Pretty bundt cake

I made this pretty moist and delicious bundt cake this afternoon. It came out of the oven around 4.30 pm, then had to cool and by the time I wanted to take a photo there was no light left whatsoever. That meant having to wait either until the next day or find an alternative solution. I still had this one daylight lamp that I took out of the studio at some point, used once, didn’t like it and tossed it in a corner to get dusty. Enough with the lazy and comfortable daylight! Time to get cracking on some serious stuff..

I’ve received many a question from people desperate to find out how to work with lighting in the night or for those of us living in the Northern Hemisphere, in the wintertime when light fades after 3 pm. I’ve written something about it before which you find here but thought I could do a little more research myself so why not share? As I said; I never use this lamp as it’s just not the same but in case of emergency, you would have to do with what you got right? So for today I dusted of my daylight lamp, took it into our kitchen and started moving it around.

Position of the lamp

As you can see I positioned the light to come from the right and back and from above a little bit. The lamp has 5 separate bulbs I can turn off individually, so I turned three of and left two burning as it was far too bright, causing burnout and heavy shadows. With a little less light it started to look a little better. I had only one light, so you can see that there is quite a bit of shadow in front of the cake. In order to fill that up a bit I used a silver reflector (you can also use foamboard, aluminiumfoil or something similar) to bounce a bit of light back to the front of the cake. In the two photos below you can see the difference with or without the reflector.

With or without reflector

You can tell that there is a big difference here. You can still tell that these are shot with artificial light but the result is acceptable and you can actually use this. Now what is most important I find when working with lights is the direction of the light. That is also true for daylight but that can be a bit more forgiving. I’ve taken two shots where I changed the position of the lamp and see what happens.

Ok first of all; what I like, might be something else from what you like, so it’s in the end all personal preference but to me the photo on the right is boring and lacks something. I turned the light more towards the table coming more from straight above almost (not quite) which made the light a bit flatter and shadows less pronounced.

I will be doing more tests with other lights that anyone would have in their home. Just to see what the issues are and how to possible solve those (or not). These lights are the easy ones since they are daylight balanced and need limited tweaking when it comes to color. In general for shooting at night, it is extremely helpful to use raw instead of jpeg. It gives you more control over the white balance so you can correct it later where needed. For now I will leave you with this delicious bundt cake!

Apple pear and nut bundt cake

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Serves:	8-12
Prep time:	15 minutes
Cook time:	1 hour
Total time:	1 hour, 15 minutes
Allergy:	Egg, Peanuts, Tree Nuts
Meal type:	Dessert
Misc:	Pre-preparable
Region:	Worldwide
Website:	Epicurious

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup dried cranberries
• 2 cups all purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon nutmeg (freshly grated)
• 1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
• 1 cup light brown sugar (packed)
• 1 cup granulated sugar
• 1 cup unsalted butter (2 sticks, softened)
• 3 eggs (large ones)
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 pears (peeled, cored and cut into small pieces)
• 2 apple, Golden Delicious (peeled, cored and cut into small pieces)
• 1 cup Mixed nuts (coarsely chopped)
• 1/2 teaspoon salt

Directions

In a small bowl put the cranberries with a bit of warm water and let them soak for at least an hour. Drain, discarding the water and set aside. Position rack in the middle of an oven and preheat the oven to 180 C. Lightly butter the bundt tin, then dust with flour, knocking out the excess.

In a large mixing bow or bowl of electric mixer, sift together flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves and salt. Add brown and granulated sugars, butter, eggs and vanilla. Using electric mixer, beat on high speed, scraping down sides of bowl with rubber spatula as needed, until batter is pale and smooth, about 3 minutes for handheld mixer and 2 minutes for standmixer. Stir in apples, pears, nuts and cranberries. Spoon into prepared pan and smooth the top.

Bake until a wooden pick or skewer comes out clean when inserted into the center of the cake. About 1 hour. Cool cake in pan on a rack for 10 minutes, then invert and unmold onto rack and cool completely. Cake can be made up to three days in advance and stored at room temperature wrapped tightly in plastic wrapp

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Delicious creme brulle

“O that’s gonna be an easy one.” I thought when going through the recipe for the creme brulee in Donna Hay’s book Modern Classics. Cream and eggs, what can go wrong right? Wrong! Ofcourse we have a Dutch saying that goes something like ‘Hoogmoed komt voor de val” and it precisely point out what I am just saying… Think something is easy and you might be unpleasantly surprised!

I made the – probably classic – mistake of overheating the eggs. The recipe was not very clear in the sense that it didn’t mention you had to be careful with how hot the mixture got and so I just put it on the stove and it bubbled happily away. I kept stirring but obviously heating it above 100 C with eggs is always tricky. I should have really paid more attention but ok, I guess it was a good learning experience! I still moved forward with baking the creme brulee and I strained it before putting in the oven, hoping it would smooth out the texture a bit. And it did for the most part. It did not taste too eggy and was actually still surprisingly good.

