Daring Bakers July - Swiss Swirl Ice Cream Cake

It may be the middle of winter here but it's never too cold for ice cream!

The July 2010 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Sunita of Sunita’s world – life and food. Sunita challenged everyone to make an ice-cream filled Swiss roll that’s then used to make a bombe with hot fudge. Her recipe is based on an ice cream cake recipe from Taste of Home.-

This was a brilliant challenge. I've long been afraid of making a swiss roll after a disastrous experience years ago. Although when I think back I was probably about 12 and I'm almost certain I tried to roll up my cake while it was cold.

Anyway, this time around was a cinch! My cakes cooked in the time specified, they came out of the tin easily and they rolled up perfectly. I may have gone a little overboard on the sugar but this made for a gorgeous crackly texture once frozen.

The brief was to make 2 chocolate swiss roll cakes filled with vanilla cream, to line a bowl with the slices and fill the interior with ice cream. I was so glad we were having visitors to help us eat this otherwise it would be ice cream cake for months!

I used plain vanilla ice cream for the top and bottom layers and filled the middle with a caramel ice cream flavoured with fruit mince. This gave the bombe a Christmas in July sort of feel.

The taste test ...

Well it's cake, cream and 2 types of ice cream ... there's no way this can be bad! We loved it! It was also surprisingly easy for such an impressive looking dessert. Turn this baby out at the table and you are guaranteed some ooohs and aaahs!

Thanks for a wonderful challenge Sunita! You will find the recipe on her blog here.

Tuesdays with Dorie: Chewy, Chunky Blondies

This week's TWD recipe was Nicole of Cookies on Friday and she picked Dorie's Chewy, Chunky Blondies. I don't think I've ever made or eaten a blondie so I wasn't really sure what to expect. Turns out these are supposed to be like cookies but in bar form.

We can't get butterscotch chips here but to keep the caramelly theme going I used dark brown sugar and some chopped up Violet Crumbles (chocolate covered honeycomb pieces) as well as extra chopped dark chocolate and some walnuts.

I made a half batch in an 8 x 8 pan and baked for 35 minutes. At that point they were puffed and a deep golden brown but after a few minutes on the bench the middle fell completely. So my blondies were a little on the flat and greasy side. But the taste?

The taste test ...

AMAZING. Especially warm from the oven when they're gooey and melty and oh so delicious. You'll see in the photo above there are 2 pieces missing, well a few more went missing immediately after. I wish we had some left!

Thanks for an awesome pick Nicole! You can find the recipe on her blog Cookies on Friday under today's date.

Oatmeal Raisin Cookies

Wow, 2 posts in 2 days! What is the world coming to?? Continuing yesterday's theme of wheat and dairy free treats, I made these Oatmeal Raisin Cookies a while back. Oscar is now at the age where it's really difficult to eat in front of him ie. he throws a bit of a tantrum if he can't have a bite! So having something safe for him to eat as well makes life a little easier.

Rather than start from scratch I adapted the Oatmeal Raisin Cookie recipe on Simply Recipes here. The changes I made were:

• swapped out the wheat flour for a 50:50 blend of white and wholemeal spelt flours along with a pinch of xanthum gum
• used a dairy free spread instead of butter
• left out the nuts
• cut back on the sugar (I used just 1/2 cup brown and 1/2 cup white and they were still really sweet)

The taste test ...

Chewy, spicy, sweet and completely addictive! I got 24 huge cookies and they make a pretty substantial snack. I froze most of the batch and they are delicious straight from the freezer. These are a definite winner and will be made again and again.

Tuesdays with Dorie: Lots of Ways Banana Cake

Kimberly of Only Creative Opportunities chose Dorie's Lots of Ways Banana Cake this week. I adore banana cake (and banana bread and banana pancakes and just plain bananas). My son Oscar is the same. In fact, his third word was banana!

As I have mentioned before, Oscar has a wheat and dairy intolerance. Most of the time it's no problem at all to sub in alternatives but I haven't been too adventurous with baking. And I don't need to be yet. At 15 months old, he's not eating a whole lot of cake!

While I didn't make this cake specifically for Oscar, it's nice for him to be able to have a taste of some of the yummy things I make so I did a wheat and dairy free version with dried apples and a passionfruit icing. Delicious!

Banana Cake with Passionfruit Glaze
(Wheat and Dairy Free)
Adapted from Lots of Ways Banana Cake on pp204-5 of Baking: From My Home to Yours

1/2 cup white spelt flour
1/2 cup wholemeal spelt flour
1/3 cup gluten free flour (mine was a blend of maize, rice and soya flours)
1/2 ts xanthum gum
pinch of salt
1 ts baking powder
1/2 ts baking soda
1/2 ts nutmeg
90g nuttelex or other dairy free spread
3/4 cup brown sugar
1 egg
1ts vanilla extract
2 ripe bananas, mashed
1/4 oat milk (or soy milk etc)
1/2 cup dried apple, chopped

Preheat your oven to 180/350 degrees. Grease and line an 8 inch round pan and set aside.

