This is a light lemony flourless cake that will be perfect on a beautiful summer/spring afternoon (although it’s winter in Australia now). The cake reminds me a little bit like friands; moist and almondy. I like this cake the next day, after it’s completely chilled, and the flavour and texture seems to get better with time. This cake is on the sweet side, so I would recommend reducing the sugar (probably down to 200 grams) if you don’t like your cake overly sweet. Update: I’ve received several requests to provide a volume measurement for this recipe. I’ve been reluctant to do so because I’m one of those bakers who like to methodically measure out each ingredient by weight. I feel that it’s the only reliable way to get a consistent result. But hey, that’s just me. Anyway, I have updated the recipe with volume measurement as requested. I understand that Australian measuring cups and spoons may vary slightly from American. So, just a note that I have provided American cups conversion here. Please let me know if there is any mistake in the conversion. Lemon, Ricotta and Almond Flourless Cake (Adapted from Donna Hay Magazine Winter June-July 2013) 120 grams (1 stick) unsalted butter, softened 275 grams (1 1/3 cups) caster sugar 1 vanilla bean, split and seeds scraped 1/4 cup lemon zest 4 eggs, separated and at room temperature 240 grams (2 1/2 cups) almond meal 300 grams (10 1/2 oz) ricotta Flaked almonds, to decorated Icing sugar, for dusting Heat oven to 160 degree celcius fan-force (325 degree fahrenheit fan-forced). Line the base and sides of a 20cm round cake tin with baking paper and set aside. Place the butter, 165 grams caster sugar, vanilla seeds and lemon zest in an electric mixer and beat for 8-10 minutes or until pale and creamy. Scrap down the sides of the bowl, then gradually add the egg yolks, one at a time, continuing to beat until fully combined. Add the almond meal and beat to combine. Fold ricotta through the almond meal mixture. Beat the egg whites in a clean bowl with a hand-held electric mixer until soft peaks form. Gradually add the remaining sugar to the egg whites mixture and whisk until stiff peaks form. Gently fold a third of the egg whites into the cake mixture. Repeat with the rest of the egg whites. Pour the mixture into the prepared cake tin, smooth the tops with a palette knife, decorate the cake with almond flakes, and bake for 40-45 minutes or until cooked and firm to touch. Allow to cool completely in the cake tin. Dust with icing sugar to serve.
Have you had Loukoumades (Greek Doughnuts) before? I'm drooling just looking at them! They're simple dough balls served warm with cinnamon and honey/syrup.
If you don’t already know, I’m a super-duper big fan of Korean food. Do you know they actually serve different banchan (small side dishes) to Korean customers vs non-Korean customers in Korean restaurants? I contemplated so many times to learn Korean language so I could order in Korean and hopefully pass off as one, so they’ll serve me those secret speakeasy side dishes. Tiger thinks I’m Crazy – with a capital C.
Ricciarelli are dense, chewy Italian almond cookies originating in Siena. They are a distant, and much less fussy, Italian cousin to the French macaron — perfect with tea or coffee!
Cinnamon crescent cookies filled with walnuts and apricot jam, slightly adapted from Ina Garten's Barefoot Contessa Parties.
A tender and soft biscuit Joconde sponge. Use it for any kinds of cakes and desserts, such as opera cake and mousse cake.
Creme Anglaise is just a fancy term for home made custard. There are a few different ways of preparing this and some can be quite intimidating. This is Gordon Ramsay’s recipe and I’ve m…
The ultimate lemon tart. Rich, creamy and tangy.
This madeleine recipe is a foolproof way to make the French tea cakes. Try the classic vanilla and then experiment with our eight delicious variations.
Phyllo dough and puff pastry are both wonders of the frozen food world that help us create amazing pastries, tarts, and other baked goods at the drop of a hat. Of course, if you’re the ambitious type you can make them yourself, but the beauty of these is their convenience and ease — you can pluck them straight from the frozen case. Both doughs are flaky and delicious, but how are they different, and can they be used interchangeably?
If there is one thing you must know about Armenians, you must know that we love our sweets! Having a plethora of cookies and pastries to choose from on a daily basis (especially around the holidays)
Soft and chewy lemon cream cheese cookies with a classic vanilla icing. Perfect for a dessert or holiday.
These dairy-free and egg-free funnel cakes are really easy to make! The batter whips up in the time it takes to heat the oil!
Simple Syrup is a homemade recipe for the popular sweetener that can be used in cocktails, coffee, tea, and added to baked goods and desserts.
The flavour of everyone's favourite boiled sweet in a delicious dessert. Forced rhubarb adds a pop of colour and sweetness to this tart. Check out our rhubarb guide for more handy rhubarb facts
My version of the ever so famous baked cheese tart that’s originally from Hokkaido. Flaky crust and ohhh so creamy cheesey filling.
