lavender crème brulée - almost

SHF#38 the proof is in the pudding - with a Tartelette tutorial

It's been ages since I participated in Sugar High Friday, and this month's theme - the proof is in the pudding - chosen by Zorra of Kochtopf, is just up my street. Also, for my birthday way back in September my auntie gave me a nifty little blowtorch (and she even smuggled a can of gas lighter refill stuff to go with it in her luggage on Eurostar!). Which, shame on me, I hadn't used yet. Although S had a jolly good time playing around with the torch already. What can I say: boys, gadgets, and flames - an irresistible combination.

Crème brulée was on Kochtopf's approved pudding list, so crème brulée it would be. Somehow it's one of those things I've never made before, even though it seems dead simple. Maybe because it's I'm not utterly crazy about it - to me, there seems to be something not quite right about a fridge-cold dessert with a piping hot crust on top - or maybe it's because I had a few bad versions in the past, one of which made me really sick.

Anyways, I decided it was high time to put my little blowtorch to good use, finally use that lavender I still had lying around, and give crème brulée a go. The recipe I used was a Claudia Fleming one and very easy to make: basically a custard, which is then baked in the oven in a water bath covered with pierced aluminium foil. I was a bit nervous about the bain-marie - all the other times I tried similar things were complete disasters; whatever I put in there would completely boil over. And this time was no different. Luckily the cremes were not completely ruined and still salvageable. And they still tasted quite nice, so not all was lost. I was stumped though, and in need of professional advice. And who better to turn to then the one and only Tartelette! Who, very kindly, answered my questions and suddenly things seemed very clear.

Turns out that my crème brulée wasn't exactly crème brulée, more like a set custard with a layer of sugar over the top. See, you're not supposed to thicken the custard on the stove, which I did - you just pour the hot cream over the beaten egg yolks with sugar, let that mixture cool, skim off the foam on top and bake au-bain-marie. The water bath distributes the heat evenly and gently to the custard so that the eggs don't curdle. It is also a bit more forgiving if you let them cook a little bit longer than necessary. Tartelette top tip number one: 'check for that tiny giggle in the middle and remove them before they are completely done'.

Then there was that issue of my custards 'boiling over'. Enter Tartelette top tip number two: 'I am thinking the steam and heat created by the foil makes the cremes boil over. Also if you whisk your eggs too vigourously they will have a tendency to foam up a lot and create a soufflé motion.' and whisk vigourously I sure did. Funny how I almost never succeed in turning out a good soufflé, except when I'm trying to make a crème brulée.

And to finish her tutorial, Helen threw in a basic crème brulée recipe for free! Thanks so much for your advice, Helen. It is much appreciated and I will certainly give it one more try before I throw in the towel. If only because S would like to have another go playing around with that blow torch...

design dessert

Last weekend I finally got around to doing something with the sweet potatoes I'd had lying around for way too long - I don't use sweet potatoes all that often and all the lovely Thanksgiving posts I've been reading everywhere made me itch to try something new. I browsed through my cookbooks, thought about adapting and combining different recipes and was determined not to get myself into a catch-22 situation, where I end up making nothing at all because I'm unable to choose from all the possible dishes.

Also, I wanted to challenge myself a bit: I have a few cookbooks with complex dessert recipes, consisting of several components and looking oh so beautiful. Which I never get around to making, exactly because they're so complex. Not difficult - just a lot of work. Invariably, you need a gazillion different ingredients for all the parts, so it takes half a day doing the preliminary grocery shopping, another half day to make everything and when you're finished, the kitchen looks like a battlefield. And then, of course, just when you sigh and think 'that was ok', you take a last look at the recipe and you find that, under 'assembly' or 'presentation', a few more components and some complicated garnishes are thrown in for good measure.

So I often end up making just one component, rather than the whole dessert. Which tastes nice and looks fine, but not spectacular. And sometimes, you know, a girl just wants to show off and make something that looks as if it came out of a restaurant kitchen. This girl does anyway.

And so here it is, my first show-off (but no sweat) dessert: sweet potato and white chocolate flan on a gingersnap crust, sweet potato gnocchi and coconut custard, all flavoured with sweet massala spices. Very easy to make, because it doesn't use a million different ingredients, and looks like a million dollars. Just one warning: pretend you don't know how much butter goes into the whole thing.

