Tag Archives: dessert

Bruleed upside-down Mandarin Cake

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This week’s recipe for a gluten-free, dairy-free cake using mandarin oranges which are now in season makes a sumptuous crowd-pleasing dessert.

The upside-down mandarin idea came from a recipe on a website I subscribe to called Delicious. However, the cake mixture in that recipe included flour and I needed to make a gluten-free, dairy-free dessert to take to a dinner party.

So I used a different recipe for an orange cake which uses almond meal instead of flour, used mandarins instead of oranges and combined the two recipes into one. Best served on the day it’s made, this cake is delicious.

Topping:
8 mandarin oranges
2 Tbs runny honey
Cake:
3 mandarin oranges
6 large eggs at room temp
1¼ cups sugar
1½ tsp baking powder
4 cups almond meal (bought or made in a food processor)
To serve:
2 Tbs sugar
250ml mascarpone
½ cup thick cream

Topping: Grease and line a 22cm (9 inch) cake pan with baking paper. Drizzle the honey evenly over the bottom. Finely grate the peel from 4-5 of the mandarin oranges and keep for the cake. Peel the 8 mandarin oranges, discard the peel and arrange the segments in circles in one layer over the base of the cake tin.

Cake: Preheat oven to 160° C. Place the 4 mandarins in a saucepan, cover with water then bring to the boil and simmer for 20 minutes. Drain and cool.

Make almond meal in a food processor by processing shelled almonds until very fine. They can be blanched almonds or not. Measure 4 cups and keep any excess for another use. Place the cooled mandarins in food processor (no need to wash it after processing the almonds) and process for a minute or two. Add remaining ingredients, including the almond meal and the grated rind you reserved earlier.

Scrape into the cake pan. Bake for 60 minutes or until well-risen, golden brown, firm to the touch and a skewer inserted in the middle comes out clean. Cool thoroughly in the tin.

To serve: Carefully tip cake out of pan and remove paper. If liked, sprinkle 2 tablespoons of sugar over the mandarin segments which are now on the top of the cake and use a blowtorch to brown the top. Not essential but looks nice.

Mix mascarpone with cream and serve with the cake.

Serves 12-16

Chia Puddings

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You may have seen chia seeds in the supermarket and wondered what to do with them. When mixed with liquid and left for a few hours or overnight, they set into a sort of pudding or chunky jelly.

Our son James says that for him chia puddings are in the same category as tapioca pudding and bubble tea, a popular drink filled with chewy tapioca balls. He is not a fan, whereas I love them.

Chia puddings are very easy to make and involve no cooking. To make one serving you just need half a cup of any kind of milk and 2 tablespoons of chia seeds. Mix thoroughly and leave in the fridge overnight, then top with fresh or frozen berries, sliced banana, muesli, yoghurt, or a combination and you’ve got a healthy breakfast or dessert, loaded with fibre and protein. A hundred grams of chia seeds contains 17g of protein.

2 Tbs chia seeds
½ cup any kind of milk (cow’s, oat, soya, almond, coconut)
To serve:
Berries or sliced banana, mango, peaches etc
Toasted muesli
Plain yoghurt
Maple syrup or honey

Thoroughly mix the chia seeds with milk and place in an individual bowl or glass, leaving space for toppings. After an hour or so, stir the mixture again to avoid any big lumps forming. Refrigerate overnight.

Serve topped with fruit, muesli and yoghurt.  Drizzle with a little maple syrup or honey. If you’re feeling decadent, drizzle with a little cream.

You can always mix up a larger quantity, allowing 4 Tbs chia seeds for every cup of milk. Tip the mixture into a plastic storage container with a lid. It will keep for a several days in the fridge.

Makes one serving

Cooking for the Holiday Season

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With less than a week to go till Christmas everyone is busy shopping and cooking. A week later many of us will be at it again for New Year’s Eve. Here are some links to Café Cat recipes to help you through the holiday season.

