Zuccotto: the ultimate holiday dessert at my home

This Italian torte is always a guaranteed success at my home when it comes to holiday desserts. I found the recipe a few years ago in a recipe book for buffets and meals for large groups of people and I have to say, it has become a favourite in my family.

So...time to share it!

ingredients:
2 butter cakes to 450 grams or 1 large 900 gram
150 ml amaretto (or more to taste) mixed with orange juice (you can leave the amaretto out if you want to serve the dish to kids)
1 orange180 grams of dark chocolate or cooking chocolate ( chopped)
250 ml cream1
25g icing sugar
250g mascarpone
50 g of hazelnuts
50 grams of white almonds
extra icing sugar
materials
1 deep bowl , capacity about 2 ltrs
cling film

1. Cut one cake (or half of a big cake) lengthwise into slices 1 cm thick. Cut the long slices each in two long strips. Cut the rest of the cake into regular slices 1 cm thick. Moisten the inside of the bowl with water and lined the bowl with cling film. Cut a circle for the middle of zuccotto from a regular slice of cake. Put it on the bottom in the middle of the bowl. Cover the edges of the bowl from the bottom up with long strips of cake. If you place the strips slightly diagonally, it'll give a nice effect. Fill the gaps that occur like a puzzle with pieces of cake. Sprinkle the cake generously with Amaretto ( at least 75 ml ).



2. Melt the chocolate in the microwave or in a bowl au bain-marie. Allow the chocolate to cool a bit. Chop the nuts coarsely into pieces. Scrub the orange clean and grate zests from the skin. Stir into the melted chocolate. Whip the cream with the icing sugar until it has the consistency of yoghurt. Now stir the mascarpone in another bowl separately till there are no lumps in it. Now slowly add the chopped nuts and chocolate into the cream. At this point, if you have any other ingredients for the filling like cherries, coarsely crushed meringues or crunchy crushed cookies, add them to this mixture now.

 

3. Spoon half of the chocolate cream mixture into the lined bowl with cake and smooth the top.












Cover with a few slices of cake and drizzle the cake again with Amaretto. Spoon the rest of the cream mixture on top, cover again with cake slices and drizzle the rest of the Amaretto over it. Cut off the rough edges of cake from the sides of the bowl.





Cover the bowl tightly with cling film and leave the zuccotto in the fridge at least 4 hours (preferably overnight).

Note : You can also choose one continuous layer of chocolate mousse . If you choose to do so, then cut more long strips than regular cake slices and cover the zuccotto bottom with a layer cake.
4. Pour the cake onto a large flat plate or dish and remove the foil. Sprinkle the cake generously with powdered sugar. Or.. as I did, make a ganache from equal quantities of chocolate and cream by heating the cream (don't let it boil) and pout it into a bowl with broken pieces of chocolate. Stir the chocolate well into the warm cream until the mixture has no more lumps and becomes shinny and glossy. Let it cool outside the fridge for a few hours. Once cooled, take an electric mixer and mix air into the ganache until it doubles in volume. Now that the ganache has been mixed it is easier to spread it over the whole of the zuccotto cake. I used a knife to do so, but a pallet knife might be a better utensil to get this done. Decorate the zuccotto with white chocolate flakes, sugar decorations and/or chopped nuts or nougat.
Cut the cake into slices and serve to your guests.

Serving tips:Tip 1: Serve with a salad of strawberries. Take 500 grams of strawberries, clean and halve them and mix them with the juice of 1 orange and some chopped mint leaves . Allow the strawberries to marinate in the refrigerator at least 30 minutes .Tip 2 : Replace the Amaretto with fresh orange juice if you serve the zuccotto to kids.Tip 3 : For a nice effect use marbled cake and don't             decorate the zuccotto after pouring it onto a serving dish.

Crunchy coleslaw

Every year on Boxing day, we have a brunch for my Love's friends at my in-laws home. This has been a tradition for over 20 years now. It started out with just my Love's friends, but through the years their girlfriends, later wives and later kids joined the brunch too. So nowadays my parents-in-law host for some 28 people. And every year we come up with a theme for the brunch. From Italian to Indian...Every year we try to come up with fun things to make for this brunch. Last year though we had to cancel the Boxing day brunch to illnesses of the hosting couple. So...last weekend we had a belated Christmas brunch for 20+ folks. The theme? American! So pancakes, brownies, cheesecake, carrot cake, bagels with cream cheese and ham or chicken, mini triffles, mini burgers and...coleslaw.
 
Now this coleslaw is not much work WHEN you have a kitchen machine which grates and thinly slices. If you don't have one of those.... you better get your knife skills refreshed and get cutting.



This is how I made it.

1 white cabbage
1 large carrot
2 red onions
4 crunchy and firm apples
 

for the dressing
mayonnaise
yogurt
white wine vinegar
honey
chopped parsley
salt & pepper
 
Have your kitchen machine ready with the thin slicer part. Now cut up the cabbage so it fits the feeder and get slicing. Take a large bowl and add the sliced cabbage in there. Slice the red onions in the same way and ad to the bowl. Change the cutting device of your kitchen machine into the fine grater and grate the carrot. Add to the bowl of cabbage. Do the same with the apples. Now quickly mix it all up with your hands making sure that all slices and grated parts are nicely loosened.
 
For the dressing mix equal parts of mayonnaise with yogurt. Add the vinegar to taste, making sure the end result is a bit more sour than you normally would like. The vinegar breaks down the toughness of the cabbage. Now add honey, plenty of salt and pepper and parsley to taste. Stir thoroughly and dress the coleslaw with it. Don't let it soak in the dressing though. Just dress it enough so every little piece is coated with some dressing.
 
Serve with some grilled burgers and fries. 

The quickest homebaked cookies ever!

