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Tag Archives: Yotam Ottalenghi

Ottolenghi Strawberry and Vanilla Mini-Cakes

Posted on July 5, 2018 by The quirk and the cool

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65A6C6F5-BF69-48B7-819F-A414FCDB6DC0I love little cakes, and I’m always keen to find recipes for something other than cupcakes.

Yotam Ottolenghi in his lovely book Sweet, written with another great cook Helen Goh, has a number of recipes for all kinds of little cakes. Many of the cakes are made with ground almonds, making them moist and delicious.

These Strawberry and Vanilla Mini-Cakes are very fragrant with fresh strawberries and vanilla. The cakes are quite dense and would be great on their own. The strawberry icing however, adds piquancy, but be careful as it’s quite runny!

Here’s the recipe from Sweet. Ottolenghi suggests making the cakes in a pop-over or giant muffin tin, giving you 12, or if you make them in regular muffin tins you will end up with 18.

I decorated the cakes with freeze dried strawberry powder instead of freeze dried whole berries.

Ingredients 

1 cup plus 1 1/2 tbsp/ 250 g unsalted butter, at room temperature

1 1/4 cups/250 g granulated sugar

1 tsp vanilla extract

scraped seeds of 1/2 vanilla pod

4 large free-range eggs, lightly beaten

1 cup/120 g self-rising flour, plus extra for dusting

1/4 tsp salt

1 1/3 cups/140 g almond meal

7 oz/200 g fresh strawberries, hulled and cut into 1/3 inch/1-cm dice

Strawberry Icing

2 oz/55 g fresh strawberries, hulled and roughly chopped

2 1/2 cups/300 g confectioners’ sugar

1 tbsp light corn syrup

scraped seeds of  1/4 vanilla pod

6 whole strawberries (or 9 if using a regular muffin pan) cut in half lengthwise, or 2 tbsp freeze-dried chopped strawberries, to garnish

Method

Preheat the oven to 400°F/200°C. Grease and flour the molds of your chosen pans.

Place the butter, sugar, vanilla extract and vanilla seeds in the bowl of an electric mixer with the paddle attachment in place. Beat on medium speed until light, then add the eggs, a little at a time, scraping down the sides of the bowl a few times as you go. (Adding the eggs gradually should prevent the mix from splitting, but don’t worry too much if it does, it might look a bit curdled, but this will not affect the final result.)

Continue to beat until fully combined. Sift the flour and salt into a bowl, then stir in the almond meat. Turn the speed of the mixer to medium-low, then add the dry ingredients in three batches and finally fold in the diced strawberries.

Spoon the mixture into the prepared molds – it should come about three-quarters of the way up the sides (about two-thirds in a regular muffin pan). Bake for about 22 minutes (about 20 minutes in a regular muffin pan), rotating the pan halfway  through, until a skewer inserted into the middle of one of the cakes comes out clean.

Remove from the oven and allow to sit for 15-20 minutes before easing the cakes out of the molds. Transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.

To make the strawberry icing, place all the icing ingredients in a food processor and process together until smooth.

Drizzle the tops of the upside-down cakes with the icing, allowing it to drip down the sides. If desired, garnish with half a strawberry on each cake, cut side facing up, or a sprinkle of dried strawberries.

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Posted in Cakes, Dessert, Small Baked Things, Sweet Food and tagged , , , . Bookmark the permalink.

Fig and Raspberry Frangipane Tart

Posted on March 10, 2018 by The quirk and the cool

It’s fig season in Sydney, late summer, and the figs are plentiful and cheap.  I love the look of  green figs, with their lustrous skins and bright pink centres.

I have a confession to make. I think figs look really pretty, but I’m not always convinced that they taste as delicious as they look. I think recipes can be a little bit hit and miss.

The figs in this recipe do work very well. The recipe is tweaked from an Ottolenghi recipe for little fig tartlets. I love the idea of the frangipane in the tartlets, with beautiful baked figs, so I decided I would make one large tart, filled with frangipane, with slices of figs placed on top. I added raspberries as they are superb at the moment. I think the large tart idea worked well, it looked nice and tasted delicious!

Ottolenghi’s original recipe for Fig and Pistachio Frangipane Tartlets is in his beautiful book Sweet, and the link to the recipe is here.

Here is my Fig and Raspberry Frangipane Tart recipe:

Ingredients

For the sweet shortcrust pastry (you will probably only need 3/4 of the pastry)
300g plain flour, plus extra for dusting
90g icing sugar
¼ tsp salt
200g unsalted butter, fridge-cold, cut into cubes
Finely grated zest of 1 lemon
1 large free range egg yolk
20ml water

For the frangipane

125g unsalted butter, at room temperature
125g caster sugar
Finely grated zest of 1 lemon
2 large free range eggs, lightly beaten
35g ground almonds
35g plain flour
⅛ tsp salt
1 tbsp brandy
4 large ripe figs, quartered (choose the best quarters – you will need about 12)
12-15 raspberries

Method

To make the pastry, put the flour, icing sugar and salt into the bowl of a food processor. Add the butter and lemon zest, then pulse a few times, until the mixture is the consistency of fresh breadcrumbs. Whisk the egg yolk and water, then add to the mix. Process once more, just until the dough comes together, then tip on to a lightly floured work surface. Knead the dough into a ball, wrap loosely in cling wrap and press gently into a flattish disc. The dough will be very soft, so keep it in the fridge for at least an hour.