If you want to make your own Christmas cake or pudding it’s not too late – just give it a good drizzle of brandy a couple of days before serving and it will be nice and moist. And this cheat’s recipe for Quick Individual Christmas puds, made with crumbled shop-bought cake, is a sure winner for end of year gatherings.

Sausage rolls and mince pies are traditional Christmas finger foods which can be baked ahead until just slightly under-done, then frozen (or refrigerated for a day or two) and reheated for a few minutes on the day.

At this time of year I always make a Glazed Ham and some Gravlax with Sweet Mustard Sauce because they both slice into a lot of servings and last for several meals. Cook the ham a bit longer than the one shown in the photo, so the glaze goes a darker brown. I must have been in a rush that day! Make double the Sweet Mustard Sauce recipe and keep it in a jar in the fridge. You’ll find it goes well with ham as well as Gravlax or Smoked Salmon. Here you can see a platter of sliced Gravlax next to some cooked asparagus surrounded by good old-fashioned devilled eggs, garnished with a small piece of anchovy.

Here are some more ideas for a cold buffet:

And a few cold starters for a sit down meal:

For an impressive dessert you can’t go wrong with one of these:

And if you’re short of time try one of these:

I would like to wish all my readers a very Merry Christmas and a happy, healthy and safe New Year. I look forward to sharing many more recipes with you in 2025.

Chocolate Bread and Butter Pudding

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Someone gave my daughter Catherine a Panettone for Christmas.  As they don’t like Panettone very much, she gave it to me.  I have to admit I’m not mad about the Italian answer to Christmas cake either, but my “war mentality” doesn’t allow me to throw good food away.  So I stuck it in the freezer.  Catherine laughed when she saw me do this and admitted she had inherited my “waste not want not” approach to food and if she hadn’t been travelling she would have frozen it too.

This weekend I used just over half the Panettone to make a delicious chocolate bread and butter pudding, adapted from a recipe by Delia Smith.  She uses ordinary white bread with the crusts cut off.  You could use bread, panettone, croissants, brioche – anything which needs using up – which is how this traditional British dessert was first invented – to use up stale bread.

9 slices of day old white bread – or the equivalent in panettone, brioche or croissants
150g dark chocolate (I used more like 175g to make it really chocolatey)
75g butter
425ml cream
4 Tbs dark rum (optional)
pinch ground cinnamon
4 Tbs caster sugar
3 large eggs, lightly beaten
To serve:
Icing sugar
Thick pouring cream

Butter a rectangular lasagne-type dish.  In a large bowl place chocolate, broken into squares, butter, cream, sugar, cinnamon and rum, if using.  Microwave until melted which will take a couple of minutes. Stop every 30 seconds or so to stir the mixture and stop as soon as it’s melted.  Delia does hers the traditional way over simmering water which is safer.  Using the microwave is quicker, but you need to keep an eye on it.  Whisk in the eggs with a hand whisk, until well-combined.

Pour about 2cm of the chocolate cream over the base of the dish, then arrange about half the panettone slices or bread slices, overlapping if necessary to cover the base of the dish.  Panettone slices are large so you need to cut them into about three and use them like a jigsaw puzzle.  Pour in half the remaining chocolate cream and push all over with the back of a fork so the panettone soaks it up.  Arrange the rest of the panettone or bread over the top, pour in the remaining chocolate cream, push with a fork so there are no dry bits left.  Cover the dish with plastic wrap, leave for a couple of hours at room temperature then refrigerate for 24-48 hours.

Remove cling film and bake at 180°C for 35 minutes or until the top is brown and crunchy and the bottom is cooked but still soft.  Remove from the oven, allow to stand for a few minutes then serve dusted with icing sugar.  Pass a jug of thick pouring cream separately.

Serves 6-8

Frozen Chocolate Mousse with Coffee Ice Cream

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We were served this dessert in a restaurant in the north of Spain. I can’t remember the name of the restaurant and I didn’t come away with the recipe, just the name and the memory of the delicious flavours and textures.

It’s been in the back of my mind to replicate it, so here is my version. The recipe is easy to halve to serve 6-8.