Whisk the flours, salt, baking powder, baking soda, nutmeg and xanthum gum together.

Using a stand mixer, beat the nuttelex and sugar together until creamy. Add the egg and then the vanilla, beating well after each addition. Lower the speed and add the bananas. Mix well. Add the dry ingredients, followed by the milk and beat until just combined. Stir through the dried apple using a rubber spatula.

Pour the batter into your prepared pan and bake for 35-40 minutes or until the cake is a deep golden brown and the cake is starting to pull away from the sides. A skewer inserted into the middle should come out clean.

Cool in the pan for 5 minutes before turning out onto a rack to cool completely.

Passionfruit Glaze

1/2 cup pure icing sugar, sifted
1 passionfruit
hot water

In a small bowl, add the juice and pulp of your passionfruit to the icing sugar and stir. Add just enough hot water (1 -2 ts) to reach the consistency of thick cream. It should coat the spoon but still be easy to spread. Pour over your cooled cake and spread to the edges.

The taste test ...

Awesome. So moist and absolutely packed with flavour. The passionfruit icing finished it off perfectly. This is one cake I will be making again and again!

Tuesdays with Dorie: Brrr-ownies

This week Karen of Welcome to Our Crazy Blessed Life chose Brrrr-ownies. Basically brownies with mint and since choc-mint is one my favourite combinations I couldn't be happier!

I vaguely remember peppermint patties being around when I was a kid but they were no where to be found now, including at the lolly shop which sells lots of imported sweet treats. Instead I went with a couple of blocks of Lindt Intense Mint chocolate with some extra chocolate chopped up for texture.

Choc-Mint also happens to be my all time favourite ice cream flavour, though I'm usually turned off by the vivid green artificial colouring. I made a full batch of the brownies, ate a few pieces (for quality control of course) and chopped up the rest to be mixed through vanilla ice cream.

The taste test ...

YUM!!!! While the brownies themselves were ooey-gooey and fabulous, mixed through ice cream it was sensational! The peppermint flavour intensified and I loved the chewy chocolatey chunks. It was very hard to stop at one bowl.

Thanks for a great pick Karen! You can find the recipe at Welcome to Our Crazy Blessed Life under today's date.

Tuesdays with Dorie: (Not) Tarte Noire

No your eyes don't deceive you, that is definitely not a chocolate tart! This week's pick was an epic fail for me, resulting in a bowl of black sludge oozing fat. Yech. I have made ganache many times without any problems so I can only think the fat content of my cream was too high. Whatever it was it was totally unusable and ended up in the bin.

Having now run out of both cream and chocolate (soooo glad Lindt was 50% off this week so I only wasted $6 on chocolate instead of $12) I had to come up with another use for my tart shell.

Inspired by the Mystery Box challenges on MasterChef I searched the fridge/pantry and came up with condensed milk, sour cream, eggs, vanilla and lemon. Voila! The baked lemon custard tart was born!

As my tart shell was already fully baked I was a little worried it would get too dark upon baking again but I kept a close eye and had no problems.

Baked Lemon Custard Tart
(makes enough filling for 2 tarts)

400ml sour cream
1 tin of condensed milk
2 eggs
1ts vanilla paste
juice and rind of 1 lemon
2 tbs strawberry jam
Fresh strawberries and icing sugar to serve

Preheat your oven to 180/350 degrees. Place your prebaked tart shell on a baking tray. Brush the base with strawberry jam and set to one side. Combine all other ingredients in the food processor and blitz until very smooth. Pour the filling into the tart shell and bake for approximately 20 minutes or until set (firm but with a slight wobble in the middle). Tent with foil during baking if the crust is becoming too dark.

Remove the tart from the oven and allow to cool to room temperature then refrigerate for a couple of hours.

To serve, carefully remove the tart from the pan and place on a serving plate. Cover the top with sliced strawberries and a dusting of icing sugar.

The taste test ...

An absolute winner! The filling tastes almost exactly like a lemon cheesecake but a lot lighter (obviously without all the cream cheese). The lemon and strawberries complimented each other perfectly and the sweet tart crust was delish as always. Hubby was really looking forward to chocolate tart but even he wasn't too disappointed to get this instead!

My apologies to Dharmagirl of bliss: towards a delicious life for completely stuffing up her pick this week! To see how it should have been done visit the other TWD bakers here.

** Blogger seems to be eating my comments for some reason. I'm not sure who you are, but if you were one of the 7 or so people who commented this afternoon and your comment isn't here, that's why! Anyone had this happen before??**