Flourless pistachio cupcakes with rosewater icing

It's probably because I have time on my hands, but I've been in the middle of some kind of reorganisation craze since I started annual leave. I've been madly moving the contents of all the kitchen cupboards and shelves around, finding things I forgot I had. Just before Christmas I turned the shelving over the buffet unit into a book case which means I now have room in my book cases for the other accumulated books that have been sitting stacked on the side table!

I've also been clearing out the pantry looking for anything that needed to be used up. I found a bag of pistachios to use and went searching the net for a pistachio cupcake recipe. All the recipes I found called for flour, and a lot of them were just vanilla cupcakes with pistachios stuck on top of the icing. I had already used the last of the flour I had making fruit cakes for Christmas so I improvised an almond meal recipe.

Ingredients (makes 12 large cupcakes)

Cupcakes:

• 1 cup whole unsalted pistachios
• 1 1/4 cups sugar
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 4 ounces (1 stick) unsalted butter, softened
• 2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
• 1 tablespoon rosewater
• 4 large eggs
• 1 1/2 cups almond meal

Icing:

• 125g butter or nuttalex, softened
• 1 1/2 cups pure icing sugar, sifted
• 2 tsp rosewater
• Pink food colouring (optional)

Decoration:

• 1/4 cup crushed pistachios for decorating

Directions

Cupcakes:

1. Preheat oven to 190 degrees. 
2. Using a food processor or blender, process the pistachios in small batches till finely ground.
3. Combine the pistachios, almond meal, sugar, and salt in a food processor until finely ground. 
4. Mix in butter, vanilla, rosewater, and eggs, until smooth. 
5. Divide batter among cupcake liners.Bake about 30 minutes or till a knife poked into the centre of a cake comes out clean. 
6. Leave cakes in the tin to cool.

Icing:

1. Beat butter in a large mixer till smooth and and slightly lighter in colour.
2. Mix in the icing sugar, 1/2 a cup at a time.
3. Add in rosewater and food colouring and mix till smooth.

Decoration:

1. Ice each cupcake and decorate each with a sprinkle of crushed pistachio.

The cakes were nice and moist and for an improvised recipe at 1 in the morning they turned out quite well. While tall swirls of icing always looks nicer on cupcakes, I personally think it would be too sweet to do with this cupcake.

Apologies for the camera phone photos. My camera died a while back and I haven't decided what I'm getting as a replacement yet.

Raw vegan cheesecake with berry sauce topping

I got my fiance a slice of raw cheesecake from TOFWD while we were in the city on boxing day because it was listed as no added sugar. He loved it so much I thought I would have a crack at making one at home.This would also be the first time I have made an attempt at a raw food dessert (unless fruit salad counts...)

I searched around the web for a few recipes, and by far the best looking one was raw double chocolate cherry cheesecake. The slice in the picture looks delicious. I really want to make this particular recipe one day, but on this occasion I was making one for Kev, who is not really a chocolate fan.

So I used this as a very loose guide for making a berry cheesecake recipe. All recipes I found called for coconut oil to help the filling set, and all asked for 3 cups of cashews. I used just a little over 3 cups - there were only a small number of nuts left out of the 400 grams after measuring 3 cups, so I just threw them in as well. I used a home made date honey for sweetener, but agave syrup would be fine too. I was surprised at the number of recipes for 'Vegan raw cheesecake' that called for bee honey. On what planet is bee honey considered vegan?