250g dark chocolate, broken into squares
250g unsalted butter, cut into small pieces
8 eggs, separated
2 Tbs Cointreau or Grand Marnier
Pinch of salt
4 Tbs sugar
1 tub of good quality vanilla ice cream (half a litre)
3 Tbs instant coffee
3 Tbs boiling water
To serve:
A few berries, fresh or frozen
Pouring cream

Melt chocolate and butter in a microwave or in a bowl over boiling water. Cool a bit then mix in the egg yolks and the orange liqueur.

Beat egg whites and salt with electric beaters until soft peaks form. Add the sugar and continue to beat until you have a glossy thick meringue. Add half to the melted chocolate and fold in gently with a rubber spatula. Add the rest and do the same. When thoroughly mixed, pour into small dishes and freeze for several hours or overnight.

Coffee Ice cream: Take the vanilla ice cream out of the freezer for about 15 minutes, so it softens a bit, then scrape it into a bowl. Mix the instant coffee and boiling water until smooth, then mix it into the ice cream. When thoroughly mixed, scrape back into the ice cream container and put it back in the freezer. Recipe can be prepared ahead to this point.

Serve each mousse with a scoop of coffee ice cream and, if liked, a few berries and pouring cream. Mine were frozen home-grown boysenberries, which is why they look frosted in the photo.

Makes 12-16 little mousses, depending on the size of your moulds

Chocolate Pancake Cake

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This recipe looks more complicated than it is. The only time consuming part is making the pancakes, which takes about half an hour. You can do this the day before, and indeed, assemble the whole cake the day before serving.

Feel free to vary the dried fruit and nuts or to leave them out altogether.

Pancake mixture:
4 eggs
½ tsp salt
1 tsp vanilla essence
1 rounded Tbs sugar
2 heaped Tbs cocoa powder, sifted
150 g plain flour, sifted
300ml milk
100ml boiling water
2 Tbs melted butter, or oil
Filling:
100g prunes, pitted and diced
2-3 Tbs rum or brandy (optional)
100g cream cheese at room temp
75g dulce de leche (manjar) (see note)
To serve:
100g dark chocolate
75ml cream
3-4 Tbs flaked almonds, or granulated peanuts, lightly toasted
Extra cream to serve, optional

Place all pancake ingredients in a food processor or blender and blend until smooth. Stop halfway to scrape down the sides with a spatula. Use mixture to make large pancakes in a nonstick frying pan. Use about 1/3 cup mixture for each and swirl the pan to cover the bottom evenly. Spray the pan lightly with oil between pancakes. Cook each one for a minute or two and when firm turn over and cook the other side. Place the pancakes in a pile, one on top of the other. My mixture made 11, but I only used eight in the cake as I didn’t have enough filling to use any more.

Soak the diced prunes in the rum or brandy or if preferred soak them in hot water. Mix the cream cheese and dulce de leche until smooth.

On a piece of aluminium foil, arrange the pancakes in a line, overlapping each one onto half of the previous one and spreading each one all over with the cream cheese mixture. See photo. Drain prunes and scatter them over the pancakes. Turn in about 2 cm on the long sides, just to make them neater. Roll up the cake on the short side, as tightly as you can, into a sausage shape. Wrap tightly in the foil and refrigerate for several hours or overnight.

Unwrap the cake and place it on a rack over a plate or tray to catch any drips. Heat the chocolate and cream until melted. If using granulated peanuts, mix them in then spread all over the cake. If using flaked almonds, ice the cake first with the chocolate mixture then sprinkle with the lightly toasted flaked almonds and leave to set.

Serve slices of the cake with whipped or pouring cream.

Serves 8

Variations: use seedless raisins instead of prunes; chopped roasted peanuts or macadamias instead of almonds.
Note: you can use Nestle Top and Fill Caramel instead of Dulce de Leche.

 

 

Vegan Chocolate Mousse

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I’m not vegan, but I saw this recipe and it looked so quick and easy I thought I’d give it a try. It was delicious.

The packet of tofu I bought weighed 450g, but I threw it all in anyway. If you want to make the mousses dairy-free, don’t serve them with cream.

