Margarita-Syrup Cake

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Going back over my older posts I had the realization that I never posted the actual recipe......

While you enjoy the view of the mess that is my kitchen when we're having a baking session.....I found the precursor of this recipe in this amazing cookbook called 'Cook in Boots' by Ravinder Bhogal which is just a pure treasure-trove...the trifle this weekend was from there as well....well the general idea and the amazing custard that goes into the trifle....but i'll save that for another day...
So here we go...

Margarita-Syrup Cake
190g Butter
225g Sugar
350g Yoghurt
3 tbsp Tequila
4 Eggs
Zest of a lime
150g Self-raising flour
75g Semolina (go for the kind that is not too fine but don't go for the kind that is made from durum wheat.....)
75g Polenta
11/2 tsp Baking powder
75g Ground almonds

125g Sugar
Juice and zest of a lime
Juice of half an orange
6 tbsp Tequila
4 tbsp Cointreau

Preheat your oven to 180 degrees and get out you 26cm springform tin, you'll want it lined with baking parchment but I wouldn't bother greasing it.

Cream the butter and the sugar together (if you're using an electric mixer that should probably take just under 5 minutes at a medium speed), mix in the yoghurt, tequila, egg yolks and the lime zest and give it another minute till it's all mixed in.
Add the dry ingredients and stir it until it's all well combined.
Whisk the egg whites in a separate bowl until you have those lovely peaks forming. I find if I add a pinch of salt this tends to be a lot quicker (not sure whether that's just superstition).
Anyhow....mix in about a third of the egg whites into the batter and make sure it's all well mixed in, then you fold in the rest of the egg whites. Apparently, if you mix in about a third of the egg whites with the batter the folding in is a lot easier (seems to do the job for me).
Once you have a lovely batter, pour it into the tin and bake it for something between 50 and 60 minutes.
Once you've taken the cake out of the oven and you are enjoying the most amazing smell in your kitchen you mix the sugar and the juice over a low heat until the sugar is fully dissolved. Take the syrup off the heat and add the tequila and the Cointreau and then you poke your lovely cake with a skewer....I know, it's a bit depressing to do that....but you'll get over it the second you pour the syrup over the cake and it all gets absorbed into the cake.
The syrup recipe is a bit more than you need but trust me, there won't be anything going to waste :)

Indoor Picknic

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No recipe this time, but lots of previews for recipes :)
It was my birthday a while ago but since I seem to spend more time away from St Andrews than here I never had a chance to have a party. Anyhow, since I'm obviously living in the wrong country temperature-wise I decided to have a 1950s themed picknic in my flat....
I was thinking that what I'll do over the next few weeks I'll add some of the recipes of the cakes I made but will give you a taster of what's to come....

We had some Margarita-Syrup Cake....then we had Red Velvet Cupcakes with Vanilla Frosting (so the white ones at the front)....Vanilla and Rosewater Cupcakes with a Blueberry-Cream-Cheese Frosting (the pink ones)

And then we had some amazingly amazing Trifle (at the very back). I think I was most amazed by the Trifle because I realized I had never made custard from scratch (and let me just say I'm a convert) why do people use custard powder???? It takes just as long as making it from scratch and the difference in flavour is incredible.

Anyhow...recipes will follow when I get around to it....

Northpoint Hot Chocolate

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Up here in St Andrews we've got this cafe called Northpoint and they serve the most amazing griddle melts and do a decent American breakfast...but the best thing about them is their hot chocolate. They top it with marshmallows and cream (ok, so far not that exciting...) and then you can have maltesers on top or chocolate buttons or mini-oreos....when you feel down on one of those glum days in November....or actually at any point if we're being honest this is a real pick-me-up.
The last time I was down in London I went to Hope and Greenwod for the first time. It's this lovely old-fashioned confectioner's and they have the most amazing sweets! So when I saw their chocolate buttons I obviously had to buy some to make my own hot chocolate creation :)

So when another cold, windy, and generally horrendous day came along a couple of weeks ago they finally got their chance....pure joy in a cup :)

Foodness....

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It's been ages - at the moment I keep going back and forth between St Andrews and London for a collaboration. So no time to cook - lots of time to eat out though.
Since I haven't made anything other than pasta in a while I thought I'd share some photos I took on my last trip.

After having gone to Primrose Bakery I feel like I should definitely make some cupcakes some time soon. I mean they looked lovely

but were a bit on the dry side. I've got this addiction thing going on with Magnolia Bakery cupcakes, especially the Red Velvet ones, and I got my mum the cookbook two years ago. It has a recipe for a Red Velvet cake in it but it's sooo much nicer as cupcakes.
I'll make some this weekend and post the photos.

I had this amazing spring vegetable soup at Le Pain Quotidien after we went to the V&A for a Friday Night thing....there was a DJ in PJ's....pure amazingness!!!!

And then I couldn't resist getting this chocolate mousse. It was a lot more like chocolate truffles that an actual mousse, I guess that's what made it so amazing

Anyhow, I hope I'll get back to properly cooking at some point soon - otherwise I'll just have to keep taking photos of food for a while. I'm going on a roadtrip in Georgia and Florida next month, I'm sure I'll find some amazing food there.

Any suggestions?

Vegan Brownies

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It's been a while since my last post. I have been skiing and then I spend a week in Warsaw pretending to know things about programming where I had some amazing cheesecake
But now it's Lent and I'm doing my usual 'let's go vegan for 40 days' spiel. I admire everyone who can stick to it but I normally don't have the willpower to keep going. 40 days is about as long as I can keep going until I feel like I'm going to die on the spot if I can't have some cheesecake or even something as simple as salt and vinegar crisps (why do they have to add milk powder to everything on this planet?)
But enough feeling sorry for myself. I made some vegan brownies when I came across two bars of Lindt chocolate in my cupboard. The recipe is based on Nigella Lawson's brownies (the best brownies EVER), feel free to replace the egg replacement with your choice of mashed up banana or oil or whatever you tend to use but I keep thinking that there is a reason the people who designed egg-replacement are being paid for it - it just works really well. Then again, that's just a personal preference.

Vegan Brownies
200g margarine
200g nice dark chocolate
egg replacement for 4 eggs
1/2 tbsp vanilla extract
250g caster sugar
125g plain flour
a pinch of salt
150 or so g chopped walnuts (I sometimes use some ground almonds to replace some of the walnuts....don't replace all the chopped nuts with ground ones though....been there done that....not a good idea....)

I used a 26cm springform tin because my brownie tin has gone missing.....if you read this and have my brownie tin can you let me know? :)
Preheat the oven to 180 degrees, line and slightly oil your tin and then melt the marg an the chocolate together, add the vanilla extract, the sugar and the salt. Mix the dry ingredients and then mix everything together. If you're using egg replacement make sure you don't forget the water it tells you to add. Once it's all mixed together, add the nuts and potentially some oil if it looks a bit too dry.
Pour everything into the tin and put it into the oven for about 18-20 minutes (adjust it so the brownies are as goooey as you want them (don't forget they keep cooking even after you've removed them from the oven...and there's no eggs you need to be worried about....)
Hmmm.....I think I'm going to eat some more brownies now.

White Russian Flavoured Cheesecake and it's evolution to a Turkish Coffee Cheesecake....

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After the margarita cheesecake session Anna and I were thinking of all the amazing different cocktail inspired cheesecakes we could make....so I got a bit carried away....lots of baking and 4 cheesecakes later I feel like I'm nearing obesity, but the cheesecakes make me very happy.
Anyhow, back to the cheesecake :) we thought that the amazingness of White Russians would go very well with the whole idea of a baked cheesecake, so last weekend I finally got around to giving the idea a go....same recipe as the Margarita Cheesecake but instead of the lime juice and the Cointreau I added 4 shots of Kahlua and instead of the cornflour I used 2 tbsp of Dr. Oetker Chocolate Pudding powder (the best stuff in the world...like ever!!! if you have friends living/going to Germany or Austria get them to buy you some!) and 2 tbsp of normal custard powder.

It worked well...and turned out ok...especially on the second day but it's not quite there yet....it's missing the amazingness of a White Russian (so there will be a second round of that one). I think adding some whipped cream and some instant coffee might do the job...

Having attempted the White Russian-ness I was stuck trying to make a cake for our departmental fundraising coffee morning...the whole coffee-flavour thing hadn't been too bad but I wanted a more indulgent cake than the decidedly puritan product the day before - one late-night baking session later I had an 18cm tin of turkish coffee amazingness in front of me....

