cream cheese – Sweet Tooth Experiments

Bulgur Lemon Almond and Green Tea Cake

Posted on August 25, 2018 Posted in Cakes .

Bulgur Lemon Almond and Green Tea Cake

Bulgur Lemon Almond and Green Tea Cake recipe

If you follow my blog and the recipes I post ever week you will be well aware that a large amount of my recipes feature grains. Millet, quinoa, couscous, oates, wheat, corn, amaranth and rice too name a few! However I recently came across Bulgur, in which I have very limited knowledge and experience with. Not until I did some research did I realise this grain is most known for being the core ingredient in tabouli.

As soon as I experience a new grain that I’m not familiar with I cannot help myself but to start experimenting.

So unsurprisingly as soon as I brought a packet bulgur I got busy cooking the grain to understand its taste, texture and optimal cooking method. I additionally experimented with using cooked bulgur & uncooked in the batter as well as varying nuts, citric fruits, seeds, essence and powders (protein and teas).

From here I went full steam ahead coming up with recipe ideas, landing on 4 key variations.

My favourite recipe featured the flavour pairing of lemon, almond and weirdly green tea. Not only do these flavours work wonderfully together they compliment the nuttiness of the bulgur grain.

To add a variation to the cakes texture I added a smooth and creamy frosting, which very much enhances the cake, bringing it from nice and tasty to delicious and satisfying.

If your interested in making an usual cake with a range of textures that taste delicious then this cake cannot be bypassed.

Bulgur Lemon Almond and Green Tea Cake recipe

Ingredients:

Batter:

200g bulgur, cooked
50g butter, softened
80g sugar
1 egg
½ tsn almond essence
½ tsn vanilla essence
1 + ½ tsn lemon zest
¼ tsn salt
25g matcha powder
3 green teabags
50g almond meal
25ml milk
45 self-raising flour
2 tbsn lemon juice

Frosting:

130g icing sugar
10g matcha powder
200g cream cheese
90g butter, softened
¼ tsn lemon zest

Method:

Pre-heat the oven to 175c degrees and line a 20cm cake tin with baking paper.
Whisk butter and sugar together with electric beaters for 5 minutes or until creamy and pale.
Add the egg, essences, matcha powder, zest and salt to the butter mix, beat until well combine and silky.
Place 3 green tea bags into a bowl along with the milk, stir and heat in the microwave until boiling. Place aside until cooled.
Add the bulgur, almond meal, tea milk, flour and juice to the butter mix, whisk on low speed until combine.
Pour the mix into the cake tin and bake in the oven for 1 hour or until a skewer inserted in the center comes out clean.
Invert the cake onto a cooling rack until cooled.
Meanwhile make the frosting by placing all the frosting ingredients into a bowl and beat with electric beaters until fluffy and smooth.
Cut the cooled cake in half horizontally.
Place one cake layer on a plate, top with half the frosting.
Place the 2^ndcake layer on the frosting and top with the remaining frosting.
Decorate with green tea leaves and diced almonds if you wish.
Cut into slices and enjoy.

Bulgur Lemon Almond and Green Tea Cake recipe

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Bulgur Lemon Almond and Green Tea Cake recipe

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Cream Cheese Nutella and Strawberry Dessert Dumplings

Posted on May 26, 2018 Posted in Unique .

Cream Cheese Nutella and Strawberry Dessert Dumplings

Dumplings would have to be one of my all-time favorite foods. I could live off vegetable pan fried dumplings for dinner every night if I needed to quite easily!

Thus after recently making dumplings for dinner that can only be described as bliss, I figured, if dumplings are that good as a savoury dish they must be a worthwhile experiment to make as a dessert.

I quite often experiment with turning a savory meal into a sweet dish, in which tends to fail more than it feats so this should be interesting to say the least.

After a range of varying filling experiments (from a ricotta white chocolate & nutella filling to a citrus chocolate berries almond & glace fruit filling), I found a superstar combo. And the end result? Surprisingly fresh strawberries with chocolate hazelnut and coffee!