400g silken tofu
200g dark chocolate
4 Tbs maple syrup
1 tsp vanilla essence
To serve:
Whipped cream (optional)
Grated chocolate

Place tofu in a food processor or blender, and mix until smooth with the maple syrup and vanilla. While it’s mixing, heat the chocolate, broken into squares, in a microwave for about two minutes, or until melted.

Add the melted chocolate to the blender and mix until smooth. Scrape into small serving dishes and refrigerate. If liked serve with whipped cream or pouring cream and garnish with some chocolate, shaved off with a vegetable peeler.

Serves 4-6

 

Quick Individual Christmas Puds

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I first published this recipe in 2016. It’s such a good idea, I thought I would publish it again so newer subscribers can make it.

Everyone is busy at this time of year. Despite best intentions it’s easy to run out of time to make traditional Christmas puddings, cakes, mince pies and all the other Christmas fare.

Adapted from a recipe published some years ago in Delicious magazine, these individual Christmas puds, called Cheat’s mini Christmas puddings in the magazine, are very quick to make. The original recipe makes four one cup puddings, but I think half that amount is enough. I served them at a ladies Christmas lunch and we concluded that they were so small we could pretend they didn’t have any calories at all.

If you make these please let me have your comments by using the balloon at the top of the page, next to the title.

Puddings:
600g shop bought Christmas cake or dark fruit cake, crumbled (I used Aldi’s)
½ cup milk
4 eggs
⅓ cup mincemeat (fruit mince) (see note below)
¼ cup sherry
Glacé cherries to decorate
Custard:
1 cup milk
1 cup cream
2 tsp vanilla essence
4 egg yolks
1 Tbs cornflour
¼ cup caster sugar
To serve:
A jug of thick pouring cream (optional)

Preheat oven to 180°C. Grease 8 half cup (125ml) dariole moulds or ramekins. Chinese tea cups (see photo) are ideal. Place cake, milk, eggs, sherry and fruit mince in food processor and pulse a few times just to combine – you want it to remain nice and chunky. If preferred mix by hand.

Divide among the moulds and place in a large baking dish. They should be almost full to the top. Pour boiling water to come halfway up sides of moulds. Cover baking dish with foil. Bake 45 mins or until firm and slightly risen.

Individual serving dishes for Quick Individual Christmas Puds

Meanwhile make custard. Heat milk, cream, sugar and vanilla in a small non-stick saucepan to boiling point. Mix egg yolks and cornflour in a bowl. Tip some of the hot milk into the egg yolk mixture and stir to combine, then tip back into saucepan with the rest of the hot milk. Continue to cook over low heat, stirring constantly with a wooden spatula, until thickened. Don’t let it boil. Pour custard through a sieve to remove any tiny bits of cooked egg white. Chill or serve warm.

When puddings are cooked remove moulds from dish, rest 10 mins, then tip onto individual serving dishes. Serve with custard (warm or cold) and decorate with glacé cherries. Serve with a jug of cream.

Serves 8

Note: If you don’t have any fruit mince, replace it with a mixture of fruit jam or marmalade and dried fruit and nuts.

Sticky Ginger Cake

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Auntie Vina and Uncle Hector lived at Hill House, a busy dairy farm on the moors of County Durham, where I spent many summers as a child. The farm hands all came into the farmhouse for meals, so Auntie Vina and her daughter in law Little Mary spent a lot of time cooking. She taught me all her basic cake recipes, such as sponge cake, chocolate cake, ginger cake and fruit cake.

Times have changed and most recipes using ginger now call for the fresh kind rather than dried. I decided to do some research online, looking for ginger cakes which use fresh ginger, or a combination of ground and fresh. I then adapted Auntie Vina’s recipe, using some of the new ideas I had found online. This is the result which I served as a dessert with Mangoes in Ginger Wine. If mangoes are in season where you live, give this quick and easy recipe a try.

