Blueberry Sauce

This is the recipe I used for the blueberry sauce on the Cheesecake Bites. I've used it to top sponge cake and make meringue mess too. It's yummy and versatile and one recipe I didn't really change when I found it on the internet.

Blueberry Sauce


makes 2 1/2 cups

2 cups blueberries, fresh or frozen
1 cup orange juice
1/4 cup water
3/4 cup sugar
1/4 cup water
3 Tbsp cornstarch
1/4 tsp almond extract
1/4 tsp ground cinnamon

In a small saucepan, combine blueberries, oj, water and sugar.
Over medium-low heat, bring the mix to a boil.
In a small bowl, mix the other 1/4 cup water and cornstarch together.
Whisk into the blueberry mix along with the almond and cinnamon.
Cook at a gentle boil until sauce coats the back of a spoon, about 2 minutes or until desired thickness.
Serve warm or cool depending on your dessert.
Keeps about a week in the fridge.

Enjoy!

Blueberry Cheesecake Bites

Was trying to come up with ideas to get rid of my blueberries, and went for blueberry sauce. I thought about doing it on a roll cake but then we had the cream cheese in the fridge and so idea (!): blueberry bites.

The recipe is technically from Fannie Farmer's Baking Book, but we nixed the crust since it was super candy and went for a shortbread type we found in a church charity cook book that makes awesome lemon squares.

Blueberry Cheesecake Bites


makes 25 bites

1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup butter
1 cup flour
1 cream cheese bar
1/3 cup sugar
1 egg
2 Tbsp milk
1 tsp vanilla
1 1/2 cups blueberry sauce (canned or homemade)

Pull cream cheese out and let come to room temperature. (Or chop into little bits and microwave about 20-30 seconds if in a hurry)
Preheat oven to 350 F and pull out an 8x8" glass pan.
Cream butter and sugar together and stir in flour.
Press lightly into pan and bake about 12-15 minutes.
In a tall 4-cup measuring cup, mix cream cheese and sugar together with a stick blender.
Blitz in the egg, milk and vanilla and keep at mixture until really smooth.
Pour onto baked crust and bake about 25 minutes or until not jiggly anymore and you don't leave fingerprints when you touch it.
Cool about 15 minutes and cut the square with a sharp, clean knife. (Super important!!! The crust will be really, really hard to cut when fully cooled, especially if well-done!)
Top with blueberry sauce and carefully find your cut marks.
Serve cool and keep refrigerated.

Enjoy!

Chocolate Pavlova and Chocolate Cream

I finally got around to reading the pre-Christmas Food and Drink Magazine from the LCBO and copying out the recipes that caught my eye and this was one of them. It was essentially perfect, since my meringue craving was building up and we had frozen raspberries and blueberries hanging out in the freezer since my plans for mixed berry and apple stuff went out the window when mom turned the apples into applesauce and I keep forgetting to pick up some more on my daily walks.

When I told mom what it was when she woke up, she was all "I haven't heard of chocolate pavlovas" and I was like, they're yummy. Heh, even changed my FB status to this being my new fave meringue recipe. Though, if I'd thought it through, I would have made like six or eight little ones and left the whip cream and berries separate in the fridge, since my brother isn't into sweets with his cigarette habit and it isn't something mom can take to work. Oh wells, remember that for next time, and there will be a next time, since I want revenge on the fragile state of the silly thing.

