Baking | STONE FRUIT & CHOCOLATE CLAFOUTIS … with flaxseed!

“A man’s worth has its season, like fruit.”
Francois de La Rochefoucauld

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As usual, my fridge is stuffed to the gills with an assortment of stone fruit. The weather is wonderful with the monsoons {rainy season in India} showing up, and a gentle breeze blowing through the house on most days. Two days ago, I was dog tired as the school vacations were still on, the kids had friends from Ukraine over for the day, but the weather was perfect for baking! So what did I have in the fridge? A bag of peaches, a box of cherries and some plums. Mangoes too, but those awaited a different fate because the kids love mangoes in their milkshake.

Nothing gives me more joy than when I work with fruit, especially stone fruit. Oh the colours! I would slave every single day if I had to, just to enjoy the colours that fruit offer during these summer months! With such a vibrant and exciting task on hand, tiredness forgotten, I tossed the chopped fruit in a sachet of vanilla sugar that my friend just brought for me from Ukraine. Yes, it was time for a clafoutis, and also time to experiment.

That bag of Linwoods Milled Flaxseed, Cocoa and Berries is still good to go for a few more guinea pig run, and this time it was headed for the clafoutis. I contemplated adding some additional  cocoa powder or dark chocolate to deepen the flavours, but stopped. Wanted to get a feel of how it would taste as is. Also, took no chances and added a little cornflour to help set the custard., and added the beans scraped from a vanilla pod too. I dislike runny, eggy custard! While I was doing my silly experiments, the kids were running RIOT all over the place, the boys especially!

The skies had been overcast all morning. By noon, the rain came down. The girls stayed indoors, but not the boys. Boys will be boys, and decided a game of soccer was in order, and the only way to have fun was splash in dirty muddy puddles in the middle of the road. Nothing stopped them, and before we knew it, my exuberant fellow was splat out in the middle of the muddiest puddle of them all! SIGH… good thing I remembered to write down notes as I was adding ingredients to the clafoutis!

Don’t know whether I had more fun that day taking pictures {of the fruit, dessert, kids etc}, putting the ramekins together, or eating the clafoutis. Making the dessert and taking pictures was a celebration of colours, a brilliant palette of JOY! Clafoutis is traditionally made with cherries, but IMHO, all stone fruit should be headed into one some time or the other! Anything-but-clementine actually, as this post on Smitten Kitchen rightly suggests!

The verdict on the clafoutis was YUM YUM, and the fact that it had healthy milled flaxseeds made it even better! We all loved it, kids included. The daughter really enjoyed all the fruit juices that bubbled out through the edges. It wasn’t very light because of the addition of  the flax-seeds. In addition, I used loads of fruit, so less batter went into each. The fruit got stewed in there, and delicious syrup rose up the sides once the custard was baked. With a little time on hand and a teeny bit of low fat cream in the fridge, I eyeballed ingredients and cooked up some kind of sauce to go with it. That turned out to be delicious too and very flavourful!

Clafoutis can be made as you like. Play around with ingredients, somewhat like pancake batter! Find what works for you. You can probably grind flax seeds and combine them with cocoa powder. Else use flour instead of the milled flax seed mix. Experiment – use fewer fruit if that’s what you prefer or maybe just a single variety. Some folk skip the cream and use whole milk, some 2 eggs, not 3. It’s a forgiving and infinitely adaptable dessert to make … am sure you’ll find what works for you! Next time, I might add some dark chocolate or more cocoa to the batter to make it more chocolaty.

Stone Fruit & Chocolate Clafoutis
3 peaches, stoned and diced
3 plums, stoned and diced
1cup sweet cherries, pitted and halved
1 sachet vanilla sugar, optional
3 eggs
200ml low fat cream {25% fat}
1 vanilla bean, seeds scraped
1/2 cup vanilla sugar {or regular granulated}
1/3 cup milled flaxseed, cocoa and berry mix from Linwoods
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 tsp cornflour

Method:

Stone and chop all fruit, toss in sachet of vanilla sugar and divide equally between 8-10 ramekins.
Blend remaining ingredients together till smooth, and gently pour over fruit.
Bake at 180C for 25-30 minutes {increase to 45-50 minutes if doing on large portion} until lightly browned and fluffy.
Serve warm or cool, or even cold out of the fridge if you like, with some lightly sweetened cream, or drizzle a generous spoonful of chilled chocolate cherry cream sauce over each ramekin and serve!

