Five Quick Desserts

I hate to post so late during the week, but I like to think that there are some out there who would love to get stuck into some great desserts over the weekend. Enjoy!

If you need some quick desserts that will get you out of trouble when you have little time and people arriving on your doorstep?

My husband loves his desserts, but to be honest I don't have time to be making them every day, and my waistline doesn't need to have anything extra added to it. When there is dessert on offer - I eat it, and because of that I need to try and stick to something reasonably healthy, or just eat fruit, except on special occasions.

I've been stealing playing with recipes from friends and family, internet, my old recipe file and just about everywhere to come up with a few quickies.  These have seen me through a few desperate days when I needed something fast, yet good enough to serve to friends and family.

Luckily, I have a lot of rhubarb in the garden, and it is growing like crazy at this time of year.  Here are a few of my favs, with links to the websites where applicable. I have made all of them as the photos will show, and they are all fast to make and pretty darn healthy. Well, I am stretching that a little......

Roasted Rhubarb- serves 4 

a quantity of rhubarb stalks washed and chopped into large pieces
1/4 cup honey
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
2 star anise
zest of 1 orange
1/2 cup orange juice

Chop up the Rhubarb into small lengths and place it in an oven tray. Mix together the rest of the ingredients and spread this over the rhubarb. Bake in a moderate oven 160º fan forced/180º/350º until soft, around 30 minutes. Remove star anise and serve with custard, ice cream or cream.

Alternatively, you can make this into a Rhubarb Fool. 
Whip a carton  of cream, 300mls until thick and slowly incorporate the rhubarb. Keep some of the juice aside. Now fill up some sundae dishes, glasses or whatever is at hand, dripping the juice over the top. Add a sprig of mint to finish this off. Serve by itself.

Apple - Pastry Roses

I was really impressed with the way these 'Apple Roses' looked - so pretty. This was very fast to make and I only cooked them for 30 minutes.  The only problem I found with the recipe was that after cooking the cream cheese just seemed to disappear. I have replaced cream cheese with Mascarpone and mixed in lemon zest. I found this worked much better. Also cook the apples until they are really soft so they are easier to roll.

You will find the recipe here:  
https://www.pinterest.com.au/pin/74239093841437331/

Raw Chocolate Mousse - 4 serves

2 ripe avocadoes
1/2 cup carob powder
1/3 cup honey
1/4 cup coconut milk
pinch salt

Put all of the ingredients into a food processor and blend together. Empty into a container and place in the fridge for 1 hr. Serve with fresh fruit or by itself. Just increase the quantities if you need to make for more people.

Banana and Raspberry Ice Cream - 4 serves

2 large frozen bananas, peeled
1 cup frozen raspberries/strawberries

Place the bananas and the raspberries in a food processor and pulse until it turns into ice cream. You may need to stop the machine a few times and scrape down the sides. Use immediately or store in the freezer in a sealed container. But remember to take out of the freezer for a good 10 minutes before serving, to allow it to soften. 

Its worth keeping some frozen bananas in the freezer at all times. They are great for smoothies too.  Don't forget to peel and slice them before freezing.Because it's damned hard and messy trying to peel them after they are frozen - believe me I have tried. This is fabulous on a hot day and really as good as any home made ice cream.

Rhubarb Cake with Almonds

Let me preface this recipe with a word of warning! 
This will be my last cake recipe (for a while) because once I make cake,I eat cake and eating cake is not a good idea when you are trying to control your waistline. There I have said it!

Commitment folks! That is what it is! A New Years resolution I am trying to stick to. 

This was brought home to me again after watching another of Dr Michael Moseley's "Trust Me I am a Doctor" series on TV. (Michael is the guy that brought us the 5:2 Intermittent Fasting Plan). The program looked at the best way of losing belly fat. Reduction in the amount of food eaten versus exercise. While the exercised toned - reducing overall portion sizes had the greatest effect. Check out the above link for more information.

With that in mind, my portion sizes are now getting smaller! But with cake, it's impossible to eat it alone so you add cream, ice cream or sour cream. Point taken! No more cake, enjoy this last recipe for a few months until I can report on a reduction of my waist line - way before winter arrives and I start to crave comfort food.

So lets concentrate on this last rhubarb cake recipe, enjoy it, tuck it away and don't look at it any longer than you have to. 

I have a lot of rhubarb in my garden and I tend to use it for desserts only, but I have recently read about how rhubarb makes a great pickle. Now I have made rhubarb chutney, but rhubarb pickled by itself is a whole other story. Keep watching, I may get time to try some soon.

RHUBARB CAKE WITH ALMONDS

       Ingredients

     1 1/2 cups of plain flour
     1 1/4 cup caster sugar
     1 tsp baking powder
     1/2 tsp baking soda
     1/2 tsp ground cardamom
     1/4 tsp almond extract
     1/2 cup almond meal
     1 tsp vanilla extract
     1 tbl icing sugar
     zest of an orange
     1/3 cup flaked almonds
     1/2 cup unsalted butter
     1 cup Greek yoghurt
     1 extra tbs caster sugar
     pinch of salt

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• Pre-heat your oven to 170 degrees fan forced.  Line the bottom of a 23 cm springform pan with a round of baking paper. Then generously coat the paper and the sides of the springform pan with butter.  Set aside.

