Another 80th birthday cake

Today would have been my Dad's 80th birthday, had he not passed away fairly suddenly some four years ago. I still miss him and I mark his birthday every year, though not always with a cake.

We visited Madeira at the start of June this year, it would have been a family trip back in 2020 with my Mum, Dad and Sister Bip, had we not been hit by covid and had to cancel it. In the supermarket in the centre of Funchal I spotted two cakes that looked very interesting and different from what I've seen before, so I quickly snapped a photo of each and decided to make the first one to mark my Dad's 80th. It is called Bolo de Bolacha and is a Portuguese version of a biscuit cake. I found an English language recipe here, but decided not to make the butter cream, that's way too much on one cake.

Instead I decided to make something lighter like a no-bake cheesecake filling, preferably with bilberries and I picked this one.

Ingredients

1 unwaxed lemon
300 g frozen bilberries
130 g granulated sugar
350 g cream cheese
1 tbsp vanilla sugar
2 dl double cream
42 Marie biscuits
3 dl blueberry soup or milk

Method

1. Wash the lemon, zest it and set aside, then cut the lemon in half.
2. Place the bilberries in a deep saucepan together with 50 g of the sugar and the juice from half of the lemon.
3. Bring the bilberries to a simmer on medium-low and stir occasionally. Simmer for about 10 minutes until it thickens and looks like jam.
4. Set aside to cool down - speed up by placing in cold water in the sink.
5. Transfer to a deep container and blend until smooth. Be very careful of splatter because it will be difficult to remove.
6. Place the cream cheese in a deep bowl, add the remaining sugar, the vanilla sugar and the juice from the second half of the lemon. Stir thoroughly to combine.
7. Add the smooth bilberries and stir through well.
8. Whip the double cream to stiff peaks – this doesn't take long and watch out so it doesn't turn to butter.
9. Fold in the whipped double cream into the cream cheese mixture.
10. Pour the blueberry soup or milk in a small bowl. Now dip each Marie bisquit into the liquid and place on a cake plate so that there is one in the middle and six around it.
11. Use a spatula or a knife to spread some of the cheesecake filling over the biscuits, taking care to not go outside the outer edge of the flower shape they form. I aimed for about 1 cm thickness.
12. Repeat the proces with the second layer of biscuits – dip in the liquid, then place on top of the cheesecake layer. Then follow with another layer of cheesecake mixture.
13. Do four more layers. Then carefully work around the outer edge and fill in the gaps and smooth out so that the biscuit layers are visible.
14. Place a little of the cheesecake filling in a piping bag with a star nozzle and pipe some rosettes on top. Decorate with fresh or frozen bilberries.
15. Chill in the fridge for a couple of hours, to allow the biscuits to soften a bit so that it's easier to cut the cake.

This turned out quite small because the Marie biscuits I bought were on the smaller side, so the cake would have been enough for 6 people. Lundulph thought that the lemon dominated the overall flavour. I agree, bilberries can easily get lost among other flavours, so I will need to experiment and reduce the lemon juice a bit. As there's a heat wave in the south of the UK at the moment, I had to chill the cheesecake filling for a bit before assimbling the cake, then I had to chill the assembled cake before finishing the edges, and chill a final time before piping decorations on top. But on a regular cooler day it should be possible to do everything in one go.

I had hoped that the cake would be the same lovely purple colour like in the recipe, but no, it went a lot darker. It could be a camera setting on the recipe photo or some sort of post-production treatment. But I wonder if it might be because I used bilberries – these are the European wild variety that my Mum picks every year. They seem to be purple all through, whereas the shop-bought blueberries only seem to have purple skins, so might not result in such a strong colour. I will need to experiment with these as well. It was very tasty – we had a slice on Sunday already when I made it and had the last piece today on my Dad's actual birthday.

Happy birthday, Dad!

Chickpea and cauliflower stew

Since we started using Ocado to deliver our weekly groceries, we've also been getting their magazine, which quite often has a few interesting recipes. Today I tried this one, which turned out to be quite tasty. However, I felt it needed a bit of sprucing up.

