2.5cm in diameter to draw circles with a pencil about an inch or 2.5cm apart on the back of your baking parchment. Turn the parchment over and stick it down to your baking sheet with a quick shot of non-stick spray.

Preheat your oven to 445°F or 230°C and prepare your baking sheet by lining it with parchment paper stuck down with a little non-stick spray – with or without circles drawn on the bottom. (See note just above.) I have a small baking pan so I had to prepare two.

Now let’s get on with the main attraction, the choux pastry. Sift together your flour and a pinch of salt and put the bowl right next to the stove in readiness.

In a medium pot, combine the butter and water and bring to the boil.



Pour the flour/salt mixture into the boiling water/butter all at once. Stir vigorously until the mixture forms a ball and pulls right away from the sides. This takes just a minute or two.



Now take the pot off of the stove and add the eggs, one at a time, beating well with your wooden spoon in between. With each addition, it looks like the egg won’t mix in and the dough starts to fall apart but keep mixing and after a couple of minutes of hard labor, the dough comes together again in one big lump and it’s time to add the next egg.


After the fourth egg has been thoroughly incorporated, put the dough into a piping bag with a large tip, about 1/2 in or 1 cm wide.

Pipe the soft dough on the parchment paper in 1 inch or 2.5cm circles about an equal measure apart from each other.


Poke down any pointy tops with a damp finger.


Bake in your preheated oven for 10 minutes then turn the temperature down to 400°F or 200°C and bake for a further 25 minutes.

Remove from the oven and allow to cool completely. The dough makes about 50 choux buns.



When you are ready to serve the profiteroles, cut the completely cooled choux pastry buns in half with a serrated knife and fill them with the chilled vanilla custard. I used a piping bag for this as well but you could also just spoon it in. Pop the tops back on the choux buns.

Drizzle with a little of your caramel sauce. You may now call them profiteroles!


Store any unfilled choux buns in an airtight container where they will stay nicely for several days.


Enjoy!






Looking for tasty recipes that won’t empty your wallet? This is your Sunday Supper week!

Scrumptious Mains (Breakfast and Dinner)
Satisfying Sides
Sweet Treats
Sips, Spreads, and Snacks




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Thursday, July 17, 2014

Upside-down Apricot Butter Bundt #BundtBakers


Baking an upside-down cake in a Bundt pan is not for the fainthearted. But with lots of butter in the caramel and in the batter, it can be done! 

This month the Bundt Bakers are celebrating stone fruit. Things like peaches, apricots and plums or cherries and nectarines, in fact anything with a hard stone or pit in the middle, so even avocados would qualify. This great theme was chosen by Felice of All That’s Left are the Crumbs but unfortunately, she was unable to host this month, so I’ve stepped in. We miss you, Felice, and are all wishing you well!

We can get beautiful apricots here in Dubai, but they aren’t the sweetest so I decided to use canned ones for the cake. If you have sweet fresh apricots, by all means, substitute. The cake batter is a simple buttery pound cake, spooned into the caramelized sugar Jamie Oliver uses for his apricot tarte tatin, which is one of my favorite desserts to make. Although I usually leave the pistachios off. Must share that one soon too.

Ingredients
For the cake:
1 pound or 450g unsalted butter, plus more for pan
1 pound or 450g sugar
5 eggs
3 cups or 375g all-purpose flour, plus more for pan
1/2 teaspoon fine salt
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1 cup or 240ml milk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

For the “upside down” caramelized apricots:
3 1/2 oz or 100g sugar
2 tablespoons water
5 tablespoons or 1/3 cup or 70g unsalted butter, diced
1 can (14 1/2 oz or 410g) apricots in syrup, well drained

Method
In a small skillet, cook your sugar and water over a low to medium heat until it starts to brown. Watch it carefully the whole time! You do not want this to burn, just to caramelize. When it gets a nice medium brown, take the skillet off the stove and add in the butter.


Stir vigorously but don’t splash yourself! That stuff is hot.

Preheat your oven to 350°F or 180°C and butter and flour your Bundt pan thoroughly.

