Desserts
Summer Fruit Pudding
Coming soon ...
Banoffee Pie
Guy Fawkes (5th November) was a night to remember: Vicky, Kari and Anthony, in spite of the foul weather, decided to go and see the fireworks in the local town. On their return, they quickly changed into dry clothes and tucked into Anthony's very sweet dessert - not one for dieters!
Ingredients for 4
digestive biscuits
butter
1 can condensed milk
whipped cream
2 or 3 bananas
a little grated chocolate
First of all, simmer the can of condensed milk in pan on boiling water for two hours. In the meantime, melt the butter in a small saucepan and add the crushed digestives. Mix well and flatten at the base of a medium-sized bowl. Leave to chill.
Open the can of milk (carefully!) and pour over the digestives. Once it has cooled down, spread the whipped cream on top and place the chopped bananas over the lot. Sprinkle with grated chocolate and chill of at least one hour.
WARNING: this is very filling!
Apfelstrudel
This is a recipe Anthony found in an Austrian book, in two versions: one was in Viennese dialect, and this is the other. If you feel like practicing your Viennese, click here.
Ingredients for 8
300g plain flour
1 egg
4 tbs oil
a drop of vinegar (!)
180 ml water
salt
4 large eating apples, peeled and cored
butter
breadcrumbs
sugar
cinnamon
sultanas
icing sugar, to serve
Sift the flour and salt into a bowl and mix in the egg, oil, vinegar and water until smooth. Knead the resulting pastry for as long as you can put up with it and place back in the bowl. Cover and leave to rest for half to three-quarters of an hour.
In the meantime, prepare the filling: melt the butter in a fairly large saucepan and add the chopped apples; leave to stew until they start softening. Add some breadcrumbs (don't ask me why, the recipe said so). Mix in sugar, cinnamon and sultanas to taste, and leave to cool.
Spread a clean cloth out onto a board and roll out the pastry as thin as you dare - don't stop until you can see through it, and whatever you do, DON'T tear it! Spread the filling over the pastry and, using the cloth to help you, roll the strudel up. PLace on a greased baking tray in a hot oven, for about half an hour (the pastry should remain fairly pale). Serve warm, sprinkling each portion with icing sugar.
Sachertorte
Another of the things Anthony makes when he wants to show off! When making this, it's best to go all the way and get really top quality ingredients. One further word of advice (it's something he's suffered from): make sure the oven is hot before you bake the cake!
Ingredients for 1 large cake (should feed at least eight)
6 eggs, separated
180g plain chocolate
180g soft butter
150g sugar
150g icing sugar
2 tsps vanilla sugar
180g plain flour
salt
200g apricot conserve
125ml water
another 200g sugar
another 150g plain chocolate
whipped cream, to serve
Grease two sponge cake tins and preheat the oven at 190°C. Break up the first batch of chocolate into a bowl and melt over a pan of boiling water. Mix in the butter, then add the icing sugar, vanilla sugar and a pinch of salt. Mix until smooth, and add the egg yolks one at a time.
Whisk up the egg whites with the first lot of sugar until stiff. Fold a third of this into the chocolate mixture. Next fold the flour into the remaining egg white, and guess what? - fold that into the chocolate mixture. Pour into the cake tins and place in the middle of the oven. Leave for 20 mins, then turn the oven down to 160°C and bake for another 40 mins.
In the meantime, liquidise the apricot conserve to remove the pieces of fruit, and then make the chocolate glaze. To do this, boil the water and add the second lot of sugar; stir for about 5 mins and take off the gas. Then melt the remaining chocolate as before and gradually mix in the sugar syrup (if it doesn't mix very well, use an electric mixer), and leave to cool. When the cakes are baked, remove from the oven and only take them out from the tins when they have cooled down. Place one cake on a serving plate and spread half of the conserve on the top and sides; place the other cake on top and do the same. Leave to cool, and then glaze the lot, stopping to let it set as and when necessary.
Serve with whipped cream and a strong coffee.
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