Sun-dried tomato and piquanté palmiers

A simple yet impressive canapé that is cinch to make - not to mention they come out looking so elegant. You can really experiment with the filling and they can be either sweet or savoury. They can be prepared in advance and refrigerated - just pop in the oven when you are good and ready.

375g pre-rolled puff pastry 

1/2 cup drained pickled piquante peppers

3/4 cup drained sun-dried tomatoes (preserved in oil)

1 egg beaten for egg wash

Freshly ground pepper

handful of fresh basil leaves

Plain flour for dusting

It's easy to work with pre-rolled puff pastry. You can still use a block of puff pastry and roll it out so that it is  about 3 millimetres thick and 9 x 14 inch in dimension.

• Whizz the piquante peppers and sun-dried tomatoes in a food processor till they are finely chopped bordering on becoming a paste. You can use some of the oil from the sun-dried tomatoes jar to loosen the mix if needed.
• Dust the surface with some plain flour and roll out the pastry sheet to the desired thickness and dimension. You don't have to be delicate about it as we don't really want the pastry to rise too much when baked.
• Spread the mix evenly covering the entire surface of the puff pastry. Tear the basil leaves over the spread and season with from freshly ground pepper.
• Roll both the longer edges towards each other so they meet in the middle. Brush a little egg wash in the centre so the rolled halves can stick together.
• Transfer the log to a baking sheet and refrigerate for half hour till its chilled well. This will make cutting easier.
• Preheat the oven to 200C.
• Remove the log from the fridge. Cut it into 1 centimetre pieces and place each piece flat on the baking sheet.
•  Brush them all over with the egg wash and place in the oven for 20-25 minutes or until they are crisp and golden brown.
• Remove from oven and cool on a baking rack before serving.

Pineapple fruit loaf

It's been a while since my last post. Following a busy phase at work and a mind numbing bout of cold, it was hard to dig up motivation to do anything. This weekend however perked things up a lot. Good weather and time spent with close friends - it's the best way to wipe away the blues. Taking advantage of this shift in the mood, I spent a few hours baking this afternoon. The attempt was to bake a cake, but the recipe seemed more suited for a fruit loaf. I experimented with both and given the density of the batter, the loaf turned out to be the better result. The makes a moist - for lack of a better word - cake. You can make it even more moist by feeding the cake with a few tablespoons of warmed pineapple juice while it is cooling down.

2 large eggs
2 cups plain flour
2 cups granulated sugar
2 cups crushed pineapple( I used tinned, but fresh is fine as well)
2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
4 tbsp melted butter
1 tsp vanilla essence

• Pre-heat the oven to 180C. Prepare a loaf tin by spraying it with cooking spray and lining the bottom with parchment paper.
• Sift together the flour, salt and baking powder and keep aside.
• Beat the eggs in a bowl for 3-5 minutes with an electric mixer till they are pale and fluffy. Gradually add the sugar and vanilla and continue beating for a few more minutes till the sugar dissolves. 
• Add the flour in batches to the above mixture and combine everything using a metal spoon using a folding action.
• Combine the melted butter and crushed pineapple. Mix it into the batter. This is a very loose batter.
• Pour it into the prepared tin and bake in the oven at 180C for 50 minutes or until a skewer or knife comes out clean.

Chocolate cake

Whilst organising the cupboards in my kitchen, I came across a tin of unopened cocoa powder that I had bought a couple of years back with the intention of using it in a cake. Since it was nearing its best before date, I decided to use that as an excuse to bake. There goes my diet out of the window but who cares, right?!

I have only ever baked a chocolate cake once in my lifetime. This was when my parents had first bought a microwave. Microwave was still new in the Indian market and every cookery programme at the time was trying to cook anything and everything under the sun using this appliance. This was about the time I started to discover my love for cooking. Knowing my propensity for "accidents" this just seemed like a safe tool to experiment with! One of the more successful experiments then was a chocolate cake. The best part of that cake was that it was incredibly moist.

So when I decided to bake one this time, I started searching for a recipe that would for one use cocoa powder ( duh, that's what started this whole thing remember!) and would be as moist as the one I first attempted.  I found this one from AllRecipes that ticked all the boxes (follow the link for the original recipe).

I had to make a few adjustments as I didn't have the exact ingredients. I had self raising flour instead of plain, so that's what I used. The cake batter I thought was a little too runny (I read somewhere that american cake batter is  usually wetter than british ones, but I might be wrong). Anyway, I used half of the boiling water quantity recommended. I don't think it took anything away from the cake. I didn't  have the amount of icing sugar that the buttercream frosting required. I had a 500g pack and that's what I used by adjusting the amount of liquid I added. I still found it a tad oversweet, so I'll probably reduce that the next time as well.

 For the cake
225g self raising flour
375g caster sugar
65g cocoa powder
11/2 tsp baking powder
11/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1/2 tsp salt
2 large eggs
125ml vegetable oil
250 ml milk (easier to work with when closer to room temperature)
2 tsp vanilla extract
175ml boiling water

• Pre-heat the oven to 180 deg Celcius. 
• Rub two 23cm cake tins with butter and dust with cocoa powder.
• Place the sugar in a large bowl and also sift together flour, cocoa powder, salt, baking powder and bicarb soda. Whisk the milk and egg together and add to this along with the oil and vanilla. Mix this for about 3 minutes with an electric mixer. 
• Add the hot water to this and mix using a wooden spoon. The mixture can be quite runny.
• Spread the batter evenly between the two cake tins and bake in the oven for 30-40 minutes or until a skewer or knife comes out clean.
• Cool on a rack for 10 minutes before removing from the tin.

Frosting
175g butter ( at room temperature )
125g cocoa powder
500g icing sugar
about 150ml milk
1 tsp vanilla extract

• Whisk the butter in bowl until softened and light.
• Add the icing sugar, cocoa powder, vanilla and 100ml of milk. Mix well with an electric mixer starting at a low speed till it comes together and forms a creamy and spreadable mixture. Add the remaining milk in small quantities if needed.  

Split each cooled cake in half. Stack them one over the other after covering the top of each layer with the frosting. Use the remaining frosting to cover the outside of the cake.

I found the amount of butter cream I made was more than what I needed. That was probably because I only had a layer of cream in between the two cake layers. It will probably be needed if you split each cake and end up with 3 layers of cream.