Chocolate Truffles without using double cream

I received some Christmas cake flavoured liquor from Marks & Spencer as an early Christmas present and wanted to think of a few things to do with it, apart from drink it of course! I thought it would make a nice flavouring for chocolate truffles but didn't have any double cream, which has always been a part of recipes for chocolate truffles I've made before. But you can make chocolate truffles without cream. I found a recipe online but can't remember where I found it now, even though it was only a few days ago!

They are pretty simple to make at any rate:
Melt 85g chocolate in the microwave and stir in 2 tsp of your chosen liqueur. Stir in the yolk of one egg, followed by 1 tbsp. butter and 1 tbsp. sifted icing sugar.

You will find the mixture stiffens pretty quickly. It can easily be shaped into truffles - I placed mine into mini sweet cases and put them in the fridge overnight. They don't set quite as solid as truffles made with cream, which is why I'd recommend putting them in little paper or foil cases, but they aren't too soft - the perfect consistency to eat in my opinion!

You can definitely taste the liquor - which is very nice by the way, I'm not sure I would have recognised it as Christmas cake flavour if it didn't say so on the bottle, but it is lovely! These are perfect for enjoying after dinner with a coffee, or at any time really! I wouldn't recommend packaging them up to give as an edible gift though as they are a little too soft for that and probably need to be kept in the fridge.

I'm sending these to Baking with Spirit, hosted by Janine at Cake of the Week; this month she is asking for recipes using a Christmassy alcohol, and you can't get more festive than Christmas cake liqueur!

I'm also sending this to Treat Petite, hosted by Kat aka The Baking Explorer and Stuart at Cakeyboi.

Festive Eggnog Cheesecake

 

At Thanksgiving I saw these boxes of eggnog in Tesco (below). I've never tried eggnog but remember Penny from the Big Bang Theory drinking it straight from the carton ("It stopped being eggnog like a half hour ago. It's pretty much just rum now"). I thought it would be great to use in a dessert so just after Thanksgiving I went back to the shop, only to find none on the shelves.

 

I asked someone and he went on a mission into the stock room to track some down, leaving me standing in the world foods aisle for what felt like ten minutes - but that was handy as I spotted an ingredient beginning with X I could use for Alphabakes! When the Tesco worker finally came back with a box of eggnog, he told me it cost £6 - which I thought was pretty steep, but I hadn't realised it was imported from America, and given the effort he had put in to get me one, I felt bad just putting it back on the shelf so I decided to buy it!

 

 

I thought that both the flavour and texture of the eggnog would work really well in a cheesecake, and I love cheesecake at any time. I found this recipe on Taste of Home which I followed, but substituted digestive biscuits for Graham crackers (which are pretty much the UK equivalent). I also left out the rum extract as I thought a child might be eating this (I served it as part of a pre-Christmas meal with friends), even though you can get non-alcoholic rum flavouring, as I wasn't sure that she would like the taste. 

 

I blitzed the biscuit crumbs in a food processor, mixed with the melted butter and pressed into the bottom of a loose-bottomed cake tin. I baked it in the oven and allowed to cool as instructed.

 

Mixing the cream cheese, sugar, flour, eggs, eggnog and nutmeg:

Poured into the cake tin. It only just fit without over-spilling!

I baked the cheesecake in a water bath in the oven as the recipe described. Several cracks appeared on the top of the cheesecake but I think it still looked OK.

It came out of the tin perfectly and has a really good ratio of filling to crust.

This was an incredibly creamy cheesecake and seemed lighter than baked ones I have made before - it was really delicious. I didn't think I could particularly taste the eggnog but would have said instead it had a strong vanilla flavour, but my boyfriend said he could taste the eggnog. I think this would be a great dessert around Christmas time or Thanksgiving.

 

 

 

Mini Sticky Toffee Pudding with Irish Whiskey Sauce

These mini sticky toffee puddings are delicious though the sauce is very sweet!