Also, because the flan squares tasted rather nice all by themselves and because - in my mind anyway - the sweet potato thing has a decidedly American feel to it (plus they are not too showy by themselves and won't upstage a brand new house) I'm taking them to Peabody's housewarming party.


sweet potato flan squares
inspired by D & C Duby's Wild Sweets

100g roasted and mashed sweet potatoes
100g crushed gingersnaps (by all means, make them yourself if you want, but store-bought will do just fine)
195g + 25g butter
130g white chocolate
3 eggs
80 caster sugar
1 tsp vanilla bean extract
1 tsp sweet massala spices

line a baking tin (I used a 20 cm square one) with baking paper, making sure it the sides of the tin are covered as well. Melt 25g butter, mix with the crushed gingersnaps and spread evenly on the bottom of the tin. Melt butter with chocolate (I used the microwave, in 30 second bursts). Combine sweet potatoes with eggs, sugar, vanilla and massala, then fold in the chocolate mixture and stir until thoroughly combined. Pour mixture over gingersnap base and bake in oven (150˚C) for 30 minutes. Refrigerate until ready to use.

sweet potato gnocchi
inspired by Hidemi Sugino The Dessert Book

125g roasted and mashed sweet potatoes
50g plain flour
1/3 whole egg
1 tbsp coconut milk
caster sugar with pinch of sweet massala spices

combine all ingredients in mixing bowl until incorporated. Cover bowl and leave to rest in fridge for at least one hour. Flour work surface and roll dough into a log, about 1 inch diametre. Cut into half inch cubes and cook in boiling water (they are ready when they float). Coat in massala sugar mix.

coconut custard
adapted from here

1 1/2 cups coconut milk
1 tbsp cornstarch
3 egg yolks, beaten
1 tsp vanilla bean paste
1 tsp sweet massala spices
1/6 cup sugar

Combine 1/4 cup coconut milk and cornstarch in a bowl and blend until smooth. Whisk in yolks, beating until smooth. Combine rest of coconut milk, vanilla, massala and sugar in a saucepan and carefully bring to a boil. When the mixture just boils, whisk a ladleful into egg mixture to temper it, then whisk this back into the cream mixture. Cook, stirring constantly, until the mixture is thick enough to coat the back of a spoon. Pour into jug and cool.

To assemble: dust flan squares with icing sugar, add a few gnocchi and a drizzle of custard.

potato bread

Another month has flown past, which means it's time for another Daring Bakers' challenge. This month, Tanna of My Kitchen In Half Cups chose potato bread - you'll find the recipe on her blog. As usual, I left it to the last minute to start baking, but this weekend was the only weekend this month I actually spent in my own home. One weekend I had to work, another weekend there was an interesting symposium, and last weekend S and I were in Antwerp, showing 'our' city to two friends, doing touristy things, and of course sampling lots of chocolate and beer. Such a hard job, playing tour guide!

When I told S I'd be making potato bread, he went 'seriously, potato bread? Why? Not so sure about that'. But by the time I switched off the oven and had him taste one of the rolls, he was singing an entirely different tune. And then... I told him he couldn't eat any more of it until the next day, because I wanted to take a decent daylight photograph. Which I couldn't take at 4 o'clock in the afternoon, because it gets dark ridiculously early these days (yes, I will probably keep complaining about this until, oh, April or so). We couldn't resist though, which is why the focaccia (brushed with olive oil and sprinkled with sea salt, black pepper and rosemary from my garden) is mysteriously absent in the pics. We ate it all while watching Star Trek - it didn't survive Captain Picard's mission of the day and didn't live to see real daylight.

I often bake bread at weekends - it's just so much better than the stuff you can buy here, at least you know what goes in it, and you won't get a heart attack or break your tongue when trying to pronounce all the ingredients in pre-packed breads. I'd never tried potato bread though. And one thing I can now say: when you make potato bread, make sure you have someone at hand to flour the work surface and scrape the dough together because, boy, is this a sticky bugger!

