A New Years Trifle of Gingerbread & Nectarine

Now don’t fall off you’re perch’s because I’m posting twice in one week.  This is not a New Years resolution either so no one get too excited please. The next post could be a month away. I have just had more time over Christmas with the shop closed till the 7th but I am already writing my lists for shopping, preparing and baking to be done Monday. This was our New Years Eve dessert which followed Braised beef cheek and ribs, Mexican spiced. Accompanied with a piquant coleslaw,  bean & corn salad and homemade tacos. It was a gloriously sunny evening, we ate outside and lit the outdoor fire as the sunset so we could spend the rest of the evening outdoors. I have to confess, we didn’t see the New Year, I’m not much good with late nights, even on special occasions. Does it really matter if one doesn’t stay up till after midnight?

The recipe will made 6 individual servings or one medium sized trifle bowl. You can prepare all the components of the trifle or buy some of them depending how you feel and how much time you have. I have offered recipes for each part if you are feeling adventurous. I thought of buying a gingerbread loaf when contemplating the recipe, cursing that I hadn’t frozen some from my shop before we closed for Christmas, but when I looked at what the supermarket had to offer I couldn’t bring myself to buy it.

I’m also submitting this for our monthly Sweet New Zealand blogging event which is hosted this month by Alessandra If you pop over you will find more delectable sweet treats by fellow bloggers.

Simple Gingerbread Sponge

Preheat oven 160C, Line approx 18cm cake tin or tray with greaseproof.

100g butter, melted, 100g golden syrup, 1 free range egg, 100g self raising flour, handful crystalized ginger, roughly chopped. Save a few pieces of ginger for slicing and decorating the trifles.

In a medium sized bowl, beat together the butter. Add the egg and beat mixture again. Add the chopped ginger and flour and stir until combined.

Pour mixture into lined cake tin and bake to 25-30 minutes. Remove from oven and allow to cool before using in the trifle. Crumble sponge roughly once cool.

Creme Anglaise

200ml cream or milk, 2 medium free range eggs, 1 heaped Tbsp castor sugar, seeds of 1 vanilla pod

Whisk eggs and sugar together in a large bowl. In a saucepan heat cream or milk and vanilla bean seeds over a medium heat to a simmer. Pour hot milk/cream over the egg mix and whisk while pouring to prevent eggs scrambling (easier if you get an extra hand to help you). Turn heat down to low and pour the mixture back into the saucepan, cook over the low heat whisking all the time until sauce thickens. It’s important to keep whisking to prevent sauce sticking to bottom of pan. Once thickened pour into a clean bowl and cover with lid or plastic wrap to cool.

Poached Nectarines

6 nectarines (or you could use peaches), 1 vanilla pod (I use an empty pod that has already had its seeds used above)

Half and de-stone the nectarines. Place them in a pan and cover with water. Add the vanilla pod and place over a medium heat and bring to a simmer. I don’t add sugar to the water as the tart fruit contrast well with the other sweeter ingredients in the trifle. Simmer gently for 10 minutes. Turn off heat and allow fruit to cool in water. If fruit is quite ripe then you may only need to simmer for 5 minutes or use the fruit fresh. Once cool slice nectarines into wedges, approx 12 wedges per nectarine.

Whipped Cream

150ml whipping cream whipped to soft peak. Or you can use more cream if you prefer a thicker layer of cream!

Assembly

Layer nectarines, sponge, creme Anglais then cream. A few slices of crystalized ginger for decoration.

Simple Strawberry Tarte Tatin with Vanilla Syrup

Just a quick post so I can sneak this into our monthly New Zealand blogging event, Sweet NZ. It’s not a new one but we are in the height of our strawberry season here so ‘oldies are goodies’ right if they are using seasonal produce, are easy to make and and look fab! Mairi over at Toast is hosting this months event, pop across and see what else our KIwiw family of bloggers are cooking this month. I’m heading back to my crazy pre Christmas kitchen baking up batches of Christmas biscotti, Pacific Christmas cakes (millions on order), Panforte for the shop, not to mention mince pies once December hits next week. I’ll keep you posted on Facebook!

 

Ingredients – makes 6

1 large punnet/chip strawberries or 18-24 small/medium strawberries (enough to fit 3 to 4 in each muffin tin base)

2 Tbsp Equagold Vanilla Syrup

100g ready bought puff pastry or 1 sheet

Method

Preheat oven to 180C, fan bake

Wash & hull the strawberries and place in a bowl with the vanilla syrup

Toss the strawberries through the vanilla syrup.

Using large muffin tin (6 per tin normally) place 3 to 4 strawberries in the base of each tin

Roll out the puff pastry to 1/2 ich if not using a ready rolled sheet

Using a large cookie cutter, slightly larger than the top of your muffin tins so there is enough pastry to tuck down the sides, cut out 6 pastry circles and place each one on top of the strawberries

Tuck the pastry down the sides with a butter knife around the strawberries to make a little shell that will hold the strawberries once turned out.

Bake in the oven on the top shelf for 20-25 minutes, until golden brown.

Remove from the oven and cool for 5 minutes.

To turn the tarts out, use a rubber spatular and slide it under the pastry and strawberries and turn the whole tart over.

I tried turning the whole tin over but that didn’t work so it is best to remove them one by one.

