I love grained photos in winter!

Today, I have a very interesting and very impromptu recipe to share. So, I knew I had to bake something, so I looked at the fruit bowl and saw that we have some tangerines, apples, pears, a quince and some oranges. I decided to make apple and pear cake by using my beloved Carrot Cake recipe as the base. And since I came by this deliciousness today, I decided to lay some pears on the bottom of the cake mold.

Then, I decided to double my carrot cake recipe, since I know that it doesn’t yield much. But, doubling came with pain..

After sifting a cup of whole-wheat flour, I realized that I don’t have any more flour left, and still 3 more cups of flour to add. So, instead I added a cup of rice flour, a cup of processed oatmeal and a cup of processed almonds.

I put 1/3 of the batter to muffin cups, and 2/3 of it to a cake mold. But, since I used a deep mold, it took the cake an hour to bake. So I really recommend baking this recipe in a shallow pan, as I usually do. Nevertheless, the cake turned out to be amazing. I could totally taste the almonds and apples and pears and cinnamon!! Yummy!!

Pear Apple Cake with Mixed Flours

makes 2 batches of cake

Ingredients:

• 6 eggs
• 1 cup whole-wheat flour
• 1 cup rice flour
• 1 cup oat flour (or simply processed oatmeal)
• 1 cup almond flour (or simply processed almonds)
• 2 1/2 cups sugar
• 2/3 cup olive oil
• 5 cups coarsely grated pears and apples
• 3-4 pears to lay on bottom, sliced and dipped into honey
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 4 teaspoons cinnamon
• a pinch of salt
• 4 teaspoons baking soda

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 175 degrees C (350 degrees F).

In a bowl, beat together eggs, oil and sugar.

Stir in vanilla, flours, and cinnamon, and mix well. Finally, add the baking soda into the mixture and stir.

At this stage, don’t worry if the mixture is not so liquid. It should be something between cookie dough and cake batter.

Add the grated fruits and form an even mixture. Don’t worry again that the fruits are too much. They will dissolve after cooked.

Option 1- Take two shallow pans. Lay the bottoms with sliced pears. Divide the mixture into two and pour inside the pans.

Option 2- Simply pour the mixture into muffin cups and out the sliced pears on top.

Bake for 30-40 minutes, or until cooked.

Few weeks ago, when I was on my regular grocery shopping ritual, I bought some rice flour. I have never experimented with this flour, and thought it would be nice to use it somewhere, and if I am gluten-intolerant, it would be nice to experiment it before. Here are the two recipes that use rice flour. The first one is “banana cocoa rice flour pudding”, and the other one is an unbelievably tasty impromptu dessert that I want to talk about. I call it simply rice pudding cake, but there’s more than that.

Yesterday, my mum and my sister wanted some pudding. I, as usual thought that  is a boring idea and told them that we should make some more interesting dessert. Then mum said “I bought peaches, and you can make some peach pudding”. Then the idea developed, and by the end of the next ten minutes, we agreed on making some sponge cake, on top of that some pudding, and on top of that, peaches and leftover bananas.

In short, I made a cake (not gluten-free!!) Then, I made rice flour pudding and poured it over the cake. After that, I cooked some peaches and bananas with little butter and sugar, and put it over the top of my dessert. Result? I wasn’t expecting such a good taste (because it somewhat looked boring and tasteless to me), and when we tasted it we were literally shocked. It was unbelievably good!. I mean, really good! And the good thing is, it can be modified easily. Actually the next thing I’m planning to do is making some carrot cake and pudding and using apples on top. Well, I don’t know, there are hundreds of options. Enjoy!

Rice Flour Pudding

Ingredients:

• 500 ml low-fat milk
• 35 gr rice flour
• 40-50 gr sugar
• 1 small banana
• 1 teaspoon cocoa powder
• some diet cookies (or gluten-free, if you wish) for serving
• coconut flakes for serving

Directions:

Mix milk, rice flour, sugar and cocoa powder in a bowl and heat them while stirring.

