Photographer: Margaret Paola Minero
Welcome to my blog centred around baking with delicious and interesting flavour combos as well as textures to uncover unusual bakegood gems. In addition, this blog discovers traditional sweet treats, opening up taste buds to different cultures and flavours from all over the world.
This recipe came about off the back of a cocktail and an impulse buy, A Midori and Cherry cocktail and a random melon essence purchase with no recipe to use it in.
The cocktail was super delicious but needed an acidic kick and the melon flavour of the liquor got me thinking of making a recipe with the essence I had brought.
Sometimes my recipes are as random as that.
I replaced the Midori with the essence and added lemon to balance the flavours (the sweetness without acid in the cocktail was quite overwhelming). As quite a bit of lemon was needed the recipe had to allow for a high yield of liquid, in which my head went straight to jelly, custard, ice-cream…etc. After playing around with some recipes the ice-cream was a solid winner. Super creamy, easy to make and so tasty with a lovely floral zest.
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Frozen strawberries in a glass of Rosé on a hot summer day, strawberries coated in melted white chocolate to end a dinner party, strawberry and vanilla smoothies for a morning snack….all delicious strawberry treats with complimentary flavour profiles.
This recipe expands on these flavour profiles to combine them together to make a rich, decadent, alcohol spiked dessert.
Why a pudding? This gave me the best chance to really allow the Rosé flavour to own the show!
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Taking inspiration from Middle Eastern flavours as well as my Baklava Cake and my Hazelnut Cake with Spiced Syrup this recipe takes their tastes and textures but with a ‘new age’ twist.
Gluten free and egg free this recipe uses ingredients usually found in ‘alternative’ style recipes.
The texture the chia seeds produces, the silkiness of the syrup along with the rose, pistachio, cinnamon, honey and pomegranate flour profiles makes this a delectable treat.
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White Honey Blondies
Blondies are a brownie without cocoa powder and usually the addition of vanilla essence.
Why this is a ‘white’ blondie is due to the chocolate being different to a brownie/blondie, in which is milk or dark chocolate. In this instance I have opted for white chocolate and with keeping with this theme I also utilised white sugar instead of the usual brown sugar.
For a little variation on this sweet treat (and there are soooo many variations from different chocolates, nuts, dried fruit, essence), I decided to try something that is quite unusual while still keeping in with the blondies ‘warm’ theme therefore I introduced honey into the mix.
This is definitely a very sweet treat – keeping in with blonie/brownie traditional texture and expectations.
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This dessert is best served warm with a side of vanilla ice-cream.
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Cseresznyes Gomboc (Cherry Dumplings)
Cseresznyes Gomboc (aka Cherry Dumplings) are a Hungarian traditional dessert dumplings that is a mix between potato gnocchi and a sweet version of English steamed dumplings (you know the ones that are usually eaten with stews).
As like gnocchi these dumplings are cooked in boiling salted water and are the same texture – fluffy and light.
Occasionally made with plums the traditional recipe calls for cherries (hence the ‘Cseresznyes’ which means cherry in Hungary).
Such a unique treat, think cinnamon doughnut outside and sweet gnocci filling.
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Technically not a ‘true’ ice-cream, I wanted to make a tasty alcoholic refreshing dessert – perfect for a hot Summers day. This recipe came off the back of exactly this concept, whilst also delivering on ease and minimal ingredients that anyone can make and look like a star.
With 4 ingredients and the most challenging step holding electric beaters this is a decadent recipe that takes seconds and will satisfy with its zesty sweet tang in every scoop.
Why pay way $$$ on fancy Ice-cream brands when you can make a delectable one with a boozy twist!
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Jackfruit White Chocolate Macadamia Brittle Ice-cream
For some time Jackfruit has been on my radar, but being a vegetarian most of my experience with this fruit has been via savory dishes as a meat replacement. Being such a versatile fruit, I decided to make it the feature of a dessert.
With such an interesting taste to work out flavour combos I opted to look at the closest fruits I deemed most similar, these being mango, apricot and pineapple.
After playing around with a few apricot, pineapple and mango flavour pairings with jackfruit I landed on a killer recipe. White chocolate as the foundation flavour, macadamia brittle crunch flavour bombs and 2 different jackfruit textures for smoothness and chewiness.
I actually didn’t think this would be a successful bake but was so surprised I ended up redoing the recipe to this time write down the ratios!
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Method:
Dried Jackfruit
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I do a loooot of baking, and quite a lot of my recipes include sponge cake as a layer. I have previously shared my never fail amazing sponge cake recipe but let’s face it, sometimes I have limited time to whip up this element in a bake and need a quick fluffy alternative (and paying $5 at the supermarket feels like big wasted money).
This got me thinking of coming up with a super fluffy, easy and tasty sponge recipe that I could whip up and cook in seconds saving me 20 minutes per future bake.
Therefore, coming up with a microwave sponge cake recipe would be super helpful, but could it be done?
After 4 experiments, a lot of time trailing and dish sizes I landed on the below recipe in which has worked 3 times in a row perfectly.
A great secret recipe that involves no oven and saves you on baking time and money!
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Chocolate and Peanut Rice Crust Tart
This recipe actually derived from a savoury tart recipe with a brown rice and seed base. I liked the idea of a rice base so much I adapted the recipe to suit a sweeter bake.
As the parmesan added such great richness and flavour, whilst being a great binding ingredient I left it in the sweet adaptation recipe. This then dictated what type of a sweet bake I would make as dark chocolate and parmesan go so well together (see my Parmesan Cheese Chocolate Slice recipe).
I changed the seeds from the original recipe to peanuts as peanuts had similar fat content in which the tart needed to keep it moist, while coating the proteins and starches in the egg, rice and flour. A few trials and I had the perfect base.
As peanuts were used in my base, I made this the hero ingredient along with the previously identified dark chocolate and wah-lah a peanut filled tart with chocolate ganache recipe on a rice crust tart case was born.
You would have no idea of rice in the base, in which is a great alternative to flour and the peanut filling with dark chocolate topping is just to die for.
This recipe exceeded my expectations and then some – decadent, delicious, unique and so so satisfying.
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Fig Orange Chocolate and Almond Zuccotto
After recently eating Zuccotto, a traditional Tuscan dessert (though originated in Florence), I was intrigued how this Zuccotto was so different to others I had eaten previously…in which were also apparently ‘traditional Zuccotto’.
This led me to investigate the dessert further, in which resulted in finding lot of different variations…though all featured some sort of cream, cake, nut, fruit and alcohol in a dome shaped tin (or pumpkin shape ala ‘little pumpkin’ in Italian).
Whether it be cream, ricotta or ice-cream, almonds, macadamia or hazelnuts, figs, cherry or raspberry, the recipes always had a fruit, nut and cream component.
After playing around with a few variations from other ‘traditional’ recipes I ended up with this recipe, in which is my favourite combo of flavours by far from a few combined recipes.
I’ve opted for fig, orange, chocolate, cream and almond.
Recipe:
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NOTE: I used Cointreau for the liquor but you can use any orange liquor such as Curacao, Grand Marnier or Triple Sec.
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