Tag: fruit

Strawberry Streusel Cake

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This is, briefly and simply put, absolutely sublime. When I shared this loaf with my godparents, my mother and godsister, they all exclaimed it was incredible, especially doused in some heavy cream, after a lighthearted meal over denser conversation. And I do agree.

I’ll say it first before you get to the ingredients: This is a gluten-free cake. Yes, it is gluten-free, but. A but. I’ve recently become more aware of the effects of gluten not just in myself, but in others. I love my bread and might never stop eating it, however one too many a slice and I will feel it. The bloat, you get it. The carbohydrate may be the most demonised item in this current era of food-demonising, and it’s hard to determine what we could or should eat, if we end up eating anything at all. But this article puts things into nice perspective. That being said, the effects of refined flour cannot be denied and I too have to force myself to take it slow with the not-so-great stuff. There will always be room for dessert, just not every day of the week.

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Therefore, the side effects of a Saturday morning’s adventurous spirit include stepping outside of my little box of refined flour and sugar and trying things like almond flour. And how simple, plain and easy, it was. How joyous, to mix something as nondescript as almond flour with eggs and then boom, a perfectly intact cake is born.

The cake is moist without being gluey, with that perfect golden-brown all over after the single hour in the oven. I used strawberries here but feel free to use any berries you have on hand, and the same goes for the streusel topping which has mixed nuts, in which case you can use whatever nuts you like.

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Strawberry Streusel Cake (makes one 9×5-inch loaf)

Ingredients 

For the filling:

2 cups strawberries (fresh or frozen), stems cut off and diced

100g (0.5 cup) sugar

1 tbsp freshly squeezed lemon juice

0.5 tsp cornstarch

 

For the streusel topping:

45g (0.5 cup) almond flour

handful of chopped nuts (I used a mix of almonds, cashews, brazil nuts and walnuts)

90g (little less than 0.5 cup) sugar

35g (0.15 cup) salted butter, melted

 

For the cake:

3 eggs

50g (0.25 cup) light brown sugar

60g (0.25 cup) caster sugar

150g (around 1.5 cups+ 2 tbsp) almond flour

0.5 tsp baking powder

0.5 tsp baking soda

1 tsp vanilla extract

*Substitution notes:

VEGAN: Make 4 flax or chia ‘eggs’ in replacement of the 3 eggs, made by mixing 4 tbsp ground flaxseed or chia seeds with 8 tbsp water, and setting that aside to gel up for a bit. Substitute the butter with vegan butter.

KETO: Substitute the half cup of sugar with half cup xylitol or two-thirds cup erythritol

 

Directions

Preheat your oven to 180C (350F). We start with the juicy berry filling: In a saucepan heated on medium heat, add the strawberries, cornstarch, sugar and lemon juice and cook until the mixture turns glistening and sticky.

Now for the cake. In a bowl, whisk together the eggs, sugars, vanilla extract, baking powder and baking soda. Then add the almond flour and whisk. The mixture should look pretty wet, but don’t worry since this will set nicely in the oven once it is finished baking.

Make the streusel topping by whisking all the streusel ingredients together with a fork in a separate bowl. Grease a 9.5-inch loaf pan, then add half of the cake mixture. Add the mixed berry mixture evenly on top, and then add the rest of the cake mixture, and then finally the streusel topping. Bake in the oven for 1 hour exactly. Remove and let the cake cool in the pan before serving (with powdered sugar and doused in heavy cream, preferably).

Posted on by alexcrumb 2

Blackberry Orange Sweet Rolls

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‘Too often, we do something for the sake of reward. But usually there is a delay between action and reward… If you can make the process of making an effort your primary source of happiness, then you have succeeded in the most important challenge of your life.”– Ken Mogi

On that note, why not dance or sing with no one to hear you? Why not bake when there’s no one to bake for? Like this blackberry orange sweet cinnamon roll, ready for you like nothing else in the world, sometimes. There’s something pretty magical about the way two dimensions of tart marry perfectly with each other. Can we just talk about blackberries for a second?