When the heated mixture thickens, add mashed bananas and stir for a minute or two.

Pour the pudding in cups filled with some diet cookies. Sprinkle coconut flakes on tops.

Impromptu Rice Pudding Cake

Ingredients:

Cake

• 2 large eggs
• ¾ cup sugar
• ½ cup low-fat milk
• 1 ½ – 2 cups flour (depends on the thickness of the batter)
• 1/3 cup olive oil
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• pinch of salt

Rice Pudding

• 750 ml milk
• 80-100 gr sugar
• 35 gr rice flour
• 10 gr starch

Fruits

• 2 peaches
• 1 large banana
• 1 tablespoon butter
• 2-3 tablespoons sugar

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 175 degrees C.

First, prepare the cake batter. Mix the eggs, milk and olive oil. Add the dry ingredients and pour them in a small/medium pan. Bake for 30 to 40 minutes.

For rice pudding, mix all the ingredients and cook until the mixture thickens.

And for cooked fruits, simply sautee the sliced fruits with butter and sugar.

Now, assemble the dessert. Pour the pudding over the cake. Then, spread the fruits on top. Finished!

Last week, I was in Italy and I bough a lot of chocolate from Torino after they told me that the city is famous for its chocolate and grissini. So to finish all the chocolates (about 400 grams (14 oz.)), I decided to use them for my mother’s birthday cake. However, some of these chocolates had red pepper in it, so I made a spicy cake.The chocolate cake recipe was taken from a pastry chef, so I cannot give it, but it is very similar to a sponge cake. Anyway, you can use any chocolate cake recipe you want. After layering the cake, I poured some milk on the layers to make them moist, and spread some “crème patisserie”.

For “crème patisserie”, I used this recipe, and I added 1 cup of crushed and spiced almonds. To make them, I simply mixed the almonds with red hot pepper, salt, cumin and black pepper.

Finally I decorated the cake with chocolate ganache I made from the Torino chocolates. I heated 200 gr (7 oz.) heavy cream, and mixed it with 400 gr (14 oz.) dark chocolate, and some of them had red pepper. To make the ganache lighter, I mixed it with some whipped cream, and decorated the cake with whipped cream also.

Oh, no! Chocolate and orange cake again????? I know, but I think they’re the best couple ever.. Whenever I make something with chocolate and ask myself “What else can I add?”, the mantra repeats in my mind like “orange, orange, orange, orange”. Well, I know it’s not creative at all, but there is a plenty of orange on the kitchen table at this time of the year, and I just can’t resist them!

This time, I tried a recipe from “The Essence of Chocolate” by John Scharffenberger and Robert Steinberg. It was supposed to be a “one-pot sour cream cake”, but I changed the recipe slightly, and the result was not a “moist” cake as described in the book, but a normal cake. I think if cooked it less, then I could get a moister cake. Anyways, here’s the recipe. Enjoy!

Chocolate Orange Cream Cake with Orange Sauce

adapted from The Essence of Chocolate

makes 1 big cake, 9 cupcakes

Ingredients:

• 1 egg
• 1 cup flour
• ½ cup sugar
• 100 g (7 oz.) butter
• 50 g (3.5 oz.) dark chocolate
• ½ cup orange juice (or juice of 1 orange)
• ¼ cup sour cream
• ½ teaspoon baking powder
• ½ teaspoon salt

For the sauce:

• ¾ cup heavy cream
• ½ cup powdered sugar
• zest of one lemon

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 175 degrees C (350 degrees F).

Melt the butter, chocolate and orange juice in a pan, and stir well.

Remove the pan from heat, add the sugar and whisk.

Add the dry ingredients and continue whisking.

Add the egg and sour cream, and mix well.

Pour the mixture into muffin cups or into a little pan.

Bake for 15 minutes for cupcakes, 20 minutes for the pan.

