Spiced Chocolate Pear and Hazelnut Torte - The Cook’s Pantry

Currently there are a lot of pears around, so it is a perfect time to make the most of them. I was watching The Cook’s Pantry this weekend when Courtney Roulston made a Spiced Chocolate, Pear and Hazelnut Torte - a perfect way to celebrate pears.
 

This moist torte contains both hazelnut and almond meal. When combined with dark chocolate, cardamom and cinnamon, and topped with sliced pears, you have a nutty, winning dessert.

To make this easy, gluten free dessert, you will need:

120g chopped dark chocolate, melted

2/3 cup olive oil

3/4 cup brown sugar

3/4 cup hazelnut meal

1/2 cup almond meal

3 eggs, separated

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon cardamom 

2 pears, cored and thinly sliced

Preheat your oven to 180 degrees Celsius and grease and line a 9” fluted tart pan with a removable base.

In a large bowl, combine all of the dry ingredients and the egg yolks with the olive oil, then fold through the melted chocolate.

In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form. Fold the whites through the chocolate mixture.

Scrape the mixture into the prepared tart pan and smooth the top. Arrange the sliced pears on top.

Bake the torte in the oven for 45-50 minutes or until cooked through. Remove the torte from the oven and allow it to cool in the tin before slicing and serving.

TWD - Pecan Brown Sugar Crack -Ups

 This week’s Tuesday with Dorie recipe comes from the land of pre-COVID, being a cookie designed to share. The recipe is for Pecan-Brown Sugar Crack-Ups, so named because you are meant to crack off pieces from the single large cookie.

Toasted pecans are whizzed up with brown sugar, butter, flour, eggs, sugar and salt to form a cookie that is warm and earthy in flavour. I wasn’t sharing, so I made a quarter of the recipe. My cookies were probably a bit thick as a result of the pan I used, but they suited me.

To see what the other Dorie’s Cookies bakers made this week and what they thought of it, visit the LYL section of the TWD website.

Simple Apple Cake - Helen Goh’s recipe

 Happy Saturday everyone! I hope that you are having a relaxing weekend.  It’s freezing here today,  but perfect weather for cooking and baking because it warms up the house.

Last Sunday was Mother’s Day. My mum is too far away to bake for, but that did not stop me from baking Helen Goh’s gorgeous Simple Apple Cake to celebrate the day.

This lovely cake is soft and moist on the inside, studded with apple pieces, and has a nice brown crust on the outside that is coated with a citrus glaze. The cake also has a hint of rose flavour. I thought it was delightful.

If you would like to make this cake for someone special in your life, you will need:

2 small apples

Zest of 1 lemon

225g plain flour

1 teaspoon ground ginger

1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of sofa

1/4 teaspoon salt

2 large eggs

100g sour cream (I subbed Greek yoghurt)

160g sugar

150ml olive oil

2 teaspoons rosewater

Glaze

1 cup icing sugar 

1/2 teaspoon ground ginger

1 tablespoon lemon juice

1 tablespoon orange juice (I just used all lemon juice)

Preheat your oven to 180 degrees Celsius and grease and line a 20cm round springform pan.

Peel and core the apples and chop into 1cm pieces. Toss the apple pieces with the lemon zest and set aside.

Sift the flour, ginger, bicarbonate of soda, baking powder and salt into a large bowl.

In a jug, whisk together the eggs and sour cream. Add the sugar, olive oil and rosewater and whisk until smooth.

Fold the apples through the flour, then pour over the egg mixture and fold together until just combined. Scrape the batter into the prepared pan, and bake in the oven for 55-60 minutes or until cooked through.

Remove the cake from the oven and allow it to cool for 10 minutes in the tin.

In the meantime, make the glaze while mixing together all of the glaze ingredients until smooth - it should be thick but pourable, so add more lemon juice if necessary.

Pour the glaze over the warm cake and spread over the top of the cake with a metal spatula. Allow the cake to cool completely in the tin before unmoulding. 

Serve the cake decorated with edible flowers.

TWD - Chocolate Chip Not Quite Mandelbrot

 This week’s Tuesday with Dorie recipe is Chocolate Chip Not Quite Mandelbrot. The name is derived from the fact that Mandelbrot is meant to contain almonds - these biscuits do not.

Like biscotti, these biscuits are twice baked. I made my own modifications - I used a gluten free flour mix, a mixture of Reese’s pieces and chocolate chips, and chocolate ginger sugar in place of cinnamon sugar on top.

These biscuits were quite tasty - way tastier than commercial almond bread.

To see what everyone else made this week and their thoughts in it, visit the LYL section of the TWD website.

