Posts tagged as:

baking

Cake With Blueberries and Crème Fraîche

by Emilia on August 15, 2009

It’s all about the bilberries here right now; the forests are filled with them.

We call them blueberries, but they are actually bilberries as I learned not so long ago, they are smaller than blueberries and the taste is not as watery as in blueberries. The taste of them is really intense and a little sour - delicious if you ask me. Bilberries happen to be my favourite berry.

I have been thinking about a bilberry cake for a couple of weeks now and luckily I stumbled across this recipe just when we had been out picking up some berries. The recipe sounded so decadent and lovely that I had no other choice than to try it, I am not someone who can say no to a recipe which uses crème fraîche and lots of butter. The cream cheese icing was also just perfect, it is not common to ice these kinds of cakes here, so to me the icing sounded a bit exotic and different.

The cake itself was very easy to make, I used some almond flour and white rice flour in it and that worked out well. I loved the taste of it, this is just the kind of cake I like, dense and moist, not too sweet and a little bit tart, but not too tart.

I would highly recommend trying this recipe.

I used almond flour and white rice flour, but the original recipe uses wheat flour (of course!), so if you are not celiac you should use just wheat flour instead of the almond and rice flour. Some quinoa flour instead of rice flour would also work out; I have been just very determined to try out some other flours than quinoa, at least for a while, and that’s why I used rice flour here.

I used only 1 dl/1/4 cup confectioner’s sugar in the icing, but the original recipe uses twice that amount.

The cake can be served when it has cooled down; it is very moist, so it will not hold itself together all that well when it is warm.

Bilberry Cake Recipe

The recipe was adapted from Ruoka Pirkka.

Serves 10, takes approximately 10 minutes to make and 45 minutes to bake.

The Cake

-150 grams/5,3 ounces soft butter

-1,5 dl/ 3/4 cup sugar

-3 eggs

-1 dl / a little bit less than 1/2 cup crème fraîche

-1 cup almond flour

-1 dl /a little bit less than 1/2 cup white rice flour

-2 tsp baking powder

-2 tsp vanilla extract

-200 grams/7 ounces blueberries or bilberries

Preheat your oven to 175 C/350 F.

Line a springform pan with baking paper and then grease it with some butter.

Mix together the butter, sugar, crème fraîche, vanilla extract and eggs. Mix together the flour and the baking powder.

Mix the dry ingredients together with the wet ingredients, but leave a little bit of the flour in the bowl and then gently mix the blueberries with the remaining flour.

Gently fold the berries in with the rest of the batter.

Pour into the pan and bake for 30-45 minutes until the cake is done. Let the cake cool down and make the icing.

The Icing

-200 grams/ 7 ounces cream cheese

-0,5 dl/ 1/5 cup crème fraîche

-2 dl/ 3/4 cup confectioner’s sugar (I used just half of this amount)

-2 tsp lemon juice

Mix everything together and then spread the icing on top of the cooled cake.

Popularity: 66% [?]

Gluten-Free Clafoutis

by Emilia on June 25, 2009

A clafoutis is a truly delicious French dessert which is made by baking a batter together with some fruit. I haven’t had much luck with my gluten-free clafoutis experiments; the taste has been something terrible at times and at other times edible, but not anything spectacular.

This changed when I first opened up Gordon Ramsay’s book Just Desserts and I saw the clafoutis recipe in it. The recipe used almond flour instead of all purpose flour - I somehow just knew that this was the way to make a wonderful gluten-free clafoutis and I could not wait to try it.

My feeling had been right and I am pleased to say that this clafoutis is not only edible, but it is in fact better than one made with regular flour. I think I died a little bit when I first tasted it.

So do try this, if you love clafoutis.

