Tag Archives: dessert

Chocolate Fondant

Just in time for the weekend, ready to impress your guests or just your tummy! Because you deserve it, you made it through January and February! 🙂 How manic have these first two months been? With all that’s happening in the world and the jam-packed kick start to the year, we need a moment. This Chocolate Fondant recipe is quick and easy and oh-so-lusciously-delicious!

If you do whip them up, please do send or tag me in the pics and let me know what you think?

Ingredients:

  • 125g butter (have some extra for greasing)
  • 1 Tblsp cocoa powder (have some extra for dusting)
  • 125g good quality chocolate, roughly chopped
  • 60g caster sugar (Natura Sugars golden caster sugar is great!)
  • 3 eggs
  • 3 egg yolks
  • 100g flour, sifted

Method:

  • Preheat the oven to 180C. Prepare your ramekins (or ovenprood moulds if you want to pop them out when plating) by greasing them with the extra butter and lightly dust them with the additional cocoa powder.
  • Melt the butter and chocolate in a bain marie or create your own bain marie by placing them in a heatproof bowl over a pan of gently simmering water (make sure the base does not touch the simmering water).
  • Using an electric whisk, beat the sugar, eggs and egg yolks until they’re pale and fluffy.
  • Pour the melted butter/chocolate mixture over the egg mix and gently fold in the sifted flour and cocoa, using a metal spoon.
  • Place the ramekins/moulds on a baking tray. Fill the prepared ramekins with the batter and bake in the preheated oven for roughly 8 minutes.
  • Once removed from the oven, they are ready to devour! The centre should be soft with a silky chocolate sauce. Serve with a scoop of your favourite ice cream, whipped cream or creme fraiche and a dusting of cocoa powder. Yum!

Salted Caramel Brownies & Toasted Meringue

My obsession with salted caramel continues…these delicious gooey brownies topped with toasted meringue has the best salted caramel surprise and is just a magical flavour combination.

If you want to make them in advance, bake the brownies and keep them airtight sealed and also make the caramel and store it in a jar in the fridge, keeping both ready until you’re ready to serve them (should preferably be within three days). Just top and toast the meringue when you’re ready to serve them and they’ll be absolutely perfect.

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Churro’s

A fresh, hot churro dunked in a velvety chocolate sauce just sounds like heaven, right?

Churros have definitely become increasingly popular in South Africa, but to find the perfect one in Cape Town is somewhat rare. Instead of hunting for it, I opted for the easier route and whipped up a batch yesterday, using the recipe below.

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Swiss Meringue Buttercream

In Cape Town, we’re in the thick of winter but experiencing regular weather changes which as you all know means its flu and cold season. Snotty noses and high fevers have hit my home in full force with my daughters tag teaming over the past two weeks with terrible colds. That has resulted in lots of indoor home entertainment, which always leads to baking as more than anything else, we need freshly baked goods to keep our happy hormone levels at bay 🙂

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Mhalabia – Lebanese Dessert

During my recent trips to Abidjan, a friend had opened my eyes to the magic of Lebanese cuisine. For dessert I tried Mhalabia, a sweet and creamy almost panna cotta like textured middle-eastern milk dessert with the perfect complementary note of rose water, topped with honeyed pistachios. As a sweet treat, this was right up my alley and left me dreaming about it for days.

These daydreams left me with no choice but to try and recreate it, to satisfy my growing craving. To my pleasant surprise, it is incredibly quick and easy to make!

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Chocolate Bread Pudding

I’ve had this recipe in my drafts for such a long time, it’s finally time to shake off the dust and cobwebs and share this quick, easy and decadent recipe!

With winter snuggled in, this is the perfect quick and  indulgent dessert to whip up for comfort, nostalgia and eye-rolls-of-delight…*cue the music* Chocolate Bread Pudding. I literally took a traditional bread pudding recipe and replaced the raisins with chopped up Lindt couverture. The selfish reason for this substitute is simply because I can’t stand raisins and hey any excuse for chocolate right?!

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Banoffee Pie

Happy New Year! Wishing each and everyone a fabulous new year, may the year ahead navigate us all to be the best versions of ourselves!

During the holidays, I must say, I didn’t bake as much as I thought I would. However, at the very start of my vacation, I gave this banoffee pie a go and wow it’s delicious, decadent but I must warn you that it is quite rich and therefore a modest slice will completely hit the spot. Continue reading →

Chocolate and Strawberry Tart

I’ve really chosen the worst time to attempt making raspberry desserts. Well basically it’s impossible because it’s out of season. First it was the white chocolate and meant to be raspberry tarts and now it’s the milk chocolate and raspberry tart that was substituted with strawberries. I will definitely be trying this recipe again when raspberries are actually in season. It was such a quick and easy dessert to put together and I was particularly impressed with the pastry which is basically a shortbread pastry – divine!

