Junglefrog Cooking » sweets

Pavlova with pomegranate and cranberry sauce

Simone (junglefrog) — Sun, 11 Dec 2011 16:44:01 +0000

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

Print recipe

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

Arretje nof – the simplest chocolate cake

Simone (junglefrog) — Sun, 04 Dec 2011 16:03:46 +0000

Isn’t it funny how certain foods can transport you right back into your childhood? When I was a little kid I already loved to bake, but we never really got much further then the standard (but tasty!) apple pie and this Arretje Nof.. Now as far as I have been able to tell, this is a very typical and old fashioned Dutch cake. We used to make it for just about every kids party and I loved making it, as it was soooo simple and soooo good. I hadn’t thought about arretje nof in ages but when I was looking for Christmas desserts I ran into another recipe which reminded me of arretje nof. So I said something to Tom about it and he looked at me with one of those blank stares… “Arretje.. who???”

Kids heaven

Turns out he never even heard of this!! So naturally I just had to make it again. It had been roughly 30 years ago that I last made this famous Dutch chocolate cake and I was a little curious where that weird name came from, which is also impossible to translate by the way…

Apparently Arretje is the name of a cartoon character that was invented by the Dutch Oil Factory (Nederlandse Olie Fabriek) later to be known to many as Calve. Arretje, a brave little Turkish boy, born and raised in Baghdad was featured in a series of 5 little booklets around the year 1926 (!) and was a big hit. In those books the company was only referred to with the letters NOF, so before you knew it; Arretje was called Arretje Nof.

I haven’t been able to find out why then this cake was called by that name but my guess is that it might have had something to do with the original ingredients which were deepfrying oil and I am guessing that mr. Calve produced that in those days.

I am happy to report that the frying oil has been replaced by butter, although technically I am not sure how much more healthy that is. This is a delicious cake and Tom had to agree even though he keeps calling it my Ivan Rebroff cake. It doesn’t require any baking; a few hours in the fridge is all you need and you can be sure that kids will absolutely love it (and so will grown ups by the way!) It’s almost like a firm chocolate mousse cake with crunchy biscuits in between. It’s about time that Arretje goes international!

Arretje Nof

Print recipe

Serves:	12
Prep time:	15 minutes
Cook time:	4 hours
Total time:	4 hours, 15 minutes
Allergy:	Egg
Meal type:	Dessert
Misc:	Pre-preparable, Serve Cold
Region:	Worldwide

Ingredients

4 eggs
250g sugar
125g cacao powder
375g butter (melted)
275g biscuits

Directions


Let the butter melt very slowly on low heat. Break all the biscuits in small pieces. Line a cake tin with baking paper.

Mix the eggs and sugar together. Carefully add the cocoa powder through a sieve into the egg/sugar mixture. Pour in the melted butter. Do this one step at the time to make it easier to incorporate the butter into the mix. As soon as the butter is entirely incorporated into the mix add the biscuits and stir everything together so all biscuit pieces are coated with chocolate. Put everything in the cake tin

Put in the fridge and leave to stand at least 4 hours or preferably overnight to become solid enough to cut.

Note

You cannot substitute the butter in this recipe for oil as it is the butter that makes the cake 'set'. So substituting for oil will mean that the cake will never set and you'll have a liquid cake

Simple but so good!

Mascarpone raspberry trifle

Simone (junglefrog) — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 08:00:27 +0000

Christmas dessert made easy

Noooo!!! I can hear you exclaim out loud in utter confusion… Did I not say yesterday that I was gonna be good and losing weight and blablabla?? True, so true… but you see.. this was already made when I wrote that. And I am not gonna eat it all myself! What’re you thinking? Ofcourse I will share.. Gizmo a little bit, Tom a little bit and ok, I will bring the rest to my parents… Did I not warn you there would be unhealthy recipes abound here in the coming weeks? I do need to do some sort of Christmas testing so that means actually making it or I will not be able to tell if I’m making something good or not so good.

