Dark Chocolate and Fig Cake

I am "recycling" this post for Sweet New Zealand (just to show you that it can be done :-), and I am doing it now because this month our lovely host Sue from Coucous & Consciousness has put a linky tool to make submitting posts easier, and I cannot wait to try it!!!!

I am so happy that Sweet NZ is already in its third month, and I would like to thank all the bloggers for taking part. I have made a page on my main blog dedicated to it, with the link for each month's recap.

If you like to take part in Sweet New Zealand #3, October 2011, please go to this link!

I made this last Autumn, but figs will be ripening again this Summer, so this recipe can come handy soon. Also, I have received so many positive feedbacks about this, especially from Italian bloggers who have started to making it now (it is Autumn up there!!), and it also works well with other fruit too, even canned pears! And didn't someone made it with Feijoas? Who was it? I forgot, but there you are, you can use what you like :-).

We have a fig tree up on the road, our neighbours planted it many years ago, and passers-by help themselves with the fruit every Autumn. More than harvesting I would say that this is foraging, in the Waitakere Ranges there are several fig trees, and everybody can pick the fruit, possibly before the birds do (they spread the seeds and fig trees are becoming a noxious weed in the bush!).

For this recipe I used a 250 g bar of Whittaker's Dark Ghana Chocolate. Break the chocolate and melt with 100 g of butter (salted, if you can). In the meantime divide 3 eggs and beat the whites into stiff peaks.

Stir the melted chocolate and butter with a spatula or spoon, then add 2 tbsp of sugar, the 3 egg yolks, 1 tsp vanilla paste (or a few drops of pure vanilla essence) and 3 tbsp self-rising flour.

Gently fold in the egg whites.

Wash and cut the figs into halves, then place, cut-size down, into a baking tin lined with baking paper.

Cover with the chocolate mixture and bake at 180°C for approximately 30 minutes: the sides of the cake should look perfectly cooked, but the centre should still be a little tender and moist.

Wait at least 5 hours before tipping the cake onto a serving dish and removing the baking paper from the top (and what a pretty pattern!). This cake is semi-soft and very chocolatey, and the figs give colour as well as pairing well with dark chocolate. As an alternative you can also use pears.

How to make Rose Turkish Delights (Lokum), and Sweet New Zealand

Rose Turkish Delights (Lokum) Before I start I would like to say that I don't have a sugar thermometer, essential if you are really into confectionery, and that I didn't use much sugar for these Turkish delights. Many recipes use much more sugar, and it is not that I wanted to make a low sugar treat here (it is still pretty sweet), it is just that making it at home really makes me realize how much sugar there is already in my diet, and if I can have something with a little less... well, why not! This method is 'home friendly' i.e. these can be made at home with very little effort and equipment, and the recipe comes from my book Sweet As... where I also have the recipe for lavender and orange blossom Turkish Delights. Ingredients 1 l water 300 g sugar 2 tbsp lemon juice 100 g cornflour 1 tbsp frozen raspberries 1 tbsp rose water icing sugar (very little) and cornflour (lots) to dust. In a pot put hal

Silver beet Paneer, a variation of Palak Paneer

The other day I showed you my curry made with borage , ‘invented’ because I have tons of it in the garden! The other green-leaf crop that does well in Auckland is silver beet. My old plants (from last year!) got so tall that I started collecting only the little leaves from the stalks, and they look like spinach. One of my favourite Indian dishes is Palak Paneer (or Panir), spinach with panir cottage cheese, and this variation is made using my silver beet. I washed (many times!) the small silver beet leaves, and then I steamed them and drain them. In a heavy pot I heated 2 tbsp of vegetable oil (I used rice bran oil) and sautéed for 30 seconds: 1/2 tsp ground cumin 1/2 tsp ground coriander 1 tsp turmeric 1/3 tsp ground chili then I added 2 roughly chopped shallots and, after 3 minutes, a good pinch of salt and the cooked silver beet. I cooked everything on low for about 20 minutes (you may need to add just a little water if the silver beet is too dry) and then finely pureed the content

Home Made Marzipan Sweets

This is another recipe from my book Sweet As , and something that I love to make for Xmas. I would like to say that for marzipan you should get the best almonds around, natural, but here in New Zealand the almonds taste different from the ones in Italy. They are imported, not sure where from most of the time, but they are not top grade almonds. Still, with a few tips, you can make your marzipan taste great even with 'regular' almonds! Buy them natural, not blanched, you need to blanche then yourself or the result will be too dry. To blanch them you need to put them in boiling water for a couple of minutes, and then add cold water and take the skin off, one by one. For this recipe you will need: 200 g almonds 100 g icing sugar 5 apricot kernels. As I was saying before, the almond here have little taste, so I like to collect the stones from apricot and get the almonds out. They are a real pain to crack! In the photo above you can see apricot stones and kernels. The apricot kernel

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