dessert Archives - Page 37 of 57

Rhubarb Cake With Pomegranate And Rosemary Buttercream

4|03|2015

Speaking of rhubarb, I think we people broadly fall into two groups. The ones who love rhubarb and the ones who are unfamiliar with rhubarb. I belonged to the second category until a couple of years ago but now I am very much in the first one. I love Rhubarb! I am always drawn to it’s beautiful colour…specifically the pink stains it leaves on baked goods and of course it’s juicy, tart flavor. When balanced out with right amount of sweetness in a recipe, it can do wonders to the dish. Fortunately, I have had success every time I’ve cooked/baked with it so I was able to dream up a three layered rhubarb cake.

The rhubarb cake by itself is not too sweet so it makes a great pairing with buttercream. The rosemary snugly fits into the recipe lending a subtle earthy touch which is quite refreshing. When I went to my favourite fruit market looking for inspiration, I was torn between rhubarb and pomegranate. I wanted to bake cakes with both. Fresh produce markets always seem to have that effect on me. Then instead I combined the two. If you like both Rhubarb and Pomegranate, this cake is recommended. If you are a fan of one of them, then this is a must-try because you never know, you may fall in love with the other one as well. It might seem like an unusual combination but trust me, they pair well here. Colour, texture and taste!

The rhubarb cake is dense (but not heavy) like a typical sour cream cake. You will surely taste the rhubarb and the rosemary but the pomegranate flavour is not too strong. The fresh pomegranate on top does give the cake a nice crunchy bite whilst making it look like a pomegranate cake. Frost the cake the way you like. The frosting is again a Swiss meringue buttercream which is what I generally use for my cakes…light, fluffy and not overly sweet.

I’ve had a really busy week and have barely been able to keep up to my posting frequency. I hope this cake makes up for my absence:-)
So tell me dear friends, do you fall into one of those groups? Do you think there could be a third group..not liking rhubarb?

Rhubarb Cake With Pomegranate And Rosemary Buttercream
Serves 10-12

Three-Layered Rhubarb Cake
90 g unsalted butter, room temperature
2 1/4 cups brown sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla essence
3 eggs
1 1/2 cups plain flour
11/2 cups self-raising flour
1 teaspoon cinnamon
450 g sour cream
400 g rhubarb, trimmed and cut into 2 cm lengths

Preheat oven to 160 degrees C. Lightly grease 3, 19 cm round pans and line the bases with baking paper.

Beat butter, sugar, and vanilla with an electric mixer until well combined. Add eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition. Fold in sifted dry ingredients and cream in two batches. Fold in rhubarb. Divide mixture among prepared pans.

Bake for about 50 minutes to 1 hour or until a skewer inserted in the middle of the cakes come out clean. Remove cakes from pans after 10 minutes and cool on wire rack.

Pomegranate And Rosemary Swiss Meringue Buttercream

1/4 cup fresh pomegranate juice (made by running the seeds through a food processor and straining)
1 sprig rosemary
4 egg whites
1 cup castor sugar
300 g unsalted butter, room temperature
1-2 drops, pink food coloring (optional)

Over medium heat in a saucepan, simmer the pomegranate juice along with the sprig of rosemary until it is thick and reduced to approx 2 tablespoons. Remove the rosemary sprig and keep the juice aside to cool down completely.

Place the egg whites and sugar in a large bowl that is placed over a saucepan of simmering water (over low heat), and whisk continuously, until the sugar has completely dissolved and the bottom of the bowl is warm to touch

Remove the bowl from the heat and whip on high speed until meringue holds stiff peaks and looks glossy. The bowl should have completely cooled by now.
Add the butter, 2 tablespoon at a time, until thick and fluffy. If it begins to look curdled, continue to whip until it comes back together, before adding in remaining butter.

When the buttercream has come together, add the reduced pomegranate-rosemary juice and mix in till smooth and well blended. Add the pink food coloring (if using) and mix till you get the desired shade.

To assemble : Place one layer of cake on a cake stand or plate. With a large round nozzle, pipe buttercream kisses all over the cake. Place the second layer and repeat. Repeat with the third layer leaving room in the centre to place fresh pomegranate seeds. Decorate with fresh sprigs of rosemary.

Butterscotch Cake With Orange Sour Cream Glaze And Figs

26|02|2015

A delicious butterscotch cake that is topped with an orange sour cream glaze and decorated with fresh figs. Made in one bowl and tastes amazing.

In summer every year, I take on a new role. Not the one I enjoy but more like an involuntary participation. Traffic police! Yes, supervising refrigerator traffic! You don’t know what that means? Let me explain. During my growing up years in India, traffic on the roads was not controlled by traffic lights or signage. It was manually controlled and supervised by a human being..a policeman stationed in the middle of important roads. As scary as it sounds, this was how entire cities functioned. He would signal with his hands and typically all driver’s eyes would be glued on to his actions. He obviously had to be completely perfect and alert at his job or else I cannot even imagine the repercussions! On my way to school every day, I would pass a very stern looking traffic policeman on a busy intersection. My sister and me would wave at him and he obviously would never wave back. Thankfully, he didn’t. I find it quite funny though when I remember how silly we were.