This month I've been a good daring baker and stuck to the recipe. Well, almost stuck to the recipe, but no major cheating this time. I added the butter to the mashed potatoes instead of later on, because I didn't think I'd get the butter to distribute evenly otherwise. And I skipped the second rise for half of the bread: I forgot to buy fresh yeast, so had to make do with the dried, instant, fast-action stuff, which only needs to rise once (you knead your dough, shape it, let it rise and then put it straight in the oven). In the past, I have tried two rises with this yeast, but without success: after the first rise and re-kneading the dough it wouldn't rise again, resulting in a rather dense and heavy bread. There was plenty of dough to go around though, so I put half in a rectangular bread tin and plonked that in the oven straight after the first rise. The other half I reworked into smaller bread thingies and left for a second rise, ready to put in the oven after my first bread came out. And, this time, both methods worked equally fine.

Like I said, the dough is incredibly sticky - after the 5 cups of flour specified in the recipe, the dough is nowhere near dough-y enough to turn it out onto a floured work surface. But, following the instructions to a t, that's exactly what I did (I am a bit blonde sometimes). and that's also when having an S on stand-by came in incredibly handy. He kept on adding flour until my blob became a workable, silky smooth, elastic dough, out of which I got a loaf, a piece of focaccia and some rolls I sprinkled with sesame seeds, and cumin seeds.

Even if I say so myself, this was one of the best breads I've ever baked, and S wholeheartedly agreed. The taste took him right back to his childhood, because it tasted exactly like the 'ovenkoeken' he would eat at a local harvest festival. I will certainly bake this again - but next time I might try it the other way around. Usually when I bake bread I start with flour and add a liquid gradually, however this recipe started with 'potato water' to which flour is added - rather strange and more difficult I think. But the end result was more than worth it.

random pic of dead stuff in my garden

Check out all the other Daring Bakers' potato breads here.

sweets for Diwali

Diwali was actually celebrated on the 9th of November this year so I’m an entire week late, but I’m sure Ganesha’s appetite for sweets is the same all year around. And as for Lakshmi (even though she’s a tough cookie – my friend’s words, not mine), surely my rice pudding is sweet enough to sway her.

Diwali, the festival of lights, is celebrated big in the area where I live, with lots of fireworks. My friends who celebrate it make sure their house is spic ‘n span clean from top to bottom, in anticipation of Ganesha and Lakshmi’s visit. These Hindu deities bestow wealth, success and happiness, but only upon clean households. In addition to all the cleaning, there are also sweets. Lots of them.

Now why would I be celebrating Diwali - blonde Belgians and Indian festivals, surely that’s a strange mix? Well, blame my friend S, a crazy (in a lovely way crazy) Mauritian girl, from Indian descent. She not only decided that I was going to be half Indian, but also introduced me to Bollywood music and films, textiles, henna, and of course Indian sweets. Which, with all their spices, are absolutely perfect for this time of year. And after restraining myself with the custard last week, I was itching to make something else with a mix of heart-warming spices.

Many moons ago I made gajjar ka halwa (carrot halwa) – an extremely sweet dessert with grated carrots and lots of cream, butter and milk – which was delicious but took me an entire afternoon to make, and I just didn’t have that much time on my hands. Ras malai is my absolute favourite – it’s a sort of milk curd ball in sweetened milk with pistachios and rose water – but I have absolutely no idea how to make that myself. And so I thought I’d give my gran’s rice pudding a go.

A bit nerve-racking, considering her rice pudding is heaven on a plate (and that’s a lot to live up to!), and also a bit of a challenge, with the vague instructions she gave me. It turns out her vague instructions are absolutely spot on though, there’s no way to make them any clearer. Gran only adds saffron to her rice pudding, but I added a bunch of spices. Other than that, I stuck to her ‘recipe’. And the result? A very Flemish dessert, with an Indian twist.


recipe
1 cup of rice (I used Arborio, but any rice that is suitable for risotto will do)
a knob of butter
full fat milk (about 1 litre)
a squeeze of honey
1 teaspoon vanilla bean extract
half a stick of cinnamon
a pinch of saffron
1 star anise
5 cloves
3 cardamom pods
a pinch of nutmeg

Melt some butter in a saucepan, add rice to pan and make sure it is coated with butter. Add enough milk to cover rice and add all the spices. Keep on stirring and adding milk (I added a tiny squeeze of honey halfway through) until the rice is soft, about 45 minutes.

