Monthly Archives: December 2014

Baking

White chocolate and ginger cheesecake.

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Mary Berry’s.

Hers, of course looked much more pretty, mine looked ok, but tasted great, that was our dessert on Christmas Eve this year.

For the base I used 150 g digestive biscuits, 25 g plain chocolate, which I melted with 50 g of butter. Whizzed it all in a blender, pressed onto the prepared lined tin and prepared the filling.

300 g white chocolate buttons, melted above the boiling water, 400 g of Philly, 150 ml soured cream, 2 eggs,  1 tsp vanilla extract all went onto the bowl of the KA, plus about 6 ginger stem balls, roughly chopped.

Baked in 170 degrees for about 45 minutes,  ended up looking like a giant soufflet, but it set in the end.

Right before serving I decorated it with some whipped cream, chocolate and icing sugar. The ginger bits in it- genius.

Merry Christmas!

Baking

Mini galette des rois.

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How my French improved, I’m so proud. :-)))

Moka and her boys are in Winchcombe for Christmas.  I made a galette with some frangipan, no photos, as there was no time and somehow it did not happen, but there was some puff pastry left and some frangipan, so Moka made it into 6 delightful things. Apart from frangipan she added some thinly sliced apple and some roughly chopped chocolate. Brushed with egg and baked till golden. Delicious when eaten warm. 🙂

Baking, Room for improvement

Chocolate mousse cake.

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Mary Berry’s. Saw her making it on telly, checked the recipe and had the base in the oven before taking Pizia for a walk. That’s how efficient I am. 🙂

I’ve made half of Mary’s portion, just to taste and see if it would make a nice pud for Christmas, I think it has a potential. The ingredients here are for my small round tin.

So, 13 g of cocoa powder was mashed into a paste with some hot water, then I added 50 g of margarine, 50 g of caster sugar, 50 g of self raising flour,1/2 tea spoon of baking powder and 1 egg all whipped into a cake, baked in a lined tin for 20 minutes in 180 degrees.  When making it next time, I’ll cut off some of the base, as in some places the base was nearly bigger than the layer of the mousse. What would also make the cake more fancy, I think, would be a thin layer of jelly maybe, instead I followed Mary’s suggestion and brushed the hot cake with whisky. Couldn’t taste it at all.

Once cooled, I made the mousse of 225 ml of whipping cream and 150 g of melted cooking chocolate. Mary recommends no more than 50% cocoa, but I found it lacking in excitement. Something has to be done next time to make that mousse more attractive. It looked great though, when the mousse set in the fridge for 5 hours, dusted with cocoa, a tower of raspberries on top, finished with icing sugar. Very nice, will be Olutafied next time.