Blueberry Cheesecake Brownies

Doesn’t the name alone sound indulgent?

 

I realised that despite launching The Brownie Blog a few months ago I haven’t made brownies – or posted anything on that blog – in ages. I had some blueberries left over from another recipe (these chocolate blueberry cakes) and I also had some of the blueberry flavour icing that I’d made up from a packet from Sugar & Crumbs as I’d made a little too much. I wondered if I could incorporate the two into brownies and remembered seeing some nice brownie recipes in my Hummingbird Bakery book. They had a recipe for raspberry cheesecake brownies so I decided to borrow that idea, using blueberries instead, but rather than blending the blueberries into cream to go on top, I used the leftover blueberry icing.
 

These are pretty easy to make – I knocked them up in about an hour around 10pm one evening!

 

You can find the recipe in the Hummingbird Bakery book or online on GoodtoKnow (the website for various women’s magazines including Essentials), so I won’t repeat it all here. I will instead describe what I did.

 

To start, make the brownie base. The Hummingbird recipe uses icing sugar instead of caster sugar which gave the brownies a different texture; they were nice (especially when they were a day or so old) but if I made this again I would probably use a more traditional brownie recipe for the base.

 

 

Preheat oven to 170C. Melt 200g chocolate (the recipe calls for plain, but I used milk chocolate) – I did it in the microwave. Cream 200g butter or margarine with 250g icing sugar then add 3 eggs and 110g plain flour. Stir in the melted chocolate.

 

Pour into a square baking tray lined with greaseproof paper.

 

Next make the cheesecake layer – mix 400g cream cheese (not the low fat kind), 150g icing sugar, dash of vanilla flavouring and two eggs until you have a smooth mixture. Pour over the top of the brownie layer and then bake in the oven. I found mine took a lot longer than the recipe called for so I’d advise baking for about 40 minutes then checking it to see if the cheesecake is still wobbly or the brownie still raw. You don’t want it to go brown on top but it does need to be cooked through – I think mine took about an hour.

 

Leave to cool; if you want the fruit and cream topping see the recipe instructions (link as above); I spread the remainder of my Sugar & Crumbs blueberry icing on the top of the cheesecake layer and topped with my leftover blueberries.

 

This sliced easily into squares – I cut it into fairly small pieces since each piece was quite deep. I took them into work and they were very popular!

I'm sharing these with the Vegetable Palette Challenge, hosted by Shaheen at Allotment 2 Kitchen; the idea is to use fruit or veg in the chosen colour each month and this month she has chosen blue and purple.

 

Vegan Meringue and Pavlova (yes it exists!)

Can you make vegan meringue? Yes you can! I bet you didn’t know that – and I bet you will be surprised by the secret ingredient.

I had a barbecue recently and served up this meringue and cream, and waved it under the nose of my vegan friend… not to tease her, but to tell her that I’d made it for her! The meringue doesn’t contain egg and the cream doesn’t contain cream!

I am ridiculously excited at having found out about this and have been spreading the word; each time I tell someone the main ingredient in the vegan meringue- and the fact that it looks and tastes great – they are amazed.

No, not chickpeas… but the water that is in the tin. It’s called aquafaba and you can read the fascinating story of how people have been looking for egg replacers which work in meringue. It seems to be a relatively recent discovery.

The meringue is really easy to make – just the same as a regular meringue, though the aquafaba did seem to need a bit more whisking than egg whites, so I was very glad of my Kitchenaid stand mixer.

You need:

For the meringue:

liquid from a 400g tin of chickpeas

1 cup caster sugar

1 tbsp arrowroot powder (available in supermarkets in sachets from Dr. Oetker)

1 tsp vanilla flavouring

1 tsp white wine vinegar or cider vinegar

For the cream:

400ml tin coconut milk

Icing sugar to taste

Fresh berries to decorate (optional)

Preheat oven to 140C. Drain the liquid from the tin of chickpeas into a bowl or the bowl of your stand mixer and whisk, starting off at low speed and gradually increasing the speed to high, for several minutes until the liquid foams up and then forms soft peaks, much like whisking egg whites.

Add the sugar and arrowroot powder and mix on medium speed and then high until you have stiff glossy peaks.

Add the vanilla and vinegar and whisk briefly to combine.

Place a piece of greaseproof paper on a flat baking tray and spoon out the ‘meringue’ into a circular shape. Turn the oven down to 120C and bake for 2 – 2.5 hours. Turn the oven off and leave the meringue in the oven to fully cool overnight if you can. At the same time, place the can of coconut milk in the fridge overnight.