Raw Berry Cheesecake

Ingredients

For the Base

• 100 grams raw macadamia nuts
• 100 grams of raw almonds
• 1 cup of chopped pitted dates
• 1/2 a cup of coconut
• A small amount of extra coconut for lining the tin

For the filling

• 400 grams of cashew nuts (soaked for at least 4 hours)
• 3/4 a cup of date honey (see recipe below)
• 1/2 a cup of lemon juice (approximately 2 small lemons)
• Rind of 2 lemons
• 3/4 cup of coconut oil
• Seeds from 1 vanilla bean
• 1/3 a cup of fresh apple juice

For the topping

• 200 grams of berries. I used blueberries and strawberries.
• 1 tsp of lemon juice
• Either 1/4 a cup of date honey or a handful of dates

Method

Base

1. In a blender or food processor, chop the nuts. A good blender helps here, since my blender was pretty crap, I used a magic bullet to grind the nuts instead.
2. Add the chopped dates and the 1/2 cup of coconut to the blender, and blend till it all comes together into a paste.
3. Sprinkle a little coconut into the bottom of your cheesecake pan to help stop the base sticking, then press the base mix into the pan. Smooth flat with the back of a spoon.
4. Put in the fridge to set till your filling is ready.

Filling

1. Drain the soaked cashews.
2. In the blender or food processer, puree all the ingredients for the filling till all are combined into a smooth paste. The mix will give a consistancy a little like ricotta cheese.
3. Pour the filling mix into the cheescake pan over your prepared base.
4. Tap the pan gently on the bench to force out any air bubbles and help smooth the top of the filling out.
5. Top the filling with either plastic wrap or baking paper and put the pan into the freezer to set.
6. Cut serving slices from the frozen cake and let the slices thaw for an hour or so before serving.

Topping

1. Puree the blueberries, lemon juice and date honey till smooth.
2. Spoon a little over each cheesecake slice just before serving. 

The cake is rich in nuts so I served it in smaller slices. 5 servers used just under a quarter of the cake. The beauty of it is though, it should keep really well in the freezer for several months so you can keep a tasty healthy dessert on easy hand. The sauce can also be kept in the freezer.

I don't believe this dessert could be classed as sugar free as I have seen some other raw cheesecake recipes claim - there are still sweeteners used that will have an affect on blood sugar. There is however less sugar than used in a traditional cheesecake, and the sugars are from a lower GI source. So a piece of cake from this recipe would be a better option for a diabetic friendly dessert than a cheesy sugar filled piece of regular cheesecake.



The cheesecake pan I used to make this was smaller than I would have liked, so I ended up with a little filling left over. I stirred some mashed blueberries through this and pushed it into a small heart shaped cake pan I had, so ended up with a small cheese cake with no base. I served this as a kind of pate with a plate of sliced fruit for afternoon tea one day. It was basically like a sweet cheese and went really well with the cut fruit even with dry water crackers.

How I make date honey/date syrup:


Ingredients

• 1 cup of pitted dates, preferably medjool
• 2 cups of water
• 1 tbsp of lemon juice

Method

1. Chop the dates into small pieces.
2. Place all ingredients into a blender and process. Start out at slow speed and gradually work up to full power to puree the dates as finely as possible.
3. Pour the mix into a storage bottle. The mix should happily keep for 2-3 weeks.
4. If your blender has not been able to get the dates as fine as you would like (as my blender was not), then push the syrup through a sieve to get the larger bits out before use. 

I'd like to get one that matches my new mixer. A beautiful red Kitchen Aid mixer that my mother gave me for Christmas. Best. Present. Ever!!!!

Kitchen Aid will probably prove too expensive though.

What ever blender I buy needs to be a quiet one - I discovered our beagle is terrified of the noise the one I have made, and it took us an hour to coax her out of her hiding place when I first started blending for this recipe. Kev had to take her to the park while I finished the rest.

Can anyone recommend a good quality, affordable, quiet blender?

Happy new year everyone!

Home made vegan chocolates

Part 2 of my posts on home made christmas presents will be a little longer than the first. This was a lot more time consuming than the white christmas and had to be done in stages. Like with the white christmas, I made everything gluten free and vegan as I was also giving some of the chocolates to K and Toby from In the Mood for Noodles.

