patrícia furtado

“Strawberries and cream” are in season, but I decided to turn things around to “Cream and Strawberries” by using my heart-shaped ice tray from IKEA for something other than ice.

In the end, the mini pannacotta hearts on strawberry sauce require a bit of work, so I don’t blame anyone for just popping them in regular jelly moulds. However, after seeing how extremely cute they were, I thought they were totally worth the effort.

You can make both the hearts and the sauce well in advance. Actually, you need to do them in advance, so they have time to thaw once removed from the moulds.

Creamy hearts in strawberry sauce

For the sauce:
2 cups pureed strawberries
1 cup sugar
1 cup water
2 Tbsp Corn flour
2 Tbsp lemon juice

Dissolve the powdered gelatin in a few tablespoons of cold water and let it soak for a bit. Mix the sugar with the cream in a saucepan, and bring to the boil. Let it simmer for 3 minutes and then remove from heat. Add the gelatin mixture, stirring until fully mixed. Let it cool for a bit and then pour into the ice trays. Chill and then cover the trays with cling film and freeze until solid.

Combine sugar and cornstarch in a small saucepan and blend thoroughly. Gradually stir in the water.
Add the pureed strawberries, and cook over medium heat, stirring constantly, until mixture thickens and comes to a boil. Continue to boil about 2 minutes. Pour into serving dishes.

When the sauce is completely cooled, you can remove the ice trays from the freezer. Run them under hot water to help release from the moulds, and them pop them into the sauce. Let them sit in the refrigerator until the hearts thaw completely and regain their jelly softness.

You can use other red fruits for the sauce, raspberry, for instance, is a classic.

Sugar. sugar, sugar! Let’s face it, I’m addicted to desserts, and my friends are starting to hate me when they jump on the scales too see the pounds pilling up. But as we can’t just live on sweets (or so the doctor told me), it’s about time I post a savoury dish around here, don’t you think? Well… mostly savoury, as one of the ingredients is pineapple. But, hey, getting there!

Polka Dot Quiche

250g of mascarpone cheese
2 large eggs
100g wafer thin ham
2 slices of pineapple
14 cherry tomatoes

Preheat oven to 180ºC. Lay the ready rolled pastry on a loose bottom pan and trim off the excess. Of course you can make your own pie crust, if you’re up for it. I wasn’t…

In a big bowl, mix the cheese and the eggs until you have a smooth mixture, and then season with salt and pepper to taste. Roll the ham slices and chop them into thin strips. Finely chop the pineapple slices. Stir the ham and the pineapple to the mix and pour it onto the pie crust. You can use other ingredients in the quiche, like spinach, mushrooms or corn, but i usually like to keep it to just one or two, at most.

Slice the tomatoes in 3, and lay them cut side up on the pie. Sprinkle some oregano and pop it in the oven for about 45 minutes, or until the pastry is done and the top is golden. Serve with some salad greens - Rocket goes nicely with it, for instance.

My friend Cláudia’s was 30 on Friday - Happy B’day C! - and I promised her a proper birthday cake for the dinner party.

She loves chocolate mousse, so I thought of creating a mousse-brownie sandwich sort of cake. But some of my recent experiments haven’t been very lucky, and I didn’t have the time to try again if this cake didn’t turn out just right. So I turned to one of my favourite food blogs - Smitten Kitchen - for something tried and tested, and found this recipe for a Double Chocolate Torte that seemed just perfect.

I adapted the quantities a little bit, removed the vanilla extract as I didn’t have any, and instead of using fresh raspberries I decided to decorate with chocolate shavings, following instructions I saw on a cook book. As it turns out, it’s not that easy to get nice big chocolate spirals, but I ended up with enough for what I had in mind.

In the end, everybody seemed to like it. The hard-core chocoholics, like the birthday girl, certainly did love it. But for me, it was a bit too rich and chocolaty, specially after the heavy meal we’d just had. It would have gone well with a scoop of vanilla ice cream on the side, to tone it down.

