Category Archives: Sweet Things

Cardamom Flavoured Fig Rolls

10 Wednesday Jan 2024

Posted by in Sweet Things

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, ,

I made this recipe last week to take to a party, my thought was to make fig rolls using the preserve in the previous post sandwiched between cardamom flavoured shortbread. Good plan.
I have successfully made shortbread countless times, but always using plain white flour with the semolina, this time I decided to use wholemeal spelt flour. The flavour was excellent, so much so that my friends have asked for the recipe, but the texture was quite different to usual. The wholemeal flour doesn’t absorb the butter quite the same as white flour, so the shortbread was more crumbly and brittle than I would have liked, and some of the shortbread melted away from the cute little rounds that I had cut out.
So making the rolls again, I cooked them in one piece in a tray and then cut them up once they were out of the oven but still quite hot, and this worked well.

1 jar caramelised fig preserve

For the shortbread –

225 grams wholemeal spelt flour

100 grams fine semolina

225 grams unsalted butter at room temperature

100 grams castor sugar

the seeds from 15 green cardamoms

Cut the butter up into a bowl and add the sugar, cream together until smooth.

In another bowl mix the flour, semolina and cardamom

Add about a third of the flour mix into the butter and mix well to blend.

Add another third of the flour mix and blend this in, then the last third.

As you are getting to the last if the flour you will have to knead it into the dough.

Work the dough into a round ball, flatten a bit and cut it into two equal parts.

Line a 17 cm x 27 cm baking tray with baking parchment.

Roll out one of your pieces of dough to fit the tray. This is easiest between two sheets of cling film. You may have to do some trimming and patching to get a perfect oblong, the dough will stick back together in the baking.

Spread over this an even layer if the preserved figs.

Rollout the other half of the shortbread and lay over the figs. Prick all over with a fork.

Bake at 125C fan oven, 150C electric or gas mark 3 for 40 minutes.

Cut the rolls into the sizes that you like while the rolls are still warm and soft and the leave to go cold completely before removing from the tray.


Caramelised Fig Preserve

10 Wednesday Jan 2024

Posted by in Preserves, Sweet Things

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, ,

For those of us lucky enough to live here in southern Spain, and who are even more lucky enough to have fig trees, this is a recipe for you. It’s for that period in the summer when your Breva figs are ripening at the rate of a kilo or more a day and you are looking for a way to keep some of them for the winter. The recipe is super simple and doesn’t add any extra sugar as the figs are sweet enough.

The fígs are great just with ice cream or cream, figgy pudding or the filling in fig rolls which will be the next post.

You will need 120 grams of butter per kilo of figs, a deep frying pan big enough to take the amount of figs that you are going to preserve and some clean sterilised jars.

A reminder only to preserve fruit that is in perfect condition, as figs are ripening at the hottest time of the year and can quickly start to ferment on the branch, I pick first thing in the morning and only the just ripe nicest figs.

Wash the figs and dry them in a tea towel.

Cut off the stems and cut the figs into quarters.

Warm the butter in a non-stick frying pan and add the figs.

Cook stirring on a medium heat. The fruit will start to give out some of its juices, continue cooking until these have evaporated.

Keep stirring and cooking until the fruit mixture is dryer and is frying in the butter.

The sugar in the fruit will now start to get hotter and be heading towards caramelising. Keep cooking until you can detect the caramel aroma. The fig mixture will get dryer, thicker and tend to stick to the bottom of the pan a bit, but keep going until they are nice and toffee flavoured.

Do not be tempted to taste the figs at this point, they are very hot.

If you are not sure that you have cooked the figs enough, always cook a bit longer until you can really get the odour of the caramel.

Let the figs cool a little before putting them into jars.

I like to put some of the preserve into regular jam sized (270ml) jars, and then some much smaller jars for 1-2 people servings.


Lime Ice Cream

21 Monday Aug 2023

Posted by in Sweet Things, Vegetarian

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , ,

Cool and sharp and rich. This ice cream satisfies on all requirements, as well as only having three ingredients and not needing an ice cream making machine. If you plan to make ice cream at home the only equipment I recommend buying if you don’t have them, are a couple of small metal loaf tins. Ice cream will freeze much faster in metal than plastic, and the smoothness of ice creams and sorbets relies on it freezing into very small crystals, which means you either have to freeze your mixture very fast or keep it moving to stop large crystals forming – or both.


My little tins measure 8 x 13 centimetres and are 5 centimetres deep. This recipe will make two tins full. Put the tins in the freezer to be chilling down before you start the recipe.

This amount makes 8 – 12 portions depending on how generous you would like them to be.

