Pumpkin and vanilla bean cheesecake & Almond puff pastry tart

 This post is a little different from my usual, not only does it contain 2 fabulous recipes: a pumpkin vanilla bean cheesecake and a ridiculously light and puffy almond puff pastry tart (or if you're feeling fancy, it's called Galette des Rois) but I'm also going to be getting a little tech-savvy (wow, I sound a bit like my grandmother there!)

It took me a while to catch on, but I've developed a bit of an app addiction. Both my tablet and phone are littered with cooking and baking apps and there seems to be one for everything! From an app that can tell you if the fish you're eating is endangered or not (WWF SASSI), an extremely versatile baking converter (QuickBake Converter), one that grabs recipes off your favourite blogs and saves them as recipe cards (ChefTap) to an app that transforms your Instragrams and tweets of restaurant meals into food for disadvantaged and hungry children (Feedie). 

But my absolute favourite at the moment has got to be the Food and Home Entertaining magazine app which has hands-down got to be the most beautiful app on my homepage. Not only is it pretty but it's also pretty useful with videos and a cook mode which goes through the recipe step-by-step so you can follow it on your tablet while you bake. 

 

I tried the pumpkin and vanilla cheesecake recipe because the spiced pumpkin reminded me so much of how my grandmother used to prepare her pumpkin fritters. This cheesecake was lovely and dense and I'll definitely be adding it to my recipe collection.  

KATE'S TIP:  I served mine with a butterscotch sauce and toasted almonds (having a sweet tooth and all).

The puff pastry tart is also so yummy and quite impressive! So if you're baking this long weekend (that's a silly thing to say isn't it? Of course you are!) give either of them a try!

For the recipes for these beautiful bakes download the app here for free.

Mini hot cross bun doughnuts

Deep-fried hot cross buns, people. Easter treats just don't get any better than this! Wait, maybe they do, 'cos I have some fabulous Easter recipes coming up in the next week so hang onto your sweet tooth! 

Sometimes people ask me how I think of deep-frying a hot cross bun. And the answer is that I dream about food at night. Not in that 'swimming in melted chocolate' kind of way (although isn't that what we'd all like!) but more in a 'wake up in the middle of the night with a recipe idea' kind of way. Which makes me pretty food-obsessed but it's where I get my best ideas. Like deep-frying hot cross buns, or making millionaire shortbread into a cake or giving sweetie pies a red velvet twist. Let's be honest, it's a little weird (or a lot weird, depending on your weird-o-meter), but we all have our quirks! Mine just happens to result in yummy things!

Photograph by Gunther Schubert of Vorsprung Studio

Mini hot cross bun doughnuts

Makes 24

60g butter or margarine

420g cake flour

1 tsp salt

50ml sugar

1 tsp mixed spices

1 tsp ground cinnamon

1 tsp mixed peel (optional)

10g Instant dry yeast

1 egg, beaten

200ml warm water

½ cup raisins (or chocolate chips)

Crosses

¼ cup flour

1 tbsp oil

2 tbsp water

Oil, for deep-frying

Castor sugar, to dust

Rub the butter into the flour and mix in salt, sugar, spices and mixed peel, if using. Add the yeast and mix. Beat the egg and warm water together and add to the dough. Mix to form a soft dough then knead for 5-10 minutes until smooth and elastic.

Divide into 24 pieces and roll into balls. Place on a lightly floured surface, cover and allow to rise until doubled in size. Mix the flour, oil and water together and place in a piping bag. Pipe crosses onto the buns. Heat a large pot of oil to 180C and fry the doughnuts, in batches until golden and puffed. Remove from oil and immediately dust in castor sugar.

Chocolate peanut butter Milo cake

I think we all have a guilty food pleasure; whether it's putting odd things on toast or eating breakfast foods for dinner. Mine is sitting with a tin on my lap shovelling spoonfuls of Milo straight from the can into my mouth. Odd but oh so gooood. 

Milo is just heaven for me. That malty, milky flavour gets me every time. So as one does, I've created an ode to this drink-that-I-eat, and stuck it in a chocolate cake. Only The Best Chocolate Cake (recipe courtesy of the fabulous Alida Ryder). 

Did I mention it has peanut butter in it too? And espresso? It's like when the cake gods were handing out decadence, this cake stood in line twice. And then again. 

I must say that I did contemplate topping this cake with those crunchy malty whispers things, but then wondered if the poor cake would explode from chocolate sexiness... wait, who am I kidding? That would've been friggin' amazing! Now, go and make this cake so you can do what I was too weak to do!

