Berry coulis with chocolate cake

As this blog is supposed to be about fruit and vegetables try to ignore the chocolate cake for a moment.

How easy is coulis to make? Absolutely lick-out-the-container-delicious and dead easy. You don’t even really need a recipe. Well, you won’t after the first time.

Raspberry Coulis

¼ cup of raspberries blitzed in the blender
add juice from half a lime (or quarter of a lemon) and 3 teaspoons of sugar to taste

You can try other fruits to make coulis (French for uncooked fruit sauces), such as strawberries, blueberries, mangoes, and kiwi fruits.  If you are  pedantic, you may like to  strain out the seeds. Drizzle over chocolate cake or dessert of choice.

Chocolate Cake

For this gorgeous gluten free chocolate cake I used Cocoa Farm chocolate to give it a hint of fruity shiraz. It’s great to see an all Australian company coming up with innovative products. I can’t wait to try their Orange Organic Dark Chocolate.

150g chocolate
100g butter
100g brown sugar
150g almond meal
3 eggs, organic and free range

1. Pre-heat oven to 170°C
2. Melt together butter and chocolate in a bowl over a pot of simmering water. (Or use microwave on low if you are game).
3. Separate eggs and set whites aside.
4. Cream together yolks and sugar until pale and doubled in size. Add melted chocolate to egg mixture and beat on slow speed until combined. Fold in almond meal with a spatula.
5. Whisk egg whites to stiff peaks.
6. Fold whites through cake mixture.
7. Transfer mixture to a greased cake tin.
8. Bake for 25 to 40 minutes.
9. Cake should be springy in the middle and skewer should come out clean. Remove from oven and transfer to cooling rack.

B.T.W. Try to avoid blitzing frozen raspberries near clean washing up. It was hard to mop up and hide the evidence of all the red segments flicked all over the place. Blend in the sink people.

Damper

Australia isn’t known for it’s breads, but we do have damper. To make the traditional campfire bread more festive I’ve added some herbs from the garden, some left over semi-dried tomatoes and a heirloom tomato. The green and red flecks of colour make it ideal to serve at this time of the year. We prefer semi-dried tomatoes to the full sun-dried ones. I’m predicting that heirloom tomatoes will be trendy soon, just like sun-dried tomatoes were a few years ago.

A heirloom tomato was the second vegetable to be harvested. As our compost doesn’t get hot enough to kill the seeds, there are tomato plants dotted all around our garden.

2 cups of self-raising flour
30g butter
2 tbps chopped chives and basil
1 tomato
6 semi-dried tomatoes
1/3 cup water
1/3 cup milk

1. Sift flour into a bowl and rub in butter with your fingertips.
2. Add the herbs and chopped tomatoes and mix.
3. Make a well in the centre of the mixture, add the combined water and milk in batches.
4. Mix quickly to form a soft dough. Add more flour or water/milk, if required, to get the right consistency.
5. Place on a tray lined with baking paper. Brush with milk.
6. Bake at 220°C for 15-20 minutes.

Baked for Bread Baking Day #15: Festive Breads.