Mix your flour, salt and baking powder together in a bowl and set aside.

With a mixer, cream butter and sugar together in another bowl. Add the eggs to the creamed butter, one at a time, beating well after each addition.

First egg and fluffy butter creamed with sugar


By the time the last egg goes in, it may look a little curdled but don't that alarm you. Now add the dry ingredients alternately with milk, starting with the flour and ending with the flour, mixing well after each addition.




Mix in the vanilla extract.

Pour your caramelized sugar and butter mixture into the prepared Bundt pan.  If it has started to harden up, you can warm it again very gently - just until it will pour - but you don't want it too hot.

That's a lot of butter in there. No way this can stick! Just keep repeating that.


Gently lay the drained apricots, round side down, in the caramel.



Spoon the batter carefully into the pan, first on top of the apricots so they stay down and then all around them. Keep spooning the batter until it is all in the pan. If you pour, you risk dislodging the apricots.



Smooth out the top and bake for 65-75 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.

If you are a thermometer-using type, according the King Arthur Flour website, the internal temperature should be about 200°F or 93°C when a pound cake is done.

It looks a bit funny around the edges because the caramel bubbled up as it baked.
You can still see a little caramel there on the right. It soaks into the cake as it starts to cool.


Cool on a wire rack for at least 10-15 minutes before turning out. I wouldn’t leave it any longer though because you don’t want the caramelized sugar to harden again and stick to the pan. There is no sound more beautiful to a Bundt baker than that gentle thud of a cake turning loose.


Enjoy!






Do you love baking with stone fruit? We’ve got a great bunch of recipes for you this month!

BundtBakers


#BundtBakers is a group of Bundt loving bakers who get together once a month to bake Bundts with a common ingredient or theme.  Follow our Pinterest board right here. Links are also updated each month on the BundtBakers home page.

We take turns hosting each month and choosing the theme/ingredient.

If you are a food blogger and would like to join us, just send me an email with your blog URL to foodlustpeoplelove @ gmail.com.



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Tuesday, November 13, 2018

Cranberry Lardy Cake #BreadBakers

Traditionally, this British afternoon teacake is made with raisins, sultanas and/or currants. My cranberry lardy cake is studded with dried cranberries, but fear not, it is amply filled with the requisite lard and sugar, for a properly respectable British teatime treat.

Food Lust People Love: Traditionally, this British afternoon teacake is made with raisin, sultanas and/or currants. My cranberry lardy cake is studded with dried cranberries, but fear not, it is amply filled with the requisite lard and sugar, for a properly respectable teatime treat.


This month my Bread Bakers are baking up yeast cakes, a subject that required some research on my part. I came up with a list of possibilities, mostly from old English recipes, to be honest. Before the days of chemical rising agents, like baking powder, the most reliable ways to get a cake to rise was either to add eggs or yeast.

Lardy cake caught my fancy because, as previously mentioned here, I have a weakness for caramel. When baked up properly - that is with plenty of lard and sugar! - the bottom turns into a crunchy caramel. As the cake is flipped for serving, you end up with a gorgeous caramel top. Who can resist that?

Cranberry Lardy Cake

My recipe below is a combination of a couple I found on the internet from The Happy Foodie and Hobb House Bakery. Check out this YouTube video to watch one of the Baker Brothers make their version. That first link is actually the one that gave me the idea to add cranberries. The recipe called for crimson grapes, which I’d never heard of. Cranberries, on the other hand, I keep always on hand.

Ingredients
For the dough:
3/4 cup or 175ml warm water
1 teaspoon sugar
1/4 oz or 7g dried yeast
2 1/4 cups or 285g strong white bread flour plus extra for kneading
Scant 1/4 cup or 50g lard
Pinch flaky sea salt

For the lard and sugar filling:
1 cup or 225g caster (very fine) sugar, plus extra for the pan
1 cup or 200g lard, at room temperature
1/2 cup or 65g dried cranberries, plus extra for decorating, if desired

Method
Mix the yeast into the warm water with one teaspoon of the sugar. Set aside.