With summer comes berries. Let there be berries. Frozen berries are, and always will be, my kryptonite. I haven’t lived through a day without frozen berries for quite a few years now. Aside from their health benefits, they just taste amazing no matter what time of year. I’m also quite in love for how thawing frozen berries adds a sorbet-like quality to anything. So why not chuck this magic into a classic cinnamon roll recipe? Blackberries in particular are so underrated. Blueberries and raspberries seem to garner all the attention, all the time. You can go right ahead and use those as substitutes in this recipe, although I do think this power-packed berry is a special one, with a flavour all its own. Tucked in folds of brioche-like bread, this roll is simple goodness at its finest.

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Think messy, sticky, sweet fingers. Bursting, warm sweet berries elevate your classic cinnamon roll, mushing into cinnamon-coated innards of each fluffy roll.

There’s no reason to shudder at the word ‘yeast’. I have a few no yeast recipes in the archives, but I tell you now, using yeast this time won’t do you any harm with luck or time, or both. It’s a simple matter of chucking instant yeast into the dry mix, mixing in the wet ingredients, kneading, and letting nature get to work on its own. Sometimes shortcuts make life less of a hassle, it’s true, but instant yeast does make this whole thing a breeze.

Just like how best part about eating granola is the sweet milk after letting the milk soak into every surface and crevice of the granola, the best part, to me at least, of eating a cinnamon roll is tearing apart a fresh and warm one, letting the tear end wherever the brioche fails to stop seizing under pressure, unveiling the speckles of cinnamon, filling spilling everywhere. Rich, superior filling with an interesting salty top. I like to have a part of this as a snack since it is quite rich, best enjoyed with a cup of hot black coffee.

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Ingredients

For the dough:

450g plain flour (sub: use half whole-wheat and half plain for something a little more wholesome, although the buns will not turn out as fluffy)

65g (around 1/4 cup) cane/coconut/white sugar

7g instant yeast

1 tsp fine salt

zest of one orange

240ml (1 cup) unsweetened almond milk

50g (1/4 cup) coconut oil (sub: the same weight of melted vegan butter)

 

For the filling: 

250-280g frozen blackberries

1 tsp ground cinnamon mixed with 2 tsp white/cane/coconut sugar

 

For the salted vanilla icing:

160g icing sugar, sifted

1 tsp fine salt

1/2 tsp vanilla bean paste

5 tbsp almond milk

1 tbsp orange juice

 

Directions

First, make the dough. In a large bowl, tip in the flour, then put the salt, yeast and sugar on opposite sides of the bowl. Mix briefly, then pour in the milk and coconut oil. Add the orange zest. Using a wooden spoon, mix everything together until you get a taut, firm dough. Flour your hands and work surface and knead the dough for around 5 minutes. Alternatively, you could actually leave the dough in the bowl and use the spoon to ‘knead’ (I like to call this spoon kneading, kill me if you wish) the dough by mimicking the same movement you would do with hands with the spoon. This technique means less dough on your hands and more left in the bowl for you to enjoy…. duh! You just have to make sure that you’re thorough and not complacent with the kneading. It gets tiring, but it’s worth it. Just 5 minutes, you know.

Cover the bowl with a towel and leave it in a warm place (skip this if you’re in Singapore currently, ha) for 1.5 hours. Leave for longer, or up to 2 hours, if your surrounding temperature is under 25C. During the time you have to wait, take your frozen blackberries out to thaw, and mix the ground cinnamon with the sugar in a small bowl. Line a baking tray with a piece of baking parchment and set this aside.

After 2 hours, tip the ball of dough out onto a lightly floured surface, and then roll this out into a relatively large rectangle of 20x30cm. Sprinkle on the cinnamon sugar, then put on as many berries as you can fit, leaving the juice behind. Alternatively, you can use fresh blackberries microwaved for a minute. Leave a border of about an inch on each side of the rectangle. Mash the berries a little using a fork. Roll the rectangle lengthwise (along its length, not the breadth), keeping each roll tight and rolling gently and carefully the whole way. Cut the roll using a serrated knife or piece of dental floss into 6-7 smaller rolls along its length, or 3-4 cm apart each time. As you cut, some of the filling will spill out, and that’s ok. The side at which you cut may have more berry stains– simply lay this side of the roll down on the parchment. Lay all the rolls out on the piece of parchment and leave them to rise and puff out a little more for an hour. Meanwhile, preheat your oven to 180C (350F).

