coming up! Christmas Cake

This was a wonderful discovery... yeap, all for Christmas!

Here are the pics and later on will post the recipe ... full of fruits, delicious!!!

Terrine au dark chocolate et soupe de framboise

For Christmas, I made this terrine au dark chocolate for the first time. I wanted a light dessert, thinking that after a Christmas meal, something light and refreshing would be best.

But , this was not the dessert I thought. It was dense and rich. If you are a chocoholic, this one is for you.
I on the other hand, needed a bit of contrast. So I made a soupe de framboise to balance it out.

Recipe
700 gr of dark chocolate. Use a good quality chocolate, min 55% cacao content.
1/2 cup of milk
1/2 cup of cream
3/4 cup sugar
 5 egg yolks
4 feuilles of gelatin/colapez
1 3/4 cups of cream shipped to chantilly consistency
fruits

Preparation
First, melt the chocolate, then in a bowl warm the cream and milk.  Beat sugar and egg yolks, and add slowly little by little the warmed milk and cream, keep whisking. You don't want the eggs to cook.
Add this preparation in a pot and until it thickens like -creme anglaise, keep stirring!
In the meantime, place the gelatine in a little bit of water and squeeze the water out , and take them to the microwave for couple of minutes so they melt. Do not let them boil!
When you preparation is ready, add the gelatine. Add the melted chocolate, and stir.

Once cool, add the chantilly with your hand - yes, the recipe says so, up to you :)
Put in a mold 29X12X7 cm and cover with a plastic film and take it to the freezer and then to the refrigerator.
to unmold, place the terrine in  hot water for half minute and pray it unmolds well... at least that's what I did !!!

Terrine aux fruits rouges au vin de Sauternes

I saw this spectacular terrine in the book I received as gift called "Mis 100 mejores recetas" by Sandra Pierantoni de Plevisani (Peruvian pastry chef) .
It takes around 1 hour to make.

Ingredients
2 oranges
175 gr of "small" green grapes
125 gr of "small" strawberries
125 gr of framboise
125 gr of blueberries
125 gr of dark grapes- again small :)

Sirop
150 ml of water
1/2 cup of sugar
9 feuilles of colapez (gelatine)
1/2 limon
2 cups of Moscato D'Asti or Sauternes


Preparation
Making the sirop: put in a pot, 90ml of water with the sugar and bring to boil, once it boils, take aside and let the sirop cool.
On another bowl, put the gelatin in the remaining water (60ml). Get rid of the water and strain, put in the microwave for about 2 minutes. Recipe calls for 2 minutes, but I guess it really depends on how high is your microwave at. Mine it took less than one minute.Do not let it boil!
Add the gelatin to the sirop, add the lemon juice and the wine.

Putting all together !!!!
Take a rectangular mold and fill it with 1/3 of the preparation. take to the freezer and let it set for about 15 minutes.
Put all the fruit in one bowl and start placing it on top of your terrine, once your placed it, add more gelatine and let it set.

now the tricky part or more nerve racking , take it out of the mold!
Place your mold for one minute in boiling water so the gelatine loosens up. Unmold it in a plate, and decorate with oranges and fresh fruits.

Empanadas!!!

I'm on holidays, can you tell ? and what I'm doing, I'm baking!
Yesterday were chocolate chips and a christmas cake that I will later post the recipe ! and today is empanadas- Peruvian style!



For that you need:
500 gr flour
150 gr salted butter
1 cup of ice-cold water
1 tbsp white vinegar
1tbsp paprika

In a food processor mix all ingredients. Wrap dough in a plastic bag and put in the refrigerator for one hour minimum.

The fillings- get inspired!  I like empanadas filled wih beef.
So for this, you need :
500 gr ground beef
4 chop onions
75 gr olives cut in 4
3 boiled eggs cut in cubes
Olive oil

In a pan, cooked onions till they are transparent and then add ground beef. And species: salt, cumin, pepper.
When almost done, add olives , eggs. You can also add raisins.
Other recipes, include tomate sauce- just a couple of spoons and you let it cook a few minutes.
When cool , it's ready to fill your empanadas.

Take the dough out of the fridge and roll out. Cut circles.

