Apple tart 2

Just another apple tart I made last night. There were 2 of this size. The dough used was rectangular, but besides that and the fact that the apple slices are aligned, it's the same as the last one.

Apple tart~

Ingredients:
- 1 store-bought pastry dough
- 3 apples' worth of applesauce
- 2 sliced apples
- Homemade apple glaze
- Cream: 1 tbs cream, 1 tbs sugar, 1 egg's worth of egg replacer

1) Boil apples in a bit of water with a bit of cinnamon, then mash them into applesauce. Strain to remove excess liquid. Put the remaining liquid aside
2) Bake the dough a little so it is just starting to form a crisp layer on the surface.
3) Layer applesauce onto the dough.
4) Add sliced apples in swirly patterns.
5) Beat the cream, egg replacer, and sugar until well mixed. Pour on top of apples
6) Bake for 30 mins at 200°C
7) Add sugar to the liquid left from Step 1. Reduce until a syrupy glaze remains.
8) Remove tart from oven. Brush glaze onto apples and crust tops.
9) Enjoy~

The glaze will make the pie look shiny~ Here's a contrast between glazed and unglazed (under a lame lighting...) The 2 inner circles of apples are glazed, and the outermost circle is unglazed.

Chocolate cookies

I found this recipe online.

Ingredients:
- 1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
- 1/2 cup cocoa (of the Nesquick kind)
- 1/4 tsp baking soda
- 1/4 tsp baking powder
- 1/2 cup sugar
- 1/4 tsp salt
- 123 g butter, softened
- 1 egg

Procedure:
1. In a medium-sized bowl, mix flour, cocoa, baking soda, baking powder, salt, and sugar.
2. Beat in egg and butter.
3. Continue mixing until dough comes together in a mass.
4. Bake for 9 min. at 190°C.

Tip: Don't serve it straight out of the oven, as the cookies are super fragile while still warm. Instead, make sure they are thoroughly cooled before serving.

I made about 22 cookies with this, plus the crust for a small cheesecake. I can't tell how big the tin I used to bake the cheesecake in is, so sorry 'bout that. Next time, I'll count the number of cookies =D

Almond Butter Cookies

Once again made with leftover cheesecake crust dough, here's another batch of cookies. These ones are topped with some warm strawberry jelly.

You can find the first ones I made here.

Birthday Party Food

I forgot to post this, and was cleaning up pictures from my camera. These are from Dec. 8, 2012, my cousin's birthday.

Pasta gratin:

Small apple cake:

Caramelized Apple Cheesecake

This cheesecake was made with caramelized apples right on top of the crust, as well as making up the decoration on the top of the cake. I forgot to put cinnamon in the apples, but we served this cheesecake with speculoos and cinnamon ice cream =D

Almond cookie crust and vanilla cheesecake.

Lasagne alla spinaci e "ricotta"

The layers are made of alternating Tomato sauce, Tofu ricotta, Lasagna noodles, Spinach, and some Bechamel sauce.

 

I am now going to describe the recipe, step by step for each layer, then the overall layering at the end.

For 4-6 servings

Tofu ricotta:
- 2 blocks of tofu (~600 g)
- 1 tbs olive oil
- 2 tsp Italian seasoning
- 1 tsp lemon juice

1. Crumble the tofu until it looks like ricotta
2. Mix in the rest of the ingredients

Tomato sauce:
- 2 cans ~400 g peeled tomatoes
- 1-2 carrot
- olive oil
- Italian seasoning
- salt and sugar to taste

1. Dice the carrots while heating the oil in a saucepan.
2. Once the oil is hot, drop in the carrots and stir to prevent sticking. Let them cook a few minutes, then add in the peeled tomatoes.
3. Crush the tomatoes with a wooden spoon while stirring to avoid overly large chungs in the sauce. Be careful, the insides of canned peeled tomatoes have a tendency to squirt their juices!
4. Season to taste

Spinach:
- ~250 g frozen spinach
- Salt and pepper

1. Follow instructions on the package as to how to thaw and cook the spinach. Add some salt and pepper to taste.

Bechamel sauce variante:
Note: I do this more by feel than by actually measuring... It's also a question of preferences, so I suggest Googling a recipe for Bechamel sauce if my instructions aren't sufficient.
- Butter
- Flour
- Milk
- Salt
- Pepper
- Nutmeg > not in the normal recipe

1. Melt the butter over medium-low heat in a saucepan. Arm yourself with a whisk.
2. Add in flour a little at the time to prevent clumping.
3. Add in milk a little at the time, whisking constantly.
4. Season to taste.

LASAGNA RECIPE:
- Tomato sauce
- Spinach
- Tofu ricotta
- Bechamel variante
- Lasagna noodle (I got the type that doesn't require precooking)

1. Grease a pan that goes in the oven with either oil or butter.
2. Lay down a layer of tomato sauce.
3. Cover with lasagna noodles.
4. Add tomato sauce.
5. Then a layer of spinach.
6. And a layer of tofu ricotta, "crumbling" it with your fingers.
7. Ladle on some bechamel.
8. Repeat steps 3-7 until the pan is full (I only managed 2 times).
9. Cover with shredded cheese.
10. Bake in oven for about 30 mins at 180°C.

Enjoy~

Tip: You can mix the spinach and ricotta together and combine steps 5 and 6 into one step.

As a side, I am really proud of that last picture! I'm really happy how it turned out. All with my good-old Canon Powershot SD1200 IS~

Raspberry Almond Cookies

When I made my Fruity Cheesecakes for my niece's birthday, I had dough leftover from the crust. Since the recipe was originally for cookies, I decided to use the leftovers for cookies.

Pictures are better quality than usual because they were taken with my dad's professional Canon, seeing how my camera was way too far, and I was in a rush (had to leave for school)...

So, I took the crust dough, added some butter to make it shape-able, since it usually requires pushing into the bottom of a pan to take shape, and formed it into a cylinder. I cut that into little circles, made a dent in it to pour a spoonful of raspberry jam inside.

Baked, and they turned out yummy~ Sweet and crumbly butter cookies with a hint of almonds~

Fruity Cheesecakes

My niece's birthday was yesterday, and I was asked to make two cheesecakes. Since I never do two of the same ones, here they are:

Raspberry-vanilla topped with whipped cream:

This one was a (failed) marble of raspberry and vanilla cheesecake. Because of the bad mixing and the difference of texture, it cracked very badly. Hence the whipped cream =D

Nah, I wanted to put whipped cream on top anyways. It just adds some creaminess and a nice appearance to the whole thing.

Apple-Caramel cheesecake:

This is a vanilla cheesecake with some diced apples inside. There are baked apple slices on top, and the whole has a caramel sauce drizzled on top.

And here they are, side by side =D

Apple Cupcakes

Apple cupcakes. I made them because I wanted to give fruity cupcakes to this elderly lady, but didn't want to make them too sweet. Hense the tweaking of the original recipes.

I got the recipe off a All About Cupcakes, though I had to tweak the recipe a bit. I don't recommend following my recipe, because the cake itself wasn't as fluffy as it should've been.

Anyways, I followed the website's recipe, except I put about 1/2-3/4 cup of milk instead, and only 1/4 cup sugar.


Frosting. This time was not a buttercream frosting. I found the recipe on Tasty Kitchen.

I did a half batch (and still had a bit too much for my 12 cupcakes), and again, I only incorperated a little sugar at the time. I was delicious.

With the leftover frosting and the 2/3 of the apple I had left after decorating, I stewed the apples, topped them with the lightly sweet frosting, and ate it as a creamy apple dessert. That was super delicious!