Serve warm as they are or with whipped cream

Chocolate Mocha Brownies & Sweet NZ

I have had the Donna Hay 10th Birthday App on my IPad for ages tempting me with the chocolate recipes, particularly these brownies. The problem is when I open this App the photos are so incredible and life like that I end up spending hours just looking through them, analyzing them and dreaming about replicating them one day. The actual cooking gets forgotten as the time whips by but I finally got round to making them this weekend. I only had mocha chocolate in the house left over from a cooking workshop so I decided to make it with that but you can use any food quality dark chocolate.

Check out the amount of chocolate in these babies, they have to be a chocoholics dream!

The final product was everything Donna Hay promises in her photographs, the only disappointment was my photos didn’t look like hers…ah well, more practice behind the camera and more eating of brownies ;0)

This is also my submission for Sweet NZ which is being hosted by Emma over at My Darling Lemon Thyme

Ingredients
300g dark chocolate 70% or mocha chocolate is what I used, chopped
280g butter
6 eggs
2 cups brown sugar
1 cup plain flour

Method
Preheat oven to 180C and line a 20cm x 30cm cake tin with baking paper.
Melt butter and half the chocolate in a pan over a low heat.
In a large bowl add the eggs, sugar, flour and rest of the chopped chocolate and briefly whisk together.
Pour the melted butter and chocolate into the bowl with the flour mixture and whisk again to combine.
Pour into prepared cake tin and bake for 30 minutes.
Remove from the oven and allow to cool slightly. If served slightly warm the chocolate bits will ooze out which is rather delicious but they are pretty dam good cold too.

Good Old Fashioned Ginger Cake & Sweet NZ

There is nothing better than a slice of good old fashioned ginger cake and how remiss of me to neglect it for the past ten years. A Jamaican Ginger Cake is what I had in mind with it’s heavy, sticky texture and dark molasses flavour. It’s an iconic British tea time cake but I have no idea where it got its name from. Did the recipe derive from Jamaica, was it the ginger that came from Jamaica or did a Jamaican in the UK invented the recipe. Or was it just an exotic name given to it by McVities (who produce the cake) and has no story behind it at all? If you do know drop me a line, I couldn’t find anything on the web.

Most recipe call for golden syrup but I prefer to use honey these days particularly since I have a constant supply from a bee keeper friend. If honey is too expensive in your neck of the woods you can substitute if back for golden syrup.

This is also my submission for Sweet New Zealand which is being hosted by the lovely Shirleen over at Sugar & Spice & all Things Nice. Pop over to her blog and see what other treats our fellow Kiwi bloggers are submitting this month.

Ingredients
250 g self-raising flour
3 tsp ground ginger
200 g honey or golden syrup
125 g butter
100g preserved stem ginger, chopped
100 g dark muscovado sugar
2 tbsp molasses or treacle
2 large eggs
200 ml milk

Method
Preheat the oven to 180C.
Grease and line a 22cm cake tin with baking paper.
Melt the honey, sugar molasses, stem ginger and butter in a pan over a low heat.
Sift the flour and ground ginger into a separate bowl.
In another bowl whisk together the eggs and the milk.
Once the sugar mixture has melted pour it into the bowl with the flour and stir together to make a smooth paste.
Add the eggs to the flour mixture and beat together, the mixture will be quite runny.
Pour mixture into prepared cake tin.
Bake for 45-50 minutes or until an inserted knife comes out clean.
Allow to cool in cake tin before removing it.
Ginger cake is always better if you can leave it a day or two before eating it, the cake becomes a lot more sticky!

Vanilla Bean & Orange Blossom Cake

Hosting Sweet New Zealand this month I am the one who is meant to be organised and have my entry up early. As more entries come in this week I realise I only have one day left to post my own entry so I thought I better get to it and do some baking at the weekend. With a big pot of yoghurt that needed to be used in the fridge and a stash of vanilla beans recently brought back from our trip to Rarotonga I wanted to use these two ingredients. I found this really easy recipe for a yoghurt cake at BBC Good Food with an orange blossom syrup that is poured over the cake while it is warm. The syrup and the ground almonds make for a really moist cake which kept fresh for several days, likely to keep longer it you don’t have piggies in your house like us. As you can see I even liked their food styling!

So this is my entry for Sweet New Zealand, if you haven’t yet submitted I’ll take your entries up till Thursday 29th and will offer a full round up of all the fabulous entries I have received Friday 30th September, so make sure you pop by to see our Kiwi gallery of goodies. Those who are keen to host the event next month, please contact <ahref="Alessandra

Ingredients
200g SR Flour
100g ground almonds
150g castor sugar
250ml plain yoghurt
1tsp baking soda
150ml canola oil
3 small free range eggs
2 vanilla beans, seeds removed
Syrup Ingredients
1 cup sugar
1 cup water
1 tbsp orange blossom water

Method
Preheat oven to 180C and grease and flour a 22-24cm cake tin.
Place all the dry ingredients into a large bowl.
In another bowl whisk all the wet ingredients & vanilla bean seeds together.
Add the wet ingredients to the dry and mix together.
Spoon ingredients into the cake tin and bake for 35 minutes or until an inserted knife come out clean.
While the cake is baking make the syrup.
Place the sugar, water and vanilla pods into a small pan over a medium heat.
Simmer until the sugar has dissolved then tun the heat up so the liquid is on a gentle boil.
Once the liquid has reduced by a 1/3 turn the heat off and allow it to cool for a minute before adding the orange blossom water.
Remove the cake from the oven once cooked and let it sit for 5 minutes then pour the syrup over the cake.
I sprinkled a few pistachios over the top for visual look but this is optional as the cake is yum on its own.