Thursday, August 20, 2015

Nutella Bundt with Nutella Glaze #BundtBakers

Nutella Bundt with Nutella Glaze #BundtBakers Fudgy and soft with a subtle nuttiness, this Nutella Bundt cake with Amaretto and ground almonds, topped with slightly warmed Nutella, is a brownie-like confection that every chocolate or Nutella fan will love.
Fudgy and soft with a subtle nuttiness, this Nutella Bundt cake with Amaretto and ground almonds, topped with slightly warmed Nutella, is a brownie-like confection that every chocolate or Nutella fan will love.

When they were growing up and still at home, I would occasionally find an empty Nutella jar in one of my daughter’s bedrooms - most often the elder, if truth be told - scraped clean of sticky hazelnut chocolate and abandoned under the bed. They spread it on toast, rolled it up in crepes and, as just mentioned, ate it with a spoon. They come by Nutella love naturally, a tale you can read about here, along with a recipe for my Nutella Swirl Muffins. When they went off to university in Providence, no stores near them seemed to carry the creamy delight of our young lives. One year I even sent them jars ordered on Amazon as a special treat, in celebration World Nutella Day. When they were coming home for Christmas last year, I bought a very large jar of Nutella in anticipation (750g or 1.7 lbs by weight) and stashed it in the cupboard. It was opened, a little Nutella was eaten and then, the holidays over, they left. That big jar has been languishing there for eight months now, mocking me each time I opened the cupboard door, threatening to turn rancid, as old things with oil will ever do. I began to scour the internet for recipes with Nutella and finally settled on this one from Nigella Lawson’s site.

I had to adapt it slightly for lack of all the ingredients, but this is essentially Nigella’s cake, fudgy, soft and brownie-like in texture. The additional Nutella warmed and poured on top is mine though. I had to get through that jar, folks!

Without further ado, here’s my contribution to this month’s Bundt Bakers Sprinkles theme, hosted by Terri of Love and Confections. August is Terri’s birthday month and what better way to celebrate than with Bundts with sprinkles. Hope your birthday was the best, Terri!

Ingredients
For the cake:
6 large eggs
1/2 cup or 120g unsalted butter, softened
1 1/2 cups or 400g Nutella or whatever hazelnut chocolate spread you have on hand
1 tablespoon Amaretto liqueur
1 cup (spooned in, not tightly packed) or 100g ground almonds
3 1/2 oz or 100g dark chocolate
1 pinch salt

For the glaze:
1/2 cup or 135g Nutella

To decorate:
Some sprinkles, of course, to fit our theme

Method
Preheat the oven to 350°F or 180°C and prepare your Bundt pan by buttering and flouring it, or use the baking spray that already has flour in it. That's what I usually do.

Carefully separate your eggs into whites and yolks. Melt the chocolate for your batter in a microwaveable bowl using a few short zaps and stirring well in between. Set aside to cool.

In a large mixing bowl, use your electric beaters or stand mixer to beat the butter and Nutella together and then add the Amaretto, egg yolks and ground almonds. Beat well.



Fold in the cooled, melted chocolate.



In a large bowl, whisk the egg whites with the pinch of salt until soft peaks form.

Add a large dollop of the fluffy whites into the chocolate bowl and stir with a spatula or spoon to loosen the chocolate batter.

Now add the rest of the egg whites, a dollop at a time, folding gently to combine the whites with the chocolate batter with each addition. You are trying to keep it light so this is not the time to mix vigorously. Just gently fold.



Spoon your batter into the prepared Bundt pan, making sure to fill all the curves and crevices. I used my Nordic Ware heart pan (<Amazon affiliate link) with a 10-cup capacity.


Bake on the center rack of your preheated oven for about 40-50 minutes or until it is all puffed up and springs back when touched.

It was even higher when I first took it out but it didn't seem to appreciate my big oven mitt thumb on the tip of the heart. 

It starts to deflate when you take it out of the oven, but don’t be alarmed. This is just concentrating the fudgy-ness inside. Cool for 10 minutes then turn the cake out of the Bundt pan onto a wire cooling rack.



Allow to cool completely before attempting to decorate.

When the cake is cool, warm the Nutella gently in a microwaveable vessel until it can just pour. If it gets too hot and runny, let it cool until it is just pourable but won’t run down the sides of your cake too quickly. Scoop a little up with a spoon and drizzle it back into the vessel to test the consistency.

Pour the warmed Nutella onto your cake and decorate with the sprinkles of your choice, or perhaps some chopped nuts.



Enjoy!



Here are this month's "Sprinkles" Bundts:



BundtBakers


#BundtBakers is a group of Bundt loving bakers who get together once a month to bake Bundts with a common ingredient or theme. You can see all our of lovely Bundts by following our Pinterest board. We take turns hosting each month and choosing the theme/ingredient.

Updated links for all of our past events and more information about BundtBakers, can be found on our home page.




