Tofu Chocolate mousse
06 Dec 2010 4 Comments
in Chocolate, Dairy Free, Desserts, Egg Free, Gluten Free, Recipe review, Vegan, Vegetarian Tags: Chocolate, dairy free, Gluten free, Recipes, Vegan, Vegetarian
I had a carton of tofu in the fridge and wasn’t sure what to do with it until I stumbled upon this recipe.
It’s a fantastically simple chocolate mousse dessert with minimal ingredients and tastes amazingly rich. You’d never believe that it contains tofu and NO eggs or cream. If you love rich chocolate desserts, this really is a ‘must try’ even if you are not vegan. The other big bonus is that it contains no raw eggs.
Technically it does not set to a mousse-like consistency but the consistency is very pleasant and thick; just the way a cold chocolate dessert should be.
You need:
- 1x 12 ounce package of silken tofu (I used ‘firm’)
- 10 oz milk or dark chocolate (check that it is dairy free if you are making it for someone who is vegan)
- 3 tsbp maple syrup (I used 2tbsp as I used milk chocolate which was sweet enough)
- 1tsp vanilla essence (optional)
Melt the chocolate in a double boiler or the microwave.
Blend tofu (preferably at room temperature) in food processor, blender, or with hand mixer until just smooth.
Scrape the melted chocolate into the food processor with the tofu and continue blending, add maple syrup and vanilla and process until creamy.
Pour into individual serving glasses or one large bowl and refrigerate until set.
I finished mine off with a grating of white chocolate but it would be gorgeous with something like chocolate curls or fresh raspberries, strawberries or mandarin segments.
Chicken and Broccoli Quiche
30 Nov 2010 10 Comments
in Leftovers, Recipe review, Sides and Snacks Tags: Baking, Recipes
I’d been wanting to make a quiche and then, when browsing Leslie’s blog I noticed the recipe for Easy All-butter Pie Crust that she posted recently. With promises of “…a recipe with a technique that will give you the flakiest all-butter pie crust you’ve ever dreamed of”, I had to bite the bullet and give it a go!
I have to confess that I didn’t have butter but wanted quiche right away so I just got on and made it with margarine anyway. I wouldn’t recommend using margarine as it made the dough a little sticky and difficult to work with but the pastry was still a success: nice, flaky and cooked well without going soggy under the quiche filling.
Easy All-Butter Pie Crust
Makes one 9″ double crust or two 9″ single crusts
2 cups/280 grams all-purpose flour, plus extra for dusting
14 tablespoons (200g) unsalted butter
5 tablespoons cold water
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar
I halved the recipe since I was making a quiche and not a pie.
Start by sifting the flour and place into a freezer bag and freeze the flour until cold. Chop the butter into cubes and place in the freezer for 15 minutes. Combine the water, salt and vinegar and place in the fridge.
Next dump the butter and flour onto your clean worktop and roll over it with a rolling pin until the butter is flattened into sheets. Gather up the butter and flour and place in a mixing dish, pour the water/vinegar mixture over half at a time in case you dont need it all and combine into a rough dough.
Turn out onto a lightly floured surface and press together into a more uniform ball of dough, wrap in cling film and refrigerate for at least half an hour before using.
More thorough explanation of the method here.
I rolled out and lined a 9″ lid of a Pyrex dish with the pastry since I don’t have a pie dish and my flan dish is a little too deep.
I refrigerated the dish with pastry for a further 30 minutes before baking blind at 375F for about 20 minutes. I covered the pastry with foil and some baking beans so prevent puffing up.
Ingredients for the quiche filling:
1 ready cooked chicken breast (approx 100g), finely diced
50g boiled and cooled broccoli, finely chopped
80g Cheddar cheese grated
60 ml cream
3 eggs, beaten
Combine the chicken, broccoli and cheese and then spread over the base of the quiche.
Beat together the cream and eggs and pour over the chicken, broccoli and cheese.
Finish off with a little freshly ground black pepper.
I found the cheese salty enough and didn’t need to add extra salt.
Bake at 375 f for 20-30 minutes; until the filling is firm and golden.
Mutabbel
11 Nov 2010 3 Comments
in Middle Eastern, Recipe review, Sides and Snacks, Vegetarian Tags: Mezze, Middle Eastern, Starters, Vegetarian
We like to eat Syrian/Lebanese style food quite often but it’s something we always eat out at restaurants. I was really happy when I found this Syrian food blog recently and challenged myself to make some of the mezze we most enjoy. I chose to make Mutabbel, Hummus, Baba Ghanoush, Waraq Inab, and Fatayir. Apart from the Baba Ghanoush, everything was a roaring success and we actually preferred my mezze to those which we normally eat out.
