Tag: dessert

Individual steamed chocolate and fruit pudding with vodka infused chocolate sauce recipe.

The original recipe of this dessert came from my new recipe book, “A Year of Desserts – 365 Delicious Step by Step Recipes”. I love that book as each and every recipe in there is very different and the amount of desserts in there is just mind boggling!

# – Individual steamed chocolate and fruit pudding with vodka infused chocolate sauce.

Anyway, I made a lot of changes to the original recipe. I guess sometimes you just got to make do with what you’ve got in your pantry and improvise. I substituted cranberries with dried mixed fruits, butter instead of margarine and demerara sugar instead of muscovado.

# – The original recipe.

Not to mention, I totally changed the chocolate sauce from an original honeyed chocolate syrup to a naughty vodka infused one ;)

For the pudding:

  • 115 grams of demerara sugar (you can use brown sugar too)
  • 75 grams of dried mixed fruits
  • 1 eating apple, peeled and chopped
  • 115 grams of butter
  • 75 grams of flour
  • 2 eggs
  • 1/2 teaspoon of baking powder
  • 3 tablespoons of cocoa powder

For the chocolate sauce:

  • 100 grams of dark chocolates (minimum 60%), broken into squares
  • 2 tablespoons of honey
  • 1 tablespoon of butter
  • 1/2 teaspoon of vanilla essence
  • 3 tablespoons of vodka

# – First, mix the dried fruits and chopped apples together. Set aside.

# – Then, grease 4 ramekins or pudding bowls with butter.

# – Coat the inside of the ramekins with demarara sugar. Keep the rest of the sugar.

# – This is how the ramekins look like.

# – Divide the mixed fruits into each ramekin. Keep chilled in the fridge.

# – In a mixing bowl, throw in the rest of the demerara sugar, flour, butter, cocoa powder, baking powder and eggs.

# – Beat until everything’s combined.

I would like to mention that at this point, if you can help it, don’t taste the cake batter. Because if you did, you would find it extremely difficult to stop.

Don’t say I didn’t warn you!

# – Spoon the batter into each ramekin.

# – As the batter is quite thick, tap the ramekins gently to make sure the batter seeps all the way to the bottom of the ramekin.

# – Cover each ramekin with 2 layers of foil and stick it in the steamer for 45 minutes.

In the meantime, it’s time to make the chocolate sauce….

# – Put the chocolate, butter, vanilla essence, honey and vodka in a microwave safe bowl and nuke it for 1 minute on medium high.

# – Stir till the sauce is smooth and glossy. If you don’t have a microwave, you can melt the ingedients in a bowl suspended over a pot of boiling water.

# – 45 minutes later, run a knife along the edge of the pudding and turn it out onto a plate.

# – Serve with the vodka infused chocolate sauce.

# – Individual steamed chocolate and fruit pudding with vodka infused chocolate sauce, DONE!

The chocolate pudding is moist & fluffy but deliciously balanced by the sharpness of the fruits. Perfect for chocolate lovers, the decadent vodka-infused chocolate sauce makes the pudding even richer.

Hope you like this recipe, happy steaming!

This is not a mango and apple creme brulee recipe.

Everytime I see chefs on television torching sugar on their creme brulee, I tell myself, “I want one of those!”. Kitchen torch that is.

I’ve seen them around but they don’t look very well built and I’m not too sure about holding something in my hand that spits out blue flame without so much of a warranty card. Not to mention, they’re priced quite expensively here too.

So I delayed buying one for a while until last weekend, I spotted THE torch. It’s the right colour, it’s of a decent brand, it’s on sale and it’s got 3 year warranty. I bought it on the spot.

# – My new kitchen torch :D

So kitchen torch search done. It was time to look for a creme brulee recipe. Every single one that I had come across required between 8 – 16 eggs and about a kilo and a half of double cream in weight (lets not begin on the sugars….).

I admit, it’s very tempting. I can almost taste how freaking delicious my creme brulee could be, but even then….EVEN THEN, my logic was telling me that I could be suffering from severe mental issues by knowingly consume 16 eggs, 1.5 kilos of double cream and lots, and lots, and lots of sugar.

And so, I google low fat creme brulee, and I got…..this. It is egg-less AND cream-less. It should not be called a creme brulee. But hey, I could torch sugars with recipe and so, inspired by the recipe, I made something similar albeit with minor changes.

The ingredients:

  • 2 mangoes, peeled and cubed
  • 2 apples, peeled and cubed
  • 500 grams of plain yogurt
  • 4 tablespoons of pure honey
  • 2 teaspoons of vanilla essence
  • 6 tablespoons of brown sugar

# – First, divide the cubed mangoes into 6 ramekins.

# – Followed by the cubed apples. Set aside.

# – Now pour 2 teaspoons of vanilla essence into the yogurt.

# – Then, the 4 tablespoons of honey. Taste, if it’s still too tart you can add more honey. In fact, you can totally omit this step if you don’t have a sweet tooth.

# – With a spoon, mix until everything’s combined.

# – Spoon the yogurt mixture into all the ramekins.

# – Submerging the fruits in the yogurt like this. You can tap the ramekins gently to get rid of air pockets in the mixture.

# – Sprinkle a tablespoon each of brown sugar onto the surface of the yogurt in each ramekin.

# – Then, with your kitchen torch…torch the sugar till they melt. Ahhhhh blue flame :)

# – The melted sugar will cool down to form a thin layer of crispy caramel.

# – “This is not a mango and apple creme brulee”, DONE!

This dessert is certainly more healthy than a creme brulee made with 16 eggs but I think it’s on par where satisfaction is concerned. It is creamy but refreshing, sweet but not in a sickly sort of way. And best of all, I got to torch sugars :D

Have fun!

Delicious and seriously easy apple crumble.

What do you do when you have only a couple of hours to spare before bedtime? You make apple crumble for supper!

Fruit crumble is possibly one of the easiest desserts to make from scratch. It looks impressive and tastes as though there’s a huge labour of love involved but the truth is, I only needed less than 15 minutes to prepare and 60 minutes to watch TV while it baked in the oven.

If you don’t cook or bake very much, I most definitely think that this is the dish to make to impress your friends & family! And what’s more, you don’t even need a whole lot of ingredients, which is a winner in my book. This recipe serves 2, so if you want to make more just multiply the amounts accordingly.

For the filling:

  • 2 green apples, peeled, cored and cut into wedges
  • 50grams of granulated sugar

For the crumble:

  • 85 grams of flour
  • 35 grams of butter
  • 25 grams of caster sugar (I used demerara sugar though)

# – First, lay the apples on an ovenproof dish or ramekins (for individual serving).

# – Then pour granulated sugar over the apples and ensure they are well coated. Set aside.

# – Sift the flour into a mixing bowl.

# – Add the butter into the flour.

# – Rub flour and butter with your fingers until they resemble fine breadcrumbs.

# – Now throw in the caster sugar (demerara sugar in my case) and mix. This is now the crumble.

# – Next, sprinkle the crumble evenly over the apples.

# – Make sure the apples are fully and evenly covered by crumble, like this.

# – Stick it in pre-heated oven at 190 degrees celcius for 15 minutes then reduce to 180 degrees celcius for a further 40 minutes or till top is lightly brown, so check your oven, ya!

# – Serve with a dollop of vanilla ice-cream for a perfect but simple & delicious dessert.

The combination of the tart & juicy apples with sweet, crunchy crumble is pure heaven! I’m going to make this regularly because the ingredients are readily available & reasonably cheap, the recipe is so easy an 8 year old can make it no problem and most importantly, I LOVE IT!