make life sweeter!

Before I went to Croatia I promised you the recipe of this cake. Sorry it took so long to finally post about it. Anyways...I kept on seeing this ricotta honey cake in this fun little baking book called Bake It. It looked so delicious that I had to try it out. Also a great way to use up the kg of ricotta that was left over from my birthday party. I was planning to make cheese filled kadaif but the kadaif dough I bought was off even though the use by date was ok. I guess it's wasn't properly stored at the store. Luckily the ricotta's use by date was somewhere in September so I wasn't pressed to use it immediately.
So I finally make this cake and I don't like it :( It's probably just me being difficult so I'm going to give you the recipe regardless.
It was both the taste and the texture I didn't like. I guess the texture had a lot to do with ricotta being the main ingredient. It was the first time I baked with ricotta, even had ricotta. I think the only ricotta I've eaten was inside tortellini. And maybe the fact that I made the recipe gluten-free by using cornflour instead of regular flour had a little bit to do with it too....I don't know.
The honey I used was too heavy, I'm not much of a honey connaisseur so when I read thyme honey in the supermarket it sounded delicious. I did have a little taste and thought it was good but quite heavy but thought it would be ok in the cake...it was not :( The cake was totally edible but just not my cup of tea. Can't win them all ;)
ps I made half the recipe but I thought the nectarines we're a bit too big for the slices of cake. The recipe below is the original size.

Honey ricotta cake with sauteed nectarines (adapted from the Dutch version of Bake It by Murdoch Books)

makes a 18 cm (7 in) cake

1 kg (2 lb 7 oz) ricotta
175 g (6 oz) mild honey
seeds of 1 vanilla bean
60 ml (¼ cup) lemon juice
2 lemons, finely zested
4 eggs, lightly beaten
35 g (1 ¼ oz) flour ( I used cornflour)
2-3 nectarines, in 8 slices each
1 tbs butter

Preheat the oven to 180°C (350°F). Grease a 18 cm (7 in) springform and dust with flour.
Puree the ricotta in a food processor. Add the honey, vanilla bean seeds, lemon juice and zest, and eggs. Mix until well blended. Add the flourand pulse until just blended.
Spoon the mixture into the prepared springform and bake for 1 hour or until lightly golden brown and somewhat soft in the middle. Turn off the oven, open the oven a tiny bit and allow the cake to cool in the oven. Chill the cake in the fridge before taking it out of the springform.
Sautee the nectarines in the butter for 1-2 minutes.
Serve at room temperature with the nectarines.

I came across a recipe of a walnut and honey filled pie in an old issue of Elle Eten (the Dutch food version of Elle magazine) the other day. It looked so good that I had to try it. I changed the walnuts to cashew nuts because I had plenty of unsalted cashewnuts lying around begging for me to use them. Besides the honey I added some vanilla to the filling too. Instead of the dough in the original recipe I used the apple pie dough my mum uses. Turned out that the flower I used to decorate not only looked cute, it was helpful too because I could cut between the petals and create 6 really equal slices :)



Even though it was a delicious pie, I was disappointed about the lack of cashew nut taste. The taste of the honey and crust overwhelmed it. I guess I never realised that cashew nuts have such a delicate taste. Next time I'll make it with either walnuts or hazelnuts.
I used a springform pan to make the pie because I don't have a pie pan/dish. I thought it was very useful because that way I could cut out the bottom by placing the greased bottom of the spring onto the rolled out dough and just cut around it with a sharp knife. If you carefully turn it around (and if you're lucky) it will stick to the bottom so you just attach the top part of the springform with the bottom part of the dough already in place. (it does take a little practice to place to close the thing in an orderly fashion I should add!) To make the disk that went on top I opened the upper part of the springform and used that to cut a round out of the other part of the rolled out dough. This made it a little bigger than the first round so that it would easily cover the filling and still have enough dough to reach the sides of the springform.