I got started making chocolates when I was really young. Mum found it was cheaper (and more fun) each easter to buy chocolate melts and make her own eggs each easter rather than buy the stupidly over priced foil wrapped store eggs. She would colour white chocolate in a variety of pastel colours with powdered food dye and paint her hand rolled hollow easter eggs them with beautiful designs. 

She soon expanded into making her own chocolates and has a little book she has put together over the years of her signature fillings. She was so good at it that she ended up turning it into a source of revenue and also went to the local primary school each year to help the little prep grade students make their very own painted coloured chocolate easter egg to take home. The kids at school thought I had the coolest mother ever and they were of course right :-)

To start making shaped chocolates at home, you will need to get a couple of things first.

• Chocolate moulds - You can get some great chocolate moulds from a cake supply shop in port phillip arcade in the city, called Cake Deco. This is just across the road from Flinders street station and the have HEAPS of food crafting supplies. Spotlight and Matchbox also have a good range. If you have never made chocolates before try to get clear plastic chocolate moulds rather than silicon as it is easier to judge whether the chocolate is thick enough.
• Food paint brushes - If you are planning on painting different coloured chocolates into the mould or onto the chocolates as decoration it is much easier to use a fine food grade paint brush. These can be purchased at the same place as the moulds.
• A candy thermometer. If you want to make caramel fillings you will need this to check when the caramel gets to soft ball or soft crack stage.

You will also need to decide what to fill your chocolates with. You can make solid moulded chocolates of course, but filled chocolates are so much more interesting and impressive.

I made 3 simple fillings this time - Peanut butter, Agave Caramel and Strawberry Cream Cheez.

 

Peanut butter filling:

This filling is really really simple. It also works with any other nut butter like macadamia or ABC spread, etc. If you are making gluten free chocolates, best to go buy a fresh jar of peanut butter. You don't want to use peanut butter that someone has wheat contaminated when they have double dipped the knife when spreading their toast...

• 1/2 cup of peanut butter
• 1/4 cup of pure icing sugar

1. Mix the peanut butter and icing sugar together to form a paste.
2. Store in the fridge till you are ready to use.

Strawberry Cream Cheez filling:
Like with the peanut butter, buy a fresh tofutti tub that no one has contaminated with bread...

• 20g freeze dried strawberries
• 2 tablespoons of caster sugar
• 1/4 of a cup of hot water
• 100g tofutti cream cheese

1. Chop the strawberries into small pieces.
2. Dissolve the sugar into the hot water in a bowl. Add the strawberries and leave to soak for 30 minutes. 
3. Spoon the strawberry pieces and 2 tbsp of the liquid into the tofutti and blend thoroughly.
4. Store the mix in an airtight container in the fridge till you are ready to use this. The mix should be used within a week and any chocolates made with it kept in the fridge.

Agave caramel
There are 2 methods I use with this caramel depending how thick I want it. Using agave syrup will give a honey flavoured caramel. Again, I started with a fresh tub of nuttalex.

• 3 tbsp nuttalex
• 3/4 cup of caster sugar
• 1/4 plus 1/4 cup of agave syrup
• 1/4 plus 1/4 cup of water
• 1 tspn vanilla essence

For a thicker slightly chewy caramel

1. In a heavy saucepan combine the nuttalex, sugar, all the agave syrup, all the water, and vanilla essence. Stir this over the heat till combined.
2. Using a candy thermometer, boil the mix till it reaches soft ball stage (115C). The thermometer should have a marker on it to show how much of it needs to be immersed in the caramel for an accurate reading. You can also tell if it has reached soft ball stage by dropping a little of the caramel into a glass of ice cold water. If the caramel forms a soft flexible little ball.
3. Once the sauce hits soft ball, remove it from the heat immediately. Transfer to a heat proof storage container or bowl.
4. Store in an air tight container in the fridge till ready for use.