I’ll start with the mutabbel today which was unbelievably easy and took less than 5 minutes to make. We had a barbeque a couple of days beforehand so I had already prepared the aubergines (eggplant) by grilling them on the barbeque for about 15 minutes and placing in a plastic tub with a lid until cooled and peeling off the blackened skin.
I used:
I started by roughly chopping 2 aubergines and then placing into a bowl with the tahina, yogurt, garlic paste and salt which I then mixed together well with a metal spoon. I then used the handheld stick blender to blend the ingredients roughly. The mutabbel should remain a little lumpy and rustic looking, it shouldn’t be smooth like hummus. Taste, and add more tahina, yogurt, garlic or salt as desired – it’s all down to personal taste, we personally don’t like the mutabbel to have too much tahina and we prefer not to drizzle olive oil over the top as is traditional.
Recipe Review – Cinnamon rolls
04 Nov 2010 2 Comments
in Breads, Breakfast, Recipe review Tags: Baking, bread, Breakfast, pioneer woman
I saw this recipe for cinnamon rolls on the Pioneer Woman website and couldn’t wait to try it but the quantities given are huge! I think I would have been eating cinnamon rolls for the next month with those quantities! I made just a quarter of the stated recipe which still made one large dish of rolls and one small dish.
As for the icing, I don’t like cinnamon rolls drowned in icing so I used just one scant cup of icing sugar beaten together will a splash of milk and maple syrup and poured this over the warm rolls.
The rolls were the best I have tasted! Very soft texture which stayed fresh the next day. This recipe is for keeps and will make this again for sure!
I used less butter, sugar and cinnamon for the filling and added a scattering of milk chocolate chips.
The printable recipe is available on The Pioneer Woman website here but I used:
- 280 ml semi-skimmed milk
- 1/4 cup Vegetable Oil
- 1/4 cup Sugar
- 1 1/4 teaspoon instant Yeast
- 2 cups (Plus 1/4 Cup Extra, Separated) All-purpose Flour
- 1/4 teaspoon (heaping) Baking Powder
- 1/4 teaspoon (scant) Baking Soda
- 1/2 teaspoon Salt
- 1/4 cup Melted Butter
- 1/4 cup Sugar
- Generous Sprinkling Of Cinnamon
- Milk chocolate chips
The finished rolls with their glaze. I just kept the glass lid on the dish and the rolls were still fresh and soft the next day.
No knead Ciabatta
02 Jul 2010 7 Comments
in Breads, Breakfast, Recipe review Tags: Baking, bread, Recipes
I discovered this recipe shortly after buying one of the Ikea cast iron casserole dishes and was really excited to get on and make this. I doubled the original recipe because at 5l, the casserole dish I have is pretty huge. If you have a smaller dish, go with the original quantities for this bread (360g flour). I was a little over zealous when it came to flouring the tea towel so there was a little too much flour on top of my bread nevertheless the results were stunning. Crunchy exterior and beautifully aerated interior that was all the more delicious with lashings of butter that melted into my still warm slice that I couldn’t wait to taste test.
You must plan ahead with this bread as the dough needs to sit for a good 10-12 hours before shaping into a loaf, wrapping in a tea towel and leaving for a further 2 hours before baking.
Ingredients
720g strong white bread flour
2.5 tsp salt
1 tsp sugar
660ml tepid water
2 1/2 teaspoons instant yeast
1 tablespoon olive oil
Sift dry ingredients together in a large bowl, make a well in the middle and pour in water and olive oil. Mix together quickly with fingertips and then knead for a minute or two. Cover and leave in a dry place for 12 hours
The risen, aerated dough after a few hours:
After 12 hours, you’ll find it more than doubled in sized and very bubbly. On a well floured surface, knock back the dough and form into a ball. Place on a tea-towel sprinkled with flour (I slightly over did it in fear of the bread sticking), bring the edges of the tea towel up and cover and leave for 2 hours.
Place cast iron cooking dish with lid (Dutch Oven) into the oven on 450F/230C to pre-heat.
Flop the dough out into the cooking dish, place on lid and bake for 25mins. Remove lid and cook for further 15 mins to crisp up the crust.
Enjoy with a good quality butter or as a delicious accompaniment to home-made soup.
Boeuf Bourgignon – recipe review
13 Apr 2010 2 Comments
in Main courses, Meat, Recipe review Tags: Main courses, Recipes
I had a delicious boneless piece of beef today that I wanted to cook in the slow cooker… I remembered this recipe for Boeuf Bourgignon (sans alcohol) on Simplicity by the Sea so I popped over there to see if I had all the ingredients. I didn’t quite have everything: no mushrooms and no pearl onions but thought it would be a nice recipe to try anyway.
