dairy free chocolate pear birthday cake? no problem!

I told you September was a birthday month and that i was in the mood for baking... so sorry, but it is cake again ;) in turn for my birthday, I decided to treat my workmates to something sweet and as I had decided to follow a non-dairy diet for a few weeks, I went on the search for something plausible and i found this recipe and as it says it in the blog, this cake is the BOM! ;) we had it cold at uni with a glass of Cava (thanks Nick :) ), but I can only imagine it warm with a scoop of vanilla ice cream! YAHAAAM! :d

what you need:
-115 gr unsalted butter, softened (or non-dairy substitute)
-1/2 cup sugar
-4 eggs, room temperature
-115 gr dark chocolate, chopped (melted &cooled slightly)
-1/2 cup all purpose flour
-1/2 cup almond or hazelnut meal (finely ground)
-4 tablespoon unsweetened cocoa powder
-1 1/4 tsp baking powder
- pinch of salt
- 4 Bosc pears, poached (sometimes, I use poached pears from a jar to save time)

Poach the pears: peel, cut in half and core the pears. Combine 2-3 cups of water and half a cup of sugar in a sauce pan on medium-high heat and stir until sugar is dissolved. Add the pears (add more water if needed to cover the pears), bring to a low boil and cook for 20-25 min or until fork tender. Drain and set aside.
(i poached the pears and i can only say yammm!)

Make the cake: Preheat oven to 175°C. Butter or spray a 25 cm round springform pan and line the bottom with parchment paper. (I did it in a baking tray of about 25x15 cm and it was perfect ;))

Melt the chocolate and set aside. Do this any way you like, in the microwave (on 20 second intervals), in a bain marie or the hot water trick. (I did bain marie, but i think all work)

Sift together the flour, almond meal, cocoa powder, baking powder, and salt. Set aside.

Beat butter and sugar on a medium speed until light and fluffy. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Add the melted chocolate, beat on a low speed until combined. Still on low speed, add the sifted flour mixture and beat for 1 minute, or until just combined.

Pour the batter into prepared cake pan. Arrange the sliced pears on top (i cut them in quarters). Bake the cake for 30 to 40 minutes. Do not overbake. When a tester is inserted into the center of the cake, it should come out with a few moist crumbs attached.
(I was scared i overbaked it as no my tester came out with no crumbs :( but it was perfect! :-D still bit moist inside, pfiu! ;))

blog i got recipe from: 'Confessions of a tart'
*Gg*

Pumpkin Gnocchi

To begin again a recipe from the pumpkins cook book I bought in Sydney... I have to admit that it wasn't really wonderful! Maybe because the pumpkins here are not the same than in Australia...?

Anyway, you need :
- 1 kg pumpkin flesh, cubed (choose a dense-fleshed variety)
- 3 egg yolks
- 1 tsp salt
- 150-180 gr plain flour
- Parsley, chopped.

Cook the pumpkin in boiling salted water until just tender. Drain and let steam dry in the strainer. Mash or press the pumpkin into a bowl.
Add the egg yolks, salt, flour and parsley and work to a firm dough, adding more flour if necessary... So, it's absolutly necessary! A lot of more flour! And if you have finally a firm dough, please, call me!!!
I did "something" with the dough but normally you should divide the dough into 4 pieces and roll each into a long cylinder, about 2 cm thick. Cut each cylinder into 2 cm segments, like little pillows.
Bring a large saucepan of water to the boil, add the gnocchi in batches and cook for 3-4 minutes each or until they float to the top of the pan and drain.
Here my gnocchi looked like pieces of spicy chicken! So I decided to fry it on a pan. And then serve topped with shavings of parmesan, olive oil and freshly cracked black pepper.

If you can, enjoy! Virg*

2 for the prize of 1

I have been very inspired lately to bake, bake and bake more! If only I had the time to try out all these nice recipes I keep on seeing everywhere! Luckily September is a month of Birthdays and I will have more than one occasion :) but my first one actually started with a lost game of mini-golf (or crazy golf for some...) and a broken washing machine.