For a runnier caramel

1. In a heavy saucepan combine the nuttalex, sugar, 1/4 cup of the agave syrup, 1/4 cup of the water, and vanilla essence. Stir this over the heat till combined.
2. Using a candy thermometer, boil the mix till it reaches soft ball stage (115C). The thermometer should have a marker on it to show how much of it needs to be immersed in the caramel for an accurate reading. You can also tell if it has reached soft ball stage by dropping a little of the caramel into a glass of ice cold water. If the caramel forms a soft flexible little ball.
3. Once the sauce hits soft ball, remove it from the heat immediately. Allow the caramel to cool a little bit and stir in the remaining agave and water. (If you stir this in when the caramel is still at 115C then the water may react violently and you may get burnt by caramel splash and that really hurts)
4. Transfer to a heat proof storage container or bowl.
5. Store in an air tight container in the fridge till ready for use.

I made the fillings a day ahead of making the chocolate and stored the fillings in the fridge. The fillings should be cold when you put them into the chocolate shells so as not to melt the chocolate.

With the fillings made it is now time to start making the chocolates. There a couple of things to note about melting chocolate.

• It does not like water. Get water in your chocolate and it will seize (go thick, solid and gluggy). Make sure your moulds are completely dry before you use them. Any water and your chocolates will look dull and furry anywhere there was water.
• It does not like direct heat. If you melt chocolate in a saucepan over direct heat it will likely seize and probably burn.
• If you do have an accident and some of the chocolate does start to seize you can save it by mixing in a little bit of copha. The copha will help the chocolate go back to a liquid and you can still use it, but it will not taste quite the same.
• You can also add a very small amount (just a couple of small shavings) of copha to any chocolate you are trying to use to decorate with if you are finding it is too thick or gluggy to paint into fine details on your mould. The copha will thin it out a little and make it easier to paint with.
• You can re-melt chocolate if it sets while you are working with it, by putting it back over a pan of boiled water.

To make the chocolates you will need:

• 1/2 a block of white chocolate to decorate (I used sweet william)
• Milk or dark chocolate. How much will depend on the number of chocolates you want to make and the size of the moulds in the tray. I find it usually takes 100g of chocolate per tray. For the volume of chocolates I made this year, I used 600g of sweet william milk chocolate, plus 170g Noble choice dark chocolate.

1. Boil a small saucepan of water. Turn the heat off after the water has reached boiling point.
2. Chop the white chocolate and place it a heat proof bowl. Place the bowl over the pan of boiled water and leave the chocolate to melt. Once most of the chocolate has melted, stir gently till the last little pieces melt away.
3. For moulds with detail - Using a food paint brush, paint white chocolate into the design on your mould in the areas you want some detail. Once all the moulds in the tray are painted with the design you want, put the trays in the fridge to set.
4. For shaped moulds where you want a marble effect - Roughly paint some white chocolate into the bottom of the mould. Once all the moulds in the tray are painted, put the tray in the fridge to set.
5. In a new heat proof bowl, melt the milk or dark chocolate using the same method as used to melt the white chocolate.
6. When the chocolate is melted, use a teaspoon to put a little chocolate into each mould in the tray. As a rule of thumb a mould will need to be about 1/3 filled with chocolate to have enough to give a good coating.
7. Using a food paint brush, paint the chocolate up the sides of the mould, making sure there is a good coating all over the whole of the shape. This is where having clear moulds is easier - if you hold the tray up to the light, you can see where the chocolate is not thick enough because light will show through. Anywhere the chocolate is too thin, paint a little more chocolate in.
8. If you are making chocolates with a marble design, gently swirl the chocolate around in the bottom of the mould. This should melt the white chocolate and start to marble the white and dark together.
9. If you have too much chocolate in the moulds don't worry. Just turn the tray upside down and pour any excess chocolate back into the bowl.
10. Put the tray in the fridge to set.
11. Once set, check each shape to make sure there are no thin spots where you can see the mould through the chocolate, or can see light coming through. Corners or any design edges will be the most likely place. Paint some more chocolate into any thin spots and return to the fridge to set.
12. Once you are happy the chocolate shells in your moulds are thick enough it is time to put your filling in. Use a small spoon to transfer a little filling into each mould. How much you will need will depend on the size of the mould you have chosen. My moulds needed about half a teaspoon. Press the filling in and get it as flat as possible. Leave a millimeter or 2 of space in the mould for a seal of chocolate to go in on top.
13. To seal the chocolate, spoon a little chocolate into the space left in each mould in the tray. For really soft fillings, start from the edges - if you pour from the middle of the chocolate your filling will ooze over the edge. Return the tray to the fridge to set for at least 30 minutes.
14. Once set, remove the tray from the fridge and gently turn the tray upside down over a plate. For plastic trays gently press on each chocolate till they fall out of their mould. For silicon trays, pull the sides of the mould around each chocolate till they fall out.
15. You're done! Try to resist the temptation to eat all your chocolate handy work at once.