Almond Clafoutis Recipe

This recipe is adapted from the book Just Desserts which is one I would recommend to everyone, even to celiacs; it has a lot of delicious gluten-free recipes and it also describes basic techniques for making desserts. Of course it has some recipes which use regular flour, but there are surprisingly many naturally gluten-free recipes. Gordon Ramsay might be an extremely annoying Tv-personality, but he knows his food, in my opinion anyway.

Some people like to use whole cherries in a clafoutis - the taste will be much stronger this way - I would recommend using them whole if you don’t mind the trouble the pits give when eating.

The Recipe

serves 4

Dry ingredients:

-30 grams/0,4 cups/1 dl almond flour (do not pack the flour tightly if you are measuring it with dl or with a cup)

-1 flat tsp flour (I use white rice flour)

-a pinch of salt

-50 grams/0,4 cups/1dl sugar (I like to use unrefined sugar here, it tastes better than white sugar, brown sugar is fine too)

Wet ingredients:

-1 egg

-2 egg yolks

-1 tsp vanilla extract

-1,5 dl/3/4 cup cream ( or coconut cream for a dairy-free version)

-200 grams pitted cherries, or 250 grams un-pitted cherries (approximately a bit over one cup/2,5 dl of cherries)

Mix the dry ingredients together and then mix the wet ingredients together. Combine them into a rather loose batter. Let the batter rest for 12-24 hours. You can of course bake it straight away, but it will not be as good.

Heat an oven to 175 C/350 F.

Grease a baking dish or individual baking dishes. Place the cherries in them and then cover with the batter.

Bake for 30 minutes. The time differs because ovens are different, keep an eye on the clafoutis while it is baking.

Popularity: 49% [?]

A Lemon and White Chocolate Cheesecake

by Emilia on May 24, 2009

Cheesecakes have been really popular at my house lately, so I decided to make a strawberry cheesecake with some lemon and white chocolate for this months Go Ahead Honey, It’s Gluten Free.

The pairing of white chocolate and lemon was so good that I decided to try making some almond cookies with those flavours, and luckily they ended up being as good as I had hoped. Like tiny soft lemon flavoured cakes.

All went well with making the cheesecake, although I will use less gelatine leaves in the future; it was a bit too rubbery in appearance for my taste.

A Cheesecake Recipe With White Chocolate, Lemon and Strawberries

This is much the same recipe as this one, the flavours are just different.

-100 grams/3,5 ounces white chocolate

-half the zest of one lemon and the juice of one lemon

-200 grams/7 ounces cream cheese (I used Philadelphia)

-2 dl/ 3/4 cup whipping cream

-4 gelatine leaves, or less, 3 might be enough

-1 tsp vanilla extract

Line the edges of a pan with halved strawberries, they will stick to the cake when it has set.

Place the gelatine leaves into some cold water. Melt the white chocolate. Whip the cream and mix it with the white chocolate and the cream cheese. Add the vanilla extract and the lemon zest.

Place the lemon juice into a saucepan on medium heat and melt the gelatine leaves into it. Let it cool a bit.

Mix the lemon juice after it has cooled with the whipped cream mixture. Pour it into the cake pan (springform, or one with just the edges, so that you can just lift it off) and leave to sit in the fridge for at least 3 hours.

Decorate with some fresh strawberries before serving.

You can make a base for this with some cookies for example, just crush some cookies (180 grams/6 ounces) and mix them with some melted butter (50 grams/1,7 ounces) and then place onto the pan before adding the filling.

Almond Cookies With White Chocolate and Lemon

These would also be good with some crushed liquorice candy mixed in, turkish peppers are a good choice.

-1 cup/2,5 dl almond meal

-50 grams/1,7 ounces melted butter, or vegetable oil

-one egg

- 2 heaping tbls sugar

-1 tsp vanilla extract

- 50 grams/1,7 ounces white chocolate pieces

-half the zest of one lemon

-2 tbls lemon juice

Just mix everything together and bake at 170 C/340 F for approximately 15 minutes, or until they are done, it depends on your oven, but they usually take 10-20 minutes.