Chocolate Pavlova and Chocolate Cream


makes one 9" round pavlova, serves 12

Meringue:
4 egg whites
1/4 tsp cream of tartar
1 tsp vanilla
pinch salt
1 cup sugar
2 Tbsp unsweetened cocoa powder
1 Tbsp cornstarch
1 tsp vinegar

Chocolate Cream topping:
1 cup raspberries, fresh or thawed
5 oz  good quality milk chocolate, chopped
1 cup 35% whipping cream
1 Tbsp unsweetened cocoa powder
2 cup mixed berries, fresh or thawed (if thawed and aiming for perfection, drain the juices off before adding to the cake)

Preheat the oven to 275 F and line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
Mix the sugar and cocoa together in a small bowl.
In a large, high bowl beat the egg whites until frothy and then add salt, vanilla and cream of tartar.
Beat whites further until soft peaks this time (more substantial than frothy and peaks are visible but fall when you lift the beaters out of mixture) and start gradually adding in the cocoa sugar while beating.
Sugar should all be in when you hit stiff peaks (the "can hold the bowl upside over you head" stiffness), beat in the vinegar and cornstarch.
Spread on the parchment in about a 9" round with the sides higher than the middle to make a little nest.
Bake about 1 hour or until outside crispy and inside still soft.
Cool completely before assembling.

Press the cup of raspberries through a fine sieve into a bowl to remove the seeds.
Stir in the chopped chocolate.
On the stove in a small saucepan over medium high heat or in a measuring cup in the microwave, heat the whip cream until it's just bubbling.
Pour over the chocolate raspberry mix and stir until smooth.
Cool about 30 minutes on the counter and 10 minutes in the freezer.
Add the cocoa powder and beat the cream until you get a moundable, stiff cream (but not butter).
Just before serving, transfer the meringue to a serving platter.
Spread the whip cream in the center.
Top with the mixed berries.
Serve immediately or freeze leftovers for a day. Fridging causes meringues to dew and go gummy.

Pretty, sweet and a tasty mix of chocolate and fruit.

Enjoy!

Blondies

My first time going at them. Some people out there in internet land call them the antithesis to brownies, but to me the recipe reads more like someone put chocolate chip cookie dough in a pan because they were too lazy to make the individual cookies. I mean, aside from having the split of white and brown sugar in cookies, that's basically it. I should have either mixed the sugars or cut back, since they were super intensely sweet, but were too finicky to cut smaller than into 16s.

Blondies


makes 16 or 25 squares, depending on your sweet tooth

1/2 cup butter, softened
1 cup brown sugar
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 cup flour
1/3 cup toppings: choose from chocolate bits/chips, nuts, dried fruit, etc. (I went with chocolate bar bits.)

Preheat oven to 350 F and grease and flour an 8" x 8" pan.
In a bowl, cream butter and brown sugar until fluffy.
Beat in the egg and vanilla.
Sift together the flour, baking soda and baking powder and then gently stir into the batter.
Stir in your topping choice until just mixed.
Pour into prepared pan and smooth out.
Bake about 20-25 minutes or until toothpick comes out clean.
Cool about 15 minutes and then score your squares to make the final cut when cool easier.
Serve.

For some reason the batter poofed up around the edges and stayed low in the center, so I got some weird little 3D action going on. The chocolate bits were yummy though.

Enjoy!

Gingerbread

Not just a seasonal food, the sweet and spicy mix that is gingerbread is yummy, with or without frosting. Plus it keeps well and makes a semi-healthy portable snack.

Gingerbread


makes 48 1/8 inch thick cookies

1/2 cup butter*
3/4 cup brown sugar, dark or golden
1/4 cup molasses
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla
1 Tbsp ground cinnamon
1 Tbsp plus 1 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp baking powder
2 cups flour

*1/2 tsp salt, if using unsalted butter

Mix the butter and sugar together in a large bowl.
Cream in the molasses, egg and vanilla.
Stir in the spices, baking powder and baking soda.
Beat in the flour until the dough comes together. It's okay if it's slightly tacky.
Cover and chill at least an hour.
When ready to bake, preheat oven to 350 F.
Lightly dust the counter with flour and pull out half the dough.
Roll out to an 1/8 inch thick, or desired thickness, and cut into your favourite shapes.
The dough doesn't suffer from being re-rolled, so save the scraps to fill your cookie sheets.
Cook for about 5 minutes if 1/8 inch thick, or until brown around the edges and a little firm.
Repeat with other half of dough.

