Tag: #delicious

Chocolate and Banana Mug Cake

It’s a big one, literally and metaphorically.

Above you may observe chocolate in one of its natural habitats (for it has many, obviously), with a cashew butter topping and chocolate shavings.

A moist, fudgy-in-the-centre mug cake, with mashed banana in the centre for optimal gooeyness. A little firmer on the surface, but easy to break into to reveal a tender, soft belly. I don’t think there’s anything much that beats a piping hot, warm, fudgy chocolate treat first thing in the morning, especially if the whole mixing and microwaving process is this easy. Maybe I should spill the beans upfront– I’ve never made a mug cake before. I always felt as if doing so is a total, embarrassing cop-out; why microwave (does that word chill you to the bone and bring to mind grease-framed images of ready-made meals or bad takeout?) when you can put to good use your lovely and probably very expensive oven?

Although I appreciate and prefer a traditional fudge cake made in the oven, all 50’s aprons and 30-minute labours, this sort of recipe is perfect for one those mornings when you want to feel indulgent, but just… Don’t want to spend all that long being a princess.

Chocolate and Banana Mug Cake (serves 1 very hungry person)

Ingredients

25g all-purpose flour

2 tbsp cocoa or cacao powder

2 tbsp white sugar (I used coconut date sugar)

1 egg

3 tbsp milk (any sort; I used almond here)

2 tbsp veg or coconut oil, or melted butter

small handful of mini chocolate chips

half a banana, mashed

Directions

In a bowl (not the mug you’re making the cake in), whisk together the flour, sugar and cocoa/cacao powder. Take a tablespoon of this dry mix and toss it with the chocolate chips in a separate saucer, just so they’re coated with the flour mix. Mix in the rest of the ingredients except for the mashed banana (egg, milk and oil, then the chocolate chip and flour mix).

Grease your mug and pour in half of the chocolatey mix. Put the mashed banana on top, then add the rest of the chocolate mix. Microwave this on high for a minute, or check the doneness with a spoon at the 45-second mark. Poke and prod to see if it’s done to your liking; take it out a little earlier if you like that little extra fudge! Keep in mind that you must watch it like a hawk because this cake does rise a little, and if you’re not careful, it might collapse or overflow, especially if your microwave is on a particularly high heat setting.

Top with whipped cream, or nut butter, and enjoy with iced coffee or a glass of cold milk. Alternatively, douse the entire thing in cold milk and enjoy as a sort of bread pudding! It’s perfect for breakfast. Or have some as a small snack and keep the rest for later, for some things are never too late to microwave.

Posted on by alexcrumb 1

‘Broken-up’ Roll Cake with Strawberry-Apple Compote

Yesterday marked my mother’s birthday. That officially makes her 26 years older than me, the cumulative years brimming with untold betterness, wisdom, coolness. My solid, grounded, pretty momma, whose self-efficiency and absurd organisational skills combined with favourable wit and wackiness make her the paragon of cool. She probably cries at night over why I haven’t reached that particular degree of coolness.

Unsurprisingly, I made cake. Cake is just a little dot in the field of foodstuffs she likes, the carb fiend that she is. She’s the sort who can sit back, legs propped on the counter, cradling a baguette stuffed with salted butter and marmalade. Lunch=sorted. She’s of solid character with an even more solid appetite. Cake to her is either meh or MMPH; she knows exactly when something is good or not. Thankfully, this sufficed, and accompanied the night’s celebration perfectly. Tip#1: I imagine that this particular cake, what with all its strawberry and apple and light-heartedness, would go superbly with a tall, thin glass of champagne!

It’s funny to look at these pictures now. I didn’t intend to wax lyrical over anything, I never meant for it to work, this was supposed to be a fingers-crossed-I-hope-it’s-alright-and-thank-god-mummy-wont-give-a-damn sort of experiment. This broken-up roll cake, as I have termed it, is indeed meant to be broken up. I figured that if it resembled a monster slice of swiss roll from the top, it would be all too easy for the whole thing to unravel from a single, exposed ends. So the mind was made up; I decided to make a simple sponge, cut it into vertical strips, and roll each around one another. The best part is that if any breakage occurs (spot the slight one in the middle coil), you can slot in some cut strawberries to add to the theme, the whimsical grandeur. Rusticity doesn’t deserve any bashing.