Creme brulee

Making a perfect burnt layer on top was also more difficult then I thought it would be but once I got the hang of it, it was easy to do with my little burner. We had the things for years but never really used it until now. Make sure you do not make my mistakes to overheat the cream and you will have a cracker dessert for Christmas! I think this dessert will be even better if you add a bit of flavor into the cream. Think lemon or maybe even a bit of cinnamon. The choices are endless!

Creme brulee

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Serves:	6
Prep time:	15 minutes
Cook time:	20 minutes
Total time:	35 minutes
Allergy:	Egg
Meal type:	Dessert
Misc:	Serve Cold
Region:	Worldwide
From book:	Modern Classics

Ingredients

• 1 litre double cream
• 1 vanilla pod (split and seeds taken out)
• 8 eggyolks
• 110g sugar (fine sugar )
• 60g sugar (for making the sugar coating)

Directions

Preheat the oven to 150 C. Put cream and vanillabean in a small saucepan and leave to simmer on low fire for about 3 minutes. Set aside for 20 minutes.

Whisk eggyolk and sugar together. Slowly pour the cream mixture on top and keep whisking. Put everything in the pan and reheat on low fire for about 6-8 minutes. This is where I am adding a note that you should not let the temperature get above 70 C here. Better is probably to reheat the mix au bain marie to be safe. Keep stirring until it is thick enough to coat a spoon.

Remove the vanillabean and strain the mixture above 6 ramekins of 175 ml each. Put them in a baking tray and pour hot water half way up to the ramekins. Bake for 15-20 minutes or until they are set. Remove the ramekins from the baking tray and leave them to cool in the fridge for at least an hour.

Put the ramekins on a baking tray, sprinkle with the extra sugar and leave for 2 minutes. Put icecubes around the ramekins and put them under a preheated gril and bake for 2-3 minutes until the sugar is melted and golden brown. You can also use a special creme brulee burner ofcourse.

Note

The key here is to not let the eggs become to hot or you will have some form of scrambled eggs instead of creme brulee!

creme brulee

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Pavlova with cream, pomegranate and cranberry sauce

You did not think I would get rid of my cranberry sauce so easily now did you?

It’s actually quite funny how you sometimes start baking and then have leftovers that turn out to be made into something far superior then your first recipe. I had one of those days today; it was about time to decorate the Christmas tree so I figured I could combine that with some Christmas baking in between. We’re thinking of doing creme brulee as the dessert for Christmas as it is supposed to be fairly easy and at least you can prepare it up front.

Pavlova

I had thought to make three recipes; creme brulee, banana-cinnamon bread and to get rid of all the leftover egg whites also a pavlova. As it turns out my creme brulee was less then successful as I let the cream get too hot resulting in curdled cream and for some reason my banana bread broke when taking it out of the tin.. But the pavlova…. the pavlova was even better then I thought it would be. I was a little worried it would get half brownish as my oven is really not the best anymore but for once everything went according to plan and my pavlova came out looking as gorgeous as I had wanted it to look.

Pavlova with pomegranate and cranberry sauce

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Serves:	6
Prep time:	15 minutes
Cook time:	1 hour
Total time:	1 hour, 15 minutes
Allergy:	Egg
Dietary:	Vegetarian
Meal type:	Dessert
Region:	Worldwide
From book:	Modern Classics

Ingredients

• 4 egg whites
• 225g sugar
• 6 teaspoons cornstarch
• 1 teaspoon white vinegar
• 250ml whipping cream
• 1 pomegranate seeds (seeds from one pomegranate)
• cranberry sauce

Directions

Preheat the oven to 150 C. Whip the eggwhites in a grease free bowl until soft peaks. Slowly add the sugar until the meringue is glossy.

Put the cornstarch through a sieve and fold it into the eggwhites together with the vinegar

On a baking tray lined with baking paper make a circle of about 18 cm wide of the meringue and put it in the oven. Turn down the oven temperature to 120 C and leave it in for an hour. Turn the oven off and let the pavlova cool in the oven completely.

Once cooled you can top the pavlova with whipped cream and as I did with pomegranate and cranberry sauce.

Note

I wanted to keep the topping of this recipe in red but you can ofcourse add whatever you like on top of the pavlova. Raspberries, blueberries, passionfruit or mmm, warm cherries!

All in all I still don’t know what to do for Christmas dessert. I mean this looks pretty good right, but I’m just afraid it will be too heavy after a big Christmas meal. I want something fairly light and fruity I think… Sigh… back to the drawing board. O of course; the creme brulee is still an option. Just need to redo that one and make sure it doesn’t curdle this time. In terms of looks however, this is a real winner!

Pavlova goodness

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Chocolate marquis with figs

I have visions of salads… lovely green salads with maybe just a tiny bit of nuts and a little bit of salty blue cheese and a gorgeous dressing. Salads that make me feel light and most of all healthy. Salads that give me the feeling that I am on the right track, that I am doing something right for my body… As you can probably tell by the brownish colors of the photo above this has nothing to do with salad. Nothing whatsoever. But it’s true, after making all that chocolate (first the arretje nof and then this chique version of arretje nof) I feel much more like having a salad then like having another piece of chocolate cake.