The next day, carefully peel the greaseproof paper off the meringue – rather than the other way around – and place on a plate to serve. Mine did break up a little unfortunately!

To make the cream, open the tin of coconut milk – the contents will have separated into a thin water-like liquid and a thick, almost solid, top layer. The tins will often separate in this way even in the cupboard and you can easily mix the two layers together to add to a curry and so on – but for this recipe, you want the solid layer. Carefully spoon it out into a bowl and add icing sugar to taste (add about 3 tbsp initially then taste it). Whisk until you have the consistency of double cream.

Spoon on top of the pavlova and top with fresh berries - I used strawberries and blueberries. And there you have it  - a vegan pavlova!

I'm sending this to Tea Time Treats as they have a theme of summer holiday baking; the strawberries and blueberries make this quite summery and this is a good dessert to have after a BBQ as you can make the meringue in advance then assemble it very quickly. The challenge is hosted by Karen at Lavender and Lovage and Jane at The Hedgecombers,

I'm also sharing it with the Vegetable Palette challenge, hosted by Shaheen at Allotment 2 Kitchen; the theme is 'more glorious reds' and she accepts fruits as well as veg.

In addition I'm sending this to the Food Year Linkup hosted by Charlottes Lively Kitchen. This would be lovely if you were holding a Breast Cancer Care's Strawberry Tea fundraiser.

 

Strawberry and White Chocolate Blondies

I had some strawberries that needed using up and it was that time of the month again where I was due to spend a whole day with the design agency I work with and I've got into the habit of taking cake.

I wanted something that would be easy to transport and thought that blondies - a bit like brownies, but without chocolate - would work really well as a way of incorporating the strawberries.

 

I found a recipe on the Good Food website for strawberry and macademia blondies but changed them to leave out the nuts. I also ran out of light muscovado sugar so used a mixture of half caster sugar, half demerera! They turned out well but I took my eye off the clock and overbaked them a bit which was a shame.

You need:
125g butter
200g white chocolate
2 eggs
50g caster sugar
50g brown sugar
130g plain flour
120g strawberries

Preheat oven to 180C. Line a 22cm square baking tin with greaseproof paper. Or if you have a brownie pan like I do, use that - spray with Cake Release.

Melt the butter and white chocolate in a small pan or in the microwave.

In a separate bowl cream the eggs and sugar then fold in the flour and the chocolate and butter mixture.




Chop the strawberries and fold in to the mixture. Pour into the tin and bake for 30 minutes.

 Leave to cool in the tin. Turn out of the brownie pan or if you have used a larger pan, turn out and cut into squares.

I'm sending this to Tea Time Treats as they have a theme of summer holiday baking; the strawberries make this quite summery and also this is an easy bake to make with the kids while they are off from school. The challenge is hosted by Karen at Lavender and Lovage and Jane at The Hedgecombers,

I'm also sharing it with the Vegetable Palette challenge, hosted by Shaheen at Allotment 2 Kitchen; the theme is 'more glorious reds' and she accepts fruits as well as veg.

 
These travel well so you could take them on a picnic; for that reason I'm sending these to Ness at JibberJabberUK for her challenge Love Cake.

In addition I'm sending this to the Food Year Linkup hosted by Charlottes Lively Kitchen. There are plenty of things happening this month and time of year that these blondies would be good for, but one stands out in particular, Breast Cancer Care's Strawberry Tea fundraiser.



Finally I'm sending this to We Should Cocoa, hosted by Choclette at Tin and Thyme; anything goes this month as long as it uses chocolate.

Pimms Cream Cake

Pimm's cake

Wimbledon is on, the new royal baby Princess Charlotte is being christened, the sun is shining, the barbecue is fired up and even the Formula 1 Grand Prix is taking place in the UK this weekend - it's a true celebration of all things British.

And where would we be at a British celebration without a glass (or three) of Pimm's and lemonade?

I've just discovered from Wikipedia (where else) that Pimm's has been around since 1823 and is named after the son of a farmer from Kent who owned an oyster bar in London. He served a gin-based drink made with a secret mixture of herbs and liqueurs as an aid to digestion, serving it in a small cup known as "no.1" - and that's why the full name of the drink we all love today is Pimm's No. 1 Cup.

We were recently sent a fruit basket at work containing among other things a large punnet of strawberries. I had some cream at home (long story - I was asked to make my malteser cake by a colleague so bought the ingredients though I warned him in this weather the chocolate would melt; he then agreed and cancelled the order but I had already bought the cream and chocolate!). Most people would think of strawberries and cream, but I don't particularly like strawberries and neither does my boyfriend (I know, we're weird). I then remembered that I had some cucumber in the fridge from another recipe - and I don't like cucumber much either. But my mind had started whirring as I thought of the mint on my windowsill and that all I was missing was an orange for a nice Pimm's!