Alone, it resembles a maze in action, but really is so easy to put together. The cake itself takes a mere 5 minutes, though the strawberry-apple compote of course takes a little while longer. Make the compote a day ahead if you wish, to ensure that it’s fully cool before using on the cake. The sponge is light, sweet, but with enough body to withstand the mild rolling, and I love how the compote moistens the tall sides, making everything ever so slightly tart.

‘Broken-up’ Roll Cake with Strawberry-Apple Compote and Strawberry Cream Cheese Buttercream (makes one 9-inch wide cake)

Ingredients for the cake:

120g (3/4 cup+ 1tbsp) all-purpose flour

1 tsp baking powder

pinch of salt

3 eggs

145g (2/3 cup) white sugar, and set aside 2 tablespoons of extra sugar in a small bowl

1/2 tbsp water

Ingredients for strawberry-apple compote:

220g apple, chopped into small pieces

120g strawberries, chopped into small pieces, and reserve a few whole strawberries for garnish.

100g (half cup) white caster sugar

1 tsp vanilla extract

2 tsp cornstarch mixed with a tablespoon of water in a small bowl.

Ingredients for strawberry cream cheese buttercream:

50g soft, unsalted butter

100g icing sugar

75g cream cheese, at room temperature (or just microwave on high for half a minute if cold from the fridge)

30g pureed strawberries (or take same mass of strawberries, microwave on high for a few minutes and then mash with a fork)

First, make the strawberry-apple compote. Put all the chopped fruit, vanilla extract and sugar in a a medium saucepan and place the pan on medium-high heat. Stir with a wooden spoon until you can see that the sugar has dissolved(no more visible crystals/lumps of the stuff). At this point, the juices from the strawberries will have started to leak. Reduce the heat to medium-low and let the mixture cook for 15-20 minutes, stirring occasionally so the heat is spread out throughout the mass of fruit and sugar. Just before taking off the heat, pour in the cornstarch-water mixture and mix in thoroughly. The mixture will thicken and lighten slightly. Take off the heat and let cool completely by placing it in the fridge. If you’re making this a day ahead, cover with cling film and let rest in the fridge overnight.

Now for the roll cake. Preheat your oven to 250C (480F) (I tried my hand at the same method used for Linda L’s vertical roll cake!). Grease and line a large baking sheet with parchment paper. In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder and salt, and set aside. In another larger bowl and with an electrical whisk or beater, beat together the eggs and sugar until the mixture doubles in volume and is incredibly pale and fluffy. This will take around 7-10 minutes, depending on the temperature of where you live and how powerful your beaters are. The beating is done when you lift your beaters and the mixture is visibly more ‘sticky’ than how it first appeared, and leaves a ribbon-like trail before quickly dissolving into the rest of the mixture again. Once you reach this stage, tip in (or sift, if you’re anal like me) the dry mixture, add the water, and gently fold everything together using a rubber spatula. Make sure all the dry mix is evenly incorporated and you end up with a smooth, aerated, pale batter. Pour this onto your greased and lined pan and bake for 5 minutes, no more and no less, in the oven.

For the frosting, beat together the butter and half of the powdered sugar in a large bowl. then, beat in the cream cheese and pureed strawberries. The mixture will look too liquidy to handle. At this point, beat in the rest of the icing sugar, making sure to scrape down the sides with a spatula, combining everything nicely and evenly. Pop the bowl in the fridge for later usage.

