Apple and Pear Crumble

Too many apples, too many pears. Not much time to make a much more elaborate dessert, so it was time to whip up some crumble. Instead of making a large dish this time, however, I made 3 large individual serves.

First, I diced apples (yellow) and pears (green) separately, mixed with some lime juice and zest, and a small amount of sugar. Then I filled each dish halfway with apples, and filled the remaining half with pear. This made for a very nice difference in color before adding the crumble mix.

Then I covered the whole dish with a crumble mix (flour, brown sugar, butter) in which I had mixed some oats for extra fiber and fun. I then decided to make a difference between the apple and pear side, so more oats were sprinkled over the pear half, and chia seeds over the apple half.

Each dish was then baked for about 20 to 30 mins at 130˚C to crisp the topping, and make the fruits tender. These dishes were quite large for individual serves.

Apple crumble recipe over here~

Coffee Crumble Cake

This cake should rather be named "Coffee" Cake. The intended coffee flavor came out only as a fragrance, overpowered by the bananas I used. But more on that further down.

I wanted to use up some instant coffee my uncle had left here. At L's suggestion that I bake it into a cake, I started looking at recipes for espresso-flavored cake. That's when I came across this recipe by The Vegan and the Chef that seemed promising. I started measuring out ingredients, already mixing the flax egg and blending oats into flour, etc. When came the time for the wet ingredients, I realized I didn't have applesauce. Oops.

I do have apples. But at the moment, I did not want to deal with cooking them into an applesauce just to make this cake. I vaguely recalled that mashed bananas worked the same way -- albeit with less liquid -- so I too the 2 overripe bananas and got to work, adding in about 1/4 of hot water to mimic the moistness brought by applesauce.

*Update* After letting the cake sit for a night, the coffee flavor really came out above the banana!

Due to a lack of almond flour, I changed it all to oat flour. I was also too lazy to actually measure the butter required for the crumble topping, so I did it by eye. A lack of almonds turned me to the jar of walnuts I have. I additionally opted out on the vanilla and almond extracts. Last change was to use buttermilk, which I had on hand, rather than the almond milk and vinegar mix.

Next time, I'll use applesauce to preserve the coffee flavor of this cake.

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RECIPE (adapted from The Vegan and the Chef)

  Ingredients

     Cake batter

     Dry ingredients

• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 1 cup oat flour (~1 cup of dried oats, blended until fine)
• 1 tbs instant coffee powder
• 2 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 tsp cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp salt

     Wet ingredients

• 1 flax egg
• 1 tbs ground flax seeds
• 3 tbs warm water
• 2/3 cup almond/soy milk*
• 1 tsp vinegar*
• 1/3 cup strong brewed coffee
• 1 cup applesauce
• 1/4 cup brown sugar
• 1/3 cup unrefined cane sugar
• 1/2 cup vegetable oil

     * use 2/3 cup of buttermilk instead, if you have that on hand

     Crumble topping

• 1/2 cup brown sugar
• 3/4 cup flour
• 1/2 tsp instant coffee powder
• 5 tbs butter
• 1/2 cup nuts, chopped

  Procedure

    Cake batter

1. In a small bowl, make the flax egg by combining the ground flax seeds and the warm water. Set aside
2. If using almond/soy milk and vinegar, combine in another bowl and set aside 10 mins.
3. In a bowl, mix all dry ingredients.
4. In a mixing bowl, whisk together all remaining wet ingredients.
5. Add in the flax egg and milk/vinegar mix or buttermilk.
6. Fold in dry ingredients.
7. Pour into prepared pan.

     Crumble mix

1. Mix brown sugar, flour, and instant coffee powder.
2. Rub in butter to obtain a mix like wet sand.
3. Mix in chopped nuts.
4. Spread in even layer on top of cake batter in the tin.

     Baking

1. Preheat oven 180˚C.
2. Bake for 1h15 min or until a toothpick inserted comes out clean.
3. Cook on a rack before unmolding.

Crumble du Chat qui Tousse

For a dinner among friends (a vegetarian sushi dinner, if you're curious), I originally hadn't planned any desserts. That was until I looked at the fruits basket and saw the apples that had been sitting there for weeks.

An easy dessert to make with apples? Apple crumble. A friend had given me these glass ramekins from some purchased desserts. As they seemed fairly sturdy and thick, I figured they could handle some time in the oven.

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RECIPE

  Ingredients

• 3 apples
• 75 g brown sugar
• 75 g flour
• 50 g unsalted butter
• 1 pack vanilla sugar
• 1/2 lemon's juice
• cinnamon

  Procedure

1. Take butter out 1/2 hour ahead of time.
2. Preheat oven 180°C.
3. Peel, core, and dice apples, and put them in a baking dish, or several ramekins.
4. Pour lemon juice, vanilla sugar, and cinnamon on the apple pieces.
5. In a bowl, mix flour and brown sugar. Add small cubes of softened butter.
6. Rub butter into flour mix to obtain a sandy mix.
7. Sprinkle crumble mix on top of the apples until covered.
8. Bake for 1/2 hour, a little less for ramekins.
9. Enjoy with a scoop of vanilla ice cream.

Lemon Crumble Cheesecake

Yesterday was my brother's birthday. He's not a big fan of cheesecake, but my mom had already ordered a durian cake for him. That cake, however, has eggs, which means not everyone could eat it. So as usual, I took it upon myself to make a cake.

My mom's first suggestion was "a banana cake," to which my first thoughts were "I have only made one before in my life, and it's not something I see as a birthday cake." Then after some thought, she added "what about that really good lemon cheesecake you made before?" I knew it was her favorite of all cheesecakes I'd made (and that she had eaten), so I thought "why not?"