Cashew nut, honey & vanilla pie (adapted from Elle Eten)

serves 6

crust:
250 g (8 ¾ oz) flour
150 g (5 ¼ oz) butter, cold and cut into cubes
125 g (4 ½ oz) caster sugar
grated rind of 1 lemon
1 egg

filling:
25 g (1 oz) butter
3 TBS honey
½ ts vanilla
100 g (3 ½ oz) cashew nuts, chopped

egg wash:
1 egg
1 TBS water
pinch of salt

Rub the flour and butter between your fingertips until it resembles breadcrumbs. Add the sugar and lemon rind and stir it in. Stir in the egg. Knead briefly to combine and to let it come together. Form into two disks and chill for 30 minutes.
Preheat the oven to 180°C (350°F). Grease a 15-18 cm (6-7 in) springform or pie pan.
Roll out each disk between 2 sheets of baking paper to a thickness of about 4 mm (1/6 in). Cut out a round that will fit the bottom of the pan (for a tip, see the text above). Cut out a slightly larger round to cover the filling. Cut out a flower and a small round with a cookie cutter.
Place round no. 1 into the springform. Spread the filling on top of it, leaving a 1½ cm (½ in) border at the sides. Place round no. 2 on top. Press the borders onto each other. Put the flower in the middle and the small round in the middle of the flower. Brush with egg wash. Bake about 40 minutes or until golden brown.

Ginger…not everybody’s favourite but I for one love it! No matter in what form or shape. So when this months SHF hosted by Ruth of Once upon a feast had ginger as its theme I was really excited. One of the first things that crossed my mind was making ginger granita. But on its own that wouldn’t be enough, I needed more….chocolate and ginger go well together…so I made my liquid truffle dessert (once again) to accompany the granita. And to add a crunch to this dessert I baked simple butter cookies to which I added powdered ginger and stem ginger. The crunchy butter cookies were tasty in their simplicity, and great for dipping in the truffle dessert.
For the granita I used fresh ginger to flavour and a combination of honey and sugar syrup to sweeten it. The ginger and honey go together remarkably well. I tried to distinguish the two flavours while tasting but they seem to blend perfectly, complementing one and other.

serves 6



adapted from The Ultimate Cookie Book by Catherine Atkinson

45 g (1.6 oz) butter
25 g (0.9 oz) golden sugar
60 g (2.1 oz) flour
¾ ts ground ginger
2 tbs stem ginger, chopped

Cream the butter and sugar together. Mix the flour and the ground ginger. Add the flour /ginger mix to the butter and sugar. Using your hands combine until you get a smooth dough. Roll into a sausage shape with a 3 ¼ cm (1 ¼ in) diameter. Wrap in plastic wrap and chill for 30-45 minutes.
Preheat the oven to 160ºC (325ºF). Unwrap the dough and cut into 18 slices of about 7 mm (¼ in) thick. Place on a non-stick baking sheet. Bake for 15 minutes or until just beginning to turn brown. Cool on a wire rack.



650 ml (2 ¾ cup) water
160 g (¾ cup / 5 ⅔ oz) sugar
2 ½ tbs fresh ginger, minced
2 ½ tbs lemon juice
120 ml (½ cup) honey

Heat the water and sugar on low heat until the sugar has dissolved. Increase the heat and allow to boil for 5 minutes. Remove from heat and add the ginger. Allow to steep for 15 minutes. Add the lemon juice.
Pour the honey in a bowl. Pour the sugar syrup with ginger through a fine sieve into the bowl with honey. Stir until combined. Allow to cool down to room temperature. Put in the fridge until cold.
Pour the fluid into a large (metal) tin and put it in the freezer. Stir every 20 minutes with a fork during about 2 hours. Make sure to scrape the sides. Don’t over-stir because the end result should look like granita, not sorbet.
Serve in 6 miniature ramekins of about 50 ml (1 ⅔ fl oz).