It’s basically like making a risotto, so it takes some dedication, but the results are more than worth it. The spices I listed are the quantities I used, but you can of course adapt according to preference (S tasted and said it was ok, but he thought the star anise was too overwhelming), add some cream instead of only milk, and sweeten it as much or as little as you like.

vanilla custard

After reading all the comments on my last post (the cheating-custard one) saying how easy and quick the custard was to make from scratch and how delicious it was, and a ticking-off from the one and only Tartelette, I shamed myself into making the custard part of the Bostini Cream Pie Daring Baker challenge. Which, indeed, took about fifteen minutes or so to make, was incredibly easy, didn't curdle at all, thickened within a minute and was utterly delicious.

I was of course tempted to add a twist to it - I was thinking cinnamon, cardamom and maybe star anise - but I know that S loves his custard good ole' plain vanilla. And since he had volunteered to make a lovely Sunday roast (and also because I love him and like to make him happy), I decided to stick to vanilla. When the custard had thickened I called S over to the kitchen and said 'look what I made'. His eyes lit up and I didn't have to ask him twice if he wanted to scrape every last bit of the custard out of the pan and lick the whisk.

Luckily I had started early enough in the day so that I could still get a decent daylight picture of my custards - unlike the nuclear looking pics in my last post. I probably should have done something fancy with the custard, saucing it over a decadent chocolate cake or something to that effect, but that would mean I'd have to bake a chocolate cake as well, and by the time that would be ready it would be dark, resulting in more fluorescent looking food. Plus there is something quite comforting about vanilla custard all by itself and so, after the pics, S and I dug straight in.

S of course loved it but I needed a lie-down afterwards, it was so heavy. Couldn't move for half an hour. Even S had to agree that, yummy though it was, it was a bit too creamy to eat by itself - next time I might substitute all that cream with milk. It would have made a perfect sauce for a Bostini Cream Pie though.

recipe
adapted from Alpineberry

1/4 cup whole milk
1 tablespoons cornstarch
3egg yolks, beaten
1 1/4 cups heavy whipping cream
1 tsp vanilla bean paste
1/6 cup sugar

Combine milk and cornstarch in a bowl and blend until smooth. Whisk in and yolks, beating until smooth. Combine cream, vanilla and sugar in a saucepan and carefully bring to a boil. When the mixture just boils, whisk a ladleful into egg mixture to temper it, then whisk this back into the cream mixture. Cook, stirring constantly, until the mixture is thick enough to coat the back of a spoon. Pour into cups and refrigerate to chill. Delicious with chocolate sprinkles.

p.s. Baking Soda is only forgiving me for cheating with custard if I send her over some of that Japanese dinner our friends made us. You'll have to make do with a virtual treat, Baking Soda, I hope that's enough. And for good measure, I'll throw in a few pics of our lovely weekend in the country.

sushi rice with salmon flakes, green beans and egg ribbon;
stew with minced meat, potatoes, onions, carrots and okra, with pickles;
French beans with black sesame

countryside - you know, a place outside the M25, with real trees and fresh air

Daring (cheating, last-minute) Baker

It’s amazing how time flies, especially when you spend one weekend at a friends’ cottage in the countryside (doing nothing all weekend but eating, sleeping, and walking the dog) and another weekend hosting friends who take over your kitchen to cook you a lovely, amazing and delicious Japanese meal. Such a hard life, I know.

After waving goodbye to our Japanese friends on Sunday morning (S duly made crepes for breakfast, the third weekend in a row), I realised I had only the rest of the day left to finish this month’s Daring Bakers challenge, hosted by Mary of Alpine Berry: bostini cream pie, which consists of vanilla custard, orange chiffon cake, and melted chocolate.

Having already missed last month’s challenge, I didn’t want to miss this month’s again, even though work has been insanely busy, my weekends filled with, you know, other things, and, last but not least, the fact I simply don’t like chocolate and orange combined. But time was running out, so prepare for a bit of cheating along the way.