The recipe is the same as this one, except I used 2 whole lemons in zest and in juice. I used about 185 g of cream cheese, and 500 g of sour cream. For the egg replacer, I used my usual Orgran ones, since I had it on hand (instead of making my own like that time I made this cheesecake).

I thought the topping being crumble mix would make it kind of boring. Decorating the cake makes it much more interesting, but the challenge was to decorate it without making the crumble topping soggy. I went for an arrangement of 3 candied lemon slices. Easy enough to make: slice lemon, boil in a sugar syrup (2 parts of water for 1 part of sugar), then let cool. After putting them on, I sprinkled some granulated sugar for extra prettiness.

Last Christmas, one of my brothers gave me a decorating pen, with which I could write things on cake. I thought I'd test it out on this cake, using some chocolate.

I tested it out a bit on some spare baking paper, to make sure I could control it well enough. Surprisingly, it is easy to use. Just squeeze the barrel a bit while writing.

Melted some chocolate chips over a bain-marie. Then I got to writing. I tried to copy the Brock Script typeface for the capital letters, the rest being my own (neatified and fancified) handwriting.

"Bon Annif" is short for "Bon Anniversaire," which means "Happy Birthday" ~

Triple Dessert

Another friends' gathering dinner. I think it'll be a regular thing from now on on Saturday nights.

One of my friends made a 5-spice stew to eat with rice, which was delicious. Another friend provided some steamed vegetables. I opted for dessert, since that's what I enjoy making most.

I made three small desserts for each of us. First, I did something very simple, which was to make pudding out of a pudding packet (mix with sugar, add to hot soymilk, pour into containers, refrigerate). Next, I took a few kiwis that were getting very ripe. I cooked them up with some brown sugar and lime juice, and topped them with a crumble mix (mix of flour, butter, and sugar, pan-fried to create a crumbled cookie mixture). Last of all, I made a mug cake, with cinnamon and more brown sugar as flavoring.

You can tell it was originally a mug cake, but due to the depth of the mug, it was very hard to take good pictures. So I decided to take the cake out of the mug.

Christmas baking!

This year, I also went for baked goods for Christmas presents. I made a rough list of the number of people I was baking for (47!), then got to work! I procrastinated a bit, and started baking on December 23rd.

First up, I made 2 batches of Spéculoos cookies. Some are flower-shaped, but most are star-shaped, because I felt they fit the purpose better.

I followed up with a Cheesecake Crumble to bring to the family party:

I also had some leftover lemon-flavored mini cheesecakes, so I topped them with some forest fruit jam, and sent them along for the other side of the family's party.

The next day (24th), I rushed to try to make chocolate bark. I wanted to make peppermint bark, but the general stores around here don't carry peppermint candy canes, and the one store that I found that had some had sold out... So I had this vague plan of trying to melt down some other peppermint candy and using that instead, but that plan went literally down the drain as it failed beyond saving.

I settled for crushed pistachios (they're colorful... and go well with chocolate). Being my first time making this kind of stuff, I made the chocolate layers way too thick. Oh wells.

Quick snapshots of the cookies and chocolate in a pretty arrangement.

I cut each of the pieces in the picture into 2-3 pieces to make them more enjoyable to eat, and settled to package them with the spéculoos cookies.

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SPECULOOS RECIPE

  Ingredients

• 250 g (2 cups) flour
• 100 g (7 tbs) butter or margarine (margarine makes it vegan but softer)
• 150 g (12-13 tbs) brown sugar
• 2 g (1/2 tsp) baking soda
• 1/2 tsp cinnamon
• pinch of salt
• 4-5 tbs cold water

  Procedure

1. Take butter out ahead of time to let it soften.
2. Preheat oven at 180°C (350°F).
3. Mix dry ingredients in a bowl
4. Cut in softened butter and rub into the flour into a sandy mix.
5. Add water progressively until it comes together into a smooth dough.
6. Roll out and cut into desired shapes.
7. Bake for 15 mins.

Spinach ricotta lasagna and Cheesecake crumble

December 22, 2013
Had some relatives over for dinner, so I made a lasagna and a cheesecake.

Cheesecake crumble

December 1, 2013
I learned this recipe from a family friend, but she used eggs in hers. I tried to adapt to make it egg-free, and added some lemon zest for extra fragrance.

Some friends asked for the recipe, so instead of typing it out, I made an image of it. On the image, I included a recipe for homemade egg replacer that I found here. The original recipe using eggs is also available on the image.

Tip: Don't use low-fat sour cream or cream cheese in baked cheesecakes, as they make it harder to hold together.

Crumble du Chat Qui Tousse

May 22, 2013
I have no idea why this crumble is named after a coughing cat. Trust me, I tried looking it up, but nothing came up...

Sorry for the low quality picture, it's due to the fact that it 

was evening, and the whole thing was still steaming...

Recipe from Marmiton.org, halved.

Ingredients:
- 3 apples
- 75 g brown sugar
- 75 g flour
- 50 g butter (take out half an hour ahead of time)
- ground cinnamon
- vanilla sugar
- the juice of half a lemon

Procedure:
1. Preheat oven 210°C
2. Core, peel and roughly dice apples. Spread in an oven dish and pour lemon juice, cinnamon, and vanilla on top.
3. In a bowl, mix flour and brown sugar. Add in small cubes of butter, and mix by hand until obtaining a sandy dough.
4. Spread this dough on top of the apples.
5. Bake for 30 mins.