Serve plain or you can ice them when cool. Buttery and yummy either way.

This is technically a gingerbread house recipe, so it would probably keep a month on the counter, but I'd suggest freezing in a sturdy container for the best results.

Basic Confectioner's Icing


makes about a cup and a bit

2 1./2 cups icing sugar, sifted
2 Tbsp butter
1 tsp vanilla
2 Tbsp milk, plus a little more

Melt the butter and stir in the vanilla.
Add the icing sugar and then spoon the milk over.
Stir to saturate everything. If it's too dry or too stiff add more milk a teaspoon at a time until you have a damp, spreadable icing. Too liquidy and it won't harden and last.

This recipe makes plain white, as you can see from the photo, but you can experiment with adding food colour to make your desired colours to jazz them up.

Enjoy!

Purist Beef Stew and Cinnamon Puff Pretzels

Another lazy day, but there's nothing wrong with that. With winter back again, a beef stew seemed like a good idea to warm the soul. And we're eating through the freezer again, so there was some thawed puff pastry in the fridge. I was thinking of something to do with apples, but mom wants to be in charge of those, since she thinks they're skeazy, so I went with a straight-up cinnamon sugar thing.

Purist Beef Stew


serves 3

2 lb eye of round beef, chunked
2 medium onions, diced
1/2 packet onion soup powder
2 Tbsp olive oil
1/4 cup flour
1 Tbsp sherry
1/2 tsp black pepper
1 1/2 cups water

Put a large pot over medium heat and add the oil.
Add the onions and cook until translucent, about 4 minutes.
Add the onion soup powder, flour and pepper and mix until everything looks wet.
Add the sherry and cook off the alcohol smell, about 1-2 minutes.
Stir in the water gradually until all the lumps are gone.
Turn down to really low and add the beef chunks.
Even though the meat is sticking out of the liquid, DON'T add more water, since the meat will give off its own.
Simmer about 2 hours, until meat is soft, stirring occasionally. If it starts to boil, just turn it off for a while and let it sit on the stove.

Serve immediately or fridge and reheat the next day (it's always better the next day if you can plan it that way)

If you couldn't tell, I nicknamed it "purist" since it only has beef and onions, none of this potato, carrot, pea and what-not stuff you find in canned stew, lol.

Cinnamon Puff Pretzels

makes 24 mini pretzels

1/2 package puff pastry (about 227g), thawed

1/3 cup sugar

1/2 tsp cinnamon

1 Tbsp butter, melted

Preheat the oven to 425 F

Sprinkle a little of the sugar on a clean work surface and put the puff pastry on it.

Roll it out to a 10 inch by 12 inch rectangle.

Brush the butter over the whole area of dough.

Mix the remaining sugar and cinnamon in a small bowl and sprinkle evenly over the dough.

Semi-tightly roll the dough to the middle from both sides, to make a pretzel-shaped log.

Cut into 24 even pieces and place on a parchment lined cookie sheet.

Bake about 8 minutes and then flip the pastries and bake another 5 minutes, or until brown on both sides. Careful, it can burn quite easily.

Serve warm or cooled. both make a yummy, sweet treat.

Enjoy!

Pear Upside-Down Chocolate Cake

Yay! Mom took care of cooking supper today since it was her day off, so I got to play with baking! Since I ground the almonds a few days ago, I've been wanting this cake, so I went for it. I found the original recipe in the Food Network Kitchens Cookbook and tried it last year. It didn't turn out quite to spec due to my impatience and I've been itching to take another crack at it for awhile.