Ingredients:

Dumplings:

125g cream cheese
60g Nutella
10g icing sugar
20g hazelnuts, finely chopped
½ tsn coffee granules
½ cup finely diced strawberries
Wonton wrappers, pack of 40

Extra:

Vegetable oil for frying
Icing sugar to dust
Crème fraiche or vanilla ice-cream to serve

Method:

Place the cheese, Nutella, icing sugar, hazelnuts and coffee granuals into a bowl and stir until well combined and smooth.
Lay a wonton wrapper on a chopping board and using your index finger dip it into water then run your finger around the edges of the wrapper (alternatively you can dip a pastry brush into water and brush around the slides of the wrapper if you prefer).
Using 2 spoons, scoop and drop 20g of mix into the center of the wrapper.
Carefully pull one side of the wrapper over the other to make a triangle (or semi circle shape if using circle wrappers) and seal by pressing the edges together well. This is where the water is key as it sticks the pastry sides together.
There are many ways to shape the dumplings, you can crimp the edges, fold the edges or take the 2 ends of the pastry and wrap them over each other, using water to stick them in shape.
Continue with remaining wrappers and filling.
Heat the oil in a saucepan on medium heat until you reach 175c degrees.
Using tongs place 4-5 dumplings into the oil at once and leave to fry until golden brown.
Place cooked dumpling onto a plate lined with paper towel.
Repeat the frying process until all dumplings are cooked.
Place dumplings on a clean plate and sieve icing sugar over the top.
Serve with Crème fraiche poured over the top of the warm dumplings or with a generous scoop of vanilla ice-cream.

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Lavender and Lemon Cheesecake

Posted on August 4, 2014 Posted in Cakes .

Lavender and Lemon Cheesecake

So for a while now I have been super interested in baking with lavender. I have heard many stories how it’s a tricky ingredient that can be ever so overpowering to the point where it tastes like your eating soap or perfume.

I figured if I baked a cake with lavender I would need another ingredient that also has a strong flavour so they could complement each other.

After doing some research I came across many cake variations featuring lavender and almond, lavender and lemon, lavender fairy cakes, even lavender and blueberry. However these were all cupcakes or cakes…this got me thinking…introducing my Lavender and Lemon Cheesecake

Ingredients:

250g plain sweet biscuits (I used Nice)
150g butter
100g sugar
1 tbsn edible lavender
3 tbsn cornflour
750g cream cheese
2 eggs
100ml double cream
1 lemon (for ¾ of the zest)
4 drops purple food colouring

Method:

Grease and line a 24cm spring-form cake tin and preheat the oven to 180c.
In a food processor process the biscuits until fine. Melt the butter and mix with the biscuits.
Press the mix into the tin and cook for 10 mins or until slightly golden.
Place the base aside to cool and turn the oven up to 200c.
Place the sugar and lavender in the food processor and process until the lavender is fine like the sugar.
Combine the lavender sugar, cornflour and cream cheese in a bowl and beat with an electric beaters until smooth and creamy.
Add the eggs one at a time, beating well in between each addition.
Add the cream, zest and food coloring, beat until smooth.
Pour the mix in the tin and with a spoon smooth the top – bake for 40 mins or until the top is brown.
Remove from the oven and let the cake cool. Now place in the fridge for 3 hours to set.

Notes:

I have decorated with a sprinkle of icing sugar.
You can use full fat thickened cream instead of double cream if you cannot find double cream.

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Ingredients

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Apple Crumble Pizza

Posted on June 22, 2014 Posted in Unique .

Apple Crumble Pizza

So by now you would notice that I frequently experiment with vegetables in sweet baking, love to make traditional unique world treats and play with textures.

However, lately I have really started to take an interest in turning ‘traditional’ savoury meals into sweet alternatives.

Based on this new found curiosity I decided to experiment with a very well known easy dish that is properly one of the most popular meals around the world….Maybe this wasn’t the smarted thing to play with every households family favourite food, but I think if you try this recipe you will let my off the hook as its that good!

Now this recipe does have quite a few parts (5 in fact), but each part is super easy using pretty much the same ingredients so please don’t be turned off by this, especially since 2 of the parts take between 2-5 minutes to do!

So if you’re a fan of pizza and have a soft spot to a warm winter apple crumble…humm you will LOVE my Apple Crumble Pizza!

Pizza Base:

1 cup of warm water
½ tsn salt
2 tbsn sugar
2 tbsn oil
3 cups plain flour
1 tbsn dry yeast

Cheese Spread:

125g cream cheese
2 tbsn brown sugar
1tbsn lemon juice
¼ tsn nutmeg

Apple Topping:

65g butter
5 Granny Smith apples (4 apples if very large), peeled and thinly sliced
¾ cup sugar
3 tbsn plain flour
2 tsn cinnamon

Crumble Topping:

½ cup plain flour
2 tsn cinnamon
½ cup sugar
1/3 cup butter, softened
½ cup oats

Method:

1. Preheat oven to 190c and line a 16-inch pizza tray with baking paper.

Pizza Base:

2. Pour flour and yeast into a large bowl, stir.

3. Add the water, salt, sugar and oil into the dry mix.

4. Knead into a smooth dough for 5 minutes and cover with a tea towel to rest for at least 15 minutes. In the interium:

Cheese Spread:

5. Add cheese spread ingredients into a bowl and whisk until well combined.

Apple Topping:

6. Place the flour, sugar and cinnamon into a medium sizes saucepan, stir until sugar is dissolved.

7. Add the butter and apple and turn the hotplates to medium, stirring constantly.

8. Once mix comes to the boil turn to low and continue to mix until the apples are tender.

Crumble Topping:

9. Place all ingredients into a bowl and with hands rub to combined.

Assembling:

10. Place dough onto the tray, punching down dough to make a large circular base.

11. Spread the cheese spread with the back of a spoon to evenly distribute.

12. Evenly place apple mix onto the spread layer.

13. Sprinkle the crumbling topping over the apple mix evenly.

14. Cover the pizza for 15 minutes in a warm place with a tea towel on the top.

15. Place the pizza in the oven for 25-30minutes or until browned and golden.

Notes:

Brown sugar is not essential if you have none just use white sugar.
If you don’t like nutmeg again this is not essential so you can omit this, but to be honest you wont taste the ingredient it just enhances the others flavours.
This recipe does make a MASSIVE pizza. It is very easy to half the mix if you don’t have an army to baking for 🙂 (you will notice this from the step pictures).
I recommend using a mandolin to get quick and easy apple slices and granny smith apple as they hold their shape quite well when you cook them.
Make sure you punch the dough down well and spread evenly as the dough will rise quite a bit and you don’t want it really thick in the centre but thin on the outsides.

Ingredients

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Slicing the apple. Use gloves and vegetable holder when slicing.

Apple Crumble Pizza recipe

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Coconut Cream Cheese Icing

Posted on January 10, 2014 Posted in Icing .

Coconut Cream Cheese Icing

Ingredients:

170g butter at room temp
170h cream cheese
1 cup icing sugar
2 tsn lemon juice (or 1 tsn vanilla essence depending on the cakes key ingredient).
1/8 cup desiccated coconut

Method:

Using an electric mixer beat the butter until creamy and pale.
Add the cream cheese and beat until smooth.
Add the remainder of the ingredients and beat.

Notes:

This is my favorite icing ever!

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Cream Cheese Icing

Posted on January 8, 2014 Posted in Icing .

cream cheese icing

Cream Cheese Icing is my favorite icing and usual default icing.

Ingredients:

2 cup icing sugar
200g cream cheese, softened.
90g butter, softened.
2 tsn lemon juice

Method:

With electric beaters beat all ingredients together until the icing is light and fluffy.

Notes:

I recommend you use normal cream cheese and not a light or low fat version. You can taste the difference.

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Red Wine Chocolate Cake

Posted on January 2, 2014 Posted in Cakes .

Red Wine Chocolate Cake

My last post featured the Chocolate Zucchini cake, which I would say was one of the most dense cakes I have ever made, however this cake I am about to introduce you to would be one of a few that is an exception.

Recently I have been drinking red wine a lot more than I usually do (I’m not really a wine or beer drinker, more a spirit with mixers). Based on this new palate I seem to have I thought it could be fun to experiment with red wine in a cake (many cakes have liqueur’s so this isn’t that different..is it)?

From my posts thus far you can start to get the notion that I am a MASSIVE chocolate fan, where again this cake demonstrates this. I promise the next posts will be chocolate free for a bit of a change 🙂

For this Red Wine Chocolate Cake you will need:

Ingredients:

1 + ¾ cups plain flour
¾ cocoa powder
2 tsn bicarbonate of soda
1 tsn baking powder
1 + ½ cups white sugar
2 eggs
1 cup milk
1 cup + 20ml red wine
½ cup butter
1 tsn vanilla essence

Method:

Preheat oven to 180c and line a 25cm spring form cake tin with baking paper.
Add all the dry ingredients into a bowl via a sieve and stir to combine.
Then add all the wet ingredients and beat with an electric beater on medium for 2 minutes until the batter is smooth.
Pour batter into the cake tin and bake for 40 minutes or until the skewer comes out clean.
Cool the cake for 5 minutes in the tin then transfer to a wire cooling rack.

Notes:

This cake is awesome and the red wine is not over powering at all.
If you want to make cupcakes instead pour batter into cupcake patties and cook for 15 minutes.
I decorated my cake with chocolate cream cheese frosting that had red wine also incorporated into it.

Like this recipe? I recommend you also check out my Chocolate Zucchini Cake. Additionally please do subscribe via RSS or email to get my new entries and more scrumptious recipes with reviews.