Pear cake

Now, when the Christmas holidays are over and I'm stuffed with Christmas sweets, it's the time to think about eating healthy and slim down all the weight gained thanks to my mom's delicious cooking :-) But I still want to bake and eat cakes! That's why I chose to make this delicious fruity cake which relies on the natural sweetness of pears rather than using lots of sugar. This cake is moist, fragant and guilt-free (not that I ever feel guilty for eating anything delicious but...).

The recipe is an adaptation of this one. Basically, I skipped the lemon juice and the liquor and added some almond extract.

Ingredients:

30g white sugar
55g unsalted butter
75g all purpose flour
500g pears (gross weight)
2 eggs
1/4 teaspoon almond extract
1/2 teaspoon baking powder

Method:

1. Preheat the oven to 180ºC.
2. Melt the butter. Leave aside to cool a bit.
3. In another bowl, mix together the flour and the baking powder and then add the sugar.
4. Mix the butter and the eggs and then add the flour little by little to the butter, mixing well between additions.
5. Peel, core and dice the pears. Add them to the butter and flour mixture.
6. Pour the mixture into a non-stick muffin pan and bake in the preheated oven for 15-20 minutes or until golden (I made mine very thin to get more of them so they only stayed in the oven for 12 minutes).

Turrón chip cookies

And again another recipe with turrón ^w^ This time I used a basic recipe for chocolate chip cookies and replaced the vanilla extract with almond extract and the chocolate chips with turrón chips.
I made these cookies for a charity baking sale and they had a good acceptance :-) People said that they tasted kind of like marzipan, I guess that's because of the almond extract...

Ingredients (for around 30 cookies):

200g white sugar
100g unsalted butter
150g soft turrón (Spanish almond nougat)
220g flour
1 egg
3/4 teaspoon almond extract
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt

Method:

1. Cream together butter, sugar and salt.
2. Beat the egg and then add it to the butter. Then add the almond extract and beat until well mixed.
3. In another bowl, mix together the flour and the baking powder.
4. Add the flour little by little to the butter, mixing well between additions.
5. Chop the nougat and add it to the dough (similar to when you add chocolate chips).
6. Allow the dough to rest for at least 15 minutes in the fridge. Meanwhile preheat the oven to 170ºC.
7. Line the baking tray with kitchen foil/waxed paper/silicon matt (whatever you prefer, just make sure that the cookies won't stick later). Take the dough out of the fridge and make little balls with it. Put them on the tray about 4cm (2 inch) away because they will grow thanks to the baking powder.
8. Bake them for 12-15 minutes or until golden.
9. Allow them to cool in a wire rack. When they're cold store them in an airtight container.

Turrón cheesecake

Another recipe of my invention! This is the second one after the honey and walnut biscotti and is basically a twist on the traditional NY Cheesecake. My recipe substitutes half of the cream cheese with the spanish soft almond nougat and changes the kind of sugar used to muscovado. Also, I refrained from using vanilla essence because I didn't thought that it would suit the flavour of the turrón.

I got this recipe right on my first attempt (incredible, I know!) though it makes a rich and heavy cake so it's advisable to either eat only a small portion each time or use half of the ammounts (quite difficult when it comes to the eggs but I used 3 medium sized eggs so you could try with 2 small sized ones).

Ingredients:

200g digestive cookies
175g muscovado sugar
75g unsalted butter (melted)
300g cream cheese
300g almond nougat (turrón) from Jijona
200ml soured cream
50g flour
3 eggs
1 teaspoon salt
50g milk chocolate (to decorate)

Method:

1. To make the base, crush the digestive cookies with a food processor until they're fine crumbs, or put them in a sealed plastic food bag and crush them with a rolling pin.
2. Add 25 grams of the sugar, the salt and the melted butter. Mix well and press it into the base of a 20cm loose-bottomed cake tin. Chill in the fridge for at least 30 minutes.
3. In a bowl, mix the cream cheese, remaining sugar, almond nougat (cut in small pieces) and soured cream until smooth.
4. Add the eggs one by one, ensuring that each of them is well mixed before adding the next one..
5. Fold the flour into the mixture to form a smooth batter.
6. Preheat the oven to 180ºC. Take the cake tin out of the fridge and spoon the filling over the cooled base.
7. Bake the cheesecake for 45-60 minutes until it's set at the edges and just wobbly in the middle. If the cake is getting too brown in the top cover it with foil.
8. Leave the cake to cool completely in the tin and then unmold it and store in the fridge for at least three hours.
9. Melt the chocolate over a water bath (or in the microwave, but veeeery carefully) and spread it over the cooled cake. Leave the cake in the fridge for another 15 minutes or till the chocolate hardens.

Meringue cake: Pavlova down-under style

I made this cake last summer but I completely forgot about it until today, and I only remembered because I saw the photographs while preparing another post (that now I´m going to delay till next week ^_^U)

The recipe comes from Audax Artifex's blog and I've had it in my bookmarks ever since the post was published. The cake was as soft and cotton like as I was hopping it would be and the fresh fruits (kiwi and banana in my case) add a nice touch to it though it could have been better without the wipped cream. Because the original post is waaay more complete than anything I could make (especially cause I've forgotten the amounts in grams that I used) I won't repeat the recipe here but encourage you to check the original one. The only thing that I can add is that it's delicious and makes a great summer dessert ^w^

Spanish almond nougat cookies

It's traditional in Spain to eat turrón in Christmas. The typical turrón can be of two varieties: Alicante or Jijona, being the Alicante type the hard kind and the Jijona the soft and chewy kind. The name of turrón can be translated to English as almond nougat, which is especially accurate for the Alicante variety, though I have used the Jijona variety for my cookies. The one I've used comes from last Christmas' leftovers which my boyfriend brought to UK on January ^·^U I don't like that type and my boyfriend seemed to have forgotten about its existence so I decided to turn it into delicious cookies. And delicious they are, indeed! My boyfriend devoured them and said they were the best ones I've made so far! ^o^

I found the recipe in this blog but it's in Spanish and I changed one or two things so I'm posting the new recipe below, enjoy!

Ingredients:

100g butter at room temperature
70g sugar
300g almond nougat (turrón) from Jijona
300g flour
1 egg

Method:

1. Cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy.
2. In another bowl, mix together the nougat and the egg to form a paste. It can be done either by hand with a fork or with an electric mixer.
3. Mix together the butter and the nougat until well combined.
4. Add the flour to the mixture to form a soft dough. Split in two and wrap each dough with cling film. Allow to set in the fridge for at least two hours.
5. Preheat the oven to 175ºC. Prepare the baking trays with a non-stick surface (baking paper).
6. Shape one of the doughs into a cilinder and store it in the freezer while you shape the other dough. Store the second dough in the freezer while you cut the first dough into slices of about 5mm thick and line them in the baking tray. Repeat the process with the second dough.
7. Bake the cookies for 12-15 minutes or until they begin to brown. Switch off the oven and let them rest inside of it for another 3-4 minutes.
8. Take the cookies out of the oven and let them cool before storing them in an airthight container. The cookies will taste better and their texture will improve after one day, so try to be patient! (though it's difficult ^^).

My version of cottage pie

As the title of this post says, this is not the traditional British cottage pie, but a version I made because I didn't have some of the ingredients ^.^U Basically, I replaced the beef stock with tomato sauce and added a leave of laurel and some pimetón (spanish paprika). Anyways, the result is delicious so I'll be sticking to this recipe in the future.

I decided to try this traditional British dish when I was trying to decide what could I make with a package of ground beef, if meatballs or a hamburger. Then it hit me that I hadn't baked anything in a long time due to the lack of appropiate equipment, but a cottage pie only requires an ovenproof recipent (which I had bought that very same day). By the way, I don't have an electric mixer yet and I didn't have a whisk or a mixing bowl till last week because my boyfriend and I have moved to another apartment -_-U In the other we could use the owner's tools but this one comes with just the very minimum furniture which means no plates, no glasses and, of course, no mixing bowls.