So, summer time for me is about managing inventory, reading labels, organizing contents only to re-organize in a couple of days and of course, gaining weight. Where do you think the fridge contents will end up? Because I am a fresh produce freak who gets so carried away looking at the beautiful fruits and veggies, my refrigerator is loaded to the point of things falling out if you opened the door. And the situation is somewhat like this ‘ricotta out…cream cheese in’….nectarines for lunchbox….strawberries have made it. Yay!

On Monday, I came back with two boxes of fresh figs. Beautiful, ripe, delicious figs…you can’t be accused of buying FIGS, right? Even with a loaded fridge. We ate a few in a salad, then with yogurt. Then I told my husband ‘how can we eat beautiful figs without putting them on cake?’ And I made this Butterscotch cake. Butterscotch is my favorite flavor from childhood but we hardly come across it these days. To get the flavor into the cake, I have used golden syrup. Golden syrup is just so effective to get the caramel-ish flavor into a recipe. You could substitute it with honey, if you do not have golden syrup at home but the taste is not exactly the same. This Buttersctch cake is really easy to make and the batter comes together in one bowl. You could also enjoy it like a tea cake by adding dried figs or fresh pears into the batter and skipping the glaze. The texture is soft, moist and the citrus glaze gives it a nice punch. The figs are a lovely addition to the not-too-sweet cake.

Having said this, our Summer is officially over in less than a week. Makes me sad. But yes, I can do without this supervisory role for some time:-)

Butterscotch Cake With Orange Sour Cream Glaze And Figs
Serves 8

180 g butter, room temperature, softened
2 cups self-raising flour, sifted
1 cup brown sugar, firmly packed
3 eggs
1/4 cup golden syrup (or honey)
3/4 cup milk
3/4 cup almond meal (ground almonds)
1/2 cup dried figs (optional)

Preheat oven to 160 degrees c.(140 degrees C for fan-forced). Grease a 19 cm round cake pan and line the base and sides with baking paper.

Place all the ingredients together in the bowl of your electric mixer excepting the dried figs (if using). Beat on low for 1 minute or until just combined. Beat on high for 3 minutes or until mixture is pale and thick. Pour into prepared pan.

Bake for 1 hour or until a skewer inserted in the centre comes out clean (cover cake with foil if over-browning during cooking). Stand cake in pan for 10 minutes. Transfer to a wire rack to cool. Once cooled completely, pour over the citrus glaze (recipe below) and allow to set. Serve the cake with fresh figs and grated orange zest.

Orange Sour Cream Glaze

1/4 cup sour cream
11/4 cup icing sugar,sifted
Grated zest of 1 orange (leave some for garnish)

Mix everything together in a medium bowl. Stir until well combined.

Dark Chocolate Cake with Milk Chocolate and Cherry Buttercream. And a Second Blog Birthday!

20|02|2015

Long long ago I wanted to become a pastry chef. Perhaps I didn’t know the term but I knew I wanted to make sweet things all day, running around the kitchen with flour on my clothes and smelling very much of vanilla and chocolate. I imagined what it would be like to live in Paris and work in a lush patisserie. I pictured myself rising before the sun and baking bread, making choux pastry, separating hundreds of eggs and making the glossiest of Italian meringue. Garnishes would get my special attention and I would make sure every dessert looked pretty. The plates would go out to my customers with a smear (you know, the classic smear) of berry coulis, quenelles of the most exotic mousse and fancy dots of citrus curd. Then on top would be my prettiest chocolate curls or sugar decorations resembling art work. They would obviously have fancy names. Like ‘beauty and the beast’ and an all green dessert plate called ‘spring’.
On the contrary, I joined a bank.

The job was great..it paid well and I had an amazing team to work with. Everything was perfect and I loved my job. I forgot all about my dreams. Once in a while when we went to a fancy restaurant and ordered dessert, I could feel something tug at my heart. But life was busy and I was having a ball of a time growing in my role and getting noticed for my work.
Then, many years later my husband walked in home one evening and exclaimed ‘This does not look like our house anymore. It looks like a pastry kitchen’ I was working on a recipe for the blog and there were bowls and whisks everywhere, I had piped designs on the table to practice, props were scattered on the floor. I looked up and suddenly the truth in those words hit me. My dream. My pastry kitchen. I did not even realise that this little blog of mine brought me so close to living the dream I once had. I am nowhere close to being a pastry chef but I am doing what I love to do the most every single day.

I love my precious corner of the Internet so much that if you ask me about the last two years I will be talking about recipes, photos, disasters, delayed meals, fresh produce, beautiful friendships, touching comments, features and all of that. As if my whole life revolves around this besides my family and nothing else. Thank you so very much my lovely friends and readers for making these two years such a happy time for me. Thank you for visiting my blog, give me your valuable time and keeping me on my toes. You make me live my dream, you give me a reason to smile everyday. You make me feel like an important person (a self-proclaimed pastry chef) who has to work on recipes all day, as if I am shouldering a huge responsibility. I know, I am. I hope I never let you down. I hope you find what you come looking for.