Crisp layers of filo pastry are filled with spiced frangipane and gooey chunks of Turkish delight, then rolled into a spectacular Moroccan m’hencha swirl. For an equally good nutty pastry, look no further than our hazelnut, apple and tahini pastry cigars.
Apricot Kolacky Cookies (kiffles) have flakey cream cheese pastry dough wrapped around an easy apricot filling! These two-bite cookies are buttery, crisp and addicting.
Nothing says Easter to me more than ricotta.
My favorite Filipino dessert by far is Bigingka. It’s a thin, unfrosted cake made with sweet rice flour and cream of coconut.
These African doughnuts are soft, pillowy, fluffy on the outside with incredible flavor! Perfect for snacking, breakfast or entertaining. And the twists are such fun shapes. Enjoy, friends!
I am so excited to bring to you today a wonderful Amaretti Cookie recipe from my blogger friend Laura over at InCucinaColCuore. Laura always has something yummy baking, and when I saw this Amaretti recipe, I had to give it a try! If you love a nice chewy cookie, then you'll love these! They taste like a Macaron, but are much easier to prepare! Another wonderful Italian Cookie that I made and loved was my Shimmering Pink Biscotti Regina Bites. These Amaretti are super easy and only take a few minutes to throw together!! If you have a small cookie scoop, they go even faster! After I scooped the mixture out, I rolled into balls, then dropped into the powdered sugar to coat. Bake for 15 minutes! Aren't they pretty?! I added a sugar flower to the top of the cookies with just a tiny bit of ready made frosting as glue! So pretty! AMARETTI InCucinaColCuore Ingredients: 2 egg whites (60 grams) room temp 250 grams granulated sugar 200 grams almond flour powdered sugar (icing sugar) Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In a large bowl, sift together granulated sugar and almond flour. In another bowl, beat egg whites to soft peaks. Add sugar/almond mixture to egg whites and combine. Using a small cookie scoop (or your hands) form small balls and roll in powdered sugar. Place balls on a parchment paper lined baking sheet, leaving 1-inch space between cookies. Bake for 15 minutes, or until tops are cracked and bottoms of cookies are just golden. Let cool slightly then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely. Makes approximately 30 cookies. **If you don't have a kitchen scale you need to get one! It makes measuring ingredients so much easier! If a recipe is in grams, you don't have to worry about figuring out how many cups you will need etc. I enjoyed several of these cookies with a nice cup of Vanilla Chai! So yummy!! Thanks Laura for this wonderful recipe and for following my blog so faithfully!!! xo!!! Today, I'm linking up with Rose Chintz Cottage for Tea Time Tuesday! Come by for some lovely tea party ideas!!
"This truly special cake with its creamy not-too-sweet filling is one I've made for years. People say it is excellent," notes Jeannette Jeremias of Kitchener, Ontario. "I'm the first generation of my Hungarian family to be born in Canada."
Now this cake is a beauty. Because not only does it smell incredible and perhaps will have any stray children or pets coming out of their respective hiding places for a slice, but it also tastes divine. This is one of the harder cakes I've made. The recipe originally came to me from the gorgeous Chanel from CatsLoveCooking . She instagrammed a picture of a Czech honey cake that she was eating and I was instantly smitten by the toasted nut coating and the multiple layers sandwiched with cream. Her colleague had brought it into work and had bought it from a bakery in Manly.
Sometimes I feel B. thinks I am crazy. Often, I know B. thinks I am crazy. Prime example this month was when he walked in the kitchen one day and saw all countertops covered with all sorts of tuile (twea-l) cookies. Traditional dough tuiles, nougatine tuiles, chocolate tuiles, mousses and sorbets of all sorts, tuile…
This kolache recipe was given to me by my mother-in-law, who received it from her mother! It was a standard treat in their family, made nearly every week. Now I make these kolaches for my own family for special occasions. —Maxine Hron, Quincy, Illinois
There is a moment at Victoria Rittinger's celebrated kolache parties when her...
This confection’s a real winner—in taste and in looks! It’s impressive, but I think that anyone can prepare it, regardless of baking expertise. I'm the third generation in my family to make it.—LuAnn Heikkila, Floodwood, Minnesota
These sweet coils are inspired by the traditional Moroccan pastry M'hanncha, or snake cake, in which phyllo pastry is stuffed with a spiced nut mixture. Here, almonds take center stage.
Abracadabra! Transform this simple batter into a sensational cake with three amazing layers - a fudgy base, custard filling and sponge-cake top.
