Little Miss has had a great term of swimming with Junelle at Aquagym. We always make a little home-made baked gift for her swim teachers at the end of each term. In this case there wasn't much baking involved; one of my gluten free colleagues gave me this recipe a while ago. At the time our kitchen whizz had just blown up, so the recipe got filed. Time poor as usual, and scratching my head about what to make, these were the perfect, quick and tasty treat for a Saturday morning.
I have adapted the original recipe to use different fruits and seeds, and you too can substitute whatever you happen to have in the pantry. The original recipe used walnuts and coconut instead of pumpkin seeds and chia. The combination of natural fruit and energy rich seeds makes them a perfect brain food snack.
Fruity Chocolate Truffles
1 cup pitted dates
1 cup sultanas
1/4 cup dried apricots
a handful of goji berries
1/4 cup preserved ginger - choose the ones without the sugar coating, or just rinse the sugar off.
1/4 cup dried mango - chopped into smaller pieces
1 cup pumpkin seeds
2 tablespoons dark cocoa
1 tablespoon sunflower or canola oil
1/4 cup chia seeds for coating the truffles
First toast the pumpkin seeds in a hot pan.
Keep them moving around the pan or they will quickly burn. tip into a bowl and set aside to cool.
Once the pumpkin seeds are cool, place all the ingredients except the chia into the food processor.
Be sure to choose fruit that is not too dried out, or the truffles wont hold together.
Process the mixture until it forms sticky chunks. Don't over process or all the texture will be lost.
Roll the truffles into even sized balls, then toss them in the chia seeds.
Leave to sit for a little while so they set. And your done! A tasty snack in no time.
Little Miss just loves Junelle, and so she was very happy to give her this little gift to show our appreciation for all her good teaching.
It has been a lovely day for a party. We have had the very great pleasure to attend the birthday party of one of Little Miss 4's swimming buddies. As per my previous post, I made a couple of batches of gluten free cup cakes for the party. These are the chocolate mud cupcakes. Without wanting to gloat, they are actually fabulous. The gluten free flour made the texture of the cake even more soft, moist and gooey. The party had a fairy, mermaid and pirate theme, so I coloured and cut out some Pettinice white icing into 'gold debloons', fish and fairy stars.
The children were completely transfixed by Buttercup the Enchanted Fairy.
These cupcakes are so easy to make. There is no beating required, just mix 'em up and bake.
Gluten Free Chocolate Mud Cupcakes
1 cup vegetable oil
1/2 cup milk
1 cup boiling water
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 eggs - beaten
2 cups caster sugar
1 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons baking soda
2/3 cup cocoa powder
1 3/4 cups bakels gluten free flour
Preheat the oven to 170deg C and assemble 30 cupcake cases. I used the solid sided ones as they are smaller and more sturdy.
Sift the flour and cocoa together and set aside.
Blend the liquid ingredients together using a whisk, then blend in the baking soda.
Using the whisk, blend the GF flour and cocoa into the liquids until no lumps remain.
Using a jug, pour the mixture into cupcake cases. Taking care not to fill them any more than half way.
Bake for approximately 18 minutes, or until a skewer comes out clean.
The cupcakes will look a little peaked, but will level out once they start to cool.
Once cold, frost with Chocolate butter cream rosettes.
Chocolate Butter Cream
125g butter
1 1/4 cups icing sugar
250g Whittakers 72% Dark Ghana Chocolate
Cream the butter and sugar until very pale and fluffy.
Melt the chocolate and add it to the creamed mixture. Beat for a few minutes to thoroughly combine.
Using a piping bag and star nozzle, pipe rosettes onto each cup cake.
Little Miss 4 had a great time playing with all the other children at the party. She was completely taken with Buttercup the fairy. She really loved the face paint, but with a school visit tomorrow it had to be washed off!
We use food to mark and celebrate the many milestones that life brings us. Birthdays come and go; anniversaries, arrivals and departures all carry their own set of rituals and conventions. Though the details of these differ, the one thing they have in common is the sharing of food. Food nourishes our bodies, but also our souls. Breaking bread with our friends is more than just sustenance, it's showing kindness, taking the time to craft a special treat for someone else.