Measure the flour, salt and lard into a big bowl and use a pastry cutter to cut the lard into the flour.


When the yeast mixture has started to bubble up, pour it into the flour bowl and mix all the ingredients together.



If you are using an electric mixer with a bread hook, knead the dough for 10 minutes. If not, sprinkle a little flour onto a clean work surface and tip the dough out of the bowl onto it. Knead the dough for 15 minutes. Once you have a smooth and elastic dough, pop it back into the bowl and cover it with cling film.

Leave the bowl in a warm place for the dough to rise to twice its size or for 1 hour, whichever comes first.



Meanwhile make the lard and sugar mix by creaming them together in a mixer or with a wooden spoon.

Prepare your 8 in or 20cm round nonstick baking pan by coating it with 1/3 cup or 87g of the lard sugar mixture. Use a rubber spatula to spread it over the bottom and up the sides. Sprinkle an extra tablespoon of sugar over the bottom.



When it’s risen, gently press the air out of the dough and form it into a ball. Pop it on a well-floured work surface and use a rolling pin to roll it into a circle about 15 in or 38cm across.

Divide the remaining lard/sugar paste in half. Use a spoon to distribute one half over the dough circle. Use a rubber spatula to spread the paste over the dough, leaving a small margin of dough around the sides uncovered.

Starting on one side, fold the dough towards the middle. Continue until till all the sides are folded over. (See the first five photos below.) Again, this video shows the method so much better than words can explain.


Let the dough rest for a few minutes, then roll it out again to a 15 in or 38cm circle. Spoon the other half of the lard mixture over the dough circle. (Photo 6 above) Spread it with the rubber spatula. Now sprinkle on the cranberries.



Repeat the folding process till all of the sides have been folded in again. Place the dough in the prepared pan.


Cover loosely with cling film and leave the cranberry lardy cake to rest and rise for two hours. It doesn’t really rise very high but it does fill the pan.



When your two hours are almost up, preheat your oven to 375°F or 190°C.

Bake the lardy cake for 45 minutes, covering the top with foil if it starts to get too brown. Remove the pan from the oven and leave to cool for just a few minutes.

Leave it any longer and you may find that the caramel will stick to your pan, even it it’s nonstick. If this happens to you, use a blunt knife to ease it off the pan so the whole cake will come out in one piece.

Food Lust People Love: Traditionally, this British afternoon teacake is made with raisin, sultanas and/or currants. My cranberry lardy cake is studded with dried cranberries, but fear not, it is amply filled with the requisite lard and sugar, for a properly respectable teatime treat.
If necessary, return any pieces that stayed in the pan to the top of the cake. Or just eat them. I cannot tell you how wonderful this crunchy caramel is! It's the perfect topping for the yeast cake underneath.

Food Lust People Love: Traditionally, this British afternoon teacake is made with raisin, sultanas and/or currants. My cranberry lardy cake is studded with dried cranberries, but fear not, it is amply filled with the requisite lard and sugar, for a properly respectable teatime treat.


Sprinkle with tablespoon or two dried cranberries to decorate, if desired. Enjoy!

Food Lust People Love: Traditionally, this British afternoon teacake is made with raisin, sultanas and/or currants. My cranberry lardy cake is studded with dried cranberries, but fear not, it is amply filled with the requisite lard and sugar, for a properly respectable teatime treat.

Many thanks to this month's Bread Bakers host, Archana from The Mad Scientist Kitchen. Check out the other recipes our fellow bakers made for the yeasted cake challenge:

#BreadBakers is a group of bread loving bakers who get together once a month to bake bread with a common ingredient or theme. Follow our Pinterest board right here. Links are also updated each month on this home page.

We take turns hosting each month and choosing the theme/ingredient.

Pin it! 

Food Lust People Love: Traditionally, this British afternoon teacake is made with raisin, sultanas and/or currants. My cranberry lardy cake is studded with dried cranberries, but fear not, it is amply filled with the requisite lard and sugar, for a properly respectable teatime treat.
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