Poached Caramel Pear, Polenta and Almond Cake

As I have mentioned and as you may have noticed… I have a very new and very real love affair with polenta. You can have it with meat or veg or you can put it in a cake… sweet or savory – it goes down a charm. My latest recipe is this gorgeous poached and caramelized pear cake with ground almond and polenta.So rich in flavour! I read about an italian cake called Amor Polenta in one of my mum’s old recipe books and I based this recipe on it. Standardly I had to adapt it so that there is way more almond and caramel as well… Let’s be honest any cake is made better with some caramel.

The pears I bought we pretty unripe, but that worked well because they didn’t fall apart when being poached and caramelized at high temperatures and the heat brought all the juicyness to the surface. Perfecto!

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Walnut Loaf Cake

Slight rant: I was woken this morning by builders hammering about 2 metres from my head at 7am on the dot. WHY is it the law that builders can start at 7 – surely 8 would be a much more civilized time! I am extremely disappointed as I was looking forward to going upstairs and ranting to  the builders about their illegally early starting times – as I was sure it was 8. But I checked online, and 7 it is. ERGH! SO TIRED.

Last week was ABSOLUTELY manic and all I wanted to do every spare moment I had was watch Game of thrones or SATC. I had a dinner party where I made some nice stuff, and I had planned to share that on the blog – but you know after a glass of wine I just couldn’t have taken any nice photos! I will have to recreate the stuff I made!

Eclairs: Classic Chocolate, Mango or Rosewater

My sister is visiting me in Berlin at the moment. So I had a day off and we went swimming in Badeschiff.. which on really hot days is a paradise for smug hipsters and their possies.. but on moderately hot week days.. it is a nice place to chill and swim outside. We got the latter.. thank GOD!

We also decided to make eclairs of all different kinds… We did the classic chocolate glaze with creme patissiere. Then we made rosewater glaze… for some others, and finally, white chocolate glaze (with pink food colouring) with mango creme patissiere…. THOSE ONES WERE FANTASTIC…!

If you are going to try and make these.. I would say just clean up as you go along… you are going to need a LOT of pots and pans and having a partner in crime is also great. Sloj (my sister – photographed below, her real name is Selina) was so helpful and a great baker!

Rice Pudding with Caramelized Orange Compote

I remember the days of school dinners. The days of Ambrosia rice pudding. Some people think of this fondly, but I hated the stuff. I was always completely disgusted by the taste of the stuff.

The system at my primary school was that you HAD to have dessert, but you could choose two different portions: DOT or normal. As you may have guessed, dot meant the tiniest amount and normal.. just a standard portion. I always always took normal for everything except for Ambrosia rice pudding… and I couldn’t even bear to eat that, so I would swish it around the bowl to make it look like I had had normal… I always got in trouble for this…

I actually don’t mind Ambrosia now, but I thought I would try this wonderful vanilla rice pudding with orange compote. I found it at Gourmet Traveller – if you haven’t seen this site, it is a must read online magazine. The recipes and food photography are spot on.

I’m not going to copy the recipe and put it on here… because I feel like Gourmet Traveller should get the credit so if you fancy making this deliciously simple and creamy dish, click here.

I really like the idea of this compote – I could imagine it would work with a lot of different fruit, like rhubarb, peach, maybe even lime…

Don’t forget to store the rice pudding in the fridge if you have any left… those fruit flies love a bit of rice pudding.

Have a lovely day!

Trisha!