Chocolate milo peanut butter cake

Based on Alida Ryder's recipe (simplydelicious.co.za)
Serves 10-12 (or just one Kate)

2 cups white sugar

450ml cake flour

200ml cocoa

1 tbsp baking powder

1 tbsp bicarbonate of soda

1 tsp salt

2 large eggs

1 cup buttermilk

1 tbsp vanilla extract

1 cup hot espresso

¼ cup Milo powder

¼ cup smooth peanut butter

115g butter, melted

ICING

½ cup smooth peanut butter

115g butter, softened

2 ½ cups icing sugar

100ml cocoa powder

100ml Milo powder, plus extra for sprinkling

1 tsp vanilla extract

150ml cream

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees celsius. Prepare 2 springform tins (24cm each). Mix all the dry ingredients together. Whisk the eggs, buttermilk and vanilla and add to dry ingredients. Combine coffee, Milo, peanut butter and butter and add to the mixture. Mix well. Divide between the cake tins and bake for 30-40 minutes or until a skewer comes out clean. Allow to cool for 10 minutes before inverting and allow to cool completely.

For the icing, cream the peanut butter and butter until light and fluffy. Add the rest of the ingredients and beat well. Ice the cake and decorate with Milo powder and chocolate curls, if desired. 

Chocolate cherry éclairs

I've been on the hunt for the perfect éclair recipe ever since the pretty French pastries started popping up everywhere! It seems they're the next big baking trend after the macaron mayhem we're all recovering from! I got the old-school choux pastry training where we taught that the perfect puff is achieved with a 1:1:1:1 ratio of water, butter, flour and eggs. As long as they were light, it didn't matter if they were a bit wonky-looking. But just like Pierre Hermé, who created that perfect-looking macaron that we all do absolutely anything to achieve, someone somewhere created a perfect-looking éclair and now we're all doomed to do the same.

In swoops Kate to save the day! After much research and testing, I give to you.. The Secret of The Perfect Eclair! 

Resting. 

So flipping obvious when you think about it! You've whipped up all that gluten and to get a perfect shape, you need to rest the pastry so it rises evenly. Makes sense right?!

A modern, sleek-looking éclair deserves an updated filling, so I've plugged them with boozy whipped cream, and placed some beautiful plump amarena cherries inside (just to-die-for!). Pile the éclairs on top of each other croquembouche-style, add some chocolate shavings and a drizzle of that gorgeous cherry syrup and I challenge ANYONE to resist this as a dessert showstopper! 

Black Forest éclairs

Makes 20

350ml water

150g butter, diced

pinch of salt

200g cake flour

4 eggs, beaten

FILLING

500ml cream, whipped

1 tsp cherry liqueur (optional)

1 tbsp icing sugar, sifted

1 cup preserved cherries, in syrup, drained and halved

TOPPING

200g dark chocolate, melted

Preheat oven to 200C.

Place the water, butter and salt in a saucepan and heat gently until melted. Then bring the mixture to the boil. As soon as the water boils, remove from the heat and add the cake flour in all at once. Beat together with a wooden spoon until the mixture comes away from the sides of the pan.

Place the mixture into a stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment (or you can do this b hand) and beat until smooth. Allow to cool slightly then beat in the eggs gradually until the mixture is thick and smooth. Cover and refrigerate for at least 1 hour.

Place the pastry into a piping bag fitted with a plain 2cm nozzle and pipe 10cm long eclairs onto a lined baking tray, making sure to leave enough space between to allow for rising.

Bake for 40-45 minutes or until the pastries are golden.

Remove from the oven and allow to cool completely.

Dip the tops in the melted chocolate and allow to set completely then cut the eclairs in half but not all the way through.

Make the filling by whisking the cream, liqueur and icing sugar together until stiff. Place in a piping bag and pipe the cream inside, arranging a few cherries inside each éclair as well.

Serve immediately.

Chocolate rum 'n raisin fudge

If I told you I've always loved the combo of rum 'n raisin, I'd be lying. It reminds me of the days my grandparents would come home from shopping and announce there was ice cream for dessert, only for me to later find out that it was rum 'n raisin flavour. The disappointment that tub of ice cream brought me was something I could only describe in a couple of days worth of therapy. It was a grown-up flavour that ruined a perfectly good scoop of ice cream, if you'd asked me!

But I was a pretty bright kid and with my insatiable sweet tooth, it didn't take me long to persuade my tastebuds to like it so I wouldn't have to skip dessert (I think the deadly sin 'glutton' is appropriate here!). Rum 'n raisin was reserved for the adults, it was sophisticated and I would feel rather classy (and clever) 'enjoying' it. So now, when I think of rum 'n raisin, I feel exactly that; classy. 

