Checkered Cake

It's big (you might want to halve the ingredients), easy and pretty much mistake-proof :). Source.

Ingredients:

For the cake:
4 eggs
2 cups sugar
3 cups flour
400 g (a little less than 3 cups) sour cream or yogurt
2 teaspoons baking powder
3 1/2 tablespoons cocoa powder

For the cream:
1 kg (7 cups) sour cream
1 cup sugar

For the icing:
100 g (7 tablespoons) butter
2 tablespoons cocoa powder
3 tablespoons milk
3 tablespoons sugar

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 F/180 C.
Beat eggs, sugar, flour, sour cream and baking powder together.
Split in two, add cocoa powder to one half.
Pour each half into a separate baking dish and bake for about 25 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.


In a large bowl stir sour cream and sugar together.
Break cake layers into bitesize pieces.
Dip each piece into sour cream mix, and arrange them on a serving plate in the form of a cake.
*or*
Drop all of them into bowl and stir well.


And flip on a plate:


For the icing:

Melt butter on low heat.
Mix in milk, sugar and cocoa and stir until the sugar is dissolved.
Cool and pour on cake.

Refrigerate cake for at least 4 hours, preferably overnight.

Nanaimo Bars

For serious sweet tooths (sweet teeth?) only :). This is a very easy, non-bake recipe, but it requires time (a total of about 3 hours) for the different layers to set. Recipe from my favorite Joy of Baking website.

Ingredients:

For the bottom layer:
1/2 cup (8 oz, 113 g) butter at room temperature
1/4 cup (50 g) sugar
1/3 cup (30 g) unsweetened cocoa
1 egg, beaten
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 cups (200 g) graham cracker crumbs
1 cup (65 g) coconut flakes
1/2 cup (50 g) walnuts, coarsely chopped

For the filling:
1/4 cup (4 oz, 56 g) butter at room temperature
2 - 3 tablespoons milk
2 tablespoons vanilla custard powder or vanilla pudding powder
1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
2 cups (230 grams) powdered (confectioners, icing) sugar

For the topping:
4 oz (115 g) semisweet chocolate, chopped
1 tablespoon (14 g) butter

Directions:

For the bottom layer:

Melt the butter in a saucepan over low heat.
Stir in the sugar and cocoa powder and then gradually whisk in the beaten egg.
Cook, stirring constantly, until the mixture thickens (1 - 2 minutes).
Remove from heat and stir in the vanilla, crumbs, coconut, and chopped nuts.
Right away (otherwise it sticks to the pan) press the mixture evenly into a 9"x9" square pan.
Cover and refrigerate until firm.

For the filling:

Cream the butter.
Beat in sugar, pudding and vanilla.
Add the milk tablespoon by tablespoon until the mixture is thick, but spreadable. Be careful, as it is easy to make it too liquid.
Spread the filling over the bottom layer, cover, and once again refrigerate until firm.

For the top layer:

Melt the chocolate and butter in a double boiler if you have one or in a saucepan dipped into another saucepan filled with simmering water.
Spread over the filling and refrigerate.

To serve:
Recipe says to bring the squares to room temperature before cutting. I like to run a knife under hot water and carefully cut the squares straight from the fridge. You can skip both, but the chocolate will crack :).

* I didn't have any pudding powder this time, so I made my own pastry cream. And, of course, I misjudged the quantity, so there is much more cream in my version than there should be.

Tatiana Cake

That's how the recipe is called - I am not sure why Tatiana exactly. But it's light and fluffy and incredibly easy. And delicious too :).

Ingredients:

For the cake:
5 eggs
1 cup sugar
1 cup raisins
1 cup chopped walnuts
1 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 cup honey
1 teaspoon baking soda (bicarbonate of soda)

For the icing:
1 lb (450 g) sour cream
1 cup confectioners' sugar (or according to taste)

Directions:
Whisk all ingredients for the cake together. Whisk *by hand*, no mixer!
Cover and refrigerate for at least 6 hours, preferably overnight.
* There is science that explains how the eggs, honey and the baking soda act together to create fluffiness, but I'll spare you that.

Pour 1/3 of the batter in a 9-inch buttered baking dish (or 1/2 of the batter for a 12-inch baking dish).
Bake at 350 F (180 C) for 15 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out dry.

And repeat with rest of the batter. You should get 3 9-inch or 2 12-inch layers of cake.

Stir sour cream and confectioners' sugar together (I use about 1 cup sugar, but adjust sugar suit your taste).
Ice cooled cake layers with icing.
Decorate with chocolate shavings (or however else you wish :P)

Tomato Cream Sauce

I adapted a recipe from "The Pioneer Woman Cooks!" this week and it turned out scrumptious. Here is an easy sauce to toss on pretty much anything... especially ravioli. :)

1 small white onion
as much garlic as you can stand
1/2 c. low-sodium chicken broth OR white wine
16 oz. tomato sauce - not chunky. I prefer Hunts because it's thin.
1 1/4 c. heavy cream
fresh parsley
fresh basil (lots)
pepper
bit of flour (optional)

I'm so precise, aren't I?

