So, this is the last day of the challenge.. I’ve been baking and blogging continuously (except for one rest day) for 11 days and even if I’m terribly exhausted, I’m so glad I made this challenge. After cutting cookies for hours yesterday, I decided to make something easy but delicious today: Apple Strudel. First, I was going to use the book my aunt brought me from Austria, but then I decided to use a recipe from mom’s recipe notebook she prepared years ago. I didn’t make my own Strudel dough, and bought some fresh phyllo dough from a phyllo shop (yes, there is such thing in Turkey).

Since it’s freezing outside, I opted for custard instead of ice cream with my Strudel. Now, if you allow me, I will eat some Strudel while catching up with my TV shows.. And after that, I don’t want to see any sort of sweet food around me for a while, which I think is a good New Year’s resolution for my belly. And that ends the 11-day New Year Dessert Challenge..

Happy New Year!

Apple Strudel

serves 4

Ingredients:

• 4 large sheets (about 25 cm- 10 in. long) phyllo dough
• 1 apple, grated (Don’t use a very sweet and soft apple. I used Granny Smith)
• 50 gr (1.75 oz.) butter, melted
• 1-2 tablespoons brown sugar
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/8 teaspoon nutmeg, grated
• 1 teaspoon lemon juice
• a pinch of salt

for serving:

• confectioners’ sugar (for dusting)
• custard (creme anglaise), recipe from here

Directions:

Mix the apples, lemon juice, sugar and spices in a bowl.

Preheat the oven to 190 degrees C (375 degrees F).

Lay the first sheet of dough on a flat surface and brush with butter. Put the second sheet on the first sheet and brush with butter again. Repeat this process until all the sheets are layered and brushed with butter. Sprinkle the dough with the apple mix and roll the dough into a log.

Bake the dough for 25 minutes, or until golden brown.

Dust the Strudel with confectioners’ sugar and depending on the season, serve with either ice cream or custard sauce.

Another week has ended, so has my sister’s birthday celebration. She’s been suffering from gastritis recently, so she cannot eat chocolate, spices and a lot more things. I also had gastritis two years ago, so I can understand how she feels, and I decided to bake her a birthday cake, which is almost guilt-free for her. It’s an apple cake with some nice homemade whipped cream. I said it’s almost guilt-free, because I added some cinnamon to the cake (honestly, I cannot think of an apple cake without cinnamon!).The recipe is originally from Martha. I adapted the recipe and increased the amount of eggs, decreased the sugar (as usual). The original recipe called for buttercream as decoration, and I replaced it with my homemade cinnamon whipped cream with a hint of cream cheese. Why not buttercream? Because we don’t use buttercream in our cakes in Turkey. It’s just heavy and fatty for our taste. I once made some cupcakes and decorated them with buttercream, and everyone told me that the cupcakes were uneatable and the only thing they ate was butter. So yeah, whipped cream is just better for me.

There’s one more thing to add. I used 200 ml (about 1 cup) of heavy milk to make my whipped cream. But I could definitely add more. The secret of this cake is this cream. So, I think using 400 ml (2 cups) of heavy milk will do wonders. Enjoy!

Apple Birthday Cake

adapted from Martha Stewart

Ingredients:

• 3 eggs
• 2 – 2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour (depends on the consistency of the batter)
• ½ cup olive oil
• 1 ½ cup brown sugar
• 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
• 3 teaspoons baking powder
• pinch of salt
• 2 apples (I used Starking), diced
• 1 apple, coarsely grated
• 1 carrot, finely grated (optional, you can use 1 coarsely grated apple instead)

for the whipped cream:

• 400 ml (2 cups) heavy cream
• ½ – ¾ cups powdered sugar (depends on your sweet tooth level)
• 1 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
• 1 tablespoon cream cheese

Directions:

For the whipped cream put your elecric mixer’s bowl to freezer and let it chill for an hour.

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

In a bowl, beat together egg, oil and sugar. Add the apples and the carrot.

Stir in flour, salt, cinnamon and baking powder.

Pour the mixture into a round cake pan. If the pan is too small, use two small pans instead. Because if you put a lot of batter to the pan, it might not cook inside.

Bake for 35 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted comes out clean. If the insides don’t cook, cover the pan with aluminum foil and increase the heat to 180 degrees C ( degrees F)

Take out the bowl from the freezer. Put the heavy cream, powdered sugar and cinnamon to the bowl and beat for 3-4 minutes in the electric mixer. Add the cream cheese and mix 30 more seconds. Let it cool in the refrigerator.

When the cake cools down, separate it into two layers. On top of the first layer, spread some whipped cream and put the second layer. Decorate the whole cake with the remaining whipped cream. Store the cake in the refrigerator.

No, I don’t like jellies. And no, I didn’t like this one too. But the difference of this jelly is; it has agar agar in it rather than gelatine. Agar agar is a gelatinous “thing” made from seaweed, and commonly used in Japan, Malaysia and Indonesia. I first saw them in Luxirare as jello shots. So just for curiosity, I ordered some agar agar from the internet and tried to make something with it. Well, I’m not going to give the recipe, because I don’t like jellies! Simply, it has some water, brown sugar, cinnamon, star anise, cloves and some black pepper seeds in it. And I also put some diced oranges and clementines, as seen in the photos (The orange things at the bottom!).

At least they look good.. OK, they don’t even look good… But I’m still working on making better tasting jellies!

Every new year, I make the same old gingerbread cookies. This year has no difference too! The only little difference is the recipe I used. There was an old recipe I used to make every year, and I really don’t know where I found it. But this year, I decided to use the recipe from Joy of Baking and changed a bit, and the results were interesting. I got some very spicy and crispy cookies and everyone liked them!!

Since photos are enough to tell everything, I won’t talk too much this time. Enjoy!!

Gingerbread Cookies

adapted from Joy of Baking

makes “a lot” of cookies (I made 4  pans of thin cookies with this recipe)

Ingredients:

• 1 egg
• 3 cups whole-wheat flour
• 1/3 cup brown sugar
• 2/3 cup molasses
• ½ cup butter
• 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon ground ginger
• ¾ teaspoon ground baking soda or baking powder
• ½ teaspoon ground cloves
• pinch of salt

For the frosting:

• 1 cup powdered sugar
• 2-3 tablespoons milk

Directions:

Mix together sugar and butter. When you get a smooth cream, add the egg and molasses.

Add the dry ingredients to this mixture, knead the dough well and form a ball.

Let the dough rest for a couple of hours (I made this step faster by making 3 little patties and keeping them in the freezer for 30 minutes. But be careful not to forget the dough in the freezer!!!!)

Roll out the dough in preferred height. (Mines were ¼ inch-high). If the dough is too sticky, add more powdered sugar (a trick I got from Cafe Fernando)

Cut the dough with your favorite cookie cutters. By the way, heat your oven to 175 degrees C (350 degrees F).

Bake the ginger cookies for 10-12 minutes, or until the edges are brown.

For the frosting, beat the sugar and milk until it gets smooth. With a piping bag, decorate your cookies. I also used the leftover ready-to-use frosting from project proposal cookies I made (You know I don’t prefer ready-to-use stuff!!! I only used the leftovers to finish them!!!)

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.

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.