Ingredients

150 g sundried tomatoes, chopped
3 tbsp vegetable oil
2 onions peeled and diced
4-5 cloves of garlic, peeled
2 tsp smoked paprika (1 mild and 1 spicy if you like)
1 cauliflower divided into bite-sized florets
250 g button mushrooms, sliced
400 ml hot vegetable stock
2 cans of chick peas, 400 g each, use the liquid from one of them
100 ml double cream
1 tbsp lemon juice
20 g basil leaves, sliced

Method

1. Heat the oil in a deep saucepan and fry the onion for 5 minutes until it goes soft and a bit transluscent.
2. Press in the garlic and add the paprika and stir vigorously for a few seconds.
3. Add the cauliflower, tomatoes, mushrooms, chickpeas with some of their liquid and the stock. Let simmer for 15–20 minutes until the cauliflower begins to soften.
4. Remove from the heat and stir in the double cream.
5. Season with salt, pepper and lemon juice and stir in the basil.
6. Serve with a wholemeal flatbread.

The original recipe said serves 4, but I'd say this is more like serves 5, though it all depends on the size of the cauliflower of course. It was very tasty and worked very nicely as filling for a pita. Fairly easy to make too, so would work well as a working night dinner. I'm not sure how well it would freeze without the cauliflower going quite mushy, but I don't see a need for freezing with these amounts.

Lingonkola

One of the traditional Swedish Christmas sweets is kola (toffee) and there are loads of variations of it. I've been making it for a few years and always felt I've done something wrong. However, the stuff I've done over the past couple of years has been very tasty and I have decided that the discrepancy between what I imagine and what I end up with is due to the humid climate in the UK.

I've tried several different recipes, but a couple of years ago I made a lingon flavoured kola and it was really nice. So I was very surprised that I'd not recorded it in the blog. This is to correct this omission, because this year they turned out very nice too.

When I searched for the recipe, there were many results which showed beautifully rich pink sweets. I was hoping to get this colour too, unfortunately they went brown and look like generic toffees. Either the sugar caramelised or some of it burnt at the bottom of the saucepan, because it required some elbow grease to remove afterwards. Luckily the flavour was not affected.

The original recipe is in Swedish here.

Ingredients
makes around 70, depending on the size
250 g frozen lingonberries
260 g granulated sugar
100 g unsalted butter
3 dl whipping cream
1.5 dl light syrup
1 tbsp glucose syrup

Method

1. Stir together the frozen lingonberries and the sugar in a large saucepan with a thick bottom and bring to a boil.
2. Strain the mixture through a fine mesh or sieve. This should give around 340 g juice. Save the pulp and skins and use as jam on toast.
3. Melt the butter in the saucepan and add the whipping cream, lingon-sugar mixture, light syrup and glucose syrup and stir gently to mix.
4. Stop stirring once everything is combined and looks homogenous. Then let the mixture simmer gently until it reaches 125 °C.
5. While the toffee mixture is cooking, line a shallow baking tin (25 x 25 cm) with baking paper. 
6. When the mixture reaches the right temperature, pour into the baking tin and allow to cool down completely.
7. Cut up into bite sized pieces and wrap in baking paper, then store in an airtight container.

Needless to say, you need to have good teeth for these. Keep them in room temperature for a softer toffee or in the fridge for a harder, chewier texture.

A couple of years ago I invested in an adjustable "toffee mould" because the mixture does set fairly quickly once it's off the hob. However once it sets, I recommend refrigerating it before cutting because it will behave like a glacier - looks solid, but flows and once the adjustable mould is removed it will start deforming. I ended up cutting a strip, putting the mould sides back on and putting the thing in the fridge, then quickly cutting the strip into pieces, wrapping them in prepared pieces of baking paper, then also back in the fridge.

The lingonberries can probably be replaced with raspberries and I think adding some liquorice powder would be quite nice too. Next Christmas.