If you into dark chocolate, I would definitely recommend using dark chocolate for a bitter chocolate tart, the strawberries provide the perfect balance 🙂

Have a lovely weekend all and happy baking! xxx

Ingredients:

– 1 cup flour

– 1/3 cup icing sugar

– Pinch salt

– 100g cold butter

1 egg yolk

 

For the filling:

– 1 cup thick cream

– 1/3 cup castor sugar

– 100g broken chocolate (dark or milk depending on your preference)

– 2 egg yolks

– 1 punnet of strawberries / raspberries

 

Method:

1. Process flour, icing sugar, salt, butter and the egg yolk. Roll out thinly to line a 20cm loose-bottom tart tin, prick and freeze.

2.Bake at 190 degrees celsius for 10 minutes or until set. Cool.

3. For the filling: Heat cream  with castor sugar and broken chocolate until the chocolate melts. Allow to cool slightly, then beat in the egg yolks.

4. Pour into pastry shell. Press in a punnet of strawberries / raspberries and bake at 150 degrees celsius for 30-40 minutes or until set.

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Bake baby bake!

5. Decorate with melted chocolate and refrigerate until ready to serve 🙂

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White Chocolate and Strawberry Tartlets

This post was meant to uploaded during Ramadaan, as I attempted it then – sorry! 🙂

When I stumbled upon this recipe, I was totally sold – white chocolate and strawberries, who can resist??? I made this for dessert the weekend before Eid when I invited my family over for iftaar. My sister in-law Aquilah (AKA Keely) got a teeny weeny obsessed with the custard filling, scooping left overs and inserting it into cream filled eclairs  and anything else she could get her hands on, actually just eating the left overs with her hand 🙂 My nephew Zaydaan absolutely loves white chocolate and his favourite fruit is strawberries, the combination warranted a “I love you Aunty Saadiyah”. The heart shaped white chocolate inserted into the tartlets were just his  ever-end. Oh how I love that little boy 🙂

This was actually meant to be White Chocolate and Raspberry Tartlets, but with raspberries being out of season, strawberries had to just do the trick.

This is perfect for any special occasion and you can have fun and go wild decorating them.

Onto the recipe….

Ingredients:

– 25g cornflour

– 3 medium egg yolks

– 400ml milk

– 1 vanilla pos, slit lengthways

– 100g white chocolate, melted, plus 60g extra white hot chocolate, melted, for lining the pastry cases

– 100ml double cleam

– punnet of strawberries or 300g raspberries

For the pastry:

– 175g plain flour, plus extra for dusting

– 90g salted butter, cubed

– 20g caster sugar

 

Method:

1. Preheat the oven to 180 degrees celsius. To make the pastry – in a bowl, rub the flour and butter together with your fingertips until it resembles fine breadcrumbs. Stir in the sugar, add 2-3 tablespoons of cold water and bring together to form a soft dough. Wrap in cling film and chill for one hour.

2. Meanwhile, make the crème patissière. In a large bowl, whisk together the cornflour and egg yolks. The mixture will be stiff at first but it will become easier to mix. Place the milk and the vanilla pod in a pan over a medium heat. When it reaches a simmering point, strain over the egg mixture, whisking all the time (discard the vanilla pod). Stir in 100g of the melted chocolate and whisk well. Return the custard to the pan and heat gently until thickened, whisking all the time. Set aside to cool, covering the surface with cling film to prevent a skin forming.

3. On a lightly floured surface, roll out the pastry to a 5mm thickness and use to line 6 × 10cm round ×2cm deep fluted tart tins, trimming any excess pastry. Line each with baking paper and beans and blind bake for 15 minutes. Remove the paper and beans and bake for a further 5 minutes until cooked and golden. Carefully remove the patsry cases from the tins and cool on a wire rack.

4. Once cool, brush the remaining melted chocolate into the tart cases in 2 coats, chilling between each coat.

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5. Whisk the cream to just stiff peaks and fold into the white chocolate custard.

6. Fill each tart case with the custard and top with strawberries/raspberries or anything else you’re in the mood for really 🙂

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This is a bad picture but I love the heart shadow :)

This is a bad picture but I love the heart shadow 🙂

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Cinnamon Roll Pull Apart Bread

What a weekend it’s been, I’ve definitely baked to my heart’s content and have made up for my creative baking lull…well I’d say. On Saturday I whipped up I chocoholics ultimate cookie…triple choc chip! Keeping in tune with the chocolate theme, I mixed it up a bit and made a salted caramel chocolate cake. On Sunday I tried to steer away from chocolate, not that you could ever overdo it 🙂 and I attempted a banoffee roulade, which turned out great until I tried to roll it up – I killed it…literally! Poked holes into it which lead to caramel oozing out, it wasn’t pretty but it still tasted good! The final item on my weekend baking to-do list was a cinnamon roll pull apart bread….oh my goodness, what a perfect little treat for those wintery evening sweet cravings. My family seems to think it tastes like Cinnabon 🙂 I’d take that as a stamp of approval, right?  Continue reading →

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