Ingredients:

450g minced beef
1/2 big onion
1 big carrot
50g peas
3 tablespoons olive oil
1 clove of garlic
400g tomato sauce
4 big potatoes
4 tablespoons whole milk
2 tablespoons grated cheese (I used mozzarella)
10g butter
1 leave of laurel
salt, black pepper and pimentón

Method:

1. Add one tablespoon of oil to a saucepan anf fry sighly the beef, just until its brown. Take the meat out of the saucepan and reserve.
2. Mince the vegetables. Add two tablespoons of oil to the saucepan (don't take out the sauce left when cooking the meat) and fry the onion, garlic, carrot and peas. When the onion begins to cook add the tomato sauce, laurel leave, the reserved beef and salt and pimentón to your preference (be careful with the salt). Cook until the sauce reduces.
3. Meanwhile boil the potatoes until they're soft. Take them out of the water and let them cool sightly before peeling them.
4. Mash the potatoes and mix them with the cheese, butter, milk, salt and black pepper.
5. Preheat the oven to 180ºC. In an ovenproof dish put the beef and then spread the potato mash over it.
6. Bake for 20 minutes or until the potato mash begins to brown. Take the cottage pie out of the oven and serve immediatly.

Layered chocolate chip cookies

As soon as I saw this post I knew that I HAD to try this recipe but for some reason or another I have postponing the moment. The main reason was that I was kind of unsure about making cookies with such a huge amount of sugar. I finally settled that it was best to do only half of the recipe and to cut down the sugar being used.
The original recipe calls for dark brown sugar but I didn't have any of it and instead I had a package of muscovado sugar therefore I substituted it. Another change that I made has to do with the number of layers, even though the original recipe states that 3 layers of cookie shall be made (with chocolate between them), due to the amount of dough that results from making only half of the recipe I only used 2 layers (it was like a cookie sandwich). The last change has to do with the type of the chocolate: the original recipe uses semisweet or bittersweet chocolate but I used milk chocolate (which I prefer).

The resulting cookies were a bit too greasy but delicious anyway. Next time I'll be cuting down the amount of butter to 100g to seen how the come out.

Ingredients:

140 g all-purpose flour
1/4 + 1/8 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 + 1/8 teaspoon salt
115g butter, at room temperature
75g muscovado sugar
50g granulated sugar
2 large egg yolks, at room temperature
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
85g milk chocolate, chopped into shards

Method:

1. In a medium bowl, whisk the flour, baking powder and salt together.
2. In another bowl, cream the butter and both sugars until light and fluffy. Then, add the egg yolks, one at a time, beating until combined and then add the vanilla.
3. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the butter mixture, beating just until incorporated.
4. Divide the dough into two equal portions and shape each into a ball. Then wrap them in plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes.
5. Unwrap the dough and place one on a lightly floured work surface. Shape the balls into equal rectangles (don't make them too thin, its better if they're thick). Sprinkle the chocolate evenly over one of the rectangles and top with the second piece of dough. Dust the top piece of dough lightly with flour, then use a rolling pin to gently roll the stack of dough and chocolate into a 4cm thick rectangle. Use a round cutter to cut as many rounds as possible from the dough and transfer the rounds to a parchment-lined baking sheet. Gather the scraps of dough together into a 4cm thick mound and cut additional cookies out (most of my cookies were made from these scraps as I only managed to get 5 cookies in my first cut).
6. Cover the baking sheet loosely with plastic wrap and refrigerate the unbaked cookies for at least an hour. The original recipe states that the more time they spend in the fridge the better they taste when baked but I couldn't wait so I juste left them an hour.
7. Preheat oven to 190ºC. If you're going to bake all of the cookies at once, separate them onto a few baking sheets, leaving at least 5cm between them because they'll spread a lot.
8. Bake for 14 minutes, or until the edges of the cookies are set (rotating the baking sheets halfway through if you're baking more than one sheet of cookies). The centers will still seem really soft and underbaked but they'll set up as they cool. Transfer the baking sheets to wire racks and let the cookies cool for about 5 minutes before removing them to the racks to cool completely.