An hour later, place your rolls in the oven for 25 minutes. As they bake, make the icing by mixing all the icing ingredients in a medium bowl. You should have a thick, runny and opaque white icing. Add the liquid ingredients little by little and stop once you reach the thick, runny consistency you need. Once the rolls are baked, leave to cool for 5-6 minutes before drizzling on the icing. These rolls are best eaten within 3 days of making them. Store them in an airtight container, or in the freezer, where they will last for months!

Posted on by alexcrumb 0

Rhubarb Phyllo Galette

4288212 Processed with VSCO with a5 presetNothing like sitting down in a cosy café to write up another yummy recipe. Just had a double salad full of gorgeous greens and beans, the sort of thing which this recipe perfectly complements. Going through recent journal entries always bring forth the necessity of consistency, self-belief, self-growth, and routine, but they also revealed how easy it is for me to get lost in a tangle of unhealthy mentality and unnecessary indecision. I guess it’s okay to excuse oneself for wondering which food photography backdrop to get next and whether the bananas I just caramelised with vegan butter and a lush deep muscovado sugar would pair better with melting dark chocolate or a simple cinnamon and coconut nectar drizzle (the former was quite the mouth show, and I need to do that more often. It’s basically a wholesome sundae for breakfast). The peril of freedom of choice! How superficial it seems, and yet, what changes they bring– to my entire outlook on life, on the way I behave. Just like how I had mushrooms on toast for brunch last Saturday and I could actually feel my heart leap with joy upon seeing perfectly caramelised onions, browned and gooey, stuffed between morsels of juicy oyster and morel mushrooms heaped on a bordering-carcinogenic piece of toast lovingly slathered with homemade hummus. Sweet moments make themselves known. Because they do make life that much sweeter.

Yesterday I ate a delicious carrot cake chockfull of walnuts. Not the most salubrious thing to have at 2pm, but it did hit the spot like nothing else. Typically a big green apple does it, but yesterday, that fine Tuesday, the cake was a brio in my mouth. If you’ve been following me for a while, you’d know just how much I resonate with the idea of moderation, so necessary in this age of health and nutrition information advertised to propagandic effect. Cake and coffee by myself, mindful and beautiful. Life is about health, and also about letting go. A pure, one-dimensional sweet this cake was, but what was missing was the hint of tart from the cream cheese component (if only vegan cream cheese wasn’t so pricey, right?) in the icing. Tart, the cousin of sweet, is sometimes necessary to balance whatever saccharine loveliness a baked good or breakfast item has to offer.

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Tart, this pinch of sour, to round off the sweet. Tart, like this rhubarb phyllo galette. Thank you Aldi for 50p on-sale fresh, seasonal rhubarb! This is a twist on a recipe recently written up by Linda Lomelino, one of my favourite baking and dessert bloggers. With plenty of phyllo pastry left over in my freezer, I thought it would be interesting to see what would become of it. Phyllo pastry may be delicate, but it’s also incredibly versatile, and should not be reserved just for baklava and other Middle Eastern desserts. Here is what happens: You layer half-sheets of phyllo pastry on top of each other, each layer brushed with a delicate layer of olive oil to help them stick together, whilst allowing the galette edges crisp up nicely in the oven (without burning). Broken pastry? No big deal. A galette is meant to be rustic, and tears and breaks here and there will only enhance, not detract, from this.