So here's a classy chocolate fudge recipe which feels like it should be stored in an antique tin. I'm pretty sure it would taste even better that way. 

Chocolate rum and raisin fudge

Makes 24

½ cup raisins

¼ cup rum (or 1 tsp rum essence in ¼ cup water)

400g dark chocolate, chopped

395g tin condensed milk

1 tsp vanilla extract

50g butter or margarine

Line a 20cm square cake tin with non-stick baking paper.

Combine the raisins and rum and allow to stand for at least 1 hour.

In a heavy-based saucepan, combine the chocolate, condensed milk,  vanilla and butter and stir over a low heat until melted.

Increase the heat and stir for a few minutes until the fudge is smooth and thick. Stir in the raisin mixture.

Pour into the lined cake tin and refrigerate until set.

Cut into squares and store in an airtight container.

Remember to hop on over to Facebook and like my page for recipes and sweet stuff. I also tweet about some cool things every now and then and Instagram my bakes (if I remember to snap them before I devour them!) 

Double mocha chunk cookies

Want to know the best part about these cookies? Except for the fact that they are deliciously dark, decadent with just the right ratio of crunch vs. gooeyness? It's the fact that they're Fairtrade. 

It's Fairtrade week which means we should all be focusing on looking out for that little (but very important) black logo and popping that product in our trolleys. Chocolate and coffee are two of my favourite things in the world and I use them in stacks of recipes (see my caramel latte loaf recipe here or the uber delicious tiramisu eclairs recipe here) and they also happen to both be Fairtrade products. To find out more on what Fairtrade means you can check out their website: www.fairtradelabel.org.za but basically, it's all about looking after the farmers and the people that work so hard to harvest and grow those coffee and cocoa beans! And I like the sound of that. 

Something I also like is the idea that I can dig into a warm, melty batch of these cookies, and know that somehow, I'm contributing to making the world a better place. 

Now, go forth and bake up a batch so you can too!

Double mocha chunk cookies
Makes 20

1 cup cake flour

1/2 cup cocoa powder

½ tsp bicarbonate of soda

½ tsp salt

250g Fairtrade dark or milk chocolate, chopped

125g butter

1 tbsp Fairtrade ground coffee

1 1/2 cups sugar

2 eggs

1t vanilla extract

Sieve flour, cocoa, bicarbonate of soda and salt together. Melt half the chocolate with the butter and ground coffee in a saucepan over a low heat and allow to cool. Beat melted chocolate mixture, sugar, eggs and vanilla together and gradually add flour mixture. Stir in the rest of the chopped chocolate. Use an ice cream scoop to drop lumps of dough onto lined baking sheets. Bake at 180C for 12 minutes until cookies are flat and cracked but slightly moist inside. Allow to cool then store in an airtight container.

The lovely people at Eat Out have nominated me for Best Local Food Blog in SA so if you like my recipes please head on over to their page and vote! 

Strawberry meringue crunch cake with whipped cream

This beautiful showstopper of a cake is for those times when you need to impress but simply don't have the skill or inclination to fuss about with a piping bag and frosting. The cake is what our American friends call a 'dump' cake, because everything gets dumped into a bowl and mixed. I love no washing up, don't you? And then comes the genius part, the meringue is baked on top of the cake. At the same time. So essentially the 'frosting' is already done! How cool is that?! Topped with lashings of softly-whipped cream and some beautiful summer berries - it's like a pavlova and vanilla cake had a love child. 

And if you're keen for a chocolate version ( I know right?!) here is an even more decadent Chocolate meringue crunch cake - and it's gluten-free too!

Strawberry meringue crunch cake

Serves 8-10

Cake

2 cups cake flour

3 tsp baking powder

1 ½ cups white sugar

½ cup oil

½ cup milk

1 tsp vanilla

3 eggs

pinch of salt

zest of 1 lemon

Topping

4 egg whites

1 cup castor sugar

Whipped cream and strawberries, to garnish

Preheat the oven to 180C. 

Mix all the cake ingredients together and beat for 1 minute. Pour into a greased and lined 25cm springform cake tin.

Make the topping by whisking the egg whites until soft peak stage with a electric mixer, then gradually add the Selati Castor snow into the whites to form a stiff, glossy white meringue. Spoon the meringue on top of the swirled cake batter then bake in the preheated oven for 45-50 minutes or  until the meringue is crunchy and a skewer inserted into the middle of the cake comes out clean.

Allow to cool completely before unmoulding. Top the cake with whipped cream and strawberries. 

Remember to hop on over to Facebook and like my page for recipes and sweet stuff. I also tweet about some cool things every now and then and Instagram my bakes (if I remember to snap them before I devour them!)