The chiffon cake was an absolute doddle to make and came together in no time at all - I think it took the whole of 10 minutes to throw all the ingredients together. I halved the quantities, used leftover egg whites I had frozen a while ago, and used orange juice from a carton. Oh, and I left out the zest because I don’t exactly like zest of anything either. That’s my first bit of cheating, but it will get worse. Consider yourself warned. I used my new mini-brioche moulds and a muffin tin, and the resulting cakes were nicely fluffy, airy and moist. They did shrink and change shape after cooling tough, which I also experienced when I made the infamous strawberry mirror cake for the DB July challenge. I don’t think I’ll ever be a fan of chiffon cake, but I can see how it might work in a ‘supporting role’, to bring together other components of a dessert. Chiffon cake by itself always seems to lack something to me, I find it just too sweet and bland. Having said that, the orange juice added a subtle bit of tang to it, which made it taste slightly more interesting.

Warning: major cheating coming up. I didn’t have that much time left to finish and photograph the dessert – now that the clocks have gone back an hour, it starts getting dark ridiculously early in the afternoon, which means less time to make decent photographs. I could have got up early this morning to make some pics of course, but I know myself too well to know that wasn’t going to happen. So I may, ahem, have made custard from a packet. Powder from the packet, milk, vanilla sugar, and some vanilla bean paste added to it, a bit of stirring et voilà, the quick ‘n easy cheat’s way to custard. But at least I’m being honest about it - my parents brought me up well that way, teaching me not to lie.

The chocolate and butter I melted together in a soup bowl in the microwave, which took another entire minute, and I dipped my little chiffon cakes in it to give them a chocolate coating.

After a few quick piccies I found a willing guinea pig in S - who had been hovering around the kitchen, his spoon at the ready, ever since he saw the custard. He loved it (but he loves everything that comes drenched in custard) until I mentioned that there was orange in the cake, and then he didn’t like it as much any more. I knew I wouldn’t like it, but I didn’t dislike it as much as I thought I would. The orange was rather subtle; the combination of soft fluffy cake with custard and chocolate makes for a very comforting dessert; the cake by itself tasted ok; I’ll have to fight S for the rest of the custard; and it was incredibly easy to make and present, which makes it perfect to show off at dinner parties. It’s just not very ‘me’, this dessert. But if you like chocolate and orange combined, by all means, give it a go.

You can check out all the other Daring Bakers’ efforts here.

weekend breakfast crepes

I’ll let you in on a little secret: I’m not a morning person. Never have been and never will be. Mind you, I’m not moody or grumpy in the morning, it’s just that in between my stumbling out of bed and actually being awake, a fair amount of time can pass. I don’t mind people talking to me, so long as they don’t expect coherent replies. Or replies at all, for that matter. As my mum knows all too well.

S, on the other hand, opens his eyes and is wide awake, ready to start the day. Which makes me a very lucky woman, because when I get up at weekends, breakfast is always ready. I even get to choose what I’d like for breakfast: bacon & eggs, French toast, or crepes. And yesterday I was the lucky recipient of the latter.

When I was growing up, crepes were a rare occurrence and a real treat. Mum would bake them once in a blue moon – for my birthday, or when my girlfriends came over for play dates. Which is why, even though I can eat crepes every weekend now if I like (if I ask nicely), it still feels like Easter, Sinterklaas, birthdays and Christmas all rolled into one!

The crepes from my childhood were made with a ready-made mix. But making them from scratch isn’t all that much more work. And of course they taste a million times better. S likes his with sugar, I like mine with syrup (a kind of molasses, treacle-like thing that I stock up on every time I’m in Belgium). Either way, they are utterly delicious and a wonderfully indulgent weekend breakfast. Did I mention how lucky I am?


S's crepe recipe
200g self-raising flour
30g caster sugar (half of which vanilla sugar)
500ml milk
2-4 eggs (to taste)

Mix everything together and pass batter through sieve to make sure there are no lumps. Butter or oil pan (make sure pan is hot) and add one ladle-full of batter. Swirl batter around into crepe shape. When baked on one side, flip and bake other side. Repeat and then eat.