Christmas Tree Cake

When I saw Cakecrumb's cake, and her tutorial as to how to make it, I knew I had to try making it. But first on a small scale. I basically followed her recipe for the cakes, except I used egg replacer instead of eggs. I must say I did not expect the dark chocolate to rise so much, and since I had divided it into two little springform pans (roughly 12 cm each).

I had a bit of a hard time carving the dark chocolate mudcake to put in the white cake mix due to a lack of round cookie cutters. As mentioned previously, I have been using emptied tomato concentrate cans to cut cookies. For these, I had to use various objects to approximate the round shapes -- from a simple knotted thread pulled taut from the central toothpick, to small cups and glasses. I couldn't be sure how successful the inside would be until the cutting.

Seems it was at least mostly a success! I was very afraid that the cake would be overly sweet, especially the white part, since it has a lot of white chocolate and it's mixed with white chocolate ganache. But seems the nap in the fridge (and me reducing the amount of sugar by almost half) did the trick to make it pleasant to the tongue without being overly sweet.

For the decorations, I simply piped some Christmas trees using white chocolate, and a small 6-pointed pseudo snowflake from the little remaining at the end. The one at the top was piped as 4 separate half trees. I then used a knife dipped in hot water then dried, and pressed against the edge to "glue" together, to melt the chocolate into a flat surface to attach to the other parts.

Definitely a recipe to try again, but not too often, as the 2-hour baking time for the white cake is not something I can do a lot.

With the carved-out scraps and cut off domes from the dark chocolate cake, and what remained of the crumb mix from the white chocolate cake, I made little cake truffles with leftover ganache and some coconut.

Christmas 2014 Gifts

Whew! Now that I am done posting all the stuff I baked during the semester, when I was too busy to post, it's time to post recent baking!

Like for a couple of the past years (2011 and 2013), I made little pack of baked goods to give out as gifts for Christmas. As usual, procrastination prevailed and I started on the evening of the 23rd of December.

I started out by making the dough for cookies. I had made these cookies a couple of weeks ago, and they're easy enough to make, and since Christmas baking means making a lot of cookies, I opted for these cookies.

A lot of rolling out, cutting with an emptied can of tomato concentrate, and baking later, I ended up with some 195 cookies. These were the first things in the little bags of goods.

I then made some chocolate cakes (white and dark) for another cake that I will post later. With the leftover scraps, I made little cake truffles, mixing cake crumbs with chocolate ganache. I rolled them in some desiccated coconut (and the white cake ones have coconut mixed inside as well).

I wrapped these in some cellophane film to keep them from moistening the cookies when in the little package. The dark choc ones were made after Christmas, so they only got added to the later packets.

Apple Crumble Pie

December 8th

Hallway dinner with a Dutch theme, and the last dinner of the semester? Of course I'd go with dessert! I quickly googled an apple pie recipe, and came across this one. I was very interested due to the use of oats in the crust/crumble mix! I also had apples to use up, so it was all in all a great recipe to use.

It was a little messy to serve, but tasty! After eating it, however, I would recommend reducing the amount of sugar in the recipe, as it was a little too sweet to my taste. Maybe I would even add more oats, but basically, I really want to play around some more with this recipe!

Sugar Butter Cookies

December 6th

Despite using the dough I had laying around to make mini jam tarts, I still had a little bit left. It was too little to make another tart, and I was out of jam anyways. I opted for turning them into little butter and sugar cookies. By rolling out the dough and cutting out circles, I ended up with these round cookies.

In an attempt to make them more interesting, I smacked them down in a bowl of granulated sugar prior to baking, which gives them this shiny and rough look.

Mini Jam Tarts

 

December 6th

That weekend was a baking spree weekend, despite me having a looot of deadlines to look out for. I had a lump of dough that dated from some months before, that I had previously frozen for future use. Well it was now or never. I also happened to have a jar of forest fruit jam that I needed using up.

I made some mini jam tarts! Since I had 6 mini tart tins, I used those. Just dough and jam straight from the jar.

In an attempt to use up more dough in one go, I made latices on top. Unfortunately, some of the jam bubbled up and ruined the look.

Banana Bread with Walnuts

December 5th

My mom had given me a large bag of walnuts, which I had yet to use due to a lack of a nutcracker. After finally purchasing one, I saw that the bananas in the fruit basket at my college dorm were starting to look like they were in a sad state. Time for banana bread!

Just like last time, I filled it with chopped dried figs and chopped walnuts -- a lot of walnuts! I also tried my best to find whole halves of walnuts to top it up with. This made it convenient for serving: "Do you want a 1-walnut or a 2-walnut piece?"

Phyllo-Rolled Asparagus with Cottage Cheese sauce

November 29th

With a bunch of asparagus, I made these rolls with phyllo dough. A very thin dough, it makes for a very crispy pastry around the asparagus.

To make this is simple: cut the dough into rectangles (around 1/2 or 1/4 of the dough size, depending on how large your sheet of dough is). Brush the dough with water, and roll the asparagus. Bake in the oven until golden.

For serving, mix some cottage cheese with some milk (or soymilk) to make it of a more sauce-like consistency. Mix in herbs and chill until time to serve. I also served it with some lemon wedges for a touch of acidity.

Balsamic Asparagus with Parmesan

November 23

Having bought a bunch of green asparagus from the market, I thought of this one recipe (in French) that I saw online. Although the recipe used white asparagus, it worked just as well with green ones.

The method is simple. After snapping off the tough, woody part of the asparagus, and cleaning the stalk, cook it in a pan with some oil. Once cooked (I had to do mine in two batches), add in a little balsamic vinegar, some sugar, and a hint of salt. Then serve with some parmesan cheese.

