Autumnal Apple Pumpkin Crumble Cake

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It’s October now and I couldn’t decide if this post should therefore feature apples or pumpkins… until I realized that together they would make a perfect autumn cake!

The markets are full with huge varieties of both at the moment, which is a lovely sight – pink, red and green apples next to yellow, orange and green pumpkins – I got a few of each.

For this cake I chose some crisp, juicy apples and a green Hokkaido pumpkin, the very mild/sweet pumpkin variety. The pumpkin gets grated into the dough and the apples on top are covered under an almond crumble mix, for an extra crunch – delish!

  • 100g almonds
  • 100g wholemeal flour combined with 150g plain flour (you can just go with plain flour but I like the extra nuttiness that a bit of wholemeal flour adds)
  • 150g sugar
  • 1tsp cinnamon
  • 200g unsalted butter
  • 2 tbsp honey
  • 750g apples
  • 2 tbsp lemon juice
  • 250g Hokkaido pumpkin
  • 1 sachet of vanilla sugar
  • 1 pinch of salt
  • 2 eggs
  • 75g cornflour
  • ½ sachet of OR 8g baking powder
  • 1 tsp icing sugar
  • a round spring cake tin (26cm diameter)

Chop the almonds into rough chunks. Combine those with 125g flour, 50g sugar and the cinnamon. In the microwave melt 75g butter and the honey, then pour it over the almond-flour mix and crumble everything together.

Core, peel and cut the apples in wedges by quartering them and, and then cutting the quarters once more so you have 8 wedges per apple. Mix the apple wedges with the lemon juice and set aside.

Cut and peel the pumpkin – this may sound easier than it is, as the pumpkin skin can be extremely tough but bear with it! Weigh out 125g of the pumpkin flesh and grate it.

With an electric whisk mix the 125g margarine, 100g sugar, vanilla sugar and salt until smooth and creamy. Add one egg, followed by 25g cornflour, whisk again, then add the other egg.

In a separate bowl mix 125g flour, 50g cornflour and baking powder. Add this, along with the grated pumpkin to the egg mix.

Preheat the oven to 175 degrees Celsius and grease and flour your cake tin.

Spread the cake mix in it and top with the apple wedges. Now sprinkle the crumble over and bake for around 45 minutes, before cooling the cake on a wire rack.

Dust with icing sugar when serving and, if you want some more calories and have this cake in the afternoon rather than the morning, have a dollop of whipped cream with it.

Individual Chai Spiced Baked Cheesecakes with Figs and Oranges

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cheesecakepots6So far it’s been a glorious autumn – some even call it an Indian summer, as we continue to have sunny days here in London. There’s already quite a lot of leaves on the ground and I can’t wait for a day of apple picking, which I might get around to doing this weekend.

In the meantime I am busying myself with figs, which are also in abundance right now. Just make sure you buy them ripe, as they won’t ripen after picking.

I love eating them as they are as much as oven roasted with some honey drizzled over but for today’s receipe I am using them to top of orange and chai infused cheesecakes!

The flavour mix of figs, oranges and all the spices from a chai tea is very complex and satisfying yet not as difficult to make as you might think…

The little individual jamjar cakes make a nice addition to a brunch buffet (something very popular in Germany).

For 6 -8 portions you’ll need:

  • 6-8  (depending on their size) ovenproof jamjars or similar glasses
  • an ovenproof dish, that will hold all the jamjars and has sides reaching up to at least half the size of them
  • 150g oat biscuits
  • 100ml orange juice
  • 4 teabags of Chai Tea
  • 200g cream cheese
  • 250g quark
  • 100g sour cream
  • 2 eggs
  • 100g sugar
  • 20g flour
  • 2 oranges
  • 4 figs

Preheat the oven to 170 degrees.

In a small pot, add the orange juice to 100ml of water and bring to the boil. Take off the heat, add the tea bags and let them steep for 10 minutes, then take the tea bags out.

Put a kettle on and while you wait for the water to boil, place the biscuits into a plastic bag and crush them to small crumbs with a rolling pin. Divide the biscuit crumbs between the jamjars and try to press them down a little (I say try, as I struggled to do this, since there is no butter to help keeping it all together…but you might have better luck than me).

Beat the cream cheese, quark, sour cream and eggs with a whisk until well combined. Add the sugar in two batches, followed by the flour and again, mix until well combined.

Continue to slowly whisk the mix while you pour in the now infused orange juice, which give you a very runny batter. Carefully pour this on top of the breadcrumbs and set the jars into the baking dish.

Place the dish on the lowest shelf in the oven and pour the hot water from the kettle in, so it goes around the glasses, and just about reaches the top of the baking dish.

Bake for 30-40 minutes.

Carefully take the dish out of the oven and then place the jars on a rack to cool down.

When the jars have cooled down, get on with the fruit topping, by cutting the figs into 4-6 wedges and filleting the oranges. Assemble a few pieces of each on top of the cakes and serve!

 

Grilled Apricots with Ricotta

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We’re definitely at the very end of summer now but here is one last summery post, featuring those sweet, end of the summer apricots that you should hopefully still be able to get hold of right now.

These ricotta topped, grilled apricots are so delicious and, at the same time, so easy to make. The result looks like it took some effort and fancy ingredients when in reality, it takes about 10 minutes and all you need to go with the apricots is ricotta & pistachios (assuming you have sugar in the house, which I can be fairly sure, if you are reading this blog, you probably do).

It’s a great sweet brunch starter that can be nicely followed by savoury egg dish, such as eggs royal which I enjoyed this morning… it’s also a great dessert for a dinner party!