Juice and zest of 175 grams unwaxed limes

400 grams condensed milk

350 ml fresh thick cream

Measure the condensed milk into a bowl and then grate in the zest from the limes.

Juice the limes and add this to the condensed milk. Stir thoroughly. This will make the milk thicken.

In another bowl beat the cream until thick.

Fold the cream into the lime mix.
Spoon into chilled containers lined with cling film and freeze in the coolest part of your freezer.

Enjoy with a little lime sherbert sprinkled over. There is a recipe for the sherbert on this blog, just put the name in the search box.

Orange Conserve

04 Monday Apr 2022

Posted by in Preserves, Sweet Things

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

,

These conserved orange slices keep that fresh orange tang and colour while not having any bitterness. They are fabulous in the summer with ice cream, yoghurt or fresh cheeses, and also a useful addition to cakes and sweets, as in the Chocolate Paradise of the previous post.

The recipe is very simple.

For every kilo of sweet oranges you will need half a kilo of sugar.

Wash the oranges and top and tail them, taking just the peel from the top and bottom.

Prick the oranges all over with a large needle or pin.

Put to soak in fresh cold water to cover the oranges, they will float.

Change the water for fresh every day for three days. This removes the bitterness from the peel and also soaks into the oranges

On day four slice the oranges and put into a pan with the sugar and stir to mix.

Slowly bring to the boil, stirring from time to time. The mix will create its own juice.

Simmer for 30 minutes, by which time the oranges will be cooked and some what softened.

While still hot put into warm, clean and dry jars. This will keep for a year or so if kept in a cool dark place. Refrigerate once opened.

Intense Chocolate Heaven

26 Saturday Mar 2022

Posted by in Sweet Things

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , , ,

For dessert these days I prefer to serve fresh fruit, but then with coffee is good to have a mouthful of sweet intense naughtiness. This tiny chocolate loaf fits the bill. Amaretto infused biscuits, dried fruits and nuts, bound together with a thick dark bittersweet chocolate mousse. What’s not to like?

I’ve made this Chocolate Heaven twice now, the first time using the very sweet dried pears from my own tree, which produced a bumper crop this year, and ginger biscuits. For the second version I managed to get hold of cantucci biscuits, not common in southern spain, which I paired with orange peel from my Orange Conserve. I mistakenly thought that I had given you the recipe for this, so it will appear as the next post on here. Both versions were successful, so any flavour crunchy biscuits can be used with what ever dried fruits you fancy and whichever nuts you think will go with them. Have fun experimenting.

My loaf tins are small, 12 x 7 cm and 5 cm deep, and take 350 ml volume, and the amount below make two loaves.

200 grams – dark chocolate 85% cocoa solids

110 grams – biscuits – almond (cantucci) or ginger. 

100 grams – dried fruit – pears, apples, apricots or candied citrus peel

60 grams – toasted almonds

4 tablespoons – amaretto

3 egg yolks

Slice or cut the fruit into chunks and put into a bowl big enough to eventually take all the ingredients.

Put the biscuits into a plastic bag and with a rolling pin break them into smallish pieces, add to the fruit.
Add the toasted nuts to the fruit and biscuits and mix throughly.

Break the chocolate into pieces and put into a bowl over hot water to melt. Stir from time to time so that it is evenly melted.

Put the egg yolks into another bowl and beat until pale, creamy and thickened.

Once the chocolate has melted thoroughly, remove the bowl from the hot water. Fold in the egg yolks, and then the amaretto.

Add the chocolate mix to the fruit, nuts and biscuits and mix to blend.

Line your loaf tins with cling film and divide the chocolate mix between them tamping down lightly so that you don’t have air gaps but not compacting the mix too much.

Cover and put in the fridge to cool. The Chocolate Heaven will keep well in the fridge up to four weeks.

To serve, unmold and unwrap a loaf and cut into thin slices. As it is very rich , one slice per person is enough.

Hazelnut Toffee Tart

21 Friday May 2021

Posted by in Sweet Things

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , ,


I often end a meal with just fresh fruit, but sometimes there’s an urge for something quite sweet, not a big portion, but a mouthful or two of delicious sweetness, and this set of super easy desserts fits the bill. They all have a biscuit base, topped with a caramel toffee made by boiling tins of condensed milk to which chopped nuts are added.

If you have not come across this way of making a toffee before it’s, as I have already said, very easy, if a little disconcerting. You take the labels off your tins of condensed milk, and without opening or piercing them, put them in a pan with enough boiling water to cover and simmer them for three hours. If the water level gets below the top of the tins during cooking just add some boiling water. It’s three hours simmering wether the tins are the small or the larger size. I usually boil three of the small, 400 gram tins together. Let them cool for several hours in the water in which they have cooked. The caramel, being in tins will keep indefinitely of course, so it’s a good standby to have in the cupboard. Even an open tin will keep for several weeks. Shall we slide quickly past the reason being the high sugar content of the toffee…..