I followed Henia’s instruction roughly. I hadn’t forplanned so there was no time to marinade the meat AND slow cook it. Instead of marinading in 1/4 cup of balsamic vinegar, I just added a generous splash of the vinegar into the crockpot with all the other ingredients. Instead of pearl onions I added a couple of smallish onions cut into quarters… they disintegrated in the stew but I love to find large pieces of soft, sweet onion in my stew so all’s good! I also forgot to thicken up the gravy with flour nevertheless, the resulting stew was delicious! It slow cooked over a period of 9 hours and, like Henia at Simplicity by the Sea, I served it with mashed potato.
Hyderabadi Biriani
02 Apr 2010 7 Comments
in Chicken, Indo-Pak, Recipe review, Rice Tags: Biriani, Biryani, Curry, Indian, Vahrehvah
I’ve made biriani/biryani many times before but have never been 100% happy with the results and have found it a little time consuming to make. That was until someone pointed me in the direction of this recipe for Hyderabadi Biriani (the link will take you to a Youtube video of the vahrehvah.com chef making the biriani). The method for making the biriani is simplicity itself but there is certainly no compromise on the taste!
All you need to do is marinade the chicken pieces in yogurt and spices for a few hours, semi-cook some basamati rice and then transfer it all to a large pot. I used my dutch oven (cast iron, enamelled pot). First empty the chicken into the pot along with it’s marinade, cover with the half-cooked rice, sprinkle some saffron water (I also added a few drops of red and yellow food colouring) top with a scattering of fried onions and mint leaves and then leave to cook for around half an hour. In that short amount of time your chicken and rice will transform into a beautifully aromatic biriani.
I did find that the chicken stuck a little to the bottom of the pot so I intend to try baking in the oven next time. Hubby also asked me to leave out the mint leaves next time. In all though, I was really pleased to have made a quick, easy and authentic looking and tasting biriani! Top marks!
Martha Stewart’s Chocolate Crackle Cookies
31 Mar 2010 2 Comments
in Chocolate, Cookies, Desserts, Recipe review Tags: Baking, Chocolate, Cookies, Martha Stewart, Recipes
The kids and I really love chocolate chip cookies but it does get boring making the same thing time and time again even if I do try different recipes on the same theme. I’ve been experimenting a bit lately with chocolate chip cookie recipes in a quest to find ‘the’ perfect recipe however I felt the need for a change today. The only requirement was that it had to contain chocolate. 
I found this recipe on the Martha Stewart website and the method (whipping the ingredients) looked intriguing so I decided to go for it. The yield of 48 cookies was good considering the amount of all the ingredients – I normally use around that amount of chocolate and get only 2 dozen cookies. The dough was delicious even before being baked- it had a wonderful truffle texture and rich chocolate taste. Looking at the dough, you would never imagine how light the cookies would become after baking; not heavy at all. They looked quite unassuming on the tray going into the oven but transformed in those short 12 minutes baking time. Lightly crispy on the outside, soft on the inside.
Recipe verbatim from the Martha Stewart website:
Ingredients
Makes about 4 dozen
- 8 ounces bittersweet chocolate, coarsely chopped (I used half dark chocolate and half milk chocolate)
- 1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
- 1/2 cup Dutch-process cocoa powder
- 2 teaspoons baking powder
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- 8 tablespoons (1 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature
- 1 1/3 cups packed light-brown sugar
- 2 large eggs
- 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
- 1/3 cup milk
- 1 cup confectioners’ sugar, plus more for rolling (I used 1 cup caster sugar and about 1/2 cup icing sugar. First dipped them in the caster sugar and made the shape more precise then quickly coated in the icing sugar)
- Melt chocolate in a heat-proof bowl, or the top of a double boiler, over a pan of simmering water. Set aside to cool. Into a small bowl, sift together flour, cocoa, baking powder, and salt.
- In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat butter and light-brown sugar until light and fluffy, 3 to 4 minutes. Add eggs and vanilla, and beat until well combined. Add melted chocolate. Add dry ingredients alternately with milk. Mix on low speed until just combined. Divide dough into quarters, wrap with plastic wrap, and chill in the refrigerator until firm, about 2 hours.
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper; set aside. On a surface dusted with confectioners’ sugar, use your hands to roll each portion of dough into a log 16 inches in length and about 1 inch in diameter. Wrap logs in plastic wrap, and transfer to a baking sheet. Chill for 30 minutes. Cut each log into 1-inch pieces, and toss pieces in confectioners’ sugar, a few at a time. Using your hands, roll the pieces into balls. If any of the cocoa-colored dough is visible, roll dough in confectioners’ sugar again to coat completely. Place cookies on prepared baking sheets 2 inches apart. Bake until cookies have flattened and sugar splits, 12 to 15 minutes.
Transfer to a wire rack, and let cool completely. Store in an airtight container for up to 1 week.