Chocolate Cherry Cream Sauce
1 tbsp cherry brandy
2 tbsp cocoa powder
100ml low fat cream
2-3tbsps vanilla sugar
Method:

Place all of the above in a small pan, and stir over low heat till the sugar melts and the sauce comes together nice and thick, 5-7 minutes. Taste and adjust sugar if required. Add a little more cocoa if it is too sweet, or increase the sugar if it isn’t sweet enough.
Strain into a bowl, cool and then chill.
 ♥ Thank you for stopping by ♥

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Also find me on The Rabid Baker, The Times of India

{Baking} COCOA BERRY DESSERT BROWNIES … with Linwoods Milled Flaxseed, Cocoa and Berry Mix

There’s more to life than chocolate, but not right now.
Anonymous
THUD! It was that all too familiar noise of the postie chucking a parcel over the gate again. While I braced myself for probable disaster & broken bits of parcel, the son raced out yelling, “Mama, must be something for your blog!” Excitement writ on his face, the expectation of a new foodie flavour or recipe lighting up his life, he does enjoy the little joys of my blogging. A foodie through and through, he was spot on! Came in waving a brown floppy parcel, his eyes searching my face for a ‘go ahead’ to get to the contents! The nod from Mama followed, and soon he was waving a delicious package of Milled Flaxseed, Cocoa and Berries from Linwoods UK.
Linswood UK are a health food company based in the UK and manufacture an astonishing range of products – fresh, dairy and packaged. My first experience with their products was after the Food Blogger Connect ’09 in London where we got a goodie bag full of exciting stuff thanks to Bethany of Dirty Kitchen Secrets. Linwoods was one of the sponsors and they had included a bag of milled flour which I experimented with  in an Apple CrispMilled Nut Flour Macarons and in this French Fougasse.

A friend coming from the UK got me another bag recently, and I continue to use it to enhance nutrition in desserts and breads I bake. Of this cocoa berry product, the company says, “Linwoods Milled Flaxseed, Cocoa and Berries blend boasts incredible antioxidants qualities, particularly when compared to other fruit and vegetables. An adult would need to eat a total of 1 cabbage, 3 full broccoli, 6 carrots, 3 apples, 1 grapefruit and 10 tomatoes to get the same amount of antioxidants contained in just two spoonfuls of this new super food!” 

The cocoa berry mix called my name and I dreamt of several ways to use it …. but Mr PAB who was recovering from an illness decided to have a relapse, and left me with little time to experiment!  Linswood asked us to create recipes using the product, and here is my contribution. The idea took off as snack brownies, but the creation in the end was more like dessert nirvana

Decadent  and delicious! I have to say I was surprised at the amount of flavour the Linwoods mix offered them! Made brownies using their cocoa product, enhanced with a little melted dark chocolate. Also substituted 25gms butter with 25gms EVOO, and added some brandied burgundy cherries to the mix. This is my entry for the Linwoods Cocoa Delight Recipe Development Competition.

My one and only jar of brandied burgundy cherries was disappearing fast, and I felt compelled to use them again before they were gone. I recently topped these divine Chocolate Pavlovas we did for the Daring Bakers with these preserved cherries. Adding some to the brownie batter, I thought the brownies might turn out nice, but I didn’t expect them to turn out this nice. The cocoa berry mix and dark chocolate added great depth in colour and flavour, and the brandied bing cherries took them straight  from snack to ‘dessert’ level! Moist, dark and deep, the verdict was out the minute I sliced them! YUM!!

Served them up with some unsweetened whipped cream topped with some more preserved cherries of course! Thank you Linwoods for this wonderful product. Loved experimenting with it, and hope to try it on some more sweet stuff in the near future. Thank you  gorgeous Bethany for introducing me to the world of Linwoods!

Cocoa Berry Dessert Brownies
Own recipe
75gms unsalted butter, soft
25gms Extra Virgin Olive Oil {EVOO}
2/3 cups vanilla sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp pure vanilla extract
50gms dark chocolate, melted and mixed with 1 tsp EVOO
1/2 cup flour
1/2 cup Milled Flaxseed, Cocoa and Berry mix from Linwoods
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 cup brandied burgundy cherries, drained, halved

Method:
Preheat the oven to 180C.

Line a 8″ round Victoria sandwich tin, or 7 X 11″ baking tin.
Place the flour, milled flaxseed, cocoa and berry mix, baking powder and salt in a bowl, and mix uniformly with balloon whisk.
Beat the butter, EVOO and vanilla sugar till smooth, 1 minute on high.
Add the vanilla extract and eggs, and beat for another minute. Pour in the melted dark chocolate in a stream, beating to incorporate constantly.
Fold in the mixed dry ingredients and the drained, chopped preserved cherries.{I reserved a few cherries for the top}
Turn into prepared tin, and bake for 20-25 minutes / until a tester comes out clean. Cool on rack completely, chill for a few hours / overnight, else they might be too fragile to cut. Turn out gently, slice and serve.
Serve with unsweetend whipped cream, and some brandied cherries.
Note: The brownies stay well in the fridge, and can be served chilled. They remain moist because of the preserved cherries.
♥ Thank you for stopping by ♥

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Also find me on The Rabid Baker, The Times of India

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