For up to 6 people, you’ll need:

  • 4 tbsps sugar
  • 8 apricots
  • 160g ricotta (this is about a teaspoon for each of the 16 apricot halves)
  • a good handful pistachios

Put the sugar in a shallow bowl, cut the apricots in half and dip each half into the sugar and place them cut side up on a baking tray (you might want to put some baking parchment underneath as it’s quite a sticky affair thanks to the juices).

Fire up your grill – which for you American readers would be the broiler – and place the tray under the flames until the apricots are juicy and caramelized. The timing for this depends on your oven. Under my grill, it took less than 10 minutes but I had to rotate the tray a little half way through, to ensure all apricots were ready.

Let them cool slightly, while you chop the pistachios until you have small nips.

Top each apricot half with a teaspoon of ricotta, sprinkle the green pistachios over and serve immediately.

Coconut Pancakes with Mango

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I’m back in New York right now but I have one more post from my time in Berlin – funnily enough it is featuring American pancakes.

I made these for my sister’s boyfriend’s birthday breakfast when we were all in Berlin this summer. We liked the idea of some fresh mango with our breakfast pancakes and adding shredded coconut to the pancake dough makes the whole dish sort of ‘tropical’ which was quite suitable to the temperatures we had this summer!  To complete the dish, I made a thick caramel sauce, which was balanced out with some crème fraiche.

The receipe is enough for 4 portions if you’re portion consists of 3 small pancakes. However, to get those 12 pancakes out of the dough, you have to use a strict measurement of 1 tablespoon only per pancake, when it comes to baking them. This means they are very small (for American pancakes at least) but once you assemble them with the fruit, caramel and crème fraiche each portion is actually a filling enough brunch dish.

You’ll need:

  • 5 tablespoons of shredded coconut
  • 50g PLUS 2 tbsp of sugar
  • 100g cream (single or whipping works best)
  • 150g crème fraiche
  • 3 tbsp unsalted butter, melted (blitzed in the microwave for about 10 seconds)
  • 150g flour
  • 1 tsp baking powder
  • 1 pack of vanilla sugar
  • 1 pinch of salt
  • 1 egg
  • 150ml buttermilk
  • 1 mango
  • 2 tsp runny honey
  • 2 tbsp oil

Start by toasting 2 tbsp of the shredded coconut in a dry pan over a low heat. When they have taken on a light brown colour, take them off the heat and leave aside until later.

For the caramel, heat 50g of the sugar in a heavy bottom saucepan until it melts and caramelizes. Add the cream and keep stirring for at least 2 minutes as the mixture boils (on a low heat). If at any point the caramalized sugar becomes lumpy don’t worry about it but keep melting the lumps back in by stirring and boiling it a little longer. Just be careful not to burn the sugar or caramel at any point, as that will result in a bitter sauce!

Cut the mango into slices and drizzle them with the honey, then set aside.

Mix the crème fraiche with 2 tbsp of sugar and set aside.

For the pancakes, mix the 3 tbsp of shredded coconut, flour, baking powder, vanilla sugar and salt in one bowl. In another whisk together the egg, melted butter and buttermilk and add them to the flour mix.

Heat 1bsp of oil in a large pan and drop 1 tablespoon of the pancake mix for each of the 6 mini pancakes. When the bottoms start to brown turn them over and press them down with the back of the pancake flipper, so they are not too thick. Repeat this for the other 6 pancakes.

To serve stacks of three pancakes, start with a pancake, topped with mango, caramel and crème fraiche, topped by another pancake and more of the mango, caramel and crème fraiche and so on.

For the final touch, add some more mango aside the pancake stack and sprinkle the toasted coconut over everything.

Summer Fruit Tart

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The heat has eased off a little and I decided to do a little bit of baking to use up the summer fruits we have around, here in Berlin.

My mom brought white currants home, which I often find a bit too sour but they go well with sweeter summer fruits, such as the ripe nectarines that we also had in the house. Other summer fruits used for the tart were strawberries – possibly the last of the season – blueberries and a few red gooseberries.

Figs, apricots or blackberries, would have worked well too. You could even use just one type of fruit but whatever your preference, I would advise to go for some sweet fruits as the mascarpone cream itself is not overly sweet. You can vary the amounts of fruit as well – sometimes I like the fruit piled high on top of each other and at other times, lined up in neat rows next to each other.

The basic receipe however is always the same and you’ll need:

For the base

  • 250g plain flour
  • 125g cold butter
  • 80g sugar
  • 1 egg
  • a pinch of salt
  • grated rind of 1 lemon
  • dried beans or peas to ‘blind bake’ the base
  • a greased tart tin with a diameter of about 26cm

 For the mascarpone cream

  • 250g mascarpone
  • 200g Schmand (this is a German type of sour cream, if you can’t get hold of it you could use more mascarpone or possibly crème fraiche, though in that case the cream will be thinner)
  • 70g icing sugar
  • grated rind and juice of 1 lemon

For the fruit topping

  • 500-750g of fresh sweet summer fruit, such as berries

Start by mixing the ingredients for the base together ideally with an electric  whisk with an attachment for kneading. The dough will be crumbly at first but as you keep kneading, it will soon become a smooth dough ball. Cover it in cling film and leave it to cool down in the fridge for 30 minutes before rolling it out to the size of your tart tin. 

After this cooling period, preheat the oven to 180 degrees to ‘blind bake’ the tart base. For this you’ll need to cover the dough in the cake tin with a sheet of baking paper and pour the dried beans on top, spreading them out evenly to avoid the base rising, when it’s baking for 25 minutes.
When it has baked, let the base cool down in it’s tin.

Once the base has cooled, make the mascarpone cream by mixing all ingredients with an electric whisk until smooth. Spread the cream on the baked base and top it with your choice of summer fruits. Return to the fridge for at least 30 minutes before serving.