I used 100g of Nestle Gold Noir 70% de Cacao and 100g of Hershey milk chocolate chips – I didn’t want the cookies to be too rich for the children>>
I beat the mixture with a handheld electric whisk and you can see here how truffley the mixture became>>
Coated in sugar and icing sugar ready for the oven. At step 2 and 3 I didn’t bother to roll into logs, I just put the bowl of dough into the fridge for an hour or so and then used a teaspoon to scoop heaped teaspoon sized amounts into a bowl of caster sugar and shaped into flat rounds and then coated in icing sugar. The caster sugar helped to make the exterior a little crunchier. I wasn’t too exact about coating them, a quick dip in the icing sugar was enough. I got exactly 48 from my mixture. I didn’t refrigerate a second time before baking – I was too impatient!
Beautifully crackled and ready to eat. 9 year old compares them to brownie cookies. A bit more effort than usual but so worth it!
Homemade Mascarpone – Review
30 Mar 2010 6 Comments
in Recipe review Tags: cheese, Cheesemaking, Italian, Recipes
Whenever I make Tiramisu I have to find some alternative recipe to those that does not use the traditional creamy, Italian Mascarpone. It’s difficult to find here in Riyadh and if you are lucky enough to find it, the price will set you back a bit! So, I was delighted when someone showed me this site with a homemade Mascarpone recipe. It requires only 2 ingredients: cream and lemon juice and accoring to the recipe takes around half an hour to make and if successful would cost me one third or less of the normal price in Riyadh for Mascaprone.
The recipe calls for pasteurised but not UHT whipping cream however, I have been unable to find non-UHT whipping cream here so I decided to take a chance and try it anyway. I used 250ml of regular fresh breakfast cream as it is called here in Saudi Arabic and 250ml of my UHT whipping cream. I found it quite difficult to reach the required heat of 190F and actually found that it got stuck on 160F so in the end I gave up with the double boiler method and poured the cream straight into the saucepan and heated it that way but took care not to burn any cream to the bottom of the pan. By this point I thought that all was lost. I added the lemon to the cream and kept stirring with a wooden spoon and saw subtle changes, the odd hairline streak of whey and the cream thickened and coated the back of the spoon as described in the recipe. I transferred to a muslin lined sieve and stored overnight in the fridge.
To be honest, after finding the temperature so difficult to reach, I was not expecting good results however…
The cheese set beautifully in the fridge, I sliced in half to checked for buttery globs within the creamy exterior but there were none – it was perfect! On tasting, I found it creamy with just a hint of cheesiness.
Now I am planning a good homemade traditional Tiramisu or Tiramisu cake. Watch this spot!
Recipe verbatim from the Baking Obsession blog >>> (Note: I used 500ml cream and my finished product weighed in at 240g)
Makes about 12 oz
Ingredients:
- 500 ml whipping (36 %) pasteurized (not ultra-pasteurized), preferably organic cream
- 1 tbsp fresh lemon juice
Preparation:
Bring 1 inch of water to a boil in a wide skillet. Reduce the heat to medium-low so the water is barely simmering. Pour the cream into a medium heat-resistant bowl, then place the bowl into the skillet. Heat the cream, stirring often, to 190 F. It will take about 15 minutes of delicate heating. Add the lemon juice and continue heating the mixture, stirring gently, until the cream curdles. Do not expect the same action as you see during ricotta cheese making. All that the whipping cream will do is become thicker, like a well-done crème anglaise. It will cover a back of your wooden spoon thickly. You will see just a few clear whey streaks when you stir. Remove the bowl from the water and let cool for about 20 minutes. Meanwhile, line a sieve with four layers of dampened cheesecloth and set it over a bowl. Transfer the mixture into the lined sieve. Do not squeeze the cheese in the cheesecloth or press on its surface (be patient, it will firm up after refrigeration time). Once cooled completely, cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate (in the sieve) overnight or up to 24 hours.
Brioche – review
27 Mar 2010 4 Comments
in Algerian, Breads, Breakfast, Recipe review Tags: Algerian, Baking, Breads, Recipes
‘Chrik Constantinois’
When I saw this recipe for Constantine Brioches on Simplicity by the Sea, I decided to get the ingredients straight into the breadmaker and give it a go right away.
I found the addition of Nigella Sativa seeds and orange zest into the dough very appealing. I halved the recipe because I was afraid that 4 1/2 cups of flour may be too much for the capacity of my breadmaker – I think it would have been fine though. No sesame seeds on top of my buns though as I didnt have any.
The deliciously soft dough being cut and shaped into buns
Glazed with egg wash and ready for baking
Ready for eating!
Verdict: Really nice, simple recipe. The brioches were wonderfully soft and had a delicius aroma coming from the orange zest and the Nigella sativa just makes them seem healthy! Thanks Henia!
Cuisine à 4 Mains (French)
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