Creamy goodness

Now this mascarpone raspberry christmassy trifle is definitely good. But it can definitely be better. (which is why the testing is necessary you see..) It was lovely and creamy but I thought the flavors were a little flat. It needs a bit of extra punch and the cranberry sauce that I am pouring over in the first picture is definitely doing the trick (btw, that is THE ultimate cranberry sauce.. Sharing the recipe for that later!) but I think it could do with some extra oomph to make it the dessert I had thought it would be. For starters; I will be adding maybe a bit of lemoncurd in the cream. That will make the taste a bit fresher. Adding some limezest in their too. On top of that I think that soaking the lady fingers in a bit of diluted limoncello sounds like a brilliant plan to me. You have to be careful though since limoncello tends to get too alcoholly when used in desserts so taste carefully before dipping your fingers. (don’t taste too much or you won’t be able to tell the difference!)

with toasted almonds

On the outside; let’s be honest. Those silver pearls look great but are a nightmare for your teeth, so I would advise against using them (we took them of before actually eating it!) although I heard there are softer varieties now. I think adding some meringue crumbles on top would be brilliant or amaretti cookies would be lovely here too. Basically; go wild… I am giving you the base recipe below but please do give it a little more punch. I’ll add the suggestions in the notes!

Mascarpone raspberry trifle

Print recipe

Serves:	8-10
Prep time:	30 minutes
Cook time:	4 hours
Total time:	4 hours, 30 minutes
Meal type:	Dessert
Misc:	Serve Cold
Region:	Worldwide
From magazine:	Olive magazine

Ingredients

2 sheets gelatine
300g raspberries
600ml double cream
250g mascarpone
1 vanilla pod (seeds reserved)
75g icing sugar
150ml dry sherry
12 sponge fingers/lady fingers
toasted flaked almonds (to decorate)
edible silver balls (to decorate)

Directions


Rinse a loaf tin approx. 21 cm long x 8 cm wide x 7 cm high with cold water and line with baking parchment. Try and not get too many wrinkles in the paper. I cut out the corners so I could smooth it down the sides easier. Leave a little overhang on the sides so you can fold it in later.

Soak the gelatine leaves in cold water for 5 minutes.

Put 125 gr of raspberries in a bowl and mash them with a fork. Put in a sieve and with the back of a spoon push it through, discarding the seeds.

Take 450 ml of the cream and whisk this into almost stiff peaks. Whisk the mascarpone with the vanilla and sugar. Fold the mascarpone into the cream until smooth. Drain the gelatine and dissolve it into 2 tbsp of slightly cooled boiled water. Stir 2 tsp of the gelatine mix into the puree and mix the rest with the cream. Spoon some cream into the tin to make a layer, about 1/2 cm thick. Drizzle with a third of the raspberry puree. Dip 2 sponge fingers in the sherry and put them in the tin against one side, end to end. Repeat with two more fingers on the opposite side of the tin, and finish with 2 more sponge fingers down the centre. Spoon more cream over the fingers and between the gaps. Push half the remaining raspberries into the cream in lines between the fingers. Drizzle with puree and repeat with the remaining fingers, cream, raspberries and puree. Fold over the baking paper and set in the fridge for at least 4 hrs. (I found 4 hrs not enough so best to leave it overnight or use one gelatine leaf extra) To serve, whip the remaining cream to soft peaks. Turn the terrine out upside down onto a platter. Top with cream and scatter with almonds and silver balls

Note

If you find that taking it out of the tin you see the lady fingers, you can put some cream over the outside to smooth it out.
In terms of the cream itself I would suggest adding maybe some spoons of lemon curd in and dipping the lady fingers in a diluted limoncello.
Another great option would be to use amaretti cookies and dipping the fingers in coffee/amaretto mixture; getting a bit of a tiramisu like flavor. Crumbling meringue on top will also look really nice.

gorgeous trifle

Slow cooking pears in red wine sauce

Simone (junglefrog) — Sun, 13 Nov 2011 15:57:18 +0000

Slow cooked pears with rich red wine sauce

Poaching… doesn’t that also mean illegal taking of plants and animals? Why then is a technique very often used in the kitchen also called poaching? It’s weird isn’t it? I just realized that as soon as I started writing this post… I do seem to be on a poaching roll lately as this is the third time in under two weeks that I’ve made a recipe where I am poaching pears in one way or the other. The funny thing is that all three times the end result was entirely different. I’ve poached different kinds of pears to which obviously has a big impact on the final flavor. But today I will be sharing how I fared with my brand new slow cooker!