I knew that the fruit wouldn't really keep until we next had people over and there wasn't much point making a pitcher of Pimm's with all the fruit just for me so the logical conclusion was a cake! I can't believe I haven't made a Pimm's cake before :-)

Pimms Cream Cake - an original recipe by Caroline Makes

175g butter, softened
175g caster sugar
175g self-raising flour
3 eggs
8 tbsp. Pimm's
8 tbsp. lemonade
About 450ml double cream
To decorate - strawberries, orange, cucumber, mint leaves

This quantity makes two thin layers - with the rich cream in the middle this was plenty but you might want to scale up the quantities to make three thin layers, or double the ingredients and make two thick layers.

Preheat oven to 175C.

Cream the butter and sugar in a large bowl and beat in the eggs and flour.

Add the Pimm's and lemonade and mix until you have a pourable batter.

Grease two 8-inch cake tins and pour half the batter into each tin. Bake in the oven for around 25 minutes until cooked. Test the middle with a skewer if you are not sure.

When the cake has cooled, whip the cream until stiff and use half to fill the cake and half to spread on top. Decorate the top with chopped cucumber, orange, strawberries and fresh mint leaves.

The cake has a hint of Pimm's and was really light; the cream was a better choice than buttercream. I was tempted to add a dash of Pimm's to the cream but wasn't sure how much this would have altered the consistency so if you do try that, let me know how it turns out!

 

I'm using this for Formula 1 Foods, the blog challenge I started to celebrate each location for the F1 Grand Prix, as this weekend is the UK.

I'm also sending it to the Food Year Linkup, hosted by Charlotte's Lively Kitchen.

This is the perfect cake to enjoy at a barbecue so I am sending it to Tea Time Treats, hosted by Jane at the Hedgecombers and Karen at Lavender and Lovage.

The theme for Love Cake, hosted by Ness at JibberJabber UK, is cakes from around the world, and this is very much a British cake.

The theme for Vegetable Palette is glorious reds and Shaheen at Allotment 2 Kitchen said she will accept fruits as well so since this cake uses strawberries I'm sending it in.

There's also a new challenge called Cake Club hosted by Kerry Cooks so this is my first entry.

Butternut Squash, Fennel and Goat's Cheese Quiche

I made this quiche for our new year's day buffet party and it uses winter vegetables, but they are ones you can also find at this time of year - at least, I certainly did the other day. As a quiche is a light dish that can be eaten cold, while it is great for buffets that you need to prepare ahead, it is also really good for picnics and al fresco lunches.

 

I based my quiche this Linda Barker recipe on Good to Know; I used my giant pink pie dish which I love but don't have reason to use very often. You can make your own pastry but I used ready-made as the recipe suggested, as I had a lot of food to prepare for the buffet!

 

Roll it out and line the pie dish and then fill with baking beans - this weighs the pastry down while you bake it blind.

  

I had a lovely selection of vegetables to use for this including some fennel, butternut squash (one of my favourite vegetables), red onion and spring onion.

You do have to pre-cook the vegetables so chop them up, lay out in a roasting tray and drizzle with a little bit of oil. Bake at 180C for about 20 minutes and allow to cool a little, then sprinkle over the baked pastry crust. I then sliced up some goat's cheese and laid it on the top.

Beat 3 eggs with 300ml milk and season and carefully pour into the quiche making sure it doesn't spill over the edges. Bake in the oven at 180C for 25-30 minutes.

The top is a lovely golden brown when cooked; I don't have a picture of the whole quiche but you can see a lot of the ingredients inside in this slice. I thought the quiche was lovely - the butternut squash and fennel went really well together and the goat's cheese gave a really nice depth of flavour.

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 this month is Q.

 

 

The theme for this month's Pastry Challenge, hosted by Jen's Food, is picnics, and this quiche is perfect for a picnic.

 

Butternut squash is one of my favourite vegetables - it's so versatile, as it can be roasted, mashed, used in soups, and goes well with salads as well as hot meals. I also like the fact that it's a really robust vegetable and quite difficult to overcook, and the colour always adds something nice to a plate. So I am sharing this with Vegetable Palette, hosted by Shaheen at Allotment 2 Kitchen, as her theme this month is 'your favourite vegetable'.

 

 

 

 

This also fits in with the Simply Eggcellent challenge hosted by Dom at Belleau Kitchen, where eggs take centre stage, as his theme this month is savoury dishes.