Plum and Blueberry Upside-down Torte

This recipe comes from Rose’s Heavenly Cakes by Rose Levy Beranbaum.

Schwechten Knedle

Plum season started earlier this month, so I celebrated by making plum dumplings.

Raspberry Pie

Blueberry Pudding Cake

I used this recipe to make the cake.

Frozen Banana Treat

Origin

I was inspired by A Spoonful of Nature’s recipe for banana ice cream. Because I have an ice cream machine, I wanted to make use of it. If you don’t have one, you may prefer the original recipe, which is extremely easy to make.

Ingredients

• 3 ripe bananas
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1/4 teaspoon agar agar
• 1 teaspoon lemon juice
• 1/4 cup hazelnut milk
• liquid stevia to taste

Process
Purée all the ingredients. The mix should be a little sweeter than you would like because it will taste less sweet when it is frozen.

Freeze in an ice cream machine until done. You can either consume it immediately or put it in the freezer for a few hours. It is nice with the addition of chocolate chips if you are looking for something which goes a bit beyond frozen fruit.

Refreshing Apple Salad

With the warmer weather I often find a salad is sufficient for dinner. I started with this recipe but made quite a few substitutions. Instead of radish, I used carrot. Instead of frisée, I used red-leaf lettuce. Instead of endive and lemon peel, I used nothing. I don’t know what type of apple I used, though it was crispy and sweet. I replaced half the oil with flaxseed oil. The dressing was a little too tart for me so I added 1 teaspoon of honey. In the end it was probably a completely different salad, but it was still refreshing.

Rhubarb Almond Cake

Origin

I started with a plum torte recipe.

Ingredients

• a few drops of liquid stevia (optional)
• 4 stalks of rhubarb
• 1/2 cup unsalted butter
• 2/3 cup agave syrup
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon almond extract
• 2 egg whites
• 1 egg
• 1/2 cup rye flour
• 1/2 cup + 2 tablespoons whole wheat flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder

Process

Preheat the oven to 350°F/180°C. Put baking paper in the bottom of a springform pan and grease it.

Dice the rhubarb. Boil it in a pan with a bit of water until it is slightly soft. Drain excess water and sweeten to taste with stevia. It should be a bit sour, as a foil to the sweeter cake.

While the rhubarb is cooking, cream the butter and agave syrup. Add the salt and almond extract and then beat in the egg whites, followed by the whole egg. Sift in the flours and baking powder and beat until well blended.

Spread the batter over the bottom of the pan. It won’t cover the pan much. Take the rhubarb mix and spread it on top of the batter, then run a knife through to slightly swirl the rhubarb into the batter. Don’t mix it very much.

Bake for about 55 minutes, until the rhubarb starts to look mostly firm and a toothpick inserted in the cake doesn’t have batter on it. Cool before removing from the pan.

Coconut Chia Pudding with Fresh Strawberries

To use up leftover coconut milk and celebrate strawberry season, I made chia seed pudding with fresh strawberries.

Apple Roses

I tried the popular apple roses, using a yeast dough instead of puff pastry and replacing the apricot jam with pear jam. They are easy to make and look nice.

Baked Oatmeal

Today’s breakfast consisted of baked oatmeal. I used a mix of agave syrup and stevia to sweeten, with a maple sugar and pecan topping. For the berries I used raspberries on the bottom and blueberries on top.  It was pretty good, especially with a bit of lightly sweetened yoghurt.