Raspberry Almond tea bread

Berries are abundantly available this time of the year, and I love to pack some in my weekly grocery shopping. The only downside is that they go bad so quickly, it breaks my heart having to throw away a couple of them. I had picked up different berries in the hope to make a terrine. But I ended up using them in different breads/cakes/pancakes etc. Here is the tea bread - it is actually more like a cake - just not as delicate. This is a wonderful raspberry studded quick bread with some almonds thrown in. We enjoyed it with some whipped cream, although it is good as is.

While using these delicate berries in cake batter, I much prefer to use frozen berries that are not thawed. With fresh ones, I invariably end up crushing a few no matter how gentle I am. And when you cut into a slice - it presents a gooey hot pink blob in the cake. Or with blueberries - the purple colour it lends is usually enough to ward off any unsuspecting guinea pigs!

In this recipe, I used fresh ones raspberries. And managed to find a couple of slices that were quite presentable.

INGREDIENTS

1 cup sugar

1/4 cup butter

1 egg

2/3 cup milk

1-1/2 cups flour

1 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp cinnamon

1/2 cup chopped almonds

1 cup raspberries (fresh or frozen, unthawed)

INSTRUCTIONS

1. Preheat the oven to 350 F, and grease a loaf pan.

2. In a large bowl, cream the butter and sugar

3. Add in the liquids - the egg, milk and whip them togethe

4. In a seperate bowl, tip in the flour, baking powder and cinnamon and mix it up

5. Add the dry ingredients into the wet and gently mix until combined

6. Add in the rasperries and almonds and gently mix them into the batter

7. Pour it into the loaf pan and bake for about 60 to 70 minutes

.

Share

Orange, Almond and Fennel cookies

Our vacation was almost 2 weeks ago, and I am already hoping we had another one! You know the first thing I did the day I returned to work? There were some 1500 e-mails staring at me, and my colleagues had already given me a low down on the umpteen number of items waiting for my attention! I looked for the holiday calender, and counted the number of days to the next long weekend! :-)
We were spoilt my our moms and grandmoms! I was off my usual "Eat healthy" ramble, and made sure I ate everything that is deep-fried, unhealthy and fatty. As long it tasted great, I was fine!

So coming home was a bit of a wake-up. These cookies are a healthy version - it uses whole wheat flour, and some oil. Here is the recipe - inspired from Sunita's post



2 cups whole wheat flour
3 tblsp of ground almonds
1 tsp of ground fennel seeds
1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
2 tblsp of orange zest
5 tblsp of sunflower or vegetable oil
5 tblsp of icing sugar
1/2 C of milk

Some slivered almonds, and fennel seeds for topping.
Mix together the flour, soda, almonds, icing sugar, orange zest, powdered fennel with your fingers until they resemble fine crumbs.
Mix together the milk and oil. Make a well in the centre of the flour mixture and tip in the milk mixture.
Fold in quickly, with a rubber spatula or fingertips, till just mixed.
Cover the bowl with a plastic wrap and chill for at least 30 minutes.
Pre-heat the oven at 180 deg c and line a baking tray.
With slightly damp hands, make 25 balls of the dough and arrange them on the tray, a little apart from each other. Flatten the balls a little with the fingertips and press an almond sliver on top. I placed fennel seeds as well - to kind of make a face, but a lot of them fell off :-(
Place the tray in the centre of the pre heated oven and bake for about 22-25 minutes or till the tops are light golden.
Cool on the tray for a couple of seconds and transfer to a rack to cool completely.

Reminder - The DMBLGIT for February 2010 is currently on. Please send me your entries Share

Almond Tuile..or is it a Taco!

I had discovered the 'tuiles aux amandes' while on a visit to Paris 2 years ago. I shall blog about it in another post, but since that day, I am in love with this yet another French treat! But a wonderful twist to this biscuit came in the form of a dessert at a restaurant here in Zurich. It was a giant tuile - probably better to call it a taco, filled with fresh fruits, served with some chocolate sauce! It was wonderful! And the tuile was very light! The entire dessert made for such a wonderful end to an excellent meal.
I looked up the net, and found just the perfect dessert for the odd day when I have a lot of fresh fruit that I want to deck up and serve. Here is the quick and easy (of course!) recipe

- 1/2 cup almond meal
- 3 tablespoons sugar(of course you could double or triple(quadruple?) the sugar!)
- 1/4 cup + 2 tablespoons water
- Fresh fruit
- Chocolate sauce - either a ready made one - or melt your favourite chocolate!

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. In a food processor, add in the almond meal (you could use almonds as well, and grind them to a powder), sugar, water and blitz for a few seconds. You should get a paste that is not too runny, but not stiff either - some sort of a goopy consistency means you are good to go. Line the baking sheet with wax/parchment paper. Drop the batter (batter?) onto the sheet, and spread it out into a thin circle - make the biscuit as thin as you can - the oven will do the rest.
Bake it for about 10 minutes. As soon as it is out of the oven, take the wax paper with the biscuit and make it into a U shape. Let it rest like that - you could place the sheet between 2 glasses or something. This is what will give you the taco shape.
Once cooled, place it on a plate with some chocolate sauce, fill in the taco with fruit, throw in a mint leaf for colour. There you have it. A light and refreshing dessert with all the goodness of almonds and chocolate. Share

Italian Almond biscotti

Do not forget to enter for the $100 giveaway on this blog. Open internationally! Link available here!

On a good day if you ask me what would I like with my coffee - it would probably be a healthy little cookie like an oatmeal and whole wheat kind, or one with arrowroot, maybe a macaron, or a biscotti. But of course there are days when I sit eating up an entire package of a peanut butter or chocolate chip cookie and not offer it to anyone..lol!
Of all these healthy variety, I have to say - macarons and biscotti are my favourite. Simply because you can play around so much with the flavours and colours and it just tastes great!
These cookies are from Italy and 'biscotti' just means cookie in Italian. These are baked twice giving them a long shelf life. Usually the Italians would dunk it in their dessert wine and eat, but of course, coffee and tea are also its wonderful companions! Here is how I made it.

2 cups all-purpose flour
3 large eggs
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/8 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup granulated white sugar. I know some people add 1 cup, but I think 3/4 gives just the right sweetness for me.
1 cup almonds, toasted in the oven for about 8-10 minutes at 350 F
1 teaspoon vanilla extract ( I use vanilla sugar coz we don't get vanilla extract here easily!)
1/2 teaspoon pure almond extract. This is what gives the biscotti their signature almond-y smell..love it!


Coarsely chop the toasted almonds. Snack on a couple maybe - they taste so good!
Combine the dry ingredients. In a seperate bowl, combine the eggs, vanilla and almond extracts. Add in this mixture to the dry ingredients slowly and stir. You could use your electric mixture for this. Add in the chopped almonds and the remaining egg mixture so that you get it to form a dough. Shape the dough into 2 logs about 10x2". Bake it on a 350 oven for about 40 minutes. Then take it out of the oven, let it cool so you can work with it- about 8-10 minutes, and cut them at a diagonal so that you get that classic biscotti shape. Lay these biscuits flat and bake for about 10 minutes again per side, or if you can make it to stand, then just once would be fine.
Allow it to cool a bit before you pop it into your mouth :)

Share