ANZAC Cake

 

Today is ANZAC Day, marked by dawn services, parades and other tributes to service men and women. The traditional “food” made to mark the day is ANZAC biscuits, made with oats, coconut and golden syrup.

Helen Goh published a recipe for ANZAC Cake, incorporating the flavours of ANZAC biscuits in cake form. The cake looked delicious, so that is what I made as an alternative this year.

Here’s my cake, decorated with rosemary to commemorate the Gallipoli landings in World War I,  and shown with my new Brooch the Subject slouch hat brooch:

I loved the look of this cake (I made a half recipe in a small loaf tin), with its shaggy coconut topping:

The cake is soft and moist, and is complemented by the sweet, textured coconut topping:

I paired my cake with coconut yoghurt, continuing on with the coconut theme:

To make this cake, you will need:

Cake

100g rolled oats

200ml coconut milk

170g plain flour

1 1/4 teaspoons baking powder

1/4 teaspoon baking sofa

Pinch of salt

120g butter, softened

100g brown sugar

100g golden syrup

2 eggs

Topping

75g salted butter

95g brown sugar

95g shredded coconut

60ml cream

Pinch of salt

Preheat your oven to 195 degrees Celsius and grease and line a 20cm loaf tin.

Put the oats in a food processor and pulse a few times to create an uneven texture. Place the oats in a bowl with the coconut milk, and stir to combine.  Leave to soak while you make the rest of the cake.

Sift the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt together in a bowl and set aside.

In a food processor, mix together the butter, brown sugar and golden syrup until light and creamy.  One at a time, blend in the eggs, then scrape down the bowl. 

Add the oats to the food processor and blend until just combined. Add the flour mixture and pulse a couple of times.  Using a rubber spatula, fold the ingredients together until just combined.

Scrape the cake batter into the prepared tin, and bake for 45-50 minutes or until cooked through.

While the cake is in the oven, make the topping by putting all of the topping ingredients into a saucepan and stirring over low heat until the ingredients are combined and the butter has melted. Set aside.

When the cake is cooked, remove it from the oven and spread the topping carefully and evenly over the top.  Put the cake back in the oven for 12-15 minutes until the topping is golden brown.

Remove the cake from the oven and allow it to cool in the tin for 15 minutes before unmoulding onto a wire rack to cool completely.

Serve dusted with icing sugar if desired.

Peach and Walnut Chutney

If you like a fruit chutney and you can get your hands on some peaches, I have the recipe for you! The recipe is for Peach and Walnut Chutney, and comes from The Veg Space.

I love this chutney - thick and fruity and savoury, with nice texture from the walnuts.  It is so good - I wish I’d made a larger batch.

This chutney is good spread on bread with meat and salad, and would make an excellent accompaniment to roasts or in sauces.

 If you would like to make this chutney, you will need (for a full batch):

6 onions, finely chopped

14 peaches 

Zest of 2 lemons

720ml cider or white wine vinegar

700g sugar

175g chopped walnuts

1 teaspoon cinnamon 

1 teaspoon chilli flakes

2 teaspoons finely chopped ginger

First, skin the peaches by putting a cross in the top and bottom of the skin of each peach, covering the peaches with boiling water for a minute, then draining the peaches and pulling off the skins.  Remove the stone from the peaches by cutting each one in half down the middle and twisting out the stone (or cutting it out for clingstone peaches).

Roughly chop the peaches, and place them into a large saucepan with all of the other ingredients. Bring the mixture to a boil, then turn the heat down and allow the mixture to simmer, stirring regularly to stop it from burning onto the base of the pan, for around 90 minutes or until the mixture is thick and jammy. The mixture stinks a bit because of the vinegar, and it is a bit of a time investment, but the end result is worth it.

While the chutney is simmering, sterilise 5 or so jars by either boiling the jars and lids in a pot of boiling water for ~20 minutes and drying them out in the oven, or running the jars through the hot cycle on the dishwasher.

Spoon the cooked chutney into the jars until nearly full  and seal immediately.  I find that turning the sealed jars upside down for a few minutes helps to create an airtight seal (you will hear the button on the lid pop in when the seal has been created). Allow the chutney to cool completely in the jars before storing in a dark cool place.

Leave the chutney to mature in the jars for 4 weeks before opening.

TWD - Matcha-White Chocolate Mads

This week’s Tuesday with Dorie recipe is Matcha-White Chocolate Mini Mads. I made full size madeleines as that is the tin I have. I ended up with 12 mads and 2 “Aberffraw cakes”.

The mads reliably got their trademark hump in the oven:

 The lovely green colour from the matcha made these especially pretty madeleines. I couldn’t really taste the white chocolate or the lime zest, but that’s ok.

To see what everyone else made this week, visit the LYL section of the TWD website.