Chocolate Orange Crescents

Part of last year's Christmas Cookie Mania :)

They do look very harmless, I have to admit, but once you start, you cannot stop eating them!

Ingredients:

125 g butter
1 egg
1 sachet vanilla sugar
100 g sugar
1 tsp. baking powder
260 g flour
100 g chocolate chips
grated zest of one orange

dark chocolate to dip the ends into

Mix all the ingredients, except for the dark chocolate, until they start forming a dough, then knead briefly with your hands. Refrigerate for 30 minutes.

Take the dough out of the fridge and form about 30 small crescents. Put them onto a baking tray, leaving some space between each. They will rise! Bake for 15-17 minutes on 175°C. When the crescents have cooled down to room temperature melt some dark chocolate and dip the ends into it.



Orange Cream Cheese Dessert

Today comes our Christmas Menu Dessert. Very orangey and very cream-cheesy. Simply yummie! You have seen this cream cheese dessert already, but here is the recipe.

The dessert consists of three parts: the cheese cream, the orange jelly and the cookie.

That's the cookie:

50 g ground hazelnuts
50 g butter
75 g flour
40 g sugar

Mix all the ingredients and one tablespoon water until they form a dough.

Preheat the oven to 180°C and roll out the dough 5mm thin. Cut out shapes with the dessert forms you are using. Mine, as you can see, were circular. You need four.

For the orange jelly:

1 orange
200 ml orange juice
2 leaves gelatin

Fillet the orange and set aside. The fillets are for decoration. Cook the orange juice and reduce to 2/3. Soak two gelatin leaves and dissolve in the hot orange juice. Set aside.


Now comes the cream:

3 leaves gelatin
250 g curd cheese
100 g crème fraîche
juice and grated zest of one orange
100 g sugar
30 ml orange liquer, e. g. Cointreau or Grand Manier
250 g single cream

Soak the gelatin. Mix curd cheese, crème fraîche, orange juice and zest and sugar until well combined. Heat the liquer and dissolve the gelatin in it. Thoroughly stir the gelatin mixture into the curd mixture. Finally, beat the single cream to stiff peaks and fold under.     

So, let's assemble our fruity-creamy Dessert.

Put each cookie on a seperate plate and a setting form around it. Divide half the cheese mixture into the four forms. Let set in the freezer for 20 minutes.

Then, pour about 2 tablespoons of the orange jelly into each form. It might be a bit more, depending on the size of your setting forms. Freeze for 10 more minutes. Finally, pour in the remaining cheese cream and refrigerate for at least 4 hours.  

 

When the desserts shall be served, gently push them out of the forms and decorate with the orange fillets.

 

Be careful, they are really orangy! Love them!



 

Peanutbutter Chocolate Pie

Actually, I am not that much into peanuts, but this pie really rocks! To be honest, it looks a bit... squished? But it is such a melt-in-your-mouth-indulgence, created by Hummingbird Bakery. 

 

 

What you need for the shell is:

200g cookies of your choice
175 g melted butter

 

Use a food processor to turn your cookies into fine crumbles. Add to the melted butter and mix until well combined. Put the mixture into a quiche pan and press down and to the sides to get a shell.

Put the pan into the fridge until needed.

Next comes the peanut butter filling.
What you need is:

3 tbsp. corn starch
160 g sugar
500 ml milk
3 egg yolks
180 g peanut butter (smooth or crunchy)
80 g dark chocolate, chopped
250 g single cream

 

Mix sugar and corn starch in a pot that is large enough to hold all the ingredients needed for the filling. In a bowl mix the milk and the egg yolks, then slowly pour it onto the sugar and starch mixture, whisking continuously, to prevent lumps. Continue whisking and slowly heat the mixture until it starts to thicken. Then remove from the heat and stir under the peanut butter.

 

Pour one third of the mixture over the chopped chocolate and stir until the chocolate is melted. Pour into the prepared shell. Give the pan a little shake, so that the mixture fills the shell evenly.

Cover with cling foil and put into the fridge to set.

Cover the remaining peanut butter cream with cling foil as well and let it cool down. When it reaches room temperature, beat the single cream until stiff and fold under the peanut butter cream. Spread onto the pie.

 

As you can see in the pictures, that's where I finished because for my liking this was more than enough cream on the pie ;) And it was yummie!

 

Nevertheless, according to the recipe there is one more step:

 

Beat 250 g single cream and 50 g icing sugar to stiff peaks, spread onto the pie and scatter with 50 g unsalted, chopped peanuts.

Maybe I'll try the complete thing next time :)

Raspberry-Tonka-Ice-Cake



So, this is the first more complex ice cream cake I made. I wanted to make an ice cream cake that was more elaborate than mixing the ice cream batter, pour it into the cake pan and freeze it. And so I found this pretty darling here, which I had to try imediately.



 

 

On the very bottom, there is a thin layer of crumbled meringues, mixed with cream. The yellowish layer is tonka bean ice cream. (http://deliciousdeliciousdelicious.blogspot.de/2010/10/tonka-bean-ice-cream.html) When it is frozen, add another layer of meringues and cream. Then, puree some raspberries with sugar, pour it onto the ice cream cake and let it freez.

Finally, put the cake into a baking tin that is 2 cm larger in diametre than the one you used to freeze the layers. Place it exactly in the centre of the pan. Beat some single cream to stiff peaks and pour it around and onto your cake. Let it freeze again. Decorate to your liking. I used some remaining meringues.

My first wedding cake

I made it last year for friends of mine. They ordered something white and red and golden, rose water, no frills, no buttercream. That's what I came up with.

1. Vanilla-Raspberry-Yoghurt
2. Joghurette-Strawberry-Chocolate
3. Joghurette-Strawberry-Chocolate
4. Coffee-Yoghurt-Chocolate
5. Rose-Marzipan
6. Orange-Chocolate
7. Vanilla-Raspberry-Yoghurt


The chocolate batter...

... becomes a chocolate cake.

Vanilla-Raspberry-Cake...

Joghurette cut into pieces.

This heart was part of the invitation's design.

Joghurette-Strawberry-Cake.

The Rose-Marzipan-Cake.

Tiny golden fondant flowers.

The unfinished Coffee-Chocolate-Cake.

The monster begins to grow.

Chocolate-Orange-Yumminess.

 

 

Coffee-Chocolate-Cake: the next step. 

 

One more tier...

The whole monster.

AND finally, the presentation: