The hard-to-mess-up apple cake

I was heartbroken.  I shouldn't have made this cake.  My baby sourdough was quietly proofing in the bowl and I got a bit bored. My friend was visiting in a few hours so I thought I might as well bake something else whilst I wait for my bread and then just pop my baby in the oven when it would.be.perfect.  It was my 4th try with my sourdough, I was determined to make.it.perfect.

Raspberry and Star Anise Friands

The recipe said 10 egg whites. Ten egg whites - what was I supposed to do with the remaining 10 yolks? Make a high cholesterol omelet?  Three jars of lemon curd? A sh*tload of mayo? I was already making a dessert so I can't save the yolks for another dessert and just the idea of these 10 egg yolks sitting in my fridge waiting to be used because they could go bad any day stressed me out too much.  I couldn't deal with 10 yolks, I've never had to deal with that many yolks.

BA's Best Banana Bread

This is a banana bread I made awhile back.  We have a fruit bowl and work and at the end of the week there are always a couple of sad brown bananas, abandoned and left for the bin.  One Friday I had decided to rescue them and bring them back to life in the form of a delicious banana bread.

Chocolate Arancini, Raspberry Coulis, Chantilly Cream

Chocolate's always a crowd-pleaser.  It's evocative of childhood, of innocent indulgence and simple pleasures.  It's funny when you think about how much consolation a bar of chocolate brings to a child.  My father used to give me chocolate whenever I was sad and I remember vividly that at that precise moment, when the chocolate was handed to me, nothing else mattered.  My watery eyes would dry and I would just be happy.  It was all so uncomplicated.  And this feeling can be carried onto adulthood and maybe that's why chocolate's always so popular as a dessert option in restaurants.  There always needs to be a silly calorific chocolate pudding on the menu -- be it a chocolate fudge cake, a soft-centered fondant or a dark chocolate pie.

White Chocolate and Cardamom Mousse Cake

Okay I kind of cheated a little.  I needed to test out a recipe, just the mousse, and I was too lazy, so the sponge is store-bought *gasp*

I am in search of a new hobby.  I'm thinking something artsy, like oil painting or pottery.  School's been stressful and I come home with the life drained out of me.  I am physically and emotionally parched.  I'm tired, I'm lost, I'm sad, and time's ticking away and I desperately need a new therapeutic activity to restore some joy (cooking's long gone -- this was just so I could test a recipe for my exam dish at school).

Vegetables in Desserts

Before you grimace in disgust, think - you've got carrot cake, you've got courgette cake, you've got beet cake (at least these are all quite common to me).  Now open up more doors, there are no boundaries.  Why should some ingredients remain in savory dishes?  Why must we be so close-minded?  After a thorough brainstorm and online research, I present to you a couple of ingredients that feature themselves in a perhaps rather odd context.  These recipes are not tested, I merely chose them for you as inspiration and if you would like to try them out, be my guest, but if they turn out to be disastrous, I am not responsible for your waste of time and ingredients. 

Tomatoes
There is no controversy, we all know that it is actually a fruit and it's time to just treat it as what it is.  My Chinese mother used to make this sweet snack for me --- she chopped up those big beef tomatoes and tossed them with sugar and it was the most refreshing dessert for a hot summer day.  See, you can kind of see how it'd work right?  It's naturally sweet and so obviously there's a place for it in desserts.

Tomato Tarte Tatin from In Sweet Treatment
Tomato, Olive oil and Cinnamon cake from Love Food Eat

Blueberry Hazelnut Bars

Ok so you know in my last post I talked about graduation and leaving university and all those excuses for not updating for the past month - well I'm going to have to talk about that again because I made these for the last meal I had people over for.  It was a rainbow themed potluck where I assigned everyone a color and so there were green salads, sauteed carrots, tomato pasta etc etc.  It was awhile ago so I actually don't remember everything i made, but I remember these and they were soo good.  I know it seems like I say this about everything I cook, and it's obnoxious, but I honestly only say it when it's exceptional (ok I see why my dad thinks I'm arrogant). The original recipe was from BBC GoodFood, and it was a raspberry coconut almond thing, but I like blueberries and hazelnuts.  This is making me miss Scotland because the berries are just not as good here in Italy in the summer *sigh*. 

The Most Glorious Plum Cake

I used to detest the sound of my alarm - you know, the standard iPhone "marimba" tune before the iOS7.  And I never bothered changing the settings on my iPhone so it was the same as my ringtone.  For four years I had kept it like that, and so it meant that now I have the horrible habit of always keeping my phone on silent, but also that I've developed this extraordinary ability to wake up just minutes before my alarm everyday.  And thank god now everyone with an iPhone has updated their systems and don't have that marimba tune anymore.  Yea, you can imagine how tense I got every time someone with an iPhone (ie everyone) got a call. 

Black Sesame Puff Pastries (黑芝麻酥饼)

You've probably never had anything like this, or at least have never made anything like this before.  They're like the Chinese version of puff pastry, where instead of having a dough and folding in a layer of butter and you keep folding and folding so you have alternate layers of butter and dough, here you make two doughs, a "water" dough and an "oil" dough.   The oil dough is 1:1 flour to fat, and you wrap that in the "water" dough, which consists of flour, water and just a bit of fat.  You then press it flat, roll it up and you press and roll once more.  The result is a bit different in that it's not as light, it's dense but still flaky and crumbly.  It's interesting and unlike anything you've had before.  It's a lot less cumbersome than the normal puff pastry dough though.  This just takes an hour, max. 

 Sorry for the late post, I know, it's been ages, busy, busy, busy.  It's hard to believe that I have a life outside this blog, but unfortunately I do.  Six essays, two presentations and two exams all by the 20th of May.  Fun times. 

Chili Peanut Butter Tart

This is a rich, dense peanut butter tart with a sprinkling of chili flakes on top. 

These photos do it no justice.  I wish I had a slate board. This pie would look really good on a black slate board.  This is all just so..neutral and nude when put on my wooden chopping board.  Everything's just.. sepia. Like some hipster instagram. 

Coconut Caramel Brioche Pudding

So many eggs.  I feel like most other bread pudding recipes ask for a 1 egg to 1 cup milk ratio, but this one was 8 eggs to 1 cup liquid.  Plus some mascarpone and brioche bread that just bumped this baby up from comforting to indulgent.


The original recipe asked for challah bread but I just used supermarket brioche rolls.  These brioche rolls always make me nostalgic.  In fact, you'll find that I say that in most of my posts, I either link a recipe to an old memory or I talk about my current life.  It's all about me, it is a personal blog, I'm allowed to be self-absorbed here. 

Carrot and Hazelnut Birthday Cake

I'm really not the biggest fan of your usual carrot cake that's slathered with diabetically sweet icing.  It tastes like a sugary sponge covered with cream cheese and sugar with a hint of carrots and it's just a sugary and buttery caloric bomb.

Too sweet.  I wouldn't say I don't have a sweet tooth, I like my desserts, but I like my desserts subtle and delicate.

So I went to look for an Italian recipe.  It was originally a carrot and almond cake but I just think that carrots and hazelnuts work so well together.  Have you ever had a carrot soup with hazelnuts?  Uh huh, prepare to have your mind blown.

Whipped Cream Bundt Cake

In Italy you'll find that most bars (and that's actually cafes in Italy) have ciambelle.  These are just simple bundt cakes, usually flavored with vanilla or lemon, and my mother loves them.  They're essentially just pound cakes, but my mother said that this Martha Stewart recipe with whipped cream rather than the standard creaming of butter and sugar tastes most like the ones you find in Italy, strangely enough.

I thought this was interesting.  I was trying to use up the heavy cream I had in my fridge and googled and googled and found this.  I had never made a cake with whipped cream in the batter before.  The texture is quite nice, it's obviously lighter than a standard pound cake but I wouldn't say the difference is massive.

Paris-Brest

My parents have a set of electric beaters that are over 20 years old.  Phillips.  And still works very well.  Whereas I somehow get through a set every year.  I had thought that it was a question of quality, as my first one was an Argos Value one that cost less than £10.  So then I bought a standard Morrisons one for a bit more, then I went and bought a James Martin one.  Still, I think it's breaking.  Maybe I should really splurge and by a Phillips one.  It's like buying cheap quality shoes, you can buy a pair for £10 but then you'd have to buy a new pair every couple of months, at the end of the day you're better off with spending £70 on a good pair that will last you a lifetime.

Ok so about this dessert: the paris-brest was made to commemorate a bicycle race, and it's supposed to represent a wheel.  In all honesty, I think that's...pretty disappointing.  Knowing that a beautiful circular dessert was made to represent a bicycle wheel?  In China, round and circular shapes represent unity and family.  If you're going to make something to commemorate a bicycle race, take up the challenge and pipe your choux pastry into an actual bicycle wheel, man.  I think they did that at The Great British Bake Off at some point, no? It's like a lovely Christmas wreath, it's sad to know that it's meant to be a bicycle wheel.

Best of 2013

And the year's drawing to a close.  I've been reading "Best of 2013"'s everywhere, from food news to celebrity moments to advances in technology.  So I've decided to share Happy Belly's highlights in 2013 - a combination of viewers' favorites and mine. 

Best breakfast
It was difficult to choose the best breakfast, because I have a ridiculous number of breakfast recipes.  But I had to choose this oatmeal over any other pancakes and eggs because.. it's just love and comfort in a bowl.  It's the perfect thing to have over and over again for a whole month.  It's cumbersome and time-consuming, yes, that is why I shamefully admit that I still make oatmeal in the microwave sometimes.  However, as I'm on holiday right now, I've been making my porridge according to this recipe every morning.


Best Dessert
This Hazelnut-Praline Dacquoise was popular.   Indeed, it took me a whole morning to make it and look how pretty.  Two nut based sponge cakes with a rich creamy center.  Despite all the sugar and butter in this dish, it was beautifully light. 















 Best Vegetable
Broccoli with Tahini 
Steamed vegetables can be boring if you don't know how to dress them.  

Mini Ice-Cream Charlottes

I really like the name "Charlotte", I think it's so pretty.  Nobody really knows why charlottes are called charlottes.  It could be named after a Queen Charlotte, or, according to Wikipedia, it could come from the world "charlyt" which means a bowl of custard.  I hope it's the latter, because that means that the name Charlotte is based on the dessert rather than the other way around.  Can you imagine?

"What does your name mean?"

"It is the latinized version of a Greek name.  It means chaste and purity  "

"Mine means 'cheerful' and 'joy' in Hebrew." 

"Mine means a bowl of custard."

 

Lemon Coconut Bars

Lemon bars are happy.  It's the color, it's the bright yellow, it's the tart and the sweet and soft filling against the crunch of the base.  Lemon bars are what you need on a dark winter's day in Scotland.

See, I have this wonderful weather app: it not only tells you what the current temperature is but it tells you what it feels like.  I've surely mentioned this.  I love talking about the weather, it's all I talk about with people.  Weather and food.  Those were certainly the main topics of conversation at the lunch where these lemon coconut bars were consumed, so I wouldn't be surprised if you find me talking about this exact same weather app in other posts. 

Tawny Port Cake

It was a long day.  I came home at around midnight from the library and decided to make cake.  That is how I relax.  I put on my apron, turned on the oven, grabbed the butter and eggs out of the fridge, opened my cupboard, and pondered.  Then I saw the bottle of tawny port I had laying around, and settled on that.  I had found a recipe for a sherry cake awhile back.  It was in a Delicious Magazine, and I sneakily took a photo of that page in the store.  Gotta love smart phones.  I have so many shots of recipes from cookbooks in book stores.  I mean, sometimes I really just like 2 or 3 recipes from a cookbook.  No need to spend so much $$$ on it.  I just pretend I'm texting.

This cake is so incredibly moist.  Some people are very uncomfortable with that word but that's the best way to describe this cake.  I don't know if it's the port that makes it so.  Also, you can definitely taste the port and it's just delicious.

Stewed Pears with Ginger and Lemongrass

On a cold winter's night, there is nothing more satisfying than coming home to fogged up windows from cooking.  Nothing more satisfying than a warm house soaked in the smell of spices and honey.  Smells like Christmas, but with ginger and lemongrass instead of the conventional cinnamon.  And there is nothing more satisfying than eating this hot spiced pear stew with good company. 

I am aware that it is only October, but as I reside in Scotland, trust me, it's winter already.

Get creative.  Play around with the spices, add a vanilla pod in there.  Add some other dried fruits, here I added raisins.  Add a healthy splash of alcohol.

Hazelnut-Praline Dacquoise

F*ck the raw challenge, man.  I stopped after two days because, to put it mildly, my body was not in the best state.  First day I was hungry, second day I was exhausted and my stomach was upset, and on the third day I felt like I had caught a cold. I'm still feelin ill now -- queasy stomach, raspy voice and dizziness.  F*ck the raw challenge, man.  

I'm slowly easing back to normal foods, I'm blanching my vegetables and cooking my oatmeal now.  That warm bowl of oatmeal for breakfast made me all warm and fuzzy inside -- just like the feeling of falling in love.

So two days ago I was not productive mentally and thus I decided to take my time and make a dessert.  It's quite a cumbersome dessert, not difficult, just takes a bit of time but it is so.good.  One of my friends said it's the best thing I've made.  Well, what can I say, it's just another recipe from Christophe Felder's Patisserie. 

The cake took awhile... And I did encounter some challenges, namely that of my broken hand mixer, which definitely made my life more difficult when it came to whipping egg whites.