So chop the onion and mince the garlic if you're using fresh, pretty finely unless you don't mind your sauce with onion chunks. (I don't mind, and I'm lazy so you can guess how much chopping I do.) Put a saucepan on medium heat and add a bit of olive oil and a bit of butter, allow to melt, swirl around pan, then toss in your onion and garlic. Let cook until soft and starting to color, then add your wine/broth. Stir occasionally and let that evaporate off for a few minutes until reduced a bit. In the meantime, chop and/or chiffonade your herbs. Then add your tomato sauce, stir, and slowly add in your cream, stirring the whole time. Add in the parsley and basil and pepper to taste. If you don't like a thin sauce, add the flour now and allow to cook for a few minutes longer to blend the flavors a bit and to thicken the sauce.

Pour over pasta or whatever you're eating. This will make enough to coat a full pound of rotini.

Cream Pie 2

This is one of my mother-in-law's recipes but it looks like a spin-off from Chrisell's recipe a few posts down, so for the sake of consistency, I'll call it Cream pie 2.

Ingredients:

3 eggs
1 cup + 3 teaspoons sugar
3 tablespoons flour
1 lb (500 g) heavy whipping cream
1/2 oz (14 g) gelatine, for Americans, that's two envelopes of Knox gelatine.
1 cup fruit - berries work best, but sliced banana is good too
1/4 cup of cold water

Directions:

For the base:
Separate one egg white from the yolk - for how to, see here.
Set egg white aside, beat yolk with the remaining 2 eggs, 3 teaspoons of sugar and the flour.
Pour batter into a buttered pie dish.
Bake at 350F/175C for 6-7 minutes or until lightly brown.
Let base cool.

For the filling:
In a large bowl beat whipping cream with sugar until it forms soft peaks.
In a separate bowl beat egg white until it forms soft peaks.
When egg white is properly beaten, it should cling to the bowl when the bowl is flipped.

That is not of paramount importance in this recipe, but it is if you are making meringue.

For gelatine:
Soak gelatine in cold water.
Put the dish containing gelatine in another dish filled with water and put the whole constuction on the stove on low heat.
Continously stir until gelatine is dissolved.
Let it cool a little bit.

OT: should we make one post with instructions on how to work with gelatine, separate egg whites etc., so everybody can reference to it?

Add fruit (chopped or sliced if necessary) to whipped cream mixture and stir with a wooden or plastic spoon - no mixer at this point!
Add whipped egg white and stir.
Add gelatine and stir.
Pour everything on the cooled base and leave in the fridge for at least 4 hours.

I didn't get to take a picture before the pie was cut:

Strawberry Cream Pie

I made this pie for a dinner party on Friday night, and it went down very well. It's very sweet and rich, but the blandness of the cream layer nicely counterbalances the very sweet strawberry filling.

Please let me know if there are any products in this recipe that don't make sense to non-Australians!

Biscuit (Cookie) Base:

Ingredients:

250g sweet biscuits (US: cookies) (I used Arnotts Choc Ripple - any plain chocolate biscuit/cookie will work)
120g margarine, melted

Method:

1. Place biscuits (cookies) in food processor and blend until finely crushed.

2. Add melted margarine and blend until it can be rolled into balls

3. Press into the base of a ~20cm (8 inch) diameter pie dish or springform tin, and refrigerate until firm (a couple of hours). I used a pie dish and greased it with margarine beforehand to make sure the pie came out easily.

Pie Filling:

Ingredients:

1 85g (3oz) packet strawberry jelly crystals (US: jello)
2 x 1/2 teaspoon gelatine
3/4 cup (185mL) hot water
~425g (1 pound) can strawberries in syrup
300mL whipping cream
1/4 cup (62mL) cold water

Method:

1. Blend strawberries and syrup in a food processor on high for ~2 minutes until strawberries are completely dissolved

2. Put jelly, gelatine and hot water in a saucepan.

3. Stir over medium heat until jelly is dissolved.

4. Combine the strawberry mixture with the jelly mixture. Stir thoroughly then pour on top of set biscuit base. Refrigerate until firm (I left it overnight to be certain).

5. Place the cold water in a small bowl and sprinkle gelatine over the top.

6. Place the bowl containing the gelatine over a bowl of hot water (like when melting chocolate) and stir until dissolved. Allow to cool slightly.

7. Whip cream until it is forming soft peaks. Stir in the gelatine and water mixture.

8. Spread cream mixture over pie and refrigerate until firm (a couple of hours).

9. To decorate, top with sliced strawberries or chocolate curls, or dust with cocoa.