Recipe Book Challange #2 Hazelnut Tiramisu

I recently decided buying vegetables in the supermarket was starting to annoy me. Too much packaging, too expensive & they don't last any time all. There are some great markets near us but unless you are super organised it can be very easy to miss them. So i thought i would give delivered veg  boxes a go & after having a good browse on the web i chose Abel & Cole. Now i'm not one of these blogger that get present for saying nice things about places or companies (mainly because i'm small fry & nobody knows i exist, otherwise i probably be a present whore) but i can flat out say that i love A&C. We opted for the gourmet box for two people, which means the veg choice is slightly more interesting than the standard box & it comes every Tuesday & makes me cycle home that much quicker. It forces us to cook new things which is great & apart from the Houseboy having a Wednesday night freak out over an Artichoke (apparently not a weekday veg choice) all has run smoothly. I have to say, the box for two is more than generous, we have to make sure we eat veg everyday otherwise we fall behind & end up wallowing in greens. We have also tried the eggs, bread & milk which were all great. So i you want fresh vegetables on your doorstep once a week, hop on line or talk to one of their ridiculously chirpy & helpful people.

I was never really a fan of Tiramisu until the Houseboy & i spent a long weekend in Venice, we ate it sitting next to the water after eating huge plates of pasta & really i should have been way too full to even contemplate dessert but i gave it a go & it was delicious. Truthfully i don't think i will ever have such an amazing version again, but this recipe is good. I doubled the amount of cream & marcarpone (already accounted for in the amounts listed below) because i didn't want half pots left in the fridge (ooh will have to remember that excuse for the furture) & the ratio worked out perfectly.

This is from the Australian Women's Weekly After Work Fast cookbook, which the Houseboys parents sent us when we moved into our flat. Two recipe books down, a fair few to go... 

Ingredients:

• one tbsp instant coffee granules
• two tbsp caster sugar
• 160ml boiling water
• 80ml hazelnut flavoured liqueur (i cheated & used sherry because it was lingering in the corner)
• 250ml whipping cream
• 500g mascarpone cheese
• twelve sponge finger biscuits
• 25g coarsely grated dark chocolate
• 70g coarsely chopped roasted hazelnuts (i chopped mine quite finely though)

Method:

Dissolve the coffee & half sugar in the water, stir in the liqueur & leave to cool. Meanwhile beat the cream with remaining sugar until it forms soft peaks (it's easier to use electric beaters) & carefully fold in the mascarpone cheese. Dip the biscuits, one at a time in the coffee mixture & lay in a single layer in a shallow dish. Pour any remaining mixture over the biscuits. Carefully spoon the cream mixture over the biscuits & sprinkle on the chocolate shavings & nuts.

Recipe Book Challange #1 Blueberry Cake

We have no internet & it's like living in the dark ages, it's a bit stupid how much we rely on the net in our household & not just proving each other wrong on general knowledge. But thanks to Miss Whindler's dongle or bongle (didn't quite understand the whole thing) i'm back on line & posting. I'm actually embarrassed how long its been since i last blogged. No internet is a fairly good excuse but but the real reason is the Houseboy & i seem to be socialising way too much. Too much you say? Yes TOO MUCH. Leaving me tired, unfit & a skint, i am positively excited that the only thing on this week horizon is book club.

We recently watched the film Julia & Julia, which seems to be every food bloggers favourite film, understandably because it's about a blogger who 'makes it' after toiling over her blog cooking a recipe a day & writing it up. I'm not sure why it took me so long to get round to it, but i finally sat down & subjected the Houseboy to it (i reckon he secretly loved it) The result being that i have decided to set myself a wee challenge (not to the same ridiculous & knackering scale Julia Junior achieved) I have to cook a recipe from every cook book i have. One recipe per book per week, this will this force me to follow a recipe & use cook books i've not picked up in months years, some of them i have read countless time but not actually cooked from them. 

So the first recipe is a Blueberry Cake from the Hummingbird Bakery Cookbook, which was a gift from someone lovely. It's a dense vanilla sponge dotted with blueberries (technically my cake was a vanilla sponge with a layer of blueberries at the bottom, but hey ho) & a nice frosting. I would warn you that this is a big cake, perfect when you are having people over for afternoon tea - not just when there's two of you. Otherwise you are both fatties. 

Ingredients:

Cake

• 350g unsalted butter
• 350g caster sugar
• 6 eggs
• 1 tsp vanilla essence
• 450g plain flour
• 2 tbsp + 2tsp baking powder
• 280mls sour cream
• 250g fresh blueberries (plus extra fir decorating) 

Cream Cheese Icing

• 250g cream cheese
• 100g butter (room temperature)
• 600g icing sugar

Method:

Preheat your oven to 170C (325F) Gas mark 3, & prepare a tin by lining with greaseproof paper on the bottom round the side.

Cream the butter & sugar together until light & fluffy, either using a hand held electric whisk or a mixer.  Add the eggs one at a time, mixing well and scraping any unmixed ingredients back in the batter. Then beat in the vanilla essence , flour, baking powder until well mixed. Add the sour cream & mix well until everything is combined & the mixture is light a& fluffy. Gently stir in the blueberries by hand until evenly dispersed then pour the batter into your prepared tin.

Bake for forty minutes* or until the cake springs back & is golden in colour.

While it's baking away make the frosting by combining the butter, cream cheese & icing sugar until smooth, using a food processor is fool proof. When the cake is fully cooled, take the cream cheese icing and cover the cake, lastly decorate with a few blueberries. 

I'm not sure why but my cake took FOREVER to bake - almost an hour & a half.. still came out nice & moist, also would to warn you it's a huge cake.