When I flick through my Vietnamese cookbooks, the dessert section will contain dishes like crème caramels, flans, custards and tarts. These dishes are associated with the French and were brought over to Vietnam during the French colonization (1874-1954). They are commonly eaten by the Vietnamese, so much so that they have made it their own with a Vietnamese twist using ingredients like coconuts, Vietnamese coffee, condensed milk and pastry often contains shortening rather than butter. When I was traveling around Vietnam last year, I found many bakeries selling French desserts and the range and quality available was amazing. It was always such a treat to get a box of sweets for just a few Australian dollars. My friends and I would often wonder down to the local bakery after dinner to get dessert and bring it back to our hostel and unwind from the day’s travel by watching whatever was on MTV (Gaga, Katy Perry on repeat) or the movie channel (I think I saw the same Jennifer Lopez movie three times, the one where she gets pregnant). I generally don’t watch much TV but my consumption of junk TV seems to skyrocket when I’m on holiday, but it’s more background noise as my friends and I plan the travel adventures for the next day and we bond over taking the piss out of how unrealistic everything that we watch on TV is. (photo that I took of a Bakery in Hanoi, Vietnam last year) (photo that I took of a Bakery in Hoi An, Vietnam last year) This month’s Sweet Adventures Blog Hop is hosted by fellow Perth food blogger, The Kitchen Crusader and the theme is “Sweet as Pie” which can be basically anything with a pastry base such as a pie, tart or galette. I decided to bake a French influenced Vietnamese dessert - Vietnamese coconut tartlets for this blog hop. You’ll find coconut used in a lot of Vietnamese dishes, especially in desserts. Coconut enriches and provides sweetness to desserts so you don’t need to add much sugar. Vietnam is one of the top ten coconut producers in the world as Southern Vietnam enjoys a tropical climate all year round which is ideal for growing coconuts. The Ben Tre Province located in the Mekong Delta has been nicknamed by the “Land of Coconuts” as it’s the biggest province cultivating coconuts in Vietnam and contributes to half of the country’s coconut yield. To make the Vietnamese coconut tarts I adapted a recipe from The Foods of Vietnam by Nicole Routhier. The recipe states that it yields six 3-inch tartlets. I doubled the quantity of ingredients for the pastry dough and ended up with 8 tartlets, maybe I used too much dough to line each tartlet but I was happy with the thickness of the resulting tartlet cases. I found that only one quantity of the coconut mixture which I added a bit more double cream into was needed to fill all 8 tartlets. I used a mix of shortening and butter in the pastry, and also added in a bit of milk powder. I have a big tin a of milk powder at home which I first bought to make Momofuku’s crack pie and I am slowly using it up by putting a tablespoon here and there in all my baked goods for a bit of a flavour boost. Christina Tosi, the mastermind behind all the Momofuku Milk Bar Store treats uses a lot of milk powder in her baked goods to give them an interesting depth of flavour and refers to milk powder as the MSG for baked goods. I also blind baked the pastry shells before filling them with the coconut mixture. Routhier’s recipe does not require the pastry to be blind baked. The pastry of the Vietnamese coconut tartlet is crumbly while the coconut filling is soft and flaky. Vietnamese Coconut Tartlets (adapted from The Foods of Vietnam by Nicole Routhier) makes 8 tartlets (~4cm tart pans) Ingredients Pastry Dough 55g vegetable shortening 55g butter, softened and cut into pieces 4 tablespoons caster sugar 2 egg yolks 1 teaspoons vanilla extract 1 ½ cups plain flour ½ teaspoon baking powder 1 tablespoon milk powder Coconut Mixture Filling 2 cups desiccated coconut 4 tablespoons caster sugar 55g butter, softened and cut into pieces 1 egg yolk 4 tablespoons double cream 1 teaspoon vanilla extract Glaze 1 egg yolk 1 tablespoon butter, melted and cooled Method To make the pastry In a bowl, beat the shortening, butter and sugar until fluffy. Stir in the egg yolks and vanilla, mix to combine. Add flour, baking powder and milk powder, and mix well. Turn the pastry out onto a lightly floured surface and gently knead until it comes together into a dough and is smooth. Press the dough into tartlet pans, prick the bases and refrigerate for 30 minutes. To make the filling In a bowl, combine the coconut, sugar and butter together. Add egg yolk, double cream and vanilla. Blend well with hands to form a soft paste. Preheat oven to 180C. Take the tartlets out of the refrigerator and blind bake them. Line the tarts with baking paper and fill with baking weights. Place the tartlets on a baking tray and bake for 10 minutes. Take the tartlets out of the oven and fill them with the coconut mixture, smooth the top. Bake the tartlets for 10 minutes. While the tartlets are baking, make the glaze – in a small bowl beat the egg yolk slightly and stir in the melted butter. After 10 minutes, take the tartlets out of the oven and brush the surface and the crust edges of the tartlets with the glaze. Return to the oven and bake for another 5 minutes. Cool the tartlets before unmolding
With a creamy lemon cheesecake filling, this easy peasy no bake Lattice Slice makes the perfect dessert! This recipe includes both regular and thermomix ins