Double Chocolate Cake for Cláudia

Decoration
100ml whipping cream
1 tbsp sugar
100g dark chocolate

Preheat oven to 200ºC. Butter a 25cm diameter springform pan and dust with sugar.
In a heavy large saucepan over low heat, melt chocolate and butter, always stirring. Remove from heat, and whisk in sugar and then the eggs, one at a time. Finally, mix in the salt and the flour.

Bake for about 35 minutes. Cool completely before chilling, and do not remove from the pan.

For the mousse, melt the butter in bain-marie. Whisk egg yolks and half of the cream in small bowl to blend and then whisk this mixture into the melted butter. Keep whisking over simmering water for about 6 minutes and then add the chocolate and mix until it melts. Mixture may appear broken.

In large bowl, beat the egg whites and the sugar to medium-stiff peaks. First, add a bit of the egg whites into the warm chocolate mixture. Then, fold in remaining egg white mixture, until smooth, but without beating too much. Pour mousse over cake in pan and chill until mousse is set.

For the shavings, you need to warm the chocolate a bit in your hands, and use a vegetable peeler to create the little curls. You’ll get your hands dirty, but if the chocolate isn’t warm enough, it will break into small bits. Chill the shavings in the freezer while you whip the remaining cream with a spoon of sugar.

Remove the cake from the pan, by loosening it with a sharp knife around the edge, and place it on a serving dish. Spread the whipped cream over the top, and decorate with the chocolate shavings.

When I’m invited to a friend’s house, for dinner or drinks, I always view it as an excuse to get into the kitchen and dream up some dessert to bring over. Yesterday, I thought of doing some custard, because I’ve had a brand new blowtorch stuck in a cabinet for ages and wanted to used it.

But a plain custard seemed somehow too unoriginal to post, so I decided to add a pineapple twist to it. The result turned out quite yummy. Don’t trust me? Ask my friends.

I used canned pineapple, not only because it’s easier, but because of the wonderful juice the fruit comes in. I was then stuck with all the pineapple slices, and decided to chop them up, caramelise them, and garnish the custard with them. This also turned out quite good, but I found it a bit overpowering to the subtle flavour of the custard. So, if you have something else to do with the pineapple slices, the custard will do just fine on it’s own.

Alternatively, if you find a really good 100% natural pineapple juice, you may dispense with the caned pineapple altogether…

Pineapple Custard

250ml of juice from a can of pineapple
400ml of single cream
350ml of milk
1 tbsp of butter
1 slice of lemon peel
3 tbsp of cornstarch
6 tbsp of sugar
8 egg yolks

In a small bowl, dissolve the cornstarch with a bit of the milk and set aside. Beat all the yolks in another bowl and reserve as well. In a saucepan, mix the remaining ingredients. When the liquid starts simmering, add the reserved cornstarch and milk, and keep stirring until the mixture thickens.

Now we need to add a bit of this custard to the beaten egg yolks, to slowly get them up to the same temperature. Then you can add them carefully to the saucepan, always stirring until the custard is nice and even. Remove the lemon peel and divide into desert dishes or ramekins. Shallow ones are better. Chill.

Before serving, sprinkle the custard with brown sugar, and caramelise it, either with a small culinary blowtorch like mine or with a creme brulée iron (aka salamander). If you like, you can garnish the custards with a bit of…

Caramelised Pineapple

1 can of pineapple, drained
4 tbsp sugar

Chop the pineapple slices into small pieces and place them with the sugar in a shallow pan over high heat. Keep tossing until it starts to brown. Chill.

The lovely weather of this past week put me in the mood for something light, frothy and summery. But usually my fast and easy fruit desserts involve lots of condensed milk, cream, yogurt and, in the end, although delicious, they tend to be a bit too heavy. Today, however, I had a bit more time and patience to do a proper airy mousse, which is a lot messier because of all the separate bowls, but well worth the effort.

450g frozen raspberries
250g sugar
4 sheets of flavourless gelatin
3 eggs, separated
100 ml cream
Chantilly and fresh raspberries to garnish.

