“I am starting to think that maybe memories are like this dessert. I eat it, and it becomes a part of me, whether I remember it later or not.”
Erica Bauermeister
Dark Chocolate Oat & Walnut Pudding {eggless} … with the festive season well underway, it’s always the more the merrier when it comes to desserts. Leave it to me, and I would pretty much try and squeeze and recreate every dessert to fit into wine glasses, or any glasses for that matter. There is something quite ethereal and fun about it. Convenient and quick too!
This is what the year is probably going to be like. Quick recipes. Fun too. Hopefully will get a handle on the techs behind the camera. The healthy, or rather healthier twist is also going to rule. Feels like a lot more chocolate through winter, and then loads of summer fruit in the hot months. So much to look forward to.I am a huge believer in individually portioned desserts, preferably in glasses. It’s fun to layer in them, fun to see the visual delight they offer and fun to see kids faces light up while holding a stem glass. That I also play around with different sizes and kinds of glasses is a personal choice. I need to break the monotony of life, of setting, of serving and of course of taking photographs.
So this is a recipe I recently did for Cosmopolitan India. The criteria was interesting … an original recipe, easy to cook, shouldn’t take longer than 20-30 minutes to put together and most importantly, it should boast ingredients with ‘beauty benefits’. Create anything you like as long as it will do the skin some good.I have been working a LOT with oats of late, especially with my association with Fit Foodie. Well oats are good for the skin too, as a scrub, as a face pack, and of course ‘in a dish to eat’!! Chocolate and honey fitted right in! Just my kind of recipe, and one that went well with the theme!
So Good for You! Oats are big on anti-inflammatory and antioxidant properties that battle skin probs, and they work as a natural moisturizer. Dark chocolate repairs dry skin, shields against UV rays, erases fine lines and wrinkles, adds shine to locks, and promotes hair growth!
I did another interesting dessert in a glass for a magazine I write for. It was a Cranberry Cocktail Fruit Jelly, which appeared in Abraxas NU this December. The recipe is festive, it’s fun and it’s make ahead! See… On another note, I was thrilled to be featured in the VOGUE India, Food & Drink Guide 2015 … doing what I like to do best! The guide showcased ‘food bloggers who are excellent photographers’. Yours truly found mention there!
Cheers to the new year. What is your favourite ‘dessert in a glass’ OR favourite way to serve dessert?
[print_this]Recipe: Dark Chocolate Oat & Walnut Pudding {eggless}
Summary: The Dark Chocolate Oat & Walnut Pudding turned out bowl scraping good. Deeply soul satisfying, smooth with beautiful texture, it’s quite delightful for an eggless chocolate pudding. Using oats meant that it ended up being gluten free too! {Recipe can be easily halved}. Serves 8
Prep Time: 5 minutes Total Time: 20 minutes plus chilling Ingredients:
Pudding
400g 2% milk
200ml low fat cream
30g cocoa powder
35g oats, ground to fine meal
125g 52% dark couverture chocolate, chopped
75g brown sugar
50g honey
50g roasted walnuts, chopped
Topping
Roasted walnut halves
chocolate shavings
Method:
Place all ingredients in a heavy bottom pan and simmer over low heat, stirring constantly until it begins to thicken. Once it becomes as thick as a custard, take off heat, allow to cool, then puree with an immersion blender or blitz in a food processor.
Fold the chopped walnuts through {optional}
Pour into serving bowls / glasses.
Cool and then chill for 4-6 hours, preferably overnight.
Top with roasted walnuts, chocolate shavings, or even seasonal berries like blueberries, strawberries etc.
“In case you never get a second chance: don’t be afraid!” “And what if you do get a second chance?” “You take it!” C. JoyBell C
The walnut tea cake haunted me. It was part two of the Daring Baker challenge that’s just gone by. I didn’t get it done on time, yet it was high on my list of things to do. Many enticing DB posts later, I breezed into the kitchen, whipped it together … and then helplessly stared at lava cake overflow in my oven!The failure haunted me, so I had to get it right! Here it is now, a happy success story with the Armenian Nutmeg Walnut Cake.
It was a tea cake waiting to be made, one which I followed on many blogs after a huge thumbs up at the Daring Baker forum. Lorraine @Not Quite Nigella posted a stunner, and so did Sawsan @Chef in Disguise.