To make the story short, I owed Graham a Lemon Meringue pie and I had this recipe from a Chilean family i stayed with during my around the World trip I wanted to try out for ages and still hadn't! So here it is, my first lemon-méringue pie ever or pie de limón like they call it in Chile :) and I have to admit, I was quite happy with the result! :-D (and if I would have known it was that easy to make, it would have become my main desert i would bring to parties for ages! ;) )
what you need:

- 2 cups of flour
- 2 teaspoons of baking powder
- 4 eggs (separating egg white and yolk)
- 2 tablespoons of icing sugar
- 4 tablespoons of sugar
- 1/2 cup lemon juice
- 1 can sweetened condensed milk
- 75 grs butter

preparation: (the way Claudia wrote it in my travel diary, look at my comment in brackets and smaller for more info)
dough: Beat the butter and sugar together until it becomes white. Add the flour, baking powder and one whole egg, mix well. Put in the oven with the filling. Put it very thinly in a buttered pie base.
(The dough is quite a dry dough and won't be as elastic as the one you would make for bread or a pizza base, but still add some water, butter, other egg or flour depending on what you get.I added 1 more egg. You should be able to have a big ball of dough in the end and roll it out to put it thinly in a buttered&flour tart base.)
filling: 3 egg yolks with the condensed milk and the lemon juice. Mix it all until it's homogeneous. Poor into base. Add the meringue (beaten up egg whites) on top and put in the oven until golden. Preheat the oven at 280°C and lower it to 180°C when putting the tart in.
(I just realised that I used sweetened condensed milk, but in the recipe Claudia gave me it just says condensed milk... so... I guess up to you, if you like your tarts sweet or not ;)).
Also, she doesn't add the icing sugar anywhere... I added it in the whipped egg whites, to make a sweet meringue :) but thinking of it afterwards, it might have been to put with the nonsweetened condensed milk and the lemon juice... anyway, do it as you feel goes best ;)
and for the cooking, I wasn't sure what I had to do... I so I put it all together in the oven at once, but maybe it would have been good to pre-bake the base a little bit first...
to eat, even though it is nice a bit warm, it is even better the next day! gives the filling time to set and balancing out the strong sweetness and lemon tastes.
Gave a piece to several people and got yummm comments from all :-D so i'll be doing it again for sure soon! :)

Having made the lemon pie on Sunday, a small ball of dough was left over. With my plan of making muffins for Nick's birthday on the following Thursday being ruined (Nick apparently not being a big fan of muffins... good I subtly asked ;)), I had to think of something else! The leftover dough got me inspired and a Chocolate Cream Strawberry Tart is what came out :d

I took the same recipe for the base, halving Claudia's to have some more for this one. So base ingredients:

- 1 cup of flour
- 1 teaspoon of baking powder
- 1 egg
- 40 gr butter
- 2 tablespoons of sugar

Follow recipe above for the lemon pie. And pre-bake: put dough in base, prick it with a fork.Line the pastry case with baking paper and pastry beads or uncooked rice. Blind-bake for 8-10 minutes, then remove baking paper and beads and bake for another 5-10 minutes until golden.

Filling: I filled the base with a chocolate ganache. What you need for that:
- 145 gr dark chocolate
- 125 ml cream
- 35 gr butter
What you do: Combine the butter and cream in a bowl over simmering water until the butter has melted and well combined. Add the chocolate and stir until the chocolate has melted and all is well combined and it looks nice smooth and shiny. Poor into base. I then left it to cool.

Decoration: Having strawberries in the fridge, it was quite obvious to use these :) I just cut them in slices and placed them around the tart alternating with lightly sweetened whipped cream.

And that was it, nice and easy :) but still goodlooking and goodtasting! :-D Plus you could make the chocolate tart quite sugar free, using no sugar for the dough and sweeteners for the whipped cream or no whipped cream at all. It is all up to you to take the recipes, make it your own style and let me know how it turned out! :) thanks,*Gg*