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Posted by at 4:41:00 AM 0 comments
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Tuesday, August 18, 2015

Gingham Picnic Cookies #CreativeCookieExchange

Perfect for a picnic-themed party or for taking on a picnic, these festive vanilla sugar cookies are decorated with royal icing and coconut and are actually quite easy to make, though the process takes time. My step-by-step photos show you how.

Back in the years of small children and birthday parties, we lived in places that either didn’t understand children’s birthday cakes as Disney-enthralled children imagine them or there simply weren't bakeries that could produce cakes like we wanted. So my girlfriends and I always made the cakes. Esmeralda from the Hunchback of Notre Dame, 101 Dalmatians, The Little Mermaid, a standup Barbie doll in a ball gown, just to name a few. Whatever my girls wanted, they got. One year our elder daughter wanted a picnic themed party so I baked a rectangular cake and decorated it green, like grass and topped the whole thing with a picnic scene, complete with gingham picnic blanket and tiny picnic fare. Instead of actually writing this post, I just spent way too much time looking for a photo of that cake and sadly managed to turn up one where we were only starting to decorate.

That's the birthday girl supervising and my chief partner in crime for all things crafty,
my friend Jacky, wielding the ruler. See my decorating tool box? This was serious business, folks!


This was in the days before digital cameras and I must confess that my system of organizing photos lacked, shall we say, a system. Or organization. Can anybody relate?

Nonetheless, that cake was the inspiration for these cookies because our theme for this month’s Creative Cookie Exchange is Pack for a Picnic Cookies. Now possibly The Spiced Life doyenne, Laura, our illustrious leader and chooser of themes, meant only cookies you could take on a picnic and in that these would also qualify. But picnic cookies meant a walk down memory lane for me with gingham and grass. And ants. Possibly the random caterpillar. Bugs aside, it felt good to go there.

As I mention in the first paragraph, these are not hard to make, but they do take time. Most of it is hands-off chilling in the fridge time though so don’t let that scare you off.

Ingredients
For the cookie dough:
1 cup or 227g unsalted butter, softened
1/2 cup or 100g sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 1/2 cups or 315g flour
Red food coloring gel. Or your preferred color for gingham.

N.B. I use Wilton’s no taste red gel. <Amazon affiliate link. Liquid colorings add too much moisture to the dough so it’s best to avoid them. The amount depends on how dark you’d like your dough. Do keep in mind that the dough will darken as it chills.

For the grass border:
Royal icing (see recipe below)
1 cup or 85g sweetened flake coconut
Green food coloring (I used Wilton’s leaf green gel. <affiliate link) The amount depends on how dark you’d like your grass.

For the royal icing:
1 1/2 cups or 190g icing sugar
1 egg white or 2 1/4 teaspoons pasteurized egg whites or egg white substitute
1/2 teaspoon lemon juice
Optional: green food coloring (Coloring means it hides better under the grass.)

For ants or caterpillars:
Semi-sweet chocolate
Mini M&Ms

Method
Cream the butter and sugar with your electric mixer until fluffy and pale yellow. Add the vanilla extract and beat again.

Sift your flour and salt into the bowl gradually, beating well between additions and scraping down the sides of the bowl with a rubber spatula occasionally.



Turn half of the dough out onto a clean work surface and knead a couple of minutes. Shape it into a rough rectangle and wrap it in cling film and refrigerate.

Add red or other food coloring to the other half of the dough still in your mixer. Mix on low until the dough is a nice homogeneous color. If the color is to your liking, form the dough into a rough rectangle, wrap it in cling film and refrigerate it.

The two doughs before the first chill. 


Once the dough is firm enough to hold its shape well, use a folded plastic bag and a rolling pin to shape it into two more precise rectangles, tucking each into a corner of each bag and folding the sides over to keep the dough in when you roll it flat and even.

After the first chill and shaped into straighter rectangles. You can see how much darker that red has gotten.


Chill again for at least one hour.

Remove the rectangles of dough from the bags and trim any uneven edges. Cut each into strips as wide as the rectangles are thick. The goal is very long rectangular blocks as wide as they are tall. For you teachers and parents out there, think Cuisenaire rods.



On top of a piece of cling film, start assembling your gingham cookies by alternating white blocks with red blocks and building upwards to create a 3x3 block or 4x4 block pattern. Lightly press the blocks together as you stack them. I was able to make one with a 4x4 block pattern and one with a 3x3 block pattern and only had one long block left over.


This step is important. See how loosely the pieces are attached in the photo above, despite being pressed into place as each was added? We are going to fix that! Wrap the stacked blocks tightly in cling film then lightly tap them on your work surface so the blocks are pushed uniformly together, creating a square “log” of sorts. Do this on every side and then do the ends as well. Refrigerate for another 30 minutes or until you are ready to bake the cookies.

Meanwhile, you can make the royal icing and color the coconut.

To make the royal icing, use the whisk attachment of your stand mixer to beat the egg white and lemon juice until just a little foamy.