For the sauce, sinply mix all the ingredients in a food processor. This way, the orange zest will infuse better to the mixture.

Serve the cake with its sauce.

It’s been a long time since my last post, I know.. But I was very busy with my midterms, quizzes and projects, and I didn’t even have time to sleep and thought I was going to die because of headache. Anyway, I’m better now, and am here with an incredible recipe: apple meringue cake!

This apple cake was inspired by my French teacher’s mom’s cake. Well, a month ago I ate that apple cake, and it was crispy on the top, which was a very unusual thing for an apple cake. I did not ask what her mother used for the cake, but I kept thinking about this cake. And I concluded that the “thing” on the top of the cake can only be egg whites. So, I tried to reinvent the cake and came up with a slightly different than I imagined, but an ammmazing thing! (The crispy layer in the original cake was thinner than in my cake, and my cake was juicier than the original cake) Enjoy!!

Apple Meringue Cake

Merengue adapted from Joy of Baking

Ingredients:

• 4 apples (I used 2 red, 2 green apples), grated
• 1 egg + 3 egg yolks
• 1 ½ cups whole-wheat flour
• 3/4 cup brown sugar
• ¼ cup olive oil
• ¼ cup yogurt
• 1 1/2 tablespoons ground cinnamon
• 2 teaspoons baking soda
• pinch of salt

For the top:

• 3 egg whites
• 130 gr (4.6 oz.) powdered sugar
• 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 160 degrees C (320 degrees F).

In a bowl, mix together eggs, sugar olive oil and yogurt. Add flour, cinnamon, salt and baking soda, and mix well.

Add grated apples to the mixture and blend.

In another bowl, whisk the egg whites until “snowy”. Without mixing too much (don’t let the egg whites dry!), add the granulated sugar and cinnamon to egg whites.

In a mid-size pan, pour the cake mixture (it should be a thin layer, otherwise the cake won’t cook on the inside) and on the top of that, spread the meringue mixture.

Bake for 30-35 minutes, or until both layers are cooked.

You’re probably thinking right now that I’m obsessed with chocolate and orange. Well, that’s true, but in this case I used these two ingredients just because I had to. I wanted to make a cake, and searched the kitchen. There were only oranges in the fruit case, and I found some bittersweet chocolate, all-purpose flour, and one egg. I took a risk to make a cake with just one egg, but I thought the chocolate would do the same job as eggs and hold the cake. The cake was delicious, although it falls apart easily because of the lack of eggs. I think, you can get the best results by using two eggs, but I haven’t tried it.

Why hypnotic? Because there is something strange with this cake that you cannot stop eating it. It is probably because of the melted chocolate, but I named it “hypnotic” anyway!

Chocolate Orange Cake

makes 16 pieces

Ingredients:

• 1 egg (2 eggs is better for holding the cake, but I did’t try it)
• 2 cups all-purpose flour (I haven’t any left. But, use whole-wheat please!!)
• ½ cup brown sugar
• ½ cup olive oil
• 50 gr (1.75 oz) bittersweet chocolate, melted
• juice and zest of 1 orange
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 4 teaspoons baking powder or baking soda
• pinch of salt

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 175 degrees C (350 degrees F).

In a bowl, beat together egg, oil, sugar, melted chocolate and orange juice.

Stir in vanilla, flour, salt and orange zest, and mix well. Finally, add the baking soda (powder) into the mixture and stir.

Pour the mixture into a cake mold and bake for 40 minutes, or until cooked.

Decorate the cakes by spreading melted white chocolate (with orange zest) on tops.