Once the cake is finished, remove it from the oven and let the pan cool on a wire rack. Sprinkle the top with the 2 tablespoons of sugar you reserved at the start, and then sprinkle your counter with a little extra sugar. Once the cake is fully cool, carefully tip it onto your counter, so that the top is facing down. Remove the pan (it helps to tap the pan with a knife first) and the parchment paper. The underside of the cake should look slightly blotchy; pale and brown here and there. Spread the cooled strawberry-apple compote on the cake, using your fingers to place all the small bits of fruit evenly if you wish. Make sure all the juices soak into the cake’s entire surface. With a sharp knife, cut the cake into four strips, starting from the short side. Take one strip and start rolling normally from the top. Then, take the next strip and place one of its ends near the end of the first strip, as you can see from the picture above. Wrap it around the first strip. Repeat with the 3rd and 4th strips. Once you’re done with the last strip, wrap the sides of the cake with cling film and place in the fridge for at least an hour, or overnight if making a day ahead.

Once ready to serve, take an offset spatula and spread the strawberry cream cheese buttercream along the sides of the cake. This buttercream is softer and less malleable than your usual buttercream thanks to the puree and cream cheese, so it must be stored in the fridge (on your cake stand) right up until serving. Place a few fresh strawberries on top for extra garnish, if you wish.

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Almond Butter Cookies

A. B. C. Should I continue with D, E, and F?

Dense, Easy, Flourless. WOW that went down well. I swore that would take longer than expected.

I never meant to do it– promise. This Almond Butter Cookie action (hopefully the acronym stuck the first time you read it) pounced on me instead of the other way round. People have things for things, and my thing yesterday morning was almond butter. I eased a dribble down a side of toast, drizzled on some honey, then some course sea salt. It’s easy to contemplate life over breakfast. Almond butter honey toast is magical. Why not turn your jar into a batch of bloody easy cookies?

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The very next morning, I decided to have one for myself with some newly bought macadamia butter (yes! It’s real!), raspberry jam, and more chopped almonds. Exquisite. Sometimes simplicity is key, but the lavish combination didn’t hurt this aching almond affinity.

I’ll give you just a line: Dense, chewy, buttery (in the most nourishing sense). These cookies are slightly crumbly due to the natural texture of raw almond butter, hence putting it just a rung up on the fragility ladder, but the lovely squidgy interior of slight under-doneness, packed with lush, nutty almond flavour, makes this one bowl affair way worth it. Alright. A couple of notes on this jazzed up loveliness:

– once the cookies are baked, leave them! For a half hour or so before touching. They are soft and rather fragile once out of the oven, so you don’t want to fiddle with them too much.

– use raw, natural almond butter, and make sure that all the natural oil (which usually rests on top of the more solid mass of almond butter in the jar) is thoroughly mixed in, using a knife or spoon.

– you may add whatever you like after getting the base recipe straight, be it chocolate chips and almonds (as in my case), or perhaps crushed biscuits (?) and sea salt. The versatility of a cookie is something to herald and marvel at. It’s pretty impossible to exhaust all possibilities and combinations..

Almond Butter Cookies (flourless, makes around 16 medium cookies)

Ingredients

1 cup almond butter

1 teaspoon fine salt

75g white caster sugar

65g soft, light brown sugar

1 tsp baking soda

1 egg

Optional: half a cup of chocolate chips/ nuts/ crushed biscuits

Preheat your oven to 177C (350F), and line and grease 2 cookie sheets. In a bowl, mix together all the ingredients listed above (yes, in that order, if you wish). Using 2 tablespoons, spoon a tablespoonful of mixture onto the cookie sheet(s), each circle of batter placed at least an inch apart from each other. There is no need to flatten the cookies as they will spread out on their own during the baking process; they should be slightly flattened balls of almond buttery goodness on the baking sheet. Bake in the preheated oven for 9-11 minutes. Mine were done by 9 minutes. Leave to cool on a wire rack for at least a half hour before touching, and then serve with glee.

Posted on by alexcrumb 3

Banana and Raspberry Stuffed Buttermilk French Toast

Lately I’ve been intrigued by a few things.