I got the recipe from the Good Food Channel; I was looking for Irish recipes for a blog challenge as it was St Patrick's day this month. I made half the quantity of the recipe which made three - obviously I was a bit more generous with my portions as the whole recipe is supposed to serve 8, but mine really weren't that big.

To make three, you need:

75g butter

extra for greasing or Cake Release or similar

85g ready-to-eat dates (without stones)

150ml water

1/2 tsp bicarb of soda

85g brown sugar

85g self-raising flour

1 egg

For the sauce:

150g caster sugar

150ml water

125ml cream

40g butter

2 tbsp Irish whiskey

Preheat oven to 180C and grease three ramekins or similar small dishes. Put the dates in a pan with 150ml water and bring to the boil. Simmer for 5 minutes until softened then stir in the bicarb of soda; the mixture will foam up. Remove from the heat and leave to cool for a few minutes, then blend in a liquidiser so you have a thick puree.

 In a bowl, cream the marg and sugar and add the egg. Fold in the flour.

Finally stir in the date puree.

 Spoon the mixture into the ramekins and bake in the oven for 25-30 minutes. You can either turn these out onto a wire rack then serve them in a bowl, or serve them as they come in the ramekins.

I found making the sauce quite tricky and I'm not sure what I did wrong. I took my eye off the first batch for just a minute and it burnt - and when I made it again, I couldn't get the sugar to caramelise. But these are the instructions in the recipe: put the sugar and water in a pan, bring to the boil then simmer for 15 minutes.

Stir in the cream, butter and whiskey and cook gently for another 8-10 minutes until thick. I used Bushmills Irish whiskey.

The sauce did turn lightly golden and thicken but it had the consistency of sugar rather than a creamy sauce, I'm not sure what I did wrong!

Pour the sauce over the puddings and serve. These were very good though extremely sweet - but my boyfriend liked them enough to have two!

I'm sending this to Baking with Spirit, hosted by Janine at Cake of the Week, as this month she has chosen dark spirits including whisky.

These puddings are also ideal for Treat Petite, hosted by Stuart at Cakeyboi and guest hosted this month by the Baking Explorer; the theme this time is Ireland.

Bellini Bundt

 This cake came into being for many reasons. Firstly, I got three Nordicware bundt tins for Christmas - I suggested to my boyfriend that I would like one, and picked out three that I liked, expecting that he might get me one of them. He did get me one - and his mum got me the second one, and his brother and sister in law got me the third! So I wanted to make a cake to try out the first tin. I also had some leftover champagne in the fridge from new year's eve that I wanted to use up, and thought I would see if I could find a cake recipe to use champagne - and I knew that would fit with the Baking with Spirit challenge as the theme this month is frugal. When I found a recipe and realised it used yogurt, I was pleased as that meant I could also enter it in Alphabakes. And finally another reason I wanted to make a cake - I've got a new job. I am a writer for a City firm and I'm, well, going to be a writer for another City firm - but it's a promotion and should be very different to what I'm doing now. I'm known for my cakes at work and realised that if I only had a month's notice left, I wanted to leave people with the memory of some really nice cakes. I also thought offering my colleagues a slice of cake when I broke the news might be nice - one girl actually did say she was so shocked she needed a cup of tea, and a slice of cake!

So this bellini bundt - featuring champagne and peaches, like the cocktail - is the perfect cake to celebrate my new job. Also, a cake including fruit seems somehow a little bit healthier, which is also a good thing in January!

I found a recipe on this website on FoodLustPeopleLove.com via Foodie.com though I adapted it as I found it easier to use tinned peaches rather than fresh (purely down to when I was able to go shopping).

You need:

375g plain flour

225g butter

450g caster sugar

4 eggs

1 tsp baking powder

400g tin of peaches, drained

150g peach yogurt

150ml champagne

75g icing sugar

Preheat oven to 180C then cream the butter and the sugar.

