Crème brûlée with raspberries

This dish is my favourite dessert ever. I am though not sure this is the correct recipe. Mom needs some recipe though and I promised her I would post it on the blog for her to use. Do not count with any picture though and especially do not count with a recipe warranty (if you ever have that on this blog to be honest...).

Ingredients
5 egg yolks
3/4dl sugar
1 vanilla powder
3dl cream (38-40% fat)
1dl milk
Cane sugar or regular sugar
2dl raspberries
2 tablespoons sugar

Instructions
Whip egg yolks and sugar. Add the content of the vanilla flower, cream and milk. Put it in the fridge overnight.
On the next day, turn on the oven to 100 degrees Celsius.
Put the mixture in suitable pot and have it in the oven for about 1 hour.
When you take it out, it probably won't be "hard" but it will get its texture when cooling down.

In the meantime cover the raspberries with the sugar. The sugar will melt and that is when the raspberry mixture is ready to use.

Before serving, powder the crème brûlée with sugar and then use a burner until the sugar melts and you get a crispy surface. If you do not have a burner, put it in the oven on the top floor with grill functionality turned on. Keep continuously an eye on it not to get in trouble. I repeat: Pay very much attention as it can easily burn.

Serve with the raspberries.

Panna cotta

Panna cotta is definitively one of my favorite desserts. You only need very small portions and you are happy at the end. But I would not complain if I had to deal with two small portions (or three for that matter) to be honest.

Gingerbread pannacotta with Dr. Oetker's vegegel 25/12-2012

I have here two alternative recipes: one very good with regular gelatin and one less good and very unlike panna cotta but still edible based on Dr. Oetker's vegegel.

Flavours

Gingerbread taste 25/12-2012

Saffron taste:
- 1 bag saffron (0,5gr)
Gingerbread taste
- 0,5 teaspoon dry ginger powder
- 1,5 teaspoon ground cinnamon
- optionally 0,5 teaspoons ground cloves
Coffee
- 2 teaspoons ground coffee
Vanilla
- 1 vanilla flower to be cooked in together with the milk and scraped at the end before adding the gelatine

Original recipe

This recipe is very simple and quick to prepare even though it does take time to settle in so prepare it at least 4 hours in advance. But you can prepare it some day before also. Furthermore, in order to avoid it being too hard when eating it, it is highly recommended to put it at room temperature at least half an hour before eating it.

Ingredients for the original  recipe
5dl cream (35-40% fat)
2,5 sheets gelatine
0,5dl sugar
Flavours (see below)

Instructions for the original recipe
Put gelatine sheets in cold water.
Cook cream and sugar. Add gelatine and stir until melted.
Add flavours.
I actually think it becomes quite neat if you put the mixture into small glasses and eat it from there. It is, of course, far more traditional if you instead use a number of small cocottes, wet it with water and pour the mixture into 4 of those. Then whenever ready to serve, you will have to turn the cocottes up and down and serve it on a plate with some decoration (e.g. Lingonberries, raspberry or whatever). For the Vanilla flavoured panna cotta, it is highly recommended to also serve some kind of sauce, e.g. raspberry sauce.

Going veggie

This thing does not give any optimal results and whatever you try, there is no way to get the texture nor the taste of a traditional panna cotta. But the stuff becomes edible anyway, so if you are putting a lot of importance into not eating animals or your guests do, then you might either choose another type of dessert (which to be honest would be my first choice given the results) or try it this way.

Saffron pannacotta with Dr. Oetker's vegegel 25/12-2012

 
Ingredients for the vegetable one
4dl cream
1 bag Dr. Oetker's vegegel
0,4dl sugar
Flavours









Instructions for the veggie recipe
The instructions here are quite unsure.... To be honest I haven't got the "solution" to this problem yet.
But well, I can tell you what I did and what the result was.

Mix 1dl of cream with the vegegel. Cook 3dl cream with the sugar. Add the flavours. Mix the whole together. This is indeed a tricky process as the mixture kind of "thickens up" while working with it, which is suboptimal. The mixture is very prone to "chunking up" and becoming unsmooth.

It is also necessary to work quickly when putting the mixture into small glasses.

I tried to also use a hand blender to mix it up and "break" the chunks. The taste becomes somewhat more "smooth". I actually loved the texture, but it did differ from traditional panna cotta. But on the other side, also the non-mixed one did differ. So... basically, whatever you do, you will never get a real panna cotta out of this vegetarian stuff.

Inverted cake pops

I have been looking at all those recipes of cake pops and been rather impressed by the idea of making a dry cake much softer with cream cheese.
Plus I have been very impressed by the idea that they are often covered by white chocolate, which I love.
So what a dear combination. Had to try them.

What a better occasion to do so than for the traditional yearly pre-Christmas party with the same group of friends?

Inverted cakepops forgotten in the fridge... 25/12-2012

Thought I should bake the cake in advance, but the whole day yesterday turned out to be more of a pure chaos than a preparation day... Started the night in the ER, slept the whole morning until one o'clock, ate and stressed to the pharmacy to buy necessary stuff for my puffy eyes, ran to the Christmas concert and concluded with a nice and cosy Indian style dinner with my dear friend! Or no... Not really... Concluded it with a shopping tour at the local ICA to buy stuff for my cake pops and meatballs.

Baking started far too late anyway this morning. Thanks to the whether Gods, it was -16 degrees Celsius outside so the cooling down went quick: I simply dumped my cake on the balcony in the snow and it cooled down all right... :O) And so did the small cake pop balls... :) Quick! Happy no chick'ns were around just then....

Inverted cakepops in action 9th of December 2012

Matilda took this picture as I had no time to do so myself before leaving the house. So now my blog can be proud to present a pro picture.... :O)

Just as a comment: I am not sure about the concept. It tasted more like a "chewed cake" somehow. No, not so sure it was as I expected it. Plus it did not get to be a real cake pop but rather an inverted cake pop as the stick was over it rather than where it should have been. And I think the chocolate I used was far too dark. Probably it would have tasted better if I had had some milk chocolate or white chocolate instead...

Ingredients

2 eggs
2 dl sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
3 dl flour
65 gr butter
 1 dl milk

200gr cream cheese

200gr dark chocolate (but I rather recommend white or milk chocolate instead)
Some decorating white (or if using white take dark chocolate for decoration)

Instructions
Turn on the oven at 175 degrees Celsius (same temperature with and without ventilation). Butter up the pan and also put some flour at the bottom. I personally forgot but it was hell to get it out of pan later.
Mix the eggs and sugar to a fluffy mix. Mix together the flour with vanilla sugar and baking powder. Add the dry ingredients into the fluffy mix and add the very soft (or even melted butter) as well as the milk into the mixture.
Bake the mixture for about 40 minutes with the cake at the bottom of the oven.

Cool down the cake.

Mix the cake with cream cheese. I even added some cream cheese frosting, just to add some additional taste (it sounded very boring without any such sugary mixture...)

Do small balls out of the dough. And chill for a while.

Then melt the chocolate and make sure that you drop into it all balls.

If you asked the pros, they would say stick the pin somewhere so the guys can stay. But that I did not bother. I put them on a pan and was happy with it... Decoration was done with some toothpicks for the first batch as I had no time to find the beaks for the suitable tool. But then after I came home I found the beak and used it for further cake pops.

What to say about the guys? Not sure. Probably something needs to be done next time to give them more taste. Still not sure it is a good idea to just mix the guys up that way. Mh... I'll have to think about it a couple of times before deciding how to approach this recipe again! Anyway, I did not enjoy them this time.... :O(

Hey, baking is a bitch these days.... :O(