]]> http://kitchenimpromptu.com/chocolate-orange-cake/feed/ 0 http://kitchenimpromptu.com/honey-carrot-muffin/ http://kitchenimpromptu.com/honey-carrot-muffin/#comments Tue, 03 Nov 2009 20:25:28 +0000 ulya http://kitchenimpromptu.com/?p=127

OK, I know I’ve made a lot of muffins recently, but I love to make them. I am experiencing the results of adding honey to my muffins. Well, as far as I noticed, honey makes the muffins look smoother and the edges brown as if you brushed it with egg yolks. Even though my mom claims that the vitamins in honey are vanished when heated, I think it’s still better than processed sugar, which makes these muffins healthier than my carrot cakes. You obviously cannot get the same taste, but you save calories (6 tablespoons of sugar is about 400 calories, while 3/4 cup sugar required for the carrot cake recipe is 600 calories) And this lighter version tastes “acceptable”. In fact, my aunt thinks these taste better than my regular carrot cakes.

Carrot Muffins with Honey

makes 12 muffins

Ingredients:

• 3 eggs
• 2 cups whole-wheat flour
• ¼ cup olive oil
• ¼ cup low-fat milk
• 2 cups carrots, grated
• 6 tablespoons honey
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 2 teaspoons cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
• ground nutmeg
• pinch of salt
• 4 teaspoons baking soda

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 175 degrees C (350 degrees F).

In a bowl, beat together eggs, oil and honey.

Stir in vanilla, flour, and spices, and mix well. Finally, add the baking soda (powder) and stir. Add the carrots.

Pour the mixture into muffin cups, and bake for 25 minutes, or until cooked.

This is another impromptu cake I just made up and it didn’t disappoint me. I came by some ripe bananas in the kitchen the other day, and decided to use them in what I do best: muffins! I also added the chocolate chips I’ve recently bought from the coffee shop (I usually use chopped chocolate instead of chocolate-chips, but the girl in the coffee shop insisted me to buy them and I gave it a try). I didn’t want to add sugar to the cake, so I used honey. I don’t usually use honey in my cakes, but this time it really worked and the muffins were neither too sweet nor vapid. This has become one my favorite muffin recipes.

Chocolate-Chip Banana Muffins with Honey

makes 20-24 muffins

Ingredients:

• 3 eggs
• 2 cups whole-wheat flour
• 1/3 cup olive oil
• 3-4 tablespoons honey
• 4 tablespoons yogurt
• 3 (200 gr. – 7 oz.) bananas, mashed
• 50 gr (1.7 oz.) bittersweet chocolate, chopped (or chocolate chips)
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 2 teaspoons cinnamon
• 4 teaspoons baking soda
• pinch of salt

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 175 degrees C (350 degrees F).

Mix together eggs, honey, olive oil, yogurt and vanilla in a bowl.

Add flour, cinnamon, salt and baking soda, and mix well.

Finally add the bananas and chocolate chips, and mix until you have an even mixture.

Pour the mixture into muffin cups, and bake for about 30 minutes, or until cooked.

It was another boring night with nothing to do, and apples on the kitchen table. So, it was a “must” to take a risk and make something totally improvisational. I mixed everything that comes into my mind to make a cake, and this is the result. Try!

Semolina Muffins with Apple and Coconut

makes 24 muffins

Ingredients:

• 2 eggs
• 1 cup brown sugar
• 1/2 cup olive oil
• 1 cup milk (I used low-fat)
• 1 1/2 cups whole-wheat flour
• 1 1/2 cups semolina (you can use 2 cups flour and 1 cup semolina instead)
• 3 apples, grated
• 1 cup coconut flakes
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
• 2 teaspoons cinnamon
• pinch of ground nutmeg
• pinch of salt
• 1/2 lemon’s zest
• 4 teaspoons baking soda or baking powder

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 175 degrees C (350 degrees F).

In a bowl, beat together eggs, milk, oil and sugar.

Stir in vanilla, flour, semolina and coconuts, and mix well.

Add cloves, salt, cinnamon and baking soda. Then, add the apples and pour the mixture into muffin cups.

Before cooking the muffins, sprinkle the tops with lemon zest, and bake your muffins for about 25 minutes.