Below are some pictures of the chocolates I made with samples of cut chocolates so you can see what they look like inside.



Little peanut butter men. I call them Meesa's Pieces



Runny agave caramels with marble design

Strawberry cream cheez hearts and roses. White detail on hearts was painted on after un-moulding the chocolates

I had some chocolate left over so I decided to attempt to use the brain mould tray again. This time I made the chocolate shell much thicker so they would not break when popping them out of their mould like they did last time. This mould is actually an ice cube tray and the chocolate needs to be pretty thick so as not to break when the mould is being peeled off. I filled them again with caramel and some dandies vegan marshmallows. They are sickly sweet with 2 teaspoons of caramel and 3 marshmallows in side each brains thick chocolate shell, but they worked this time!

Caramel marshmallow brains to give your brain a sugar overload!

And there you have it. With the right equipment and a little patience, anyone can make filled chocolates at home and they make great home made gifts for christmas time.

Damn that was a long post... I hope it all made sense.

White Christmas - Vegan

Since this is the first year in a long time that I have actually had some time off work at Christmas (with the exception of last year when I was in Sweden for Christmas) I have actually had the time to make some Christmas gifts this year. Not a lot of time to blog about them, but time to cook at least.

The first I will post about was the simplest. This White Christmas only took me 10 minutes to make, then only a couple of hours to set. The White Christmas I remember my Nan making when I was little was always super sickly sweet, made with copha, heaps of icing sugar, milk powder and those nasty red green and yellow fake cherry things. I figured it would taste way better using white chocolate instead of the sugar and milk, and with dried sour cherries instead to counter the sweetness in the white chocolate. A more adult version of a white christmas perhaps.

I made this using all vegan and gluten free ingredients so I could give this to my friends at In the Mood for Noodles in the christmas gift box I put together.

Ingredients:


500g Vegan White Chocolate (I used 3 blocks of Sweet William and 2 block of Bonvita rice milk white chocolate) If that seems like too much chocolate, you can substitute 200 grams of the chocolate for 200g Copha (solid coconut oil) instead.

1  1/2 cups rice bubbles 

100 grams dried sour cherries
100 grams dried apricots, chopped

100g sultanas
50 grams of dried citrus peel chopped

2 cups desiccated coconut

• Line a small slice tin with baking paper. 
• Sit a heat proof mixing bowl over a pan of boiled water. Melt the chocolate in this bowl.
• Mix in fruits, coconut and rice bubbles. Stir well to combine and ensure all dry ingredients get a good coating and the coconut is evenly distributed.
• Pour the mix into the lined pan, and press it down with the back of a spoon.
• Refrigerate till set, then cut into squares. 

Glace cherries look more traditional than the sour cherries I used, but if you want to use glace cherries just be careful of the red colouring they use. A couple of the brands I saw in the supermarket used colour 120 :(
The dried fruit you use doesn't really matter, you could use pineapple, figs, apple, what ever you like really. 
As long as it has white chocolate, coconut and rice bubbles it still looks like the White Christmas we all remember from child hood. It just tastes 387% better!