Walnut Cake with Spiced Caramel Sauce
Ingredients
Cake
220 g butter, at room temperature
240 g caster sugar
4 eggs
160 g fine semolina
2 teaspoons baking powder
300 g walnuts
Caramel
300g caster sugar
300 ml cream
1 star anise
½ cinnamon stick
25g butter
Method
Preheat the oven to 180C. Place the walnuts on a baking tray and toast them lightly in the oven, about 8-10 minutes. Remove from the oven and cool. Reduce the oven temperature to 160C. Grease a 24 cm round springform tin or small fluted tins, of your choice.
Place the butter and sugar in a bowl of a mixer and beat until light and fluffy. Beat the eggs in, one at a time, until well combined.
Place the walnuts in a food processor and blend until finely ground.
Stir the baking powder through the semolina and fold through the egg and butter mixture, followed by the ground walnuts.
Spoon the batter into the greased cake tins and bake in the oven for about 35 minutes (large cake) or about 20 minutes (for the small cakes). Remove from the oven, cool in the tin for about 5 minutes before turing out onto a wire rack to cool completely before covering with the caramel.
For the spiced caramel sauce, heat the sugar in a pan until it turns golden-brown. Pour the cream in carefully and bring to the boil, stirring well. Add the star anise, cinnamon and butter. Cook for 2-3 minutes until thickened and smooth.
Strain through a fine sieve, cool completely and pour over the cake before serving.
We, the Amsterdam Flavours chefs, hope you enjoy this recipe as much as we do. If you have any questions on how to prepare it or just want to send us your feedback, you can reach us here Contact Amsterdam Flavours
Baked apples
Ingredients
4 apples
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1/4 teaspoon mixed spice
50 g demarara sugar
30 g dried apricots and 30 g dried cranberries
50 g butter
250ml creme fraiche
splash of marsala
icing sugar, to taste
Method
Preheat the oven to 180 °C. Mix the sugar with the spices. Mix half the sugar-spice mix with 80 ml water and 80 ml Marsala in a roasting tray. Remove the cores from the apples using an apple corer.
Chop the apricots into small cubes and mix with the dried cranberries. Mix together with the remaining sugar and spice mix in a small bowl.
Fill the apples with the apricot-cranberry mixture. Place a cube of butter on each, lay them in the roasting tray and bake them for 30-40 minutes, basting with the juices now and again.
Whisk the creme fraiche with a splash of Marsala and icing sugar to sweeten until slightly thickened. Serve the apples warm with the Marsala creme fraiche.
We, the Amsterdam Flavours chefs, hope you enjoy this recipe as much as we do. If you have any questions on how to prepare it or just want to send us your feedback, you can reach us here Contact Amsterdam Flavours
Salted Caramel Brownies
Ingredients
butter, for greasing
350g dark chocolate, broken in small pieces
250g unsalted butter
3 eggs
250g dark brown sugar
100g plain flour
1 tsp baking powder
4 tablespoons salted caramel
Method
Heat the oven to 170°C. Lightly grease a 22cm square cake tin.
Melt the chocolate and butter in a heatproof bowl set over a pan of simmering water. Whisk the eggs and sugar together for about 2-3 minutes until smooth and fluffy.
Fold the chocolate mixture into the egg mixture.
Sieve the flour and baking powder into the mixture and stir to combine. Pour the mixture into the cake tin. Dot the top with dollops of salted caramel.
Place on the middle shelf of the oven and bake for about 35 minutes until the surface is set. It is cooked when it just starts to crack on the top. Remove from the oven. Allow to cool completely in the tin.
Slice the brownie into squares and serve with vanilla ice cream.
We, the Amsterdam Flavours chefs, hope you enjoy this recipe as much as we do. If you have any questions on how to prepare it or just want to send us your feedback, you can reach us here Contact Amsterdam Flavours
Pears Baked in Red Wine
Serves 8
Ingredients
1 to 1½ bottles robust Italian red wine
rind of 1 lemon and 1 orange
2 cloves
½ cinnamon stick
4 peppercorns
1 bay leaf
200 g sugar
8 pears (Conference or Williams)
Method
Preheat the oven to 180° C. Place all the ingredients except the pears in a pan with a little extra water. Bring to the boil and simmer for 15 minutes.
Wash the pears, remove the core from underneath with a pomme Parisienne- bore (or with a teaspoon), leave the stalk on.
Place the pears in the pan, stalks pointing up. Bake in the oven without a lid for 1½ hours. In the beginning the pears should be almost covered with wine, later this will evaporate, leaving a sort of caramelized skin on the top of the pears.