We had it that night with some parsley mashed potatoes. Delicious!

Nachos

What to do when you want to use up avocado, cheese and tomatoes? Well there's guacamole, for one. Another is nachos! My cousin and I had some cumin cheese to use up, so we just grated it over chips, diced tomatoes, diced bell peppers, and diced avocado. Baked in the oven until nice and crispy! Yum!

Curry Samosas

November 10

For an Indian-themed Hallway dinner, I tackled some homemade curry samosas. Instead of using some spring roll wrappers like last time, I made the dough myself this time. I also baked these instead of frying them, to save time and also because I don't particularly like frying things.

I used this recipe as a base, but made the curry with only potatoes, green peas, and peeled tomatoes, to which I added spices, chili, and a bit of yogurt. I also brushed the outsides of the samosas with some olive oil to aid the browning of the dough.

Halloween Scary Faced Cake Pops

November 3rd

I made these for a hallway dinner that was Halloween themed. Not really knowing what to do, I took leftover cake crumbs and frosting from the Sinterklaas cupcakes, and made them into cake pops. Then I tried to melt some chocolate sprinkles to try and draw creepy faces (not easy when they were upside down...)

Sinterklaas Cupcakes

For some weird reason, we had a super early Sinterklaas (Saint Nicholas) themed Hallway dinner yesterday. Sinterklaas is usually celebrated on December 5th... Being truly out of ideas, I decided to go with cupcakes, and let the theme be made out of decorations.

The cupcakes are plain, vegan cupcakes in which I added a dash of cinnamon and a hint of nutmeg. I made some spéculoos (speculaas in Dutch) flavored  frosting by making a batch of frosting and mixing in a couple of large scoops of spreadable spéculoos (also known as cookie butter in certain places). I also crushed a spéculoos cookie and sprinkled that on top of the frosting.

The decorations are piped white chocolate (that started melting and not holding shape as I was putting them on the cupcakes. They represent the hat and staff that Sinterklaas usually sports.

Bread Pudding Topped with Caramelized Pears

For a last dinner among friends before the fall break, I opted for a dessert that not only reminds you of fall, but also used up the pears sitting in my fruits basket.

I adapted the recipe from Delish, but instead of making the pudding myself, I used a pudding packet from the supermarket. The procedure itself was fairly simple.

First, I cut some dried bread into cubes, and made the pudding according to the instructions in the packet. I mixed bread, pudding, some raisins, and cinnamon and nutmeg together and let that rest in a mixing bowl a bit.

Then I caramelized the pears (a task made difficult by the overly soft pears), then laid them out at the bottom of a large springform pan. I poured in the bread pudding mix, and baked the whole thing for 45 minutes. After that, I flipped it onto a plate, so that the caramelized pears were on top~

It was a little sweet out of the oven, but after a night sitting out on the counter, it was perfectly fine.

Banana Bread

What to do when you have bananas ripening in your fruit basket, and you can't eat them all? Make banana bread of course!

This recipe (from Veg Recipes of India) is very very easy to make. On top of that, it is absolutely delicious. I made it on Sunday (Oct. 12th) for the first time, then quickly made another one for the next day's Hallway dinner. It's that easy to make!

The first time I made it, I topped it with walnuts. The second time, with cashews. Instead of having it plain, I mixed in chopped dried figs into the batter for extra texture and flavor.

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RECIPE

  Ingredients

• 3-4 ripe bananas
• 1 1/2 cups flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• pinch of salt
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 2/3 cup oil
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• nuts and/or dried fruits, chopped (optional)
• cinnamon (optional)

  Procedure

1. Mash bananas (a fork works well enough).
2. Add oil, sugar, and vanilla. Mix well.
3. Sift in flour, baking powder, baking soda.
4. Fold in well, then fold in nuts/dried fruits is using.
5. Pour into prepared pan and sprinkle with nuts if using.
6. Bake at 180°C for 40-45 min.

Tiramisu in Jars (2)

On October 11th, my cousin requested I make more tiramisus. Just like last time, I fell in love with the idea of mini tiramisus in jars.

This time, however, I made a full batch of ricotta-cream mix -- more than I could contain in the 4 small jars that remained in my cupboard. I had to enlist the help of some short drinking glasses that are roughly the same size as the mini jars.

Some of the hearts are unfortunately off-center due to my haste while decorating them. That did not affect the taste in the least.

Head over to this post for a tutorial on how to make this super easy dessert. It's only down point is that you cannot eat it right after making it!

Choc-Chip and Walnut Cookies

I had this very sudden urge to bake some choc-chip and walnut cookies for my academic counselor (yes, very random). So as I was preparing dinner on Thursday, I got the dough ready for these, and then baked them after eating.

Surprisingly, they didn't spread as much as I expected. They have a somewhat crumbly texture... I can never truly predict how these cookies turn out, since I always treat the butter differently each time (this time I was a bit short on time, so I zapped it in the microwave). Also, I usually beat the dough with egg-beaters, which I don't have with me now, so I just used a wooden spoon to mix everything.

The recipe can be found here, I just used dark choc chips and no lemon, with added walnuts (the lemon in that recipe was to curb the sweetness, which is done by using walnuts in this batch.)

Tiramisu in Jars (1)

Last week, I had some remaining ricotta to use up, so I went and made 2 small tiramisus in these little jars that I bought corn in.

As usual (see tutorial), I layered coffee-soaked Spéculoos cookies with a cream-ricotta mixture, then used a stencil to dust chocolate powder on top. I remade the stencil, because the one I had made out of scrap paper in the past bent too much for continuous use. Therefore, I made a new one out of a large index card.