This week it was my very great pleasure to make a cake for my colleague Wolf Just. He is a Villa legend who has taught at the school for upward of 45 years. Yesterday he told me that he was now teaching the third generation of Villa girls and many of the current staff remember him as their teacher. His teaching and story telling is legend among all those he has taught. Now 45 years is a fair while to teach English to the teenage bred and so this occasion called for a cake of some distinction. I wanted to acknowledge his subject area and also all the many thousands of photographs he has taken for the school. At the same time I didn't want the gluten free people amongst my colleagues to miss out on their helping of cake. And so I came up with the two 'book' layers of cake, the flowers and the chocolate photos and lettering. The bottom 'book' layer of the cake is Carrot and Black current. The recipe is here. I just doubled the recipe, left the cranberries out and added a handful of black currents to the mixture before baking it in a large cake tin. The top 'book' layer is a Gluten free Spiced Apple cake which I am very happy to say I adapted myself.
Gluten Free Spiced Apple Cake
1 cup caster sugar
2 eggs
100g butter - melted
2 large apples
1 cup bakels Gluten free flour
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon mixed spice
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
1 teaspoon baking soda
2/3 cup walnuts - chopped
Preheat the oven to 175deg. C and line a 20cm square baking tin.
Using an electric mixer, beat the eggs and sugar together until light and fluffy.
Using a spatula, fold the melted butter into the egg and sugar mixture.
Peel, core and chop the apples into even sized pieces.
Once the apples are chopped be quick with the remainder of the mixing so the apples don't brown.
Sift the dry ingredients and fold them into the batter.
Lastly add the apples and walnuts and fold together.
Pour the batter into the baking tin and bake for about 40 minutes until a skewer inserted into the middle of the cake comes out clean.
Take the cake from the oven and let it cool in the tin. The cake texture is very delicate and needs to be gently handled.
I made a butter cream frosting and flavoured it with orange liqueur.
For the carrot and black current cake I made Cream Cheese frosting and added blackcurrant juice for colour and flavour.
Wolf did the cutting and speech honours in his usual witty way. Congratulations to you my friend - 45 years and still going strong.
We have just had a few lovely days away on holiday. Some of which we spent with my sister in the lovely city of Dunedin. The weather was kind to us while we were there - which was more can could be said the rain, cold wind and snow on the mountains in other parts of the country.
Dunedin is a great place to visit: coming from Christchurch it's a novelty to visit a city with a bustling CBD. We cruised the Octagon for eating places; enjoyed the local produce at the Saturday Market; visited great vintage shops; sweltered in the butterfly house; paddled on the beach at McAndrew Bay; and had tea, feed the fish, and enjoyed as much contemplation as one manages to get with a 3 and a half year old at the very impressive Chinese Gardens.
It was great to spend some time with my sister and help her to celebrate her birthday. Little Miss 3 had a great time with Auntie Char-Char. Though I think Char may have been looking forward to some quiet time after her departure. Trendy inner city apartments are not ideal places for small children, even when they are big enough to hold a badminton court; Little Miss loved the novelty of it all and we were just glad none of the neighbours complained about the excited squeals.
We thought it would be nice to bake the birthday girl a cake. I gave her a Sophie Dahl cook book for Christmas, so with a few days up my sleeve I had the opportunity to have a good look through it. The recipes look really good and the biographical commentary sprinkled through-out the book make for really interesting reading. Anyway, it was an easy decision to try the flour-less Chocolate Cake. Armed with all the ingredients and my sisters antique Kenwood mixer, the cake came out quite well. I changed the method as Char doesn't have a kitchen whizz.
Sophie Dahl's Chocolate cake
300g dark semi sweet chocolate
1 cup caster sugar
180ml water
225g butter
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
6 eggs - separated
Preheat the oven to Bake at 180 deg. C. Grease and line a round 25cm spring form baking tin.
In a large saucepan melt the chocolate, butter and sugar together over a low heat. Take the pan from the heat and whisk in the water until the mixture is smooth. Add the egg yolks and vanilla and whisk again. Set aside.
In a large clean mixer bowl whisk the egg whites with a pinch of salt until stiff peaks form. Don't over mix: if the whites start to look dry they will be difficult to fold into the cake.
Pour one third of the chocolate mix into the whites and begin to gently fold together. Add the remaining thirds in two steps. Be careful not to knock the air out of the mixture as there is no other raising agent in the recipe.
Bake for approximately 45 minutes. The cake will puff up in the oven, and the centre will still have some wobble. It will sink down once it starts to cool. Let it sit for a few hours before attempting to get it out of the tin.
Dust with icing sugar and whatever fruit you have on hand. At this time of year raspberries would be amazing.
After a really delicious birthday dinner at Two Chefs, we came back to the apartment for birthday cake pudding; I thought the cake would fall into pieces for sure, given I got it out of the oven just before we left for the restaurant, but it stuck together. It's a really rich cake, and needed to be served with the cream. Having no flour makes it perfect for serving to Gluten free guests.