Sift in the powdered sugar and salt gradually. Continue mixing until the sugar is completely incorporated. Add some green food coloring at this point, if using, and mix well.

Keep it covered with cling film until ready to use or the royal icing will harden up.





To color the coconut, add it to a Ziploc bag along with a good 1/4 or 1/2 teaspoon of gel coloring. Shake and knead the bag until the coloring is more or less uniformly dispersed in the coconut. This will keep in the freezer for ages if you end up not using it all.

When you are ready to bake the cookies, preheat your oven to 350°F or 180°C and line a baking sheet with a silicone mat or baking parchment.

Unwrap one of your gingham “logs” and cut off the uneven ends. Now cut the logs into slices as wide as each square on the end.


Bake in your preheated oven for about 1-12 minutes or until the edges are just starting to brown.



Remove from the oven and cool on a wire rack. Continue until all the cookies are baked or freeze the balance of the dough, rolled tightly in cling film.



When the cookies are completely cool, fill a small plate with your colored coconut and pipe or spread royal icing on one side of each cookie.

Dip that side in the green coconut immediately and press down just a little so the coconut sticks.



And voilà! Now do the other sides.


Place back on your cooled silicone mat or baking parchment and leave till the royal icing sets. If you are in a hot climate like I am, you can pop these in the refrigerator to speed it up.



To make the ants, microwave some chocolate until it's just melted but not hot. It doesn’t take but a few squares for a few ants so use your judgment. Use a piping bag with a small tip to dot the cookies with ant-like shapes. Use dots of chocolate to hold down mini M&Ms and to make caterpillars with tiny legs.


Enjoy!

This first batch was from the 4x4 cookies. Sadly, I didn't take any photos of the 3x3. 

Here's our wonderful list of 14 picnic cookies this month:

Creative Cookie Exchange 2014
If you are a blogger and want to join in the fun, contact Laura at thespicedlife AT gmail DOT com and she will get you added to our Facebook group, where we discuss our cookies and share links.

You can also just use us as a great resource for cookie recipes--be sure to check out our Pinterest Board and our monthly posts (you can find all of them at The Spiced Life). You will be able to find them the first Tuesday after the 15th of each month!









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Posted by at 6:09:00 AM 0 comments
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Sunday, August 16, 2015

Mother’s Ruin (Gin) Punch


Originally created by master bartender Philip Ward, Mother’s Ruin Punch is a refreshingly light tasting punch made from gin, grapefruit and lemon juice, vermouth and sparkling wine. My version serves one.

Lately, I’ve been rediscovering the deliciousness of grapefruit juice in cocktails. My libation of choice when I was in Texas this summer was Deep Eddy’s Ruby Red Vodka with a capful of Campari, topped up with club soda. While in the south of France visiting friends in July, their “house” cocktail was a concoction of grapefruit cordial with sparkling rosé wine, served over ice. And now, Mother’s Ruin Punch. It’s supposed to be mixed up in greater quantities and served, as the name implies, as punch from a punch bowl but is easily adapted to serve one. For the original recipe, check out this link on Food and Wine.

This week the Sunday Supper theme is Back to School and everyone is bringing you recipes for great lunch box fare or quick dishes that are perfect for a busy school night. I couldn’t resist going in another direction to bring you a delightful cocktail that is as celebratory as it is refreshingly delicious. For many parents, it’s been a long hot summer, full of keeping children busy and barbecues and campouts and sleepovers and late night snacks and summer book assignments and ball games and lazy mornings. But you made it through! Tuck the children into bed and treat yourself to a special cocktail.

Do you have any special rituals for the first day of school? My baby graduated from university in May so this is the first year since 1995 that I won’t be sending anyone off to school. It’s bittersweet, friends, bittersweet.

Ingredients for one cocktail
Several cubes ice
1 tablespoon simple syrup (I used simple syrup made from demerara sugar.)
1 1/2 oz or 45ml gin
1 1/2 oz or 45ml fresh grapefruit juice, plus thinly sliced grapefruit, for garnish
3/4 oz or 22.5ml fresh lemon juice
3/4 oz or 22.5ml sweet vermouth
About 1/2 cup or 120ml chilled sparkling wine or Champagne

Method
Cut a couple of thin slices off of your grapefruit for garnish and then juice the rest of the fruit.

Tuck one of the grapefruit slices in a tall glass then add in several cubes of ice.

Pour in the simple syrup, grapefruit juice, lemon juice, vermouth and gin. Give it a good stir, adding another cube or two of ice and a second grapefruit slice.



Top up with sparkling wine.


Enjoy!

Many thanks to our hosts this week, DB from Crazy Foodie Stunts and Caroline from Caroline’s Cooking. We hope you find lots of recipes that make Back to School more enjoyable and fun!

Getting Started On School Days
Ideas for the Lunchbox
After School Snacks and Beverages
School Night Suppers
Sweets to End the Day




Posted by at 1:34:00 AM 0 comments
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