When you get to opening your tin you will find a thick caramel that holds its shape and can be spread onto a biscuit base. My favourite tart is to mix chopped nuts into the toffee before spreading it onto the biscuit layer, then decorate the top with whole or half nuts. I’ve made this with Pecan nuts and with Hazelnuts, both are very good. You can also put the a neat toffee layer onto the biscuits, then top that with banana slices and whipped cream for a Banoffee Tart.

The little tart pictured is made in a 10 cm wide loose based tin, which makes 6 my size mini portions or 4 larger ones.
For a 15 cm wide tart tin double all the amounts in the recipe.


60 grams biscuits – finely chopped in a food processor

20 grams butter

200 grams toffeed condensed milk

100 grams hazelnuts

Just in case you have never made a biscuit base, melt the butter in a pan over a low heat, add the biscuits and mix well.
Tip into the tart tin and spread into an even layer, tamp down firmly with either your fingers or something flat. Put to cool in the refrigerator.

Cut enough hazelnuts in half to decorate the top of the tart, then roughly chop the rest.

Mix with the toffee, then once the biscuit base is cooled, spread over this in an even layer, and then decorate with the hazelnut halves.

That’s it! Serve with fresh cream.

Oriental Rice Pudding

19 Sunday Jul 2020

Posted by in Sweet Things, Vegan

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , ,

This pudding is in need of a name, so I would be grateful for any suggestions, or should I just stick to Oriental Rice Pudding? I was looking for a light dessert to follow the Gado Gado which I served for lunch, and remembered an Indian milky dessert called Sheer Korma. That is made with a very fine wheat vermicelli, seviyan, cooked in sweetened milk with nuts and flavoured with saffron, so I thought to make it more in tune with an Indonesian dish, and to make it vegan, to substitute the wheat vermicelli for fine rice noodles and use coconut milk instead of cows milk. I think it worked very well.

For 4 servings

80 grams rice vermicelli

160 ml can full fat coconut milk

40 grams pistachios

25 grams flaked almonds

25 grams broken pecans

75 ml agave syrup / honey

few strands saffron

For lime sherbet topping

2 tablespoons caster sugar

1 lime

Start by making the lime sherbet as you have to do this a day in advance so it can dry. This amount is more than you need for garnishing this dessert, but the sherbet keeps well for a couple of weeks in an airtight jar and is lovely on plain ice cream and fruit salad.

On a flat plate or tray sprinkle the sugar in an even layer.

Using the zester on your grater, grate the zest of the lime in an even layer over the sugar, then with your fingertips lightly mix the two together still leaving the mix spread out.

Leave in a warm dry place for several hours or overnight until dry and crunchy.

So for the rice pudding –

Soak the rice vermicelli in cold water for an hour.

Drain and cut into shortish lengths.

Put into a saucepan with the rest of the ingredients and bring slowly to a simmer.

Simmer for 5 – 10 minutes until slightly thickened. Leave to cool.

Serve at room temperature with the lime sherbet sprinkled over the top.

Banana, Coconut & Cardamom Buns

01 Wednesday Jul 2020

Posted by in breakfast, Sweet Things, Vegan

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , ,

These slightly sweet breakfast buns were inspired by an article on what to do with bananas that had got too soft. In the piece one of the cooks suggested making banana and cardamom puris. I just love anything flavoured with cardamoms and the idea of mixing the spice with bananas was very appealing.
Puris are made from a rich yeast dough, which of course can be baked as well as fried. I replaced the butter and milk in the puri recipe with coconut cream, some slivers of fresh coconut would add to this flavour, but I thought of that after I had made the buns. I was forgetting that I have some coconut flesh in the freezer, so next time…

250 grams whole meal spelt flour

7 grams fresh yeast / 3.5 grams powdered yeast

6 green cardamom pods

2 medium sized ripe bananas

120 ml coconut cream

2 teaspoons soft brown sugar

Egg white and more sugar for a topping

 

Put the flour into a large mixing bowl.

Add the seeds from the cardamom pods, the sugar and the yeast. Mix well.

Peel and either mash or pulse the bananas in a food processor. You don’t want a purée but some texture remaining.

Add the coconut cream to the bananas and mix.

Make a well in the centre of the flour mix and pour in the banana and coconut cream. Mix in to form a sticky dough.

Cover the bowl with a clean tea cloth and leave in a warm drought free place for a couple of hours until it has doubled in size.

Flour your work surface and tip the dough onto it. Knead the dough for a few minutes then divide into 8 equal balls.

