Candy Cane Brownie Parfaits

Christmas is fast approaching, I hope you are not stressing out! I've always been a plan-everything-majorly-in-advancen kind of person, so I never find Christmas too stressful. I bought most of my presents while I was travelling in Sri Lanka in July, so I've just been doing some final edible gifts to go with them. I'm a big advocate of edible gifts. Most of the people in my family don't actually need more stuff, and if they do then I don't know what it is that they want. So, a thoughtful handmade edible gift saves space in their house and saves them ending up with something they didn't actually want or like. I've tried to go for some different gift ideas this year, and I'll share them with you in the next few days - so keep your eye out!

In the meantime, it's time for the last Sweet Adventures Blog Hop of the year! There have been some great hops over the year - and I'm glad to say I have managed to squeeze in an entry to all 12 of them! Wow. Here are the other great themes from this year:

November's Vegetable Hop - Jus Alpukat (Indonesian Avocado Milkshake)

October's High Tea Hop - Frankfurter Kranz (German Layered Bundt with Rum Buttercream)

September's Saucy Hop - Afghan Brides Fingers with Orange Blossom Syrup

August's Berry Hop - Sugar Free and Vegan Raspberry Fudge

July's Nut Hop -  Best Ever Vegan Carrot Cake  (I got this one in just in time, but it never appeared on the link list so you may have missed it!)
June's Pie Hop - Easy, Sticky, Messy Banana Rum Pie

May's Tea Hop - Thai Red Tea Vegan Jelly with Poached Apples
April's Lemon Hop - Lemon Curd 'Cake Sandwiches'

March's Layers Hop - Rhubarb and Apple Sago Parfait

February's 'Love' Hop - African Almond, Pistachio and Orange Blossom Bites

January's Choc Hop - Black Forest Shots & Truffles in 3 