Between the last blog birthday to this one, Sugar et al. has seen many highs which I should probably share with you in a different post. I have been working very hard behind the scenes, focusing on my photography, another subject I am very passionate about.
Moving onto this cake, it is a dark chocolate cake with a cherry buttercream filling and frosted with a milk chocolate buttercream. The cake is dense and fudgy with a slight nuttiness from the hazelnut meal (ground hazelnuts). The cherry frosting is flavored with fresh cherries which goes well with the rich cake. Swiss Meringue Buttercream is my favourite frosting on cakes as it is easy to handle, light and fluffy and not too sweet to taste.

Here’s to another year of sweet sweet things!

Dark Chocolate Cake with Milk Chocolate And Cherry Buttercream
Serves 10-12

200 g unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 cup, firmly packed brown sugar
200 g dark chocolate, melted, cooled
2 eggs
1 1/4 cups self-raising flour
1/2 cup hazelnut meal (grounds hazelnuts) or any other nut meal
1/2 cup) buttermilk
1/4 cup) cocoa powder

Preheat oven to 160 degrees C (140 degrees C for fan forced) Grease two 18 cm round cake pans with melted butter. Line the base with baking paper.

Use electric beaters to beat the butter and sugar in a bowl until pale and creamy. Beat in the melted chocolate and eggs. Fold in the flour, hazelnut meal, buttermilk and cocoa until well combined. Divide equally between the prepared pans and smooth the surfaces. Bake for 1 hour 10 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean. Set aside in the pan to cool slightly before transferring the cake to a wire rack to cool completely.

For the Milk Chocolate and Cherry Swiss Meringue Buttercream

4 egg whites
1 cup castor sugar
300 g unsalted butter, room temperature
1 tsp vanilla essence
120 g milk chocolate
8-10 fresh cherries, pitted and smashed with the back of a spoon

Remove the bowl from the heat, add the vanilla essence and whip on high speed until meringue holds stiff peaks and looks glossy
Add the butter, a tablespoon at a time, until thick and fluffy. If it begins to look curdled, continue to whip until it comes back together, before adding in remaining butter.

Remove about 1/2 cup of the buttercream aside for the cherry buttercream. To this, add the smashed cherries with the juices and mix till blended.

To the rest of buttercream, add the melted milk chocolate and fold in till smooth.

To assemble: Place one layer of the cake on a cake stand or serving tray. Spoon the cherry buttercream on top and smooth out with a spatula. Sandwich with the other layer of cake. Frost the top and outside with the milk chocolate buttercream. Decorate with fresh flowers or chocolate curls.

Blackberry, Pistachio And Rose Semifreddo

18|02|2015

I hope you had a lovely Valentine’s Day weekend. Are you tired of roses yet because I have some more coming up for you? No, not a Valentine’s Day hangover! I think I may be a bit old for that. This is just love.. plain and simple love for you guys, in edible form. Well, if you follow me on Instagram you might have seen these photos way back in January. I had so many treats to share with you that I had to hold on to this one. Which is a good in a way because while the weather in the southern hemisphere is still warm, my friends in the northern hemisphere are going to experience warmer temperatures soon. And this is a recipe worth making. It tastes beautiful and looks impressive!

I have had so much fun this summer making frozen delights without my ice cream maker that I doubt if it is going to see the light of the day at all. A semifreddo is a frozen Italian dessert much like an ice cream but the texture is richer and creamier like a mousse. It’s like eating a slab of frozen mousse. The base of this dessert is made of eggs and cream, much like a mousse. Since it takes up flavors really well, you can experiment with and have fun with many different combinations. But here’s my favorite bit, you do not need an ice cream machine!

Pistachios and rose water are like a super hit pair from my childhood. With the addition of blackberries, there is slight tartness and bite to the creamy semifreddo. You can also replace the blackberries with strawberries or raspberries with similar results.

You can serve the semifreddo in slices.

Or scoop it up like ice cream.

Blackberry, Pistachio And Rose Semifreddo (adapted with variation from here)
Serves 10

2 eggs
4 egg yolks
1/3 cup caster sugar
1 3/4 cups thickened cream, whipped
1/2 cup pistachio nuts skinned, roasted
1 tablespoon rosewater (or 1 tsp rose essence
250 g fresh blackberries
Rosebuds, to serve (optional)

Line a 6 cm-deep, 25 cm x 15 cm (base) loaf pan with plastic wrap/cling film, allowing a 5 cm overhang on both long ends.

Place eggs, egg yolks and sugar in a heatproof bowl. Place bowl over a saucepan of simmering water over low heat. Whisk for 4 to 5 minutes or until thick and creamy. Remove from heat. Whisk for 4 to 5 minutes or until cool.
Transfer mixture to a large bowl. Gently fold in cream, pistachio, rosewater and two-thirds of the blackberries. Pour mixture into prepared pan. Cover and freeze overnight or until firm.

Stand at room temperature for 5 minutes before turning out onto a plate. Top with remaining blackberries and rosebuds (if using)