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Notes:

  • For whole, unscathed sheets of phyllo pastry, leave the frozen pastry in the fridge overnight, so do that the night before baking, or at least a couple of hours before. Microwaving the phyllo pastry to heat it up in a rush might leave some parts too delicate and others frozen stiff. That being said, you may still try microwaving the pastry (cover removed but still in its plastic wrap) for 30 seconds at a time, on medium power. Not the highest!
  • Cutting up the rhubarb into batons of equal length may leave you with little pieces of rhubarb. Don’t discard these, you could try fit a few cut-up pieces into nooks and crannies in the galette. Any remaining pieces can be eaten there and then.
  • The seeds and sugar sprinkled on top of the galette before baking is optional but highly recommended. The crunch gives the galette more textural fun.
  • It’s important to watch the galette carefully as it bakes– it’s done once the pastry is pale brown and edges are crisp. Baking time may vary depending on the brand of phyllo pastry you use, or strength of the oven.

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Rhubarb Phyllo Galette (adapted from Linda Lomelino’s recipe for a rhubarb almond galette– makes one 6-inch galette)

Ingredients

200g rhubarb (about 4 large stalks), washed and leaves/ other possible dirty bits and bobs cut off

juice and zest of half a lemon

1 tsp cornstarch

1 tbsp sugar (coconut or brown)

9 half-sheets of phyllo pastry, thawed (from frozen) in the fridge overnight

60ml vegetable oil or melted butter (use vegan butter or margarine if you are vegan)

2 tbsp granulated or turbinado sugar

*optional: sprinkle of mixed seeds (I used a very random mix of sunflower and pumpkin seeds, and some homemade buckwheat granola)

Directions 

Preheat your oven to 180C (350F). After weighing out the rhubarb, cut each stalk in half lengthways, then cut into batons, each 4cm in length. Put the rhubarb batons in a bowl, add the lemon juice and zest, cornstarch and sugar, and mix well with a spoon, until the batons are all coated in the lemony-sugar mix.

On your work surface, place one half-sheet of phyllo pastry down. Brush this with a thin layer of oil or melted vegan butter, then place a second layer on top. Repeat, until you have three layers on top. Rotate this thin stack 90 degrees, then do the same with the next three half-sheets, not forgetting to brush each layer with  oil each time. Rotate 90 degrees again until you are at the same orientation as you were in the beginning with the first three sheets, and then layer on the last three half-sheets so that all 9 half-sheets are used up at this point. You should get what looks like a thick cross shape, with 8 corners

Fold each of the 8 corners down, so that you have an octagon shape. Take your rhubarb batons and place them in whatever pretty pattern you wish, in the centre of the octagon. I did a series of horizontal and vertical batons, but you could also just heap the stuff in the middle. Then fold over, somewhat in a rough and random manner, the perimeter of phyllo pastry, over the border of rhubarb to get the shape of a galette. Brush the pastry with more butter/olive oil, sprinkle on the 2 tablespoons of sugar, and the optional sprinkle of mixed seeds. Bake in the preheated oven for 13 minutes. Watch the galette carefully– it’s done once the pastry is a pale brown.

Leave the galette to cool a while on the counter, before slicing and serving with coconut yoghurt or a refreshing scoop of vanilla bean ice cream.

Posted on by alexcrumb 0

Chocolate, Pear and Banana Clafoutis

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There’s been hassle in the head, but the kitchen binds all tassles of stress and chucks it out to the cold. I surmise it’s the cold, sometimes, that keeps me going. It’s a wakeup call, like a cold shower first thing in the morning.

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A chocolate, pear and banana clafoutis, packed with molten chocolate and moist, plump pear. To be eaten à la mode.

Rusticity once more, with wreaths of sugar, chocolate and love. There is a lot going for this clafoutis, and my favourite bits, edges aside, are the moist, pear juice-saturated bits of clafoutis right up next to the cooked pear. Forkable business, that. A past Saturday spent with someone special saw a rapid finishing of this beauty to enhance all that fun and whimsy, reminding me of all the times and things we take for granted or misunderstand. Guess it’s always good to stop and smell the roses, stop blurring the edges of pain with the fastest remedy. And this clafoutis is a remedy, to be enjoyed slowly, during and after, a candle in the wind. It’s just up to you what to make of that occasional sweet event.