Add the eggs one at a time, mixing after each one.

Add the flour and baking powder and mix.

I couldn't find peach yogurt and instead used 0% fat mango, peach and passion fruit yogurt, which tasted very good.

I had two small tins of peaches which I drained.

Add the yogurt and peaches to the cake mixture and mix with a hand mixer so the peaches are broken up but not pureed.

Here's my leftover champagne, which kept its fizz thanks to a bottle stopper. Add 125ml champagne to the cake mixture and gently mix in.

This is the Nordicware bundt tin I received for Christmas. It has a lovely swirly pattern that I knew would look great on a cake. I sprayed it thoroughly with Dr. Oetker cake release, which worked perfectly.

Fill the bundt tin with the cake mixture and bake for about an hour until you can insert a skewer and it comes out clean.

Turn out and leave to cool. I was impressed by how easily the cake came out of the tin and how well the pattern showed up.

To make the glaze, mix a splash of champagne with the icing sugar and mix to a paste, and drizzle over the cake. You probably want to put it on a piece of greaseproof paper that you can throw away afterwards!

I love the shape of this cake and my work colleagues, who had never seen a cake tin like this before, thought it was amazing (one thought I had actually carved the cake into that shape!).

 Here you can see it from the side.

This cake was absolutely delicious - one person said it was the best I've ever made. The peach flavour was subtle but definitely there, and the yogurt made the cake really light and moist. This is definitely a winner!

I'm sending this to Alphabakes, the blog challenge I co-host with Ros of The More Than Occasional Baker, as the letter she has chosen is Y - in this case for yogurt.

 I'm sending this to Turquoise Lemons for the No Waste Food challenge as this uses up leftover champagne.

 As already mentioned, the theme for this month's Baking with Spirit, hosted by Janine at Cake of the Week, is frugal. This recipe uses up leftover champagne so while it's not cheap in the first place, it's better than letting the bubbly go to waste - and it doesn't cost anything extra if you had bought the champagne already for a party!

I am also sending this to Tea Time Treats, hosted by,Jane at the Hedgecombers and Karen of Lavender and Lovage, This month they are asking for any recipe that uses eggs; this cake uses four.

Slimming World Tiramisu

To many people, January is a time of diets and trying to lose weight, but that doesn't mean you can't still enjoy nice food. This recipe is from Slimming World's Love Desserts book and is low fat; each serving has 3 syns on all Slimming World plans.

To serve two, you need:

1 egg yolk

2 tbsp sweetener

a few drops of vanilla essence

200g quark

6 sponge fingers

1 tsp instant coffee dissolved in 2 tbsp water

2 tbsp brandy or other spirit - I used cointreau

50g fat free natural fromage frais

1/2 tsp cocoa powder

Whisk the egg yolk with 1 tbsp sweetener then beat in the vanilla essence and 2 tbsp quark.

Gradually whisk in the remaining quark until you have a smooth cream

 Make up the coffee in the hot water and mix with the alcohol in a wide shallow bowl. Soak the sponge fingers for a minute or two until softened.

Spoon half the quark mixture into serving glasses, add the sponge fingers (broken into pieces), then another layer of quark and another layer of sponge fingers.

Top with the fromage frais and sprinkle over the cocoa powder. Chill until read to eat.

I am sending this to Four Seasons Food, the blog challenge hosted by Louisa at Eat Your Veg and Anneli at Delicieux. Their theme this month is 'virtuous'; some people may insist that no desserts are really that virtuous but this is a great low fat version of a usually very calorific dessert.

I used Cointreau in this recipe as I already had an open bottle in the cupboard, rather than buying brandy as the recipe called for, and it tasted really nice - I think this qualifies me for the "frugal" theme for Baking with Spirit! Though this dessert isn't actually baked so I will have to see what  Janine at Cake of the Week says!

Update: I'm sending this to Chris at Cooking Around the World as the month the challenge has reached Italy.