Place on the middle of the circle the filling. Brush eggwhite or water on the borders to glue the border. Close the empanada and press with a fork or do little braids.
Place filled empanadas in baking sheet and brush with yolk the empanadas. Bake at 175°C till done, around 20 minutes.

Linzer Sables and Chocolate Chips Cookies

So, it's Christmas time again, and I have been busy baking cookies!

Linzer Sables from Dorie Greenspan

1 1/2 cups finely ground almonds, hazelnuts, or walnuts. I used hazelnuts!
1 1/2 cups flour
1 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp salt
scant 1/4 tsp ground cloves
1 large egg
2 tsp water
1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup raspberry jam or strained apricot jam plus 1 tsp water
confectioner's sugar, for dusting

In a medium bowl, whisk together the ground nuts, flour, cinnamon, salt, and cloves. In a small bowl, lightly beat together the egg and water.

In an electric mixer, beat together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add the egg mixture and beat until combined. On low speed, add the nut and flour mixture and beat only until just combined.

Divide the dough into two halves, and shape each half into a disk. Place each disk between two sheets of wax paper or plastic wrap, and with a rolling pin roll out until the dough is 1/4 inch thick. Place both pieces of wrapped dough on a cookie sheet and refrigerate for about 2 hours, or freeze for about 45 minutes, or until firm. If you don't want to bake right away, you can keep the dough refrigerated for up to 3 days, or frozen for up to 2 months.

Cut as many cookies as you can/want. Place cutout cookies on baking sheet and bake at 375 degrees F or 170 degrees C around 11 to 13 minutes. Let baked cookies cool on a rack.

When cool if you want to make a sandwich cookie, plan 1/2 tsp. jam in the center of eachcookie and cover with the remaining cookie. Dust confectioners' sugar before serving.

 

 Chocolate Chips cookies  

2 1/4

cup of flour

1/2 tsp baking powder

1 tsp salt

12 oz of chocolate chips ( your pick-milk, dark, white.... I like dark chocolate )

250 gr unsalted butter

1/2 cup of sugar

1 cup of brown sugar

2 eggs

2 tsp of vanilla

Combine all dry ingredients and set aside. Beat sugars with butter until light and fluffy, add eggs , one by one. Add vanilla. Blend dry ingredients with a spatula and add at the end the chocolate chips.

With a spoon make little balls and  place on baking sheet. Bake in pre-heated oven at 175°C for about 8 to 10 minutes.

Eat in moderation ...

Upside down caramelized apple sponge cake

Once upon a time, well actually, last week, I watched  this show called Baking Mad with Eric Lanlard.  He prepared an upside down berry sponge cake.I knew I had to give it a try!

I found the perfect opportunity to bake it one day when I couldn't sleep and was up since 3am. I got online looking for something to do while up, and after a few seconds of updating my status to sleepless in my Facebook account, the answer was: BAKE and so I did!
I followed the recipe which you can find here : Upside down Berry sponge cake 

The cake was delicious, the caramelized fruits had flavored the cake with all its juices. Yummy!
I was happy of the outcome and the look was great... So, I went to work leaving my cake to cool down and hoping to find it when back, but there was nothing left....
I'm assuming they liked it!.



I thought I could make it again since it was such a success and I had a couple of friends coming over today. I ran to the supermarket with no luck, only saw pears and apples. So, that's how it turned out to be an Upside down caramelized apple sponge cake.

I sliced 3 apples and cooked in 5 tbspn unsalted butter and 3 tbsp sugar and 1 tbsp cinnamon.
Finally, I placed them on the tin that was previously drizzled with golden syrup and finally added on top caramel till covered.

I let it cool for about 20 minutes, then I worked on the batter. I took the original recipe and instead of adding vanilla, I added cinnamon about 1 tablespoon.

And finally, I put the batter on top of the apples and baked till done!

Caramel

 

2 cups sugar

½ cup water

1½ tbsp. light corn syrup

2/3 cup heavy cream

2 tbsp. unsalted butter, at room temperature

 

Preparation

 

Put the sugar, water and corn syrup in a medium heavy-bottomed saucepan, stir just to combine the ingredients and then put the pan over medium-high heat. 

Heat, without stirring , until the caramel turns deep amber, 5-10 minutes. Lower the heat a bit and, standing back from the saucepan add the cream and butter.

 

This recipe yields about 2 cups of caramel. You can store it in your fridge for a month.