Black Cherry Sauce

Ingredients: Black Cherries, lemon juice, vanilla essence, water, sugar

Preparation:  Place a couple of large handfuls of blackcherris in a sauce pan. Add a table spoon of water and teaspoon of lemon juice and a table spoon of sugar. Make sure the pan is hot but avoid boiling. Add a drop of vanilla esscence  The cherries will taker about 7-9 minutes to become a smooth and thick paste. Add only a little cornstarch slurry to thicken and provide texture. Taste, but be warned the cherry sauce will be very hot as it will have sugar melted into to. Adjust with either water and lemon juice, or sugar, to get the appropiate sweet and tart taste as desired.

Photo by R Khalil on Pexels.com

Cinammon and Carrot Muffin

This recipe takes you through how to make a basic muffin. The ingredients can be changed to add different flavours.

Serving 6

Ingredients
75g Anchor (or other spreadable butter)
125g of grated carrots (top and tailed)
100g of castor sugar
100g plain flour
¾ tsp cinnamon
1 tsp baking powder
1 large beaten egg
125g cranberries or sultanas
25g walnuts

Preparation
Preheat oven to 180c Fan
Next, mix the grated carrots, anchor and sugar together in a large bowl. Sift in the plain flour and add the baking powder and cinnamon and start to stir. Add the egg and the nuts and berry and continue to stir to make a sticky dough. If the mixture looks too wet, add a little more flour.
Empty out the mixture into 6 muffin/cupcake greaseproof cup and place on a muffin/cupcake baking tray. Cook at 180 c Fan for 20 minutes. Take out of the oven and place on a cooling rack.

 

Flapjacks

I am not a massive fan of sweet things or making cakes etc. I decided to make these flapjacks as I thought they could be a quick way to grab breakfast on the go.

These flapjacks came out hard, but I would have preferred a chewier jack, so next time I will add more golden syrup and cook at a lower temperature.

Ingredients: 125g porridge oats, 65g butter, 65g soft brown sugar, 3 tablespoons of golden syrup, raisins and dried cranberries.

Preparation: Mix the butter, sugar and syrup in a pan until melted. Pour over the oats and mix evenly. Add in a handful of dried fruit. Place the mixture into a shallow small square tin covered in greaseproof paper.
Pad down the mix with the back of the spoon and make sure the oats are spread out evenly about a 1cm thick. Then back at around 180( fan assisted) for 15 minutes.

When you take the flapjacks out, score a line into them, so it will be easy to break up when they are cooled.

Florentines

Firstly, I need to say that these did work out quite right. There was a little too chocolate (especially when it is the very rich and dark 70% coca from the Ivory Coast) and I over baked the Florentine, so they were too hard, although edible. This is the pains of having an electric fan assisted oven which cooks fast and very high. Next time I will lower the temperature and cook for a shorter period.

Ingredients; butter, soft brown sugar, golden syrup, plain flour, glace cherries, candied peel, flaked almonds, chopped walnuts, good quality dark chocolate

Preparation; melt slowly 50g of butter and add 50g of sugar and 50g of golden syrup. Once all melted add the following; 50g flour, 25g glace cherries, 25g flaked almonds, 25g chopped walnuts, 50g candied orange and lemon peel. Stir together.

Then on a grease proof paper dollop out a small amount. This will make around 18 – 20 floretines. You must make sure there is space between each one as they will expand. So layer around 9 per tray. Then place in a hot oven for 8 minutes at around 180 or 160 degrees if you have a fan assisted oven

Take them out and allow to cool.

Then melt around a bar of 100g dark chocolate and spoon on to the bottom and leave to cool. When the chocolate starts to cool and is soft enough, make some wavy lines with a fork. Them allow to cool properly.

Please note always test one gently, as using syrup and candied peel can go very hard and you don’t want to damage your teeth. They should be chewy but not rock hard.

Black forest meringue (Black cherry sauce)

A sweet black cherry dessert with dark chocolate sauce with amaretto.

Ingredients: Ripe black cherries, 2 tablespoons of sugar, 2 tablespoons of water, 2 teaspoons of corn starch, lemon pre-made meringue and dark chocolate sauce (see recipe here)

Preparation:

Using a small/moderate punnet of black cherries remove the stones. Place them in a none stick sauce pan and heat on a medium heat.  Next add the sugar and water,  and cook until the cherries are starting to break down, which will take about 5 mins or so.

Add the cornstarch and lemon to thicken and keep the sauce on a low to medium heat for another 5-10 mins. Optional, add a splash amaretto at this stage.

You can either keep the sauce with the cherry pieces now or blend with a blender to make a smoother jam like sauce.

Serving:

Spoon a couple of spoonfuls of the sauce into each meringue and the drizzle with chocolate sauce. Best served with couple of mint leaves and fresh raspberry or two.

Ice cream cake

I don’t make sweet things or even desserts very often but I wanted to challenge Jane’s fridge cake. So I made the following ice cream cake, which is rather lovely but very rich and goes well with sweet raspberries.

Ingredients: 300ml thick cream, pre made meringues, rum or amoretto, dark chocolate and raspberries

Preparation.

Whisk around 2/3 of the cream up by hand to make a thicker cream. Avoid going to far and making the cream going to solid. The crush a couple of meringue by hand intothe cream and stir. Take out a chilled dark chocolate ( 65% above cocoa) and splinter some into the mixture. Finally add a short of rum or amoretto.

Spoon out the mixture into a container which has cling film in it. This means you can tip out the cream easily for cutting later. The place int he freezer for 8 hours or over night.

For the rich chocolate sauce, melt a few squares of dark chocolate add a spoon and a bit to the melting chocolate and keep stirring. Do not use a high heat as you do not want to cook the sauce but heat it, so it makes a rich sauce. The add a small splash of rum or amoretto.

To serve, slice the ice cream and arrange a few sweet raspberries and drizzle the chocolate sauce on top. I forgot to take a photo on the day I made it, so this one is from the next day and I did not have sauce to make a drizzle.