Place on a baking tray and again in a warm drought free place leave to prove for 30 minutes.

Heat the oven to 175 C and bake the buns for 10 minutes.

Turn the oven down to 150 C and bake for another 5 minutes.

Take the tray out of the oven and brush each bun with egg white then sprinkle on a little brown sugar. Put the buns back in the oven for 7-10 minutes until the tops are nicely browned.

The Glass Strawberry

29 Wednesday Jan 2020

Posted by in Main Courses, Snacks and Tapas, Starters, Sweet Things, Vegan, Vegetable Dishes

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, ,

To start with – what a fab name for a restaurant! This cafe in Doncaster is one of my must do stops when I visit the town. The food is freshly cooked and super tasty, the service friendly and efficient, and the decor bright and cosy at the same time. You can eat lunch at a dining table or lounge on a comfy sofa with your coffee and cake.

I have my favourite dish that I like to order, The Naked Vegan Burger. Two burgers made from quinoa, beetroot and edename beans, served with yummy sweet potato fries, mixed salad and a pot each of hummus and sweet chutney.

If this is not for you, worry not, the menu has plenty to tempt all tastes – from breakfasts to sizzling pizzas. You can see the full menu on their website – http://www.theglassstrawberry.co.uk

A Mid-Week Dinner – Continued

27 Friday Mar 2015

Posted by in Starters, Sweet Things, Vegetable Dishes

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , , , , ,

For the – probably one of you – who has been waiting for the rest of the recipes for this dinner, here at last they are. IMG_1518 SPINACH WITH PINE NUTS AND RAISINS

For 4

25 grams pine nuts

A good bunch of fresh tender spinach

Olive oil 25 grams small golden raisins

Salt and freshly ground black pepper

Firstly toast the pine nuts until a golden brown in a thick based pan over a low heat. Shake the pan from time to time to turn the nuts.

Wash and drain the spinach.

Heat a tablespoon of oil in a shallow pan. Add the spinach, cover and let wilt for a couple of minutes over a low heat.

Add the pine nuts and raisins and stir to mix.

Season then cover the pan again and leave to cook for about five minutes.

Serve on hot plates.

PRAWN WITH GARLIC, LEMON AND PARSLEY

For 4

20 medium sized peeled prawns

1 large clove garlic

Olive oil

Juice of half a lemon

Chopped flat leaved parsley

Heat a tablespoon or so of olive oil in a frying pan.

Add the chopped garlic and fry until light brown.

Add the prawns and cook quickly on a high heat until opaque and slightly browned.

Squeeze in the lemon juice and stir to collect any brownings at the bottom of the pan.

Sprinkle in the parsley and serve immediately on a hot dish.

IMG_1525 CARAMELISED FIG CUSTARDS

FOR 4

The only remotely complicated thing about this recipe is remembering to cook the custards early enough that they can cool completely. You can of course cook them the day before they are needed.

I will point out also that it is not an error that the custard does not have sugar added to it. There is enough sweetness in the caramelised fig to balance the less sweet custard.

4 tablespoons caramelised fig jam

Butter for greasing your pots

2 eggs

200 ml full fat milk

Few drops vanilla essence

Preheat the oven to 140C

To cook this you will need individual ovenproof pots for the custard. Most crockery is oven proof provided you don’t heat or cool it too rapidly. I used some glass coffee cups to cook my custards.

Grease the pots with butter and then put a tablespoon of the fig jam in the bottom of each.

Break the eggs into a jug and whisk lightly to mix.

Add the milk and vanilla essence and whisk a bit more to mix this.

Pouring through a sieve to remove any solid bits in the egg, pour the custard into the pots.

Put the pots into a deep baking dish and add boiling water to the dish to come about 2cm up the pots. This prevents the custards getting too hot and burning on their bases.

Put in the oven and leave to cook for about an hour until the custards are just set.

Remove from the oven and leave to cool completely.

To serve slide a thin knife around the edge of the custard, put a small plate on top of the pot and invert the whole lot. You may have to give the custard and encouraging shake. If any of the jam stays in the pot, simply spoon neatly on top of the custard.

MINI CARDAMOM SHORTBREADS

100 grams plain flour

40 grams fine semolina

Quarter teaspoon ground cardamoms

30 grams sugar

100 grams butter

Put all the dry ingredients in a bowl and mix.

Cut the butter into small pieces into the flour mix and rub in.

Bring the mix together in a firm dough.

On a floured surface roll the dough out to just under a centimetre thick.

If you have a very small round cutter – ideally about 3cm diameter – then cut into small biscuits. Otherwise cut into small squares or lozenges.

Bake at 150C for about an hour until pale golden.