Slow cooked and gorgeous

I’ve always been intrigued by a slow cooker but up till now had never had the change to try one out in real life, so when it arrived yesterday I got all excited and started searching for recipes and on how to use this great tool in a proper way and wow, I’m impressed at the many ways you can use a slowcooker. Apparently you can even bake a bread in them or a cake! For now I figured I should start with something fairly simple. To get a feel for the machine, see what it does and how it works, before I move on to more complicated dishes. What I totally love about it, is that you can put all the ingredients in it, turn it on, leave it to do it’s thing for a couple of hours and when you come back home your meal is cooked. Now that my friends is what I call try magic!

I can’t wait to try it out with a large piece of meat and vegetables. I have just the thing in the freezer from my meat course so that’ll be interesting. But let me start by saying that these pears are totally gorgeous and the sauce that goes with it is great. Not only in combination with these pears but this is a perfect red wine sauce. Luscious and very rich. Se how it shines?

We’re not yet into the full Christmas test-cooking mode but for starters; this would definitely make a really good Christmas dessert! The recipe is originally from the Dutch blog of Levine. O and did I mentioned that this dish, together with the main still fell under the Living Leaner budget??

On top of that I was visited by the Fairy Hobmother yesterday! In this month believing in a little magic in our lives is certainly not wrong and I was happily surprised when the Fairy Hobmother gave me a fantastic Amazon giftcard to spend as I wanted! Now how’s that for good luck in these expensive months! Now if you believe in a little magic then leave a comment here on this post and you might be visited by the Fairy Hobmother too!

Slow cooking pears in red wine sauce

5.0 from 7 reviews

Recipe type: Dessert

Author: Adapted from Levinebaktbrood

Prep time: 10 mins

Cook time: 4 hours

Total time: 4 hours 10 mins

Serves: 4

By slow cooking all the flavors have the chance to develop fully resulting in a luscious and rich dessert

Ingredients

1 bottle of fruity red wine
150 gr sugar
3 tbsp honey
1 cinnamon stick
2 staranis
2 kardemom pods, crushed
1 vanilla bean, split open
one strip of lemon peel
2 cloves
2 black peppercorns
1 kilo small pears (I used Wilder Giesseman pears)
juice of 1 lemon

Instructions

Peel the pears, leave the stalk on. Cut a small slice of the bottom so they will remain standing. Put the pears through the lemon juice to prevents discoloration.
Pour the wine in the inside pan of your slowcooker, add sugar, honey, cinnamon, staranise, cardamom, vanillabean, lemonpeel, cloves and peppercorns. Put the lid on the slow cooker and turn on to high for about 30 minutes. Stir every now and then until the sugar is dissolved.
Put the pears into the pan and heat on high for about 2 to 4 hours depending on the size of your pears until they are done.
Take the pears out of the pan with a slotted spoon and put them in a bowl. Pour the wine into a saucepan and leave to cook on high heat for about 5 to 10 minutes to reduce down. Make the sauce thicker with a little cornstarch, diluted with a bit of water. Put the pears into the liquid and leave to cool

Notes

ofcourse you can also prepare this in a regular pan but it might be going much quicker in that case. Leave the fire as low as possible.

Google Recipe View Microformatting by Easy Recipe

Slow poached pears

Disclaimer ; the slow cooker was provided to me by Tesco but all opinions are my own!

Apple and caramel dumplings, I think

Simone (junglefrog) — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 13:54:00 +0000

Sometimes, just every so often, you try out a recipe and it is just plain wrong… I had never before have that happen with a Donna Hay recipe, so I guess kudos to their team for testing most of their recipes. And I say ‘most’ because the recipe I picked for this months Donna Hay Challenge is certainly NOT right. I was alerted to the problems initially by Laura from the blog Tiramisu who had tested it to see how it would look and it turned out the caramel sauce stayed far too watery to be considered a sauce. So I tested it too and indeed, it was nowhere near the right consistency of a sauce. Plus, due to the watery nature of the caramel the dumplings became very soggy in the oven.