• In a bowl beat 1 cup of the sugar and the butter on medium speed until light and creamy. Add the eggs in one at a time, mixing after each addition. Then beat in the yogurt, orange zest and the extracts.

• Combine the flour, baking powder, baking soda, cardamom and salt in a small bowl. Add these dry ingredients to the cake batter, adding in about one-third at a time, mixing on low speed until all is mixed in thoroughly. You can do this by hand if you don't have a mixer.

• Trim the ends from the rhubarb - discarding the leaves. If the rhubarb stalks are thick, slice them in half lengthwise. Then cut the rhubarb stalks into pieces about 3 - 4 cms in length.

• Spread about half of the thick cake batter into an even layer on the bottom of your prepared springform pan. Place about half of the rhubarb on top in an even layer. Then spread the remaining cake batter over the rhubarb. Arrange the remaining rhubarb pieces on top and sprinkle the flaked almonds and the remaining 1 tablespoon of sugar over the top of the cake. This will give a nice caramel crunch to the cake.

• Transfer the cake to your pre-heated oven and bake for 45-50 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the middle comes out clean. 

• Remove the cake form the oven and set it on a wire rack to cool. Once cooled remove cake from the tin, dust with icing sugar and cut into slices. 

Serves 8

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What a load of Rhubarb!

The Chinese had it first, Marco Polo talked extensively about it and the Greeks had some extrodinary names for it, but we call it just plain, Rhubarb.

When I was just a kid in England, I remember my father used to have a huge bed of rhubarb. He would carefully collect any horse manure from the neighbouring yards and he would dig it in to the rhubarb bed. He had an old metal bucket that had a hole in the bottom which carried ashes from the fire until the bottom burned out. Each winter he would pick his best rhubarb crown and carefully lay the bucket over the top. My sister and I would keep a watch on the rhubarb over winter, brushing off the snow if it became buried by an overnight flurry. We watched it to make sure that we would be able to break off a few pieces when Dad wasn't watching, sneak into the kitchen and dip the end of the rhubarb into the sugar bowl and eat the crisp, juicy but sour rhubarb. We all loved it.

By Spring, Dad's prize rhubarb would be growing out of the top of the bucket and we knew that mum would soon be making crumbles and pies for Sunday lunch.

I picked a big bunch of rhubarb from my vegetable garden yesterday and thought it was time to make something delicious. I checked my fridge to see what I could possibly teem up with Rhubarb and decided that some Creme Patisserie would be a wonderful combination.

Here is a recipe for a French Rhubarb Tart - When you eat it, think of your parents and what they did to make your memories so wonderful.

French Rhubarb Tart

A rich sweet pastry, creme patisserie filling, topped with cooked rhubarb and a syrup glaze. The recipe came courtesy of BBC Good Food but adapted to suit. You could substitute this pastry for an ordinary shortcrust pastry with a bit of icing sugar in it.

Ingredients

Rhubarb - 12 x 35 Fluted Flan Dish

500g Rhubarb approx

50g  Caster sugar

Juice of an orange

1/2 Cup Water
Vanilla pod seeds removed and kept

Cut the Rhubarb so it is exactly the width of your flan dish

In a fry pan add water, sugar,orange juice and vanilla pod and cook on a low heat until the sugar has melted.

Add the rhubarb and cook for 5 minutes.

Take off the heat and let the rhubarb cool in the juice, it needs to be cooked but keep its shape. 

Pastry - Oven fan forced 170 degrees 

220g Plain flour

140g Butter

25g almond meal
2 tbls icing sugar
1 egg yolk

Add flour, butter, almond meal and sugar into a food processor and blitz until it resembles breadcrumbs, add egg and 1 - 2 tablespoons of water while still running. Blitz again until it forms a soft dough. Knead very lightly to bring together, wrap in plastic, fridge 30 minutes. Roll out and blind bake with paper and beans in flan dish for 15 minutes, remove beans and paper and bake another 5 minutes. Remove and cool.

Creme Patisserie

4 Egg Yolks

250 ml Milk

100 ml Thickened Cream

2 tbls caster sugar
1 tbls cornflour
1 tbls plain flour

While pastry is resting heat milk and seeds from vanilla pod until it reaches about 90 degrees or just below boiling. Beat egg yolks, flours and sugar together in bowl until pale.  Add warm milk. Strain and put back on heat stirring continuously until the custard thickens. Cool. Whip cream to peaks and add slowly to the custard once the custard is cool enough.

Assemble by spreading the creme patisserie on the base of the flan. Lay the rhubarb onto the creme. Make a syrup by fast boiling the rhubarb juice and once it is cool glaze the rhubarb.

Apart from the resting and cooling time, this really is pretty quick to make and it is delicious.