Place the gelatin sheets in a bowl of cold water, to soften. Add the sugar to the frozen raspberries in a saucepan, over medium heat. As they start to thaw, smash them with a wooden spoon and mix them well with the melting sugar, until you have a fairly thick syrup. At this point you should pass the mixture through a sieve in order to get the seeds out and have a smoother consistency.

Place it back in the saucepan and let it simmer for a few seconds. It’s now time to drain the gelatin and add it to the syrup, mixing well until it melts away. Prepare 6-8 glass cups (depending on the size), spoon a little bit of this mixture on the bottom, and set them aside.

Separate the egg yolks from the whites. In a bowl, beat the yolks with a fork, and then slowly, while still beating, add the raspberry syrup until smooth.

While letting the mixture cool, whip the cream and beat the egg whites into soft peaks. First, add the whipped cream to the raspberry mixture, slowly incorporating without mixing too much. Then, we carefully fold the egg whites. It’s important not to mix too much, or we risk losing all the fluffiness.

Divide the mixture into the cups and refrigerate for at least a couple of hours. When it’s time to serve, you can garnish the mousse with some more whipped cream and fresh raspberries, to make them look even prettier.

It’s my personal opinion that if you don’t like strawberries, there must be something seriously wrong with you. And if you’re unfortunate enough to be allergic to strawberries - my condolences, I feel truly sorry for you.

Strawberries look beautiful, taste wonderful on their own, and best of all, can be transformed into a fantastic variety of desserts, from ice-cream to milk-shake, from mousse to pie, from jam to sauce. So, when spring comes and they start being available all over, I can’t stop myself from feasting. You can expect plenty more strawberry related posts around here in the next few months, savoury recipes included.

Jelly is just a nice place to start. Spotted at school lunches and children’s parties, the artificial kind is already considered a tasty, healthy treat. Real fruit chunks and juice take it to a completely different level of healthiness and yummyness.

Not So Childish Strawberry Jelly

500g Strawberries
Juice of 3 oranges
1 cup sugar
4 sheets of flavourless gelatin (7grs, aprox.)

Wash and chop the strawberries, place them in a bowl and mix them with the sugar. Let it rest in the refrigerator for 2 hours or more, allowing the strawberries to create some sauce. Then, strain that liquid into a pan over a low heat, and set the strawberry pieces aside.

Meanwhile, soak the gelatin sheets in cold water. When the strawberry sauce starts simmering, drain the softened gelatin sheets and add them to the pan. Mix carefully to make sure the gelatin melts thoroughly, and then remove from heat.

At this point, slowly pour in the orange juice, and when it’s blended, add the chopped strawberries. Spoon the mixture into jelly moulds or pretty glass cups, and once it cools down, put them in the refrigerator until it solidifies. You can serve it plain or with a bit of pouring cream.

My friend F. is extremely hard to please, specially when it comes to desserts. He only enjoys chocolate cake, and not all will do. So, after baking a disastrously dry chocolate cake for the Halloween party - one that would kill someone if thrown to their heads - I decided to bake him something slightly different for Christmas.

After some research I found this simple Chocolate Brownies recipe on Cooking for Engineers and gave it a go. It was fantastic on the first day, but they didn’t seem to keep very well. Is it always like this with brownies? I will have to try some other recipes and see what comes out. Still, this one is very very good if you plan on eating them straight away.

You can check the Cooking for Engineers website for step by step photos and very detailed instructions, but here’s the thick of it:

170 g dark chocolate
170 g butter
125 g all-purpose flour
300 g granulated sugar
3 large eggs
(the original recipe calls for a teaspoon of vanilla extract as well, but i really wanted to keep it simple, so i omitted it)

Preheat the oven to 160º C. In a double boiler, melt the chocolate and the butter. Stir in the sugar, then the beaten eggs and then the flour, trying not to leave any lumps. Butter and dust with flour a rectangular baking tray. Bake for about 35 minutes and cut into squares.

I love these warm with whipped cream or vanilla ice-cream, topped up with chocolate sauce, but they are also great on their own.