So I thought about it, tweeted a bit here and there with Jenn, Astrid and Alessio and I decided in the end I would split up the components of the recipe and make them separate. I still had some dough leftover from the dumplings, so I used those to make 5 small dumplings and baked them in the oven for about 25 minutes. I poached the apples on the stove in a mixture of sugar, verjuice and water with cinnamon, cardamom, staranise and cloves and made an orange caramel sauce to go over the finished product.

Too sweet!

And while all the separate components worked really well this time, the end product was too sweet. Initially I thought that I should have poached the apples in a sugarless solution but I don’t think that the apples were the problem. The caramel, while delicious, would probably be better for an creamy dessert. The dumplings soaked it up quite well so they too, became too sweet. Pfft, what to do now? I’m thinking the solution might be to change the water qty in the original caramel recipe (which was great in taste, just too soggy) and add the butter into the caramel at a later stage. Anyone any thought on how to resolve this? It’s quite a tasty recipe otherwise, it’s just too soggy, that’s all…

I will share my take on the recipe with you below but first let me get into the photo process here. Based on the original photo I used a table with backlighting as you can see in my setup. Apart from the obvious differences in props for me the biggest difference is the texture. The recipe does not state to add sugar to the dumplings but that is clearly what they did in the photo. Also I did not have small apples, so I used bigger ones and cut them. As soon as you poach apples, either in the oven or in a pan the color starts leeking out of them. So while they were quite red at the start; it soon turned rather yellow. I wish I had small apples and if I do manage to find them I might make this again.

Donna vs mine

See how the texture of the sugar on the dumplings and the more wrinkled appearance of the small apples adds a really pleasing contrast to the tin they serve the apples in? In my photo it is all too smooth. Also because I did not want to overcook the apples and have no color at all left.

To reflect some of the light back onto the apples I used my foamboard wrapped with aluminium foil plus the lid of a pan. I could not – for the live of me – find my reflector, so that is probably still in the studio..

See my messy table and the reflecting lid of the pan

I will now share how I prepared this, but for the original recipe best look at the Donna Hay post. I would love to hear your thoughts on the recipe and the problems you encountered while cooking it!

I used the recipe for the dumplings as per the original, but baked them separately in the oven at 180C for 25 minutes.

I poached the apples in a liquid containing verjuice and water, about 1/2 cup of sugar, 2 cinnamon sticks, 2 staranise, 5 cardamom pods (crushed) and 3 cloves. I brought the liquid to the boil, added the apples and simmered for about 15 minutes.

Orange caramelsauce

Print recipe

Serves:	4
Prep time:	5 minutes
Cook time:	10 minutes
Total time:	15 minutes
Meal type:	Condiment
Region:	Worldwide
Website:	Epicurious

Ingredients

3/4 cups sugar
1/4 cup water
1/2 cup fresh orange juice
1/2 teaspoon orange zest

Directions

Combine sugar and 1/4 cup water in heavy small saucepan. Stir over medium-low heat until sugar dissolves. Increase heat and boil without stirring until deep amber color, occasionally brushing down pan sides with wet pastry brush and swirling pan, about 8 minutes.

Carefully add orange juice and orange peel (mixture will bubble vigorously). Stir over low heat until smooth and any caramel bits dissolve. Cool completely. (Can be prepared 1 day ahead. Cover and let stand at room temperature.)

Read More http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Orange-Caramel-Sauce-106133#ixzz1dJGke6fw

Junglefrog Cooking » sweets

Pavlova with pomegranate and cranberry sauce

Pavlova with pomegranate and cranberry sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Note

Related Posts:

Arretje nof – the simplest chocolate cake

Arretje Nof

Ingredients

Directions

Note

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Mascarpone raspberry trifle

Mascarpone raspberry trifle

Ingredients

Directions

Note

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Slow cooking pears in red wine sauce

Related Posts:

Apple and caramel dumplings, I think

Orange caramelsauce

Ingredients

Directions

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