I tend to vacillate between wanting the simple and complex. Usually it’s the former, with some variation/hop/twist/flicker. Chocolate and pear is a classic combination, and the banana adds a moist, sweet dimension without being too easily detected. Not that the flavour doesn’t pair well, but the mildest hint of it enhances and doesn’t shadow the two stars. Although I used a pan instead of the more desirable cast iron skillet, the edges still turned out very crispy, and yes I can vouch that I shall attain the crispiest ever result in time when I earn enough (ha ha). The clafoutis itself retained a lovely almost pudding-like consistency in the middle, flying the flan flag high and bright.

Served with the simple integrity of vanilla ice cream, this is the perfect breakfast, dessert, or in-betweener.

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Chocolate, Pear and Banana Clafoutis (makes one 9-inch wide pan)

Ingredients

2 large pears, peeled, cored and quartered

240ml milk of choice (whole/plant-based preferably)

65g white sugar

2 bananas, mashed

1 egg (sub: another mashed banana)

100g chopped dark chocolate, split into two portions

50g plain flour

 

Directions

Preheat your oven to 200C (400F) and butter a large iron cast skillet or pan (as I did). Lay your quartered pear in a ring in the pan so the tops all face and touch at the middle.

In a bowl, whisk together almost everything else– the flour, sugar, bananas, one portion of dark chocolate and milk. Pour this over the pears, making sure that there’s an even amount of batter between each quarter. Sprinkle the rest of the chocolate on top.

Bake for 35 minutes, then remove and let cool for at least 10 before tucking in with something cold like ice cream or creamy like custard. What a star show.

Posted on by alexcrumb 0

Gin-roasted stuffed pears with yoghurt

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I call it a grand break. A super grand one. I don’t want to sound hubristic, but damn this was one irresistible breakfast.

I like sticking with familiarity on most days– oats, toast, my beloved french toast. The classic stuff. But sometimes change awakens and broadens your horizons, and what oftentimes seems like an alarming shock to the system turns out to be inspiriting.

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So you buy a pear. That’s the first step. The first step in this magical process.

Take a knife, cut it in half. Then take a melon baller and core it, or be like Alex and not actually have one of those, and use a knife instead to cut out little half=spheres from each half. Chop up some almonds and dark chocolate (because chocolate and pears! Unfortunately the picture above was before the chocolate stuffing bit), then stuff the middles with the mix.

Then you roast it with gin, cinnamon and honey. After some research, I found that roasting something for 15 minutes retains the most (around 40% of whatever you’re using) alcohol, so I tested it, and it turned out sublime.

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Then you eat this lump of caramelised, tender deliciousness with thick Greek yoghurt, drizzled with whatever you want. That day in particular necessitated honey, a little almond butter and this divine mango chutney that a friend recently purchased for me (hi Claire!!).

The warm, firm yet soft pear complements the creaminess and sourness of the yoghurt just perfectly. Nuts provide crunch, the cocoa and cinnamon add a sultry dimension, one of apt luxury.

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Gin-roasted stuffed pears with yoghurt (serves 1, but can be scaled up or down)

Ingredients

1 firm pear (Bartlett/ Concorde)

4 tbsp unflavoured or flavoured gin (I used gooseberry which is sweeter, so you might need less with something unflavoured/stronger)

small handful (around 1 oz or 28g in total) of chopped almonds and dark chocolate

1 tsp ground cinnamon

1 tbsp honey

80-100g yoghurt (of course this bit is completely up to you, but this ratio works well)

topping options: honey, maple syrup, berries, more nuts

 

Directions

Preheat your oven to 180C (350F). Cut and core your pear (or, as I said earlier, be like me and forgo the melon baller, instead using the same knife to just cut half-spheres in each pear half).

Add one tablespoon of gin to each ‘hole’, and leave for around 30 seconds to let the pear soak it up. Then add your mix of chopped almonds and chocolate to each half. After filling, add one tablespoon of gin to each half again, drizzling all over the pear. Sprinkle on the cinnamon and drizzle the pear with honey.

Place in the preheated oven and roast for 15 minutes, no more and no less. If your pears don’t lie flat, use a knife to cut a little bit off the backs of the pear halves so that they do.

Remove from oven and serve with yoghurt, together with whatever toppings you want!

 

Posted on by alexcrumb 1