Turkish Coffee Cheesecake
I used 1/2 of the margarita cheesecake recipe which left me with lots of leftover filling and some leftover pastry.
Put the filling into ramekins and make mini-cheesecakes for desert the next day.
Instead of sticking the dough into the fridge by itself i put it into a loose-bottomed tin and put the whole tin into the fridge. Thinking about it, one of those aluminium pie dishes for thanksgiving would probably be the best size - they're deeper than my tin so they would probably hold the whole filling without having to bother with the mini-cheesecakes.
Once the pastry was in the fridge I was ready for the exciting stuff.

Make a ganache with:

100g of really good chocolate
1/2 cup of double cream&
1 tbsp of butter (heated up together)
some booze....I put rum in
some syrup if you fancy

Melt the chocolate by pouring the cream and butter mix over it , leave it for about 5 minutes, and then stir it until the chocolate bits are dissolved...then you add the rum if you're putting any in....I only had 80% chocolate which I was worried would be a bit too intense for the cake so I added some golden syrup to make things a bit sweeter.

Let the chocolate mixture cool down for a bit (I put it into the freezer for a few minutes) and then spread about 3/4 of the mixture onto the pastry (this means you have lots of leftover chocolate-amazingness which you obviously have to eat....or make some truffles if you have the energy...I didn't....)
Ok...back to the cheesecake-ness as I said - half the margarita recipe with some extra butter....I used a tbsp more butter than I would have otherwise and then you add

2 shots of of Kahlua into which you mix
2 tsp coffee granules (tiny bit of hot water made them dissolve in the booze)
1tsp cinnamon (though I'm tempted to say that 2 might work even better)

If you're not freaked out by raw eggs like I am try the batter to figure out whether it needs some more sugar. I felt it was fine without any added sugar.
And then the mixture goes on top of the chocolate in the tin (be generous but keep in mind that the thing is gonna rise - so leave some space at the top unless you like cleaning your oven)
In my oven it took about 30 minutes but just look at it and keep testing with a skewer.

Baked Margarita Cheesecake

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One of my favourite kinds of cake growing up used to be baked cheesecake...unlike the tiny versions I've seen in the States and the UK, proper German cheesecake tends to be made in a 26 or 28 cm springform tin (which means you can either invite lots of people for coffee, feed you crazy big family or eat cake for the rest of the week....I always used to love the fact that once my mum gave up on trying to force me and my sister to eat healthy food....believe me...wholegrain shortcrust pastry is one of my worst nightmares...cheesecake on Sundays normally turned into a piece of cheesecake at afternoon tea for the rest of the week....good times...) anyhow...so I hadn't made cheesecake in a while but then my friend Anna suggested making some the other day (it turned into a cheesecake-'Jane Austen Book Club'- evening....)

So we were more or less innocently making a plain cheesecake but I didn't have any lemons around.....but then we found some limes.....you can probably guess where this is going...yes...we might have ended up making margarita cheesecake.....my grandma.....who the original recipe is from would probably disown me if she found out....but OMG....I don't think I've had such an amazing idea in a while....anyhow....here we go:

Baked Margarita Cheesecake

Preheat the oven to 160-180 degrees (my oven is on the hotter side of the spectrum...so whatever you normally use to kinda slowly bake a bigger cake...160 in my case but you know your oven, I don't)

Make some shortcrust pastry using

-250g flour

-125g butter

-65g sugar

-1 egg

-potentially some cold water

rub the butter, sugar and flour together, add the egg (and if you need to the water), wrap it in clingfilm and stick it into the fridge while you make the filling.

Filling

I like my filling quite thick so I tend to use more than what my grandma told me to....so the following quantities are guidelines...use more or less depending on how you like your cheesecake...

-50-75g butter

-125-150g sugar (depends on how sweet you are)

cream the butter and the sugar for like forever....then add

-4-5 egg yolks

and keep beating for another two minutes or so...then we get to the fun part....add

-juice and zest of 1 lime

-some cointreau....we used probably 2 tablespoons....

-some tequila....didn't have any cheap tequila left...but I feel this will exponentially improve the recipe

then add

-2-4 tbsp cornflour or custard powder

-750-1000g quark (if you can't find any use 0% greek yoghurt....it's a bit too moist so either use more, using some more cornflour, or stain it in a colander lined with muslin cloth....) and if you fancy...

- 200g sour cream or whipping cream whipped (whatever the little pots are size-wise....)

once you've combined all the ingredients for the filling take the dough out of the fridge, roll it out and put it into a slightly oiled 26cm springform tin, put the filling in and put it into the preheated oven for 70-90 minutes.

Once it's done, leave it to cool for at least half an hour....otherwise the filling will ooze out slightly....it's gonna taste just as nice though....