Pre-heat the oven to 170 degrees C. Brush a tart tin with melted butter and dust with flour. I used a rectangular tart tin but you could use a circular tin (use a medium diameter rather than a big one).

If the dough has been in the fridge for more than a few hours, let it rest at room temperature for up to 30 minutes before rolling. Put the dough between 2 pieces of  cling wrap or baking paper and place onto a large board. Tap all over with a rolling pin to soften slightly, then roll out to a 2-3mm thick rectangle to fit your tin (or circle to fit a circular tin). Gently ease the pastry into the tin, pressing it down to fill the tin, making sure the pastry comes up the sides. Refrigerate the tin for at least an hour.

Place a piece of baking paper over the pastry and fill with a layer of rice or baking beans, and blind-bake for 25-30 minutes, until the pastry is light golden brown around the edges. Remove the paper and rice or beans, then leave the pastry to cool in the tin.

For the frangipane, put the butter, sugar and lemon zest into a food processor. Blitz on a medium speed until well blended and light but not too fluffy, then gradually add the beaten eggs. Don’t worry if the mix curdles a bit at this stage, it will come together again later. Add the ground almonds, flour and salt. Pulse until combined, then add the brandy.

Turn up the oven to 180 degrees C. Using a tablespoon, fill the baked tart shell with the frangipane. Place a quarter-fig cut side up in rows in the tart, and press down gently, so they  slightly embedded in the mixture. Place the raspberries in between the rows. (Arrange the figs and raspberries in whatever way you like for a round tart).

Bake for about 20 minutes, until the frangipane starts to brown at the edges but the middle is still slightly soft. Leave to cool in the tin for 10 minutes, then ease the tart out of the tin and place on a wire rack to cool. Serve at room temperature with a spoonful of thick cream or Greek yoghurt.

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Posted in Dessert, Pies, Tarts and Quiches, Sweet Food and tagged , , . Bookmark the permalink.

Ottolenghi’s Rosemary, Olive Oil and Orange Cake

Posted on April 15, 2017 by The quirk and the cool

 

This is a lovely cake from the wonderful Middle Eastern inspired food impresario Yotam Ottolenghi.

It’s fragrant with rosemary inside the cake, and the orange and lemon icing gives the cake a great citrus tang.

Although there are few steps to the recipe, it’s actually quite easy. You could leave out crystallising the rosemary sprigs to save time, but the sprigs are a nice aromatic touch plus they look great on the cake!

You could bake the cake in an ordinary tin, but if you have a bundt tin, make it in that, so the icing can drip down the centre of the cake.

I made the recipe with unusually, no tweaks of my own, so here is Yotam’s recipe largely unaltered.

Ingredients

FOR THE CRYSTALLIZED ROSEMARY:
10 small rosemary sprigs, no more than 3 cms each in size (see note)
1 egg white, lightly whisked
2 teaspoons caster sugar
FOR THE CAKE:
About 30 grams unsalted butter, softened, for greasing the tin
240 grams plain flour plus more to flour the tin
160 mls extra-virgin olive oil
120 grams caster sugar
1 tablespoon finely grated orange zest (from about 1 1/2 oranges)
1 ½ tablespoons/7 grams packed finely chopped rosemary leaves
2 large free-range eggs
130 grams sour cream
2 teaspoons baking powder
¼ teaspoon salt
FOR THE ORANGE ICING:
1 ½ tablespoons freshly squeezed orange juice
2 ½ teaspoons freshly squeezed lemon juice
150 grams sifted icing sugar

Method

At least six hours before you plan to ice the cake, prepare the crystallised rosemary: Brush rosemary on all sides with a little of the egg white and then dip it in the sugar, so the needles are lightly coated on all sides. Set aside on a wire rack to dry. Repeat with remaining rosemary. *Note: You want small, decorative clusters of needles. The simplest way to do this is to pull the smaller, bottom-most clumps off of large sprigs, or trim off the very tops of several sprigs.

Make the cake: Heat oven to 160 degree C. Generously grease a 9 inch/23 cm Bundt tin with half the butter and refrigerate for 10 minutes. Butter again, generously, and then flour it, tapping away the excess.

Put olive oil, superfine sugar, orange zest and chopped rosemary leaves in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the whisk attachment. Whisk on medium speed until combined, then add eggs, one at a time. Whisk for another minute, until thick, then add sour cream and mix until combined on low speed. Scrape down the sides of the bowl and the whisk.

Sift flour, baking powder and salt together into a small bowl. Add the dry ingredients to the olive oil mixture and mix until combined. Increase speed to high and whisk for 1 minute.

Scrape batter into the Bundt pan and smooth the top with a small spatula. Bake for 30 to 35 minutes, or until cake is cooked and a skewer inserted into the middle comes out clean.

Remove from oven and let cool for 10 minutes before inverting onto a serving plate. (You may want to trim the cake at this stage, if it rises unevenly, to allow it to sit flat on the plate.)

Prepare the icing: In a small bowl, whisk together orange juice, lemon juice and confectioners’ sugar until smooth. When the cake has cooled, drizzle icing on top, allowing it to drip down the sides of the cake, then top with the crystallized rosemary and serve.

PS Spot the Quirky Cat!

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