]]> http://kitchenimpromptu.com/apple-and-coconut-semolina-muffin/feed/ 1 http://kitchenimpromptu.com/raspberry-cakes-white-ganache-trials/ http://kitchenimpromptu.com/raspberry-cakes-white-ganache-trials/#comments Sun, 01 Nov 2009 23:06:28 +0000 ulya http://kitchenimpromptu.com/?p=67

I spent my whole Friday trying to make some flavored white-chocolate ganache. I made chocolate macarons using David Lebovitz’s recipe, and used fig and orange flavored white ganache to assemble the macarons (I simply added 1 orange’s zest orange flavored one, and 2 mashed fresh figs for the fig flavored one).

And as usual, there was some leftover ganache, and I made these mini raspberry cakes to use it. I also flavored the ganache with ground cinnamon. I liked the results, the cakes were delish and they also look good, huh?

Heart-Shaped Raspberry Cakes with White Chocolate & Cinnamon Ganache

makes 2 cakes

Ingredients:

• 4 eggs
• 2 cups whole-wheat flour
• 1 1/2 cups brown sugar
• 1/2 cup olive oil
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 3 cups raspberries (I used frozen)
• 4 teaspoons baking soda
• a pinch of salt

For the ganache:

• 80 gr. (2.8 oz.) white chocolate
• 40 ml. (1/5 cup) heavy cream
• 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 175 degrees C (350 degrees F).

Mix together eggs, oil and sugar in a bowl. Add vanilla extract, flour, salt and baking soda and mix well.

Process the raspberries in a food processor, and add into the bowl.

Pour the mixture into a mid-size pan (Don’t worry at this stage that the mixture is not enough. It will rise). You can pour the mixture into heart-shaped molds (I cooked them first, and cut them in heart-shapes).

Bake for 40 minutes, or until it well cooked.

To make white-chocolate ganache, heat the cream until slightly hot. Remove the pot from heat. Add white chocolate, which are divided into small pieces. Make sure that the chocolate is totally melted, by stirring. After that, add the cinnamon. Mix well, and let cool in the refrigerator until hardened enough.

Assemble the two pieces of cake with ganache.

It was only three years ago when I first started cooking. I started with simple vegetable dishes, and moved to desserts as I gained some confidence. And the very first cake I made was from a carrot cake recipe I found in AllRecipes. However, my first carrot cake was very sweet, greasy and topped with an ugly cream cheese frosting  that I couldn’t make properly.

Gradually, I modified that carrot cake recipe (actually changed it totally), substituted some ingredients, decreased the amount of sugar and oil, and came up with a unique carrot cake recipe. It soon became the favorite dessert in the family because of its spongy texture and different taste.

This is my first post in this blog, so it would be a shame not to begin with my “famous” carrot cake. Enjoy!

Carrot Cake

makes 25 pieces

Ingredients:

• 4 eggs
• 2 cups whole-wheat flour
• 1 1/4 cups (use 1 ½ cups if you like it sweeter) brown sugar
• 1/3 cup olive oil
• 3 cups carrots, grated coarsely (look at the picture below)
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 2 teaspoons cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
• a pinch of ground nutmeg
• a pinch of salt
• 2 teaspoons baking soda

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 175 degrees C (350 degrees F).

In a bowl, beat together eggs, oil and sugar.

Stir in vanilla, flour, and spices, and mix well. Finally, add the baking soda into the mixture and stir.

At this stage, don’t worry if the mixture is not so liquid. It should be something between cookie dough and cake batter.

Add the carrots and form an even mixture. Don’t worry again that the carrots are too much. They will dissolve after cooked.

Pour the mixture into a greased pan (you can also pour the mixture into muffin cups) and bake for 30 minutes, or until cooked.

Note: Instead of 3 cups of carrots, you can add 2 cups of carrots and 1 cup of blueberries, and you get a fantastic variation!