These cookies take no time at all to make! Just 10 minutes in the oven and a few minutes to let them cool a bit. So if you have these sudden urges for cookies, like I have every once a while... get baking!! 

125 grams margarine
125 grams of white sugar
200 grams (wheat) flour
1 packet of vanilla sugar
1 teaspoon baking powder

 
Instead of 200 grams (wheat) flour and 1 teaspoon of baking powder and 200 grams of self-raising flour can also be used.

Use another 125 grams of white or brown caster sugar instead of the white sugar. The cookies will taste slightly different,  but still very tasty.

Let the margarine melt in a saucepan just until it is slightly brown and all melted. Take the pan from the heat and let the butter cool a bit.
Preheat oven to 200 degrees. Now put all ingredients in a bowl. Knead by hand or with a mixer with dough hooks. Form small balls of dough. The balls should be about 1.5 to 2 inches diameter. 

Place the dough balls on a baking tray lined with baking paper. It is not necessary to flatten the balls, because the biscuits will naturally flatten out in the hot oven. Bake for 10 minutes (until the edges just begin to brown). No longer, otherwise they will become too hard when they have cooled. Let them cool a bit on a rack before indulging yourself with these yummie cookies.

Enjoy with a cuppa tea or coffee!

 

Asian tuna salad

This Asian tuna salad is always a hit in our house when having people over. It's perfect to serve on a piece of grilled toast or just as a spread on a sandwich.

1 can of tuna
red onion finely chopped a handful of coreander leaves chopped a heap table spoon of roasted sesame seeds wasabi paste to taste mayonnaise to taste 1-2 table spoons of rice vinegar salt and pepper

 

Drain the tuna in a sieve making sure all the oil or water from the can has been drained well. Meanwhile take a bowl and put in the chopped onions, chopped coriander leaves and the roasted sesame seeds. Take another bowl and add about 4 table spoons of mayonnaise. In a small bowl mix some wasabi with a tiny bit of water to loosen it up a bit. This will help mix the wasabi into the mayonnaise more smoothly. Now mix the mayonnaise and wasabi together with some rice vinegar. Just add the wasabi to taste. If you like it hot, put in some more, if you rather like a subtile flavour in the background, us a tiny bit.

Once the tuna has drained well, just take flakes of it and put in the bowl with the onion mixture. Mix it all together. Season with salt and pepper. Then add the wasabi mayonnaise to the tuna mix making it a smooth, but not overdressed substance. Taste and if needed adjust the flavouring to your taste.

 

This Asian tuna salad will keep up to 3 days in the refrigerator.

 

ENJOY!

 

 

 

 

 

puffed cereal bars

These puffed cereal bars are so easy to make. It took me less than 15 minutes to get the whole thing done and have it in the fridge to cool.

1/4 of a cup of butter
4 cups of (mini) marshmallows
5 cups of puffed cereals flavour to your liking.

Melt the butter in a pan on a slow heat. Once melted, add the mini marshmallows or the chopped marshmallows. Keep stirring it continuously until the marshmallows have dissolved into the butter and are mixed through. Now let it all simmer for a minute and take of the heat. Add the cereal and stir it all in well making sure that all the bits are coated with the marshmallow mixture.

Now have a baking tray ready which is lined with a non stick baking sheet. Put the cereal mixture into the baking tray and spread it out evenly with an buttered spatula making sure the mixture is evenly spread out and thick.

Put in the fridge to cool. After about an hour take it out and cut it in to squares or bars of about an inch thick.

Roast Beef Flaps

Beef flaps are a cut of meat that need some time to cook. They are lean but to get them tender and tasty this is a nice and easy way to cook them.

beef flaps
mushroom sauce
ketchup
red wine or port
some beef stock
bay leafs
onions
garlic
salt & pepper
flower

Preheat the oven at 150 degrees Celsius.
Season the meat in a low roasting tray or low oven dish with the salt and pepper. Dust it with some flower. leave it.
Cut up the onions in rather thick half moon slices. These will nicely melt away in the sauce while stewing in the oven. Put them on top of the meat with some garlic cloves and the bay leaves.
Boil the kettle and get 2 dl of water and desolve a beef stock cube in it. Then add to that 2 spoons full of mushroom sauce (from a chinese toko or bazaar) and 2 spoons full of ketchup. Give it a good stir.
Now add the fluid to the meat. Cover the oven dish with tin foil and put in the oven for at least 2 hours at 150 degrees Celsius.  

Because of the flower the sauce will thicken. Serve up with some pasta, mashed potatoes or rice. Bake of some mushrooms or roast some pumkin slices to serve with it.

A nice hearty autums dish!

Parsnip soup

Parsnips are one of the vegetables that make me think of autumn and winter. I love them simply roasted in the oven with some core sea salt and crushed pepper. But since I've made this soup I found a new alternative to preparing parsnips. And I love it ! Hope you do too.

4 parsnips
1 large potato
3 vegetable stock cubes
good quality olive oil
a handful of samphire
water
some fresh chilli or dried chilli flakes to taste


Cut the parsnips and pealed potato into small dices so it cooks faster. Add 1,5 litres of water in a pan and put the dices veggies into it together with 3 vegetable stock cubes. Bring to the boil on the hob and boil it for about 10 minutes till the parsnips and potato are tender. Blender the whole lot and put back into the pan to heat through, Taste and if necessary adjust to taste by adding salt. Add some chilli flakes or freshly chopped chilli to taste.
Boil the samphire for about 2-3 minutes and drain.
Now bring the dish together by serving the soup in a bowl or soup plate. put a handful of samphire in the midst of the soup and sprinkle a drizzle of good quality olive oil around it.


Serve up with some crunchy crusted bread.


Bon apetit !