Almost banofee pie

I wanted to make an amazing banofee pie for an amazing occasion but, for the first time, I over-whipped the cream... So it's an 'almost banofee pie' (-whipped cream, +peanuts). Nevertheless, we managed to eat it over 24 hours so I can say that whipped cream is not so important :)

Ingredients:

1 can sweetened condensed milk

150 g biscuits

100 g butter

3 bananas

100 g peanuts

lemon juice

cocoa powder for decoration

Place the can of sweetened condensed milk in a pot and put enough water to cover the whole can. Put on medium high heat and let boil for two hours. The can has to be totally immersed in water, otherwise it can explode. Let it cool down.

Melt the butter in a small pan (after my trip to Barcelona, I still had some almond butter left, so I used it instead of "normal" butter).

Crush the biscuits into powder and mix with melted and cooled down butter.

Spread the crumbles out in a mold (mine was like 20cm x 20cm) and press down. Put to the fridge for 30 minutes.

Spread the toffee on the crust. (OMG, it is so mouth-watering picture!).

Spread some peanuts...

... and cut bananas. Sprinkle with lemon juice.

You can add the whipped cream.

Here is a tip: this is how whipped cream should NOT look like! :)

Decorate with cocoa powder to counterbalance the sweetness.

Bon appétit!

amazing chocolate cake with strawberries

I love baking and eating chocolate cakes. Baking - because the best chocolate cakes recipes are the easiest ones. Eating because... because it's chocolate, I guess! :)

Modeling the marzipan flowers was a lot of fun, I felt like being back in the kindergarten (my artistic skills have not improved since then but I hope you like the decoration nevertheless).

 The recipe was found in "Chocolat & Chocolats" but I changed it a little bit (I couldn't be myself if I did not change something!)

Ingredients:

 400 g dark chocolate

 200 g butter

 4 eggs

 80 g flour

 200 g sugar

 300 g strawberries

 20 cl whipping cream

Melt butter and 200 g chocolate on low heat (or in the microwave, I don't have one :)). Stir until smooth and let it cool down.

In the meantime, cut the strawberries.

 Preheat the oven to 180^oC.

Add sugar and stir.

Add eggs and stir.

Add flour and guess what...? Yes, stir! :)

Spread half of the batter in baking mold. Put the cut strawberries on top.

Spread the second half of the batter.

Bake for about 35 minutes.

For the icing:

In a small saucepan heat cream. Remove from heat right before it starts to boil and pour over chocolate.

Let stand for a few minutes and then stir until smooth. Put to the fridge for a few hours.

Spread the icing on the cooled down cake.

Decorate with marzipan flowers.

Bon appétit!

Strawberry tart

  I love looking at pastries' pictures. When I find a nice new blog about baking, I can spend hours and hours just going through all the recipes (it's called "food porn" :) ). I have the same thing with cooking books. So once, finally, I bought an encyclopedia of baking, "Patisserie" by Christophe Felder and even if the pictures are splendid, I am really disappointed with the recipes. Sometimes they are not explained very well and a beginner will be lost.

  I decided, however, to do some "French stuff" and mix two recipes from this book: tart dough and light butter cream. The result is rather tasty but really sweet. Next time I would use lemon curd instead of butter cream.

Ingredients:

Tart dough:

120 g soft butter

60 g sugar

200 g flour

1 egg

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

"Crème au beurre légère"

3 eggs

120 g + 120g + one tablespoon sugar

180 g soft butter

50g + 50 g water

+ strawberries (about 500 g)

  Combine butter and sugar using a spatula. Add the whole egg and continue mixing with the spatula.

Add flour, salt and vanilla extract, stir gently with the spatula till combined. 

Roll in a ball and wrap in plastic. Put to the fridge for 2 h.

Separate egg-whites and egg-yolks. Combine 50g water and 120g sugar in a small pot.

Put the pot over a high-heat and bring the sugar syrup to 118°C (control with a sugar thermometer). Meanwhile, whisk the egg whites on medium until they form soft peaks (do not over-beat them!). 

Increase the mixer's speed to the highest speed. Pour in the hot syrup in a smooth, steady stream. Continue to beat the meringue until cooled down (about 10 minutes).

Now, we will do almost the same thing with the yolks.

Combine 50g water and 120g sugar in a small pot. Put the pot over a high-heat and bring the sugar syrup to 118°C. Put the yolks into the mixing bowl and set the mixer's speed to the highest speed (no need to whisk them like the whites). Pour in the hot syrup in a smooth, steady stream.

Continue to beat the yolks for a few minutes. The mix will whiten.

Beat the soft butter in the mixing bowl.

Add the yolks to the butter and mix.

Add the meringue and mix on the lowest speed in order to incorporate a maximum of air.

(I changed two steps comparing with the original recipe: first of all, I added all the meringue and not only the half- the cream tasted too much butter for me. The second was to mix it with a whisk - my mixer doesn't work very well on the low speed.)

Here is the light butter cream (light because there is quite a lot of air in it, not because it is dietetic <definitely not! :) >).

Preheat the oven to 180°C. Put the dough in a pie plate (normally, you should roll it out, I don't have any roller docker so I stick small part of the dough with my fingers). Make some small holes with a fork.
Bake for about 20 minutes.

The tart should be a bit brownish.

Put the butter cream...

... and strawberries cut in half.

Bon appétit!