Take the pears out of the cooking juice carefully so as not to break the skin, and place on a serving dish. Strain off the cooking juices and reduce until the syrupy in texture with a good rich flavour. Allow to cool slightly and serve with the pears.
This dish may be eaten hot or cold. Delicious served with ice cream or mascarpone flavoured with vanilla.
We, the Amsterdam Flavours chefs, hope you enjoy this recipe as much as we do. If you have any questions on how to prepare it or just want to send us your feedback, you can reach us here Contact Amsterdam Flavours
Blackberries from the oven
Ingredients
150 g black berries
125 g mascarpone
2 eggs
1 vanilla pod
30 g flaked almonds
1 small bunch mint
castor sugar
butter, for greasing the dish
Method
Preheat the oven to 220° C. In a bowl, mix together the 2 egg yolks with the mascarpone, seeds from the scraped vanilla pod and about 1-2 tablespoons sugar, or to your taste.
Grease an oven dish with butter. Scatter the base of the dish with the blackberries. Sprinkle the berries with sugar to taste, depending on how sour they are. Spoon over the mascarpone-egg mixture and scatter with the flaked almonds.
Bake in the oven for about 15-20 minutes until the mascarpone is lightly coloured and set.
Finely chop the mint and sprinkle over the dish as it comes out of the oven.
We, the Amsterdam Flavours chefs, hope you enjoy this recipe as much as we do. If you have any questions on how to prepare it or just want to send us your feedback, you can reach us here Contact Amsterdam Flavours
Limoncello Almond Cake
Ingredients
250 g blanched almonds or 250 g ground almonds
5 eggs
190 g castor sugar
100 g butter, softened
40 g potato flour (gluten free) or flour
75 ml limoncello
grated zest of 1 lemon
pinch of salt
6 g baking powder
icing sugar to decorate (optional)
Method
Preheat the oven to 160° C.
If using whole blanched almonds, grind them finely in a food processor, otherwise add the already ground almonds to the bowl. Add the eggs to the food processor and blend for 2 minutes until the eggs are well mixed with the almonds.
Add the remaining ingredients, except for the baking powder and blend to a smooth batter. Add the baking powder and blend briefly until just mixed.
Dampen a piece of baking paper with water from a tap. Squeeze out the excess and use to line a 26 cm round cake tin.
Bake in the preheated oven for about 40 minutes.
Allow the cake to cool and decorate with icing sugar and flaked almonds.
As we announced last week, not only is Di Zabbia a delicious degistif, it is also wonderful ingredient in cooking and baking. Try this delicious limoncello almond cake, it's quick and easy to prepare.
We, the Amsterdam Flavours chefs, hope you enjoy this recipe as much as we do. If you have any questions on how to prepare it or just want to send us your feedback, you can reach us here Contact Amsterdam Flavours
Bilder & de Clercq's New recipes week 30
As you may know by now, we are the chefs behind Amsterdam hotspot, Bilder & de Clercq. Every week we develop 3 new recipes for the stores and we'll be keeping you updated with the week's newest recipes. This weeks new recipes are:
Baba au Limoncello
Ingredients
100g butter, softened to room temperature
25g fresh yeast or 10g dried yeast
250g flour, sifted
25g sugar
generous pinch of salt
4 eggs
grated zest of 1 lemon
50g melted butter, for greasing
SYRUP
1 liter water
500g sugar
1 cup limoncello
Method
Mix the yeast with 2 tablespoons warm water. Put the flour in a large bowl and make a well in the centre. Add the sugar and salt, 2 eggs and the yeast mixture. Mix with a wooden spoon until the dough is elastic, then add the other egg. Work this in and then add the final egg and work it in. Finally add the softened butter and the lemon zest.
Brush 16 dariole moulds with the melted butter. Divide the dough into 16 small pieces and put a piece into each mould. Leave in a warm place until the dough has risen to fill the moulds. Preheat the oven to 200°C and then bake them for 15-20 minutes. Turn the babas out immediately onto a rack and allow to cool completely.
Prepare the syrup by boiling together the water and sugar. Add the limoncello. Dip each baba into the boiling syrup and leave submerged until no more air bubbles are released. Drain and place on a cake rack resting over a dish. As the limoncello syrup collects in this dish, repeatedly spoon it over the babas to keep them very moist.
We, the Amsterdam Flavours chefs, hope you enjoy this recipe as much as we do. If you have any questions on how to prepare it or just want to send us your feedback, you can reach us here Contact Amsterdam Flavours