Sticky Ginger Cake

250g unsalted butter
½ cup water
¾ cup treacle (or molasses)
¾ cup golden syrup (or honey)
1 cup brown sugar
3 eggs
3 cups self-raising flour
½ tsp salt
3 tsp ground ginger
2 tsp ground cinnamon
¼ tsp ground cloves
½ cup milk
2-3 Tbs finely grated fresh ginger (to taste)

Preheat oven to 165°C. Butter and line a 22cm baking pan – round or square. I chose a ring tin – always a bit risky because being fluted you can’t line it, but fortunately the cake came out in one piece.

Place butter, water, treacle, golden syrup and brown sugar in a mixing bowl then heat in the microwave (covered to stop it spattering everywhere) for a minute or two until melted. Alternatively heat in a saucepan over moderate heat.

When cooled a bit, beat in the eggs with electric beaters or a hand whisk. Add the sifted flour, salt and spices, the milk and lastly fold in the fresh ginger. Scrape into cake tin and bake for 40-60 mins. Cooking times vary depending on your oven and the cake tin you use. If you overcook the cake it won’t be sticky, so as soon as the top is firm and springy to the touch it’s ready. Remove from the oven and when cool remove from the tin.

Serve as a dessert with whipped cream with a little rum or brandy added and some stewed fruit. Or serve with Mangoes in Ginger Wine as shown in the photo.

Or serve as a cake dusted with icing sugar or drizzled with lemon icing (1 cup sifted icing sugar mixed with 2 Tbs lemon juice).

Serves between 12 and 20 depending on serving size

Note: if you don’t have self-raising flour use plain flour and 2 tsp baking powder

Cumquat and Almond Cake

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When a dessert comes into fashion you see it everywhere – in food magazines, on restaurant menus and served up by friends who entertain. A few years ago chocolate fondants – those tricky little puddings which are all about timing – were very much in vogue. A pool of delectable melted chocolate pours out when you stick your spoon into the middle – well that’s the theory. If you’ve managed to over-cook them, as I’ve done on more than one occasion, they’re still delicious. One of my all-time favourite desserts.

Turn the clock back even further to the 1970s and 80s and everyone was making Orange and Almond cake, where you boil two whole oranges until soft, whizz them to a purée, then add them to the cake mixture. I believe this cake made its debut in Australia in Claudia Roden’s Book of Middle Eastern Food, but recipes were soon popping up everywhere. Some versions don’t use any flour, making them good for celiacs.

Once again we have a huge crop of cumquats, so I decided to make this cake using cumquats instead of oranges and it was a great success. If preferred use two oranges or even mandarins.

Cumquat and Almond Cake

Cake:
About 300g cumquats (or 2 oranges)
2 cups ground almonds (or grind your own from whole or slivered blanched almonds)
125g butter at room temperature
1 cup caster sugar
5 eggs
½ cup self-raising flour, sifted
2 tsp baking powder
Syrup:
2 Tbs cumquat juice (or orange juice)
½ cup caster sugar
½ cup water
2 Tbs whisky (optional)
To serve:
Icing sugar

Preheat oven to 180ºC and line the base of a 22cm cake pan with baking paper and grease the sides. Place cumquats in a pan and cover with water. Simmer for 10 mins or until soft then cool. If using oranges they will take 20-30 mins. Cut in half and remove seeds.

If you need to grind the almonds, do them first in the food processor, then add remaining ingredients for cake, including the cooked cumquats, skin and all. Mix until smooth, stopping once to scrape down mixture from the sides. Tip mixture into cake pan and bake for an hour or until a skewer inserted in the middle comes out clean. Ovens vary so start checking after 45 mins.

Meanwhile make the syrup – place all ingredients in a small pan and simmer for 5 mins. Make holes over the top of the cake with a metal skewer and spoon the warm syrup over as soon as it comes out of the oven. The syrup will be absorbed.

Serve dusted with icing sugar, either warm or at room temperature, with a dollop of thick cream.

Serves 8-10

Variations: use macadamia nuts or pine nuts instead of almonds

Note: to make a flourless version suitable for anyone who is gluten intolerant, replace the flour with an extra half cup of ground almonds