150 g (5 ⅓ oz) bittersweet chocolate (70% cocoa), chopped
150 ml (5 fl oz) whipping cream
1 tbs liqueur, brandy or whiskey
6 pieces of crystallized ginger

Put the chocolate in a bowl. Bring the cream to a boil. Add the hot cream to the chocolate. Allow to stand for a few minutes. Stir to combine. Add the liqueur, brandy or whiskey and stir once more to combine. Pour into 6 miniature ramekins of about 50 ml (1 ⅔ fl oz). Allow to set for about 2 hours.
Decorate with a piece of crystallized ginger.

1 serving – 395 kcal
100 g ginger butter cookies – 450 kcal
100 g ginger honey granita – 110 kcal
100 g liquid truffle dessert – 420 kcal

carbohydrate 34 g – protein 2 g – fat 18 g (saturated fat 11 g) – fibre 0 g

Less than one week till my ‘no-sugar, no-wheat’ friend is coming. Tried yet another recipe. Found the recipe for these honey pecan cookies here (it's actually a recipe from this book) The cookies are easy to prepare and taste very good! The only downside (I think) is the texture; it’s more cake-like than cookie-like. Maybe I’ll bake them a little longer next time to give them more of a crunch on the outside. Not sure how crunchy you can actually bake cookies with honey. Honey probably doesn’t allow it to bake really crispy.
The only thing I changed in the recipe is replace the flour for spelt flour and use a little more of it.



makes about 30

150 g (5 ¼ oz / 1 generous cup) wholemeal spelt flour
½ ts baking soda
¼ ts salt
90 g (3 ¼ oz / 1 cup) pecan nuts, chopped
75 g butter (2 ⅔ oz / ⅓ cup) butter, melted
130 g honey (4 ½ oz / ¼ cup + 2 tbs)
1 egg

Preheat the oven to 180ºC (355ºC). Sift the flour, baking soda and salt in a mixing bowl. Add nuts and mix.
Mix the butter, honey and egg. Add to the flour mixture.
Drop teaspoons onto an un-greased baking sheet. Bake for 10-15 minutes.

1 cookie – 70 kcal
100 g – 430 kcal

carbohydrate 41 g – protein 7 g – fat 26 g (saturated fat 9 g) – fibre 5 g

In a few weeks two friends will be staying with us for a week. Obviously I will be doing some baking for them. The only problem is that one of my friends has quite a few products that she is sensitive to and therefore doesn’t eat. Examples are: wheat, oat, yeast, almonds, cashew nuts, peanuts, pine nuts, poppy seeds, sunflower seeds, dairy from cows (with the exception of butter) and chocolate....oh and she prefers not to eat sugar...I think you’ll agree that it’s quite a challenge to bake yummy stuff with such restrictions!

Before she comes I want to do some test-baking so I can present something tasty when she is here. The first experiment went ok. My inspiration was an almond cookie recipe I have made many times before. I choose this recipe because it doesn’t contain wheat. It does however contain sugar, cream and almonds. In place of the sugar I put honey, the cream I skipped and substituted walnuts for the almonds. Obviously the honey made the batter more liquid so I skipped the Amaretto as well.

The taste was pretty good, not very sweet and slightly bitter because of the walnut skins. Next time I’ll use pecans to prevent the bitterness, I’m not a big fan of bitter.



Makes about 15

100 g (3 ½ oz) walnuts, ground
20 g (¾ oz) corn flour
60 g (2 oz) honey
1 egg
25 g (1 oz) butter, molten
15 mini paper cups (2 ½ cm (1 inch) bottom)

Preheat the oven to 175ºC (350ºF). Mix the walnuts and the corn flour. Mix the honey, egg and butter. Mix everything together. Put the mini paper cups on a baking sheet and fill them using a spoon.
Bake for about 15-20 minutes.

1 cookie – 80 kcal
100 g – 470 kcal

carbohydrate 29 g – protein 8 g – fat 37 g (saturated fat 7 g) – fibre 3 g