Pear Upside-Down Chocolate Cake


makes 6-8 generous servings

Pears:
 2 Tbsp butter
 2 Tbsp firmly packed brown sugar
 1/4 tsp grated lemon zest
1 tsp lemon juice
4 Bosc pears, peeled, cored and quartered

Cake:
 1/2 cup milk
 1 cup flour
 1 cup ground almonds, toasted
 1/2 tsp baking soda
 1/2 tsp baking powder
 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
 1 tsp  fine salt
 4 Tbsp unsalted butter, softened
 3/4 cup sugar
 1/2 cup cocoa
 1 tsp vanilla extract
 2 large eggs

Lightly butter a 9" round cake pan, line bottom with parchment and then butter the parchment. (Makes it waaay easier to get the cake out if you do it!)
Combine butter, sugar, and lemon in a saucepan and melt together over medium heat, stirring constantly.
Add the pears, cover and simmer, turning once, until pears are soft and juicy, about 4 minutes.
Strain pears into another saucepan.
Set 1 pear quarter and the syrup aside.
Arrange pear slices in the cake pan, tips facing inward and cored side up.
Chop reserved quarter and pile in the center of the pan.
Preheat oven to 350 F.
Cream butter and sugar together.
Mix in the eggs and vanilla.
Sift in the cocoa powder and stir to combine carefully (to avoid cocoa everywhere, lol).
Add the ground almonds and stir.
Add the milk and mix in well.
Sift in the flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt and cinnamon and stir to just combine, trying not to overbeat.
Spoon batter over the pears and then tap on counter to settle it.
Bake for about 50 minutes or until toothpick comes out clean.
Cool in pan for about 20 mins and then flip out.
Cool another 30 mins then remove parchment and cool completely.
Reduce reserved syrup until it coats the back of a spoon and then brush over the cake.

Technically you're supposed to sprinkle the top with an even cocoa powder-icing sugar mix, but I don't think it needs it.

And if you're pressed for time, like I kinda was today, or you don't want to peel pears, a 19oz can of pear quarters works and they keep their shape. To make up for not poaching them, since canned pears are already soft, I added a couple tablespoons of the syrup from the can to the butter-lemon-sugar mix to make my brushing topping.

A chocolately, nutty take on an upside-down cake and an awesome combination.

Enjoy!

Almond Shortbread

Ha, a reason to use the ground almonds. Mom wanted almond shortbread...well, almond cookies, but it turned into just wanting a butter-flour-sugar-ground almond thing. It didn't take all the ground almonds I made though, since 2/3 lb turned into almost 4 cups.

This recipe started from Joy of Cooking again, since the internet failed me. It's based on their Almond Crescents, which I stumbled across last year when looking up ground almond recipes, but last year I ended up going with Fanny Farmer's version. It calls for sifting things, and usually I'm not that big on sifting, since lumps come out if you beat it long enough, but since shortbread is delicate, I totally recommend it because it just makes everything easier.

Flaky, icing sugar dusted almondy goodness!

Almond Shortbread


makes 24 medium pieces, or however you want to cut it due to richness

1 c unsalted butter, softened
1 c icing sugar, sifted
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 tsp almond extract
1 to 1 1/2 cups ground almonds
1/4 tsp cinnamon (more if you want, but then it just drowns out the almonds...)
2 1/2 cups flour, sifted

Preheat oven to 350 F. Get out a glass 9" x 13" pan.
In a large bowl (really large, cuz it's messy), cream butter and icing sugar.
Mix in vanilla and almond extract and ground almonds.
Sift first cup of flour and cinnamon on the mix and combine.
Sift and stir each remaining half cup of flour in separately.
Use your hands to lightly kneed out any dry spots if it's too hard to stir gently.
Pour into pan and lightly press out evenly.
Cook about 30 mins, or until not raw looking, brown on bottom and lightly brown on top.

Important!!! Score or cut while still warm with a sharp knife, or else it shatters instead of cutting cleanly (as I learned this time around since I wasn't following a shortbread recipe...)

If you are going to treat it like a shortbread, you technically need to leave it sit a week, but it's good right away once cool.

Enjoy!