I didn’t need any more convincing and soon scuttled off to the kitchen to make mine. I did hit disaster zone as I experimented with smaller tins and had overflowing walnut lava all over my oven. What I salvaged was fabulous but not worthy of a picture! Bryt had a similar disaster …
The walnut tea cake haunted me for a couple of days, and then I pinned it down to using smaller size tins than recommended. I should have just followed the recipe guidelines … but well! We live and learn, and thankfully I had another chance to get it right!! I used the same proportions as I did the last time {cut back the butter and sugar}, and substituted a little flour with walnuts. I hit a home run, and was so relieved I had a cake this time.
Stunning cake! Nutmeg is an acquired taste as many say, but give it a shot. I used a nice heavy dose of freshly grated nutmeg and the whole house smelt divine! You could always use cinnamon if you don’t like nutmeg, or maybe some orange zest instead of the spices. It’s a wonderful cake to try.It’s different! It’s got a crisp biscuit layer on the bottom {and on the sides since I thought I had too much base and pushed some to line the sides}. A rather liquidy batter is beaten up and poured over the biscuit crust, and they bake together, the crust firming crisp and the batter ending up in a sponge. Very interesting!
I used some extra walnuts in mine, and they sank into the liquidy batter becoming soft and nice while baking in the sponge, and tossed a few on top. Great flavours in a cake served warm. A nibble the next day, and the thought of a warm spicy fruit cake popped into my head, a nostalgic winter thought! {BTW, we loved this cold too}
Surprisingly the ‘now threatening to be quite terrible pre-teen‘ requested for a slice {rather two} when he got in from school, and said the same thing. ‘This tastes like Christmas cake Mama’, he declared and ‘I really like it‘! The ‘not so terrible anymore teen‘ didn’t quite take a shine to nutmeg though she devoured the ‘earlier disaster’ as it was squishy & gooey, and nibbled on the ‘good one‘ only when it was chilled!
Thank you Jason of Daily Candorfor sharing your rich cultural heritage in this Armenian Nutmeg Walnut Cake.
A big thank you also to Womens Weekly UK for featuring Passionate About Baking in their May 15, 2012 issue which is on the stands now.
Armenian Nutmeg Walnut Cake … the most delicious walnut tea cake!
An addictive, warm, spicy Armenian cake with pleasing overtones of nutmeg and walnut. Simple to make and rustic in appeal, it’s a beautiful tea cake to serve. We enjoyed it warm and chilled too! {Minimally adapted from Jason @ Daily Candor}. Serves 12-14
Course Breakfast, Dessert
Cuisine Mediterranean
Keyword baking, cake, dessert, eggless baking
Prep Time 15 minutesminutes
Cook Time 45 minutesminutes
Cooling time 1 hourhour
Total Time 2 hourshours
Servings 12
Ingredients
250mlmilk
1tspbaking soda
200g all-purpose flour
100g walnutsdivided
2tspbaking powder
320g brown sugar
150g unsalted butterchilled, cubed
1egg {optional}
1 1/2tspgrated nutmeg
Instructions
Preheat the oven to 180C. Lightly grease an 8″ springform tin {or line}. I used a dessert ring and lined it with foil.
Mix the baking soda into the milk and set it aside.
Place the flour, 50gm walnuts and baking powder in the bowl of your processor and pulse until the walnut is ground {4-5 times}
Add the brown sugar and pulse a couple of times to mix.
Now add the chilled butter and process until you get a breadcrumb like mix. {You can do this by hand too, but a processor is far quicker and easier}
Divide this into half. Press half {435gm approx} into an 8″ springform tin, pushing up some into the sides if you like. Else pat firmly to create a base.
In the bowl of the processor, add the milk-baking soda mixture to the remaining biscuit mix with the egg and freshly grated nutmeg, and process for 2-3 minutes till you have a smooth batter.
Pour this batter over the pressed crust, and sprinkle 25gm walnuts on top. They will sink into the rather ‘liquidy’ batter. Toss the remaining walnuts in a tsp of flour, and sprinkle on top gently.
Bake the cake at 180C for about 35 to 45 minutes till the top is a golden brown or till a skewer pushed through the centre of the cake comes out clean. { Mine took about an hour}
Cool the cake in the tin before demolding. It is best eaten while still warm, though we enjoyed it cold too.