– Plexin D1, a gene which plays a part in body fat distribution. Apple? Pear? Somewhere in between? This may be the reason why. Scientists carried out their experiments on zebrafish, and those genetically engineered to lack the gene showed less abdominal (visceral) fat. Interestingly enough, humans with Type 2 diabetes have more Plexin D1. The beer belly syndrome is a highly underrated danger; those with more of a paunch have a much higher chance of contracting heart disease. Evidently, the implications of the exercise are pretty mammoth. The experiments were carried out on zebrafish because they have transparent bodies. Imagine being a zebrafish! That’s really taking the phrase ‘I can see right through you’ to the next level.

– The burning sensation you get when you hold a mouthful of coke on your tongue

– The Myers-Briggs test (ENTJ, anyone?)

– The fact that one can turn anything, anything into French toast.

Processed with VSCOcam with f2 presetI had the urge to make my favourite breakfast dish ever yesterday morning because my dear mom always returns home on the weekends after running errands with bags full of junk snacks (I’ll pass on a few) and fresh bread from the bakery (yes!!!). I was actually planning to make my own loaf, with some exotic fillings or less-touched flour type (hey, spelt or rye), but the chocolate swirl brioche was just screaming to be dunked in a lush, eggy bath, after being stuffed silly with fruit, and in the case of this particular morning, an almond butter cream. More on that a little later. It’s a pity I forgot to take a shot of this cream, but I guess imagination can right a wrong.

Processed with VSCOcam with f2 preset Processed with VSCOcam with f2 presetFruit combinations are always a problem for me; my relationship with these mature divine ovaries is like that between monkeys and bananas– any type and degree of ripeness works fine with me. I go with flow, peel a few random things and throw em together. It’s a fruity party here all the time. Yesterday morning, I grabbed half a banana and fresh raspberries which I bought to use a little later in the week, ignoring my initial plan to mix a bit of blue and gold, for I did acknowledge the existence of some frozen berries and mangoes the day before. Sometimes, things demand spontaneity. The sweet banana of medium ripeness played up the pleasant sourness of fresh raspberry, the aftertaste of flowers bursting like the dawn of summer in my mouth. The almond cream is definitely optional, but I love how it adds a earthy flavour component whilst binding the fruit and stodge together nicely on the inside, especially if the batter only penetrated the surface of day(s)-old bread. You get a wonderful, slightly gooey plate of eggy bread, moist and saturated all the way through.

Banana and Raspberry Stuffed Buttermilk French Toast (serves 1)

Ingredients

half a banana, sliced into coins

handful of fresh or frozen raspberries

one egg

knob of butter

splash of buttermilk and one tsp vanilla extract

1 thick slice (2 inches is perfect) of brioche/challah, can be 1-2 days old

*almond butter cream: mix together a tablespoon of almond butter and a teaspoon of almond milk (or any milk, really)

*optional

Preheat your pan on a medium heat, and ready some butter. In a shallow bowl, whisk together the egg, buttermilk and vanilla with a fork. Take your bread and, with a knife, cut a deep horizontal pocket into one of the the 4 2-inch sides of the french toast. You could cut your slice horizontally all the way so you end up with 2 thinner slices of bread to sandwich the filling, but I like the cute idea of a pocket holding everything in nicely together. Once you’ve cut a pocket, stuff the inside with the almond butter cream, then fill to the brim with the banana coins (you can mash the banana, if you wish, but I prefer cutting/biting into the gooey chunks) and raspberries.

Butter the pan and let it sizzle. The pan should be hot when you hold your hand a few inches above the surface of the pan. Dunk one side of the bread into the buttermilk-egg mixture and let the bread soak for 5-10 seconds. Flip and let the other side soak for a little while less. Lift the slice and let any excess batter drip off. Lay the slice on the hot pan and cook for 1-2 minutes. You should hear a sizzle once it hits the pan, else it’s not hot enough. Fret not. Simply wait a little while longer and take a peek at the doneness with your spatula. Once browned, flip and hear the sizzle once more.

To serve, place on a plate (may cut in half however which way you want, and this step is highly recommended for visual pleasure– watch that goo!), then top with whipped cream and maple syrup or honey.

Posted on by alexcrumb 1

Maple syrup baked doughnuts with two glazes

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I used to have a thing for baked doughnuts. You see, previously, I never knew doughnuts are typically fried, so the whole idea of baking them seemed quite the revelation. Bursting to life with the kiss of heat.. actually rising! I know, she never knew? Alright, simmer down. I tested this recipe 3 times and each time yielded a perfectly risen, fluffy, sweet set of 6 little doughnuts. They’re almost bite-sized, yet nothing overly indulgent (but I guess if you pile on the glaze…).

Some of you are probably thinking: Oops, I don’t have a doughnut pan. Therefore, I cannot make baked doughnuts, no matter how good they look. I’ll pass, thanks. I mean, who would want to buy a doughnut pan just to make these, right? I already have a 9×9-inch baking pan, so isn’t that good enough for practically any occasion?

Goodness, I know exactly how you feel. You’re practically echoing my years-long mindset, that is, before I decided to set out and buy a doughnut pan. It’s no big deal, my dear friend, just pop into the nearest baking supply store in your neighbourhood, grab a doughnut pan (I got a simple 6-doughnut baby), come home, make this recipe, and you’ll be as happy as a clueless gob in no time. It won’t take you long, I promise, be it driving to the supply store or making doughnuts. No really, they take no time at all to make, for it’s really just a matter of having a bowl for your dry ingredients, one for the wet ingredients, a whisk and a spoon. You could go ahead and embark on the real deal, with litres of oil and a deep pan for frying, but if you’re pressed for time, these guys will do just the trick. Out in less than 20 minutes. The flavour combinations are exciting, diverse, ever-expanding. After standardising a recipe, I decided the addition of maple syrup to the wet ingredients would make for something a little more seductive– not sickly sweet, but with an overtone of toffee. I improvised 2 glazes– one is a cream cheese maple glaze, the other is cream cheese and salted caramel. The one you see below is the salted caramel version, and the version above is smothered in cream cheese divinity. I love improvs. I really do.

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salted caramel glaze

Maple Syrup Baked Doughnuts (makes 6)

125g all-purpose flour, or you can use half whole-wheat

1 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

1 egg

30g melted unsalted butter

120g caster sugar

50g plain yoghurt

60ml (quarter cup) milk of your choice; I used whole

2 tbsp (30ml) maple syrup

Preheat your oven to 177C (350F) and position the rack in the middle. Spray your doughnut pan lightly with cooking spray, and then wipe each well with a paper towel so nothing is too greasy. In a large bowl, whisk the dry ingredients (flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda and salt) together well, for around half a minute. In a smaller bowl, whisk together the wet ingredients (egg, melted butter, yoghurt, milk, maple syrup). Pour the wet mixture into the dry one, and using a big spoon, mix until everything just comes together. The mix should not be too thick or too wet. A flick of the hand using medium pressure will allow the mix to drop easily from the spoon. Using two large spoons or a piping bag, pipe/dispense the mix into each doughnut mold. Fill each mold until it’s just about full.

Bake for 15-16 minutes (mine took 16 minutes), until they’ve risen and turned a lovely golden on top. In the meantime, try out one of these glazes:

Cream cheese maple glaze

80g softened cream cheese (you can use the spreadable sort, or microwave a block in bursts of half a minute until it is spreadable)

50g icing sugar

1 tbsp maple syrup

if needed, a splash of milk

Whisk all the ingredients together in a small bowl, and place in the fridge to cool whilst the doughnuts bake.

Salted caramel cream cheese glaze

25g softened cream cheese

3 heaped tablespoons of salted caramel (I used store-bought, but you can make your own. I made a lovely one last year and should put up a recipe for it soon)

50g icing sugar

large pinch of fine salt

half tablespoon milk

Whisk all the ingredients together thoroughly in a small bowl. Add or subtract the icing sugar, salt and salted caramel according to taste.

So quick, so do-able, so good.

Posted on by alexcrumb 0