Gizmo doesn't mind another chocolate cake

I actually made this chocolate marquise on the same day as the Arretje Nof cake but we had our friends from Belgium coming over so I figured something a little more fancy then that would be in order. Plus I always love ‘baking’ something new. But then this is technically not baking as it is cold too. While this involved a lot more work then the Arretje Nof cake, I actually like that one better. This was good but just not as good…Funny how that works. Plus it’s double the amount of work, so you can probably guess which one would be my favorite. I’m thinking that the basic chocolate cake can be spiced up a little instead of making this one, but it does have some potential so I figured I would share the recipe with you and as you can tell; Gizmo seems to like it!

Chocolate marquis

Chocolate marquise

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Serves:	10-12
Prep time:	40 minutes
Cook time:	2 hours
Total time:	2 hours, 40 minutes
Allergy:	Egg
Meal type:	Dessert
Misc:	Pre-preparable, Serve Cold
Region:	Worldwide
From magazine:	Delicious magazine

Ingredients

• 225g tea biscuits (You will use 150 gr for the bottom and 75 gr for the filling)
• 40g butter (melted)
• 200g dark chocolate
• 200g butter
• 2 eggyolks
• 275g sugar
• 3 tablespoons kahlua
• 75g toasted flaked almonds
• 60g dried figs (chopped)
• 60g raisins (chopped)
• 50g double cream
• 150g milk chocolate

Directions

Prepare (can be done one day in advance); Crush the 150 gr of the biscuit in the blender or foodprocessor and mix with the melted butter. Put the ring of a round caketin (20 cm in diameter) on a plate or board covered with baking paper. Divide the cookie/butter mixture in a fairly thin layer and distribute over the bottom and press firmly with the back of a spoon. Leave to set in the fridge.

Melt the butter and dark chocolate au bain marie and stir til it is smooth. Whisk the eggyolks and the sugar into a very thick grainy mass and spoon them through the chocolate mixture and add the kahlua. Spoon in the almonds, the figs, raisins and the remaining 75 gr of the biscuits (crumbled). Divide the mixture across the bottom on top of the biscuit/butter mix.Smooth the top.. Leave to set in the fridge

Put the cream in a small saucepan and bring to the boil. Take of the heat and put the milk chocolate in and stir until it is melted. As soon as it has the consistency of thick yogurt, divide a thin layer on top of the marquise. Leave to set in the fridge for 2-4 hrs. Take the cake out of the fridge shortly before serving. A trick to get the outside ring of is to use a hairdryer to heat the outside of the ring, so the chocolate will release easily.

Note

While certainly a tasty cake; I thought the ratio of biscuits vs the butter for the bottom didn't work so well. My bottom could have done with a little more butter (now how wrong does that sound??)

Instead of using the figs you can use any other dried, confit fruits you like. Or replace the kahlua here for cognac, rum or any other liquor you like

In the meantime; I am fed up with chocolate so I will be moving on to healthier dishes really really soon! What are you making for Christmas dessert?

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The ultimate cranberry sauce

I did promise you I would give you the recipe for the ultimate cranberry sauce right? Well, here it is… I’ve made cranberry sauce, cranberry compote and cranberry relish before but never before did I find THE cranberry sauce to go with everything. If you look at the small list of ingredients it is really nothing to fancy and it’s also nothing really special but I can assure you that the end result will never have you ask for another cranberry recipe, ever again. It is rich, it is sweet (but not too sweet) and it goes so well with both savory dishes and sweet desserts.

I made this sauce for the simple reason that I had bought too many cranberries so I just figured I might try a couple of different variations to see which one I liked best. We had this the first time with some pork and we were immediately sold. Then I used it to spice up the mascarpone raspberry trifle you saw earlier and that just confirmed the fact that this does go with just about anything.

Cranberry sauce on top of delicious trifle

Cranberry sauce

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Serves:	4
Prep time:	5 minutes
Cook time:	10 minutes
Total time:	15 minutes
Meal type:	Condiment, Side Dish
Misc:	Pre-preparable
Region:	Worldwide

Ingredients

• 250g cranberries
• 3 pieces star anise
• 2 cinnamon sticks
• 1 cup sugar
• 1,5 cup fresh orange juice

Directions

Put all ingredients into a saucepan and brings to the boil. Once the sugar is all dissolved turn down the heat

Leave to boil softly until all craberries have popped open. Take of the fire and remove the cinnamon and star anise. Put in a blender and puree until smooth. Be careful when turning on the blender as it is hot which means it will spatter too.

Once pureed put through a sieve to remove all the skins.

Note

This recipe is perfect for both sweet and savory dishes. Sofar we have had it with dessert and we had it with pork but this will be equally good with turkey!

I am actually thinking of making large batches of this sauce so I can freeze it in and enjoy it for the rest of the year too. I still have quite a few dried cranberries left so I am wondering if I can use those to make cranberry sauce too. Something tells me that is not an option as there would be no popping. Does anyone have any experience with using dried cranberries for making a sauce? Would it work to re-hydrate them first and then cook? Let me know your thoughts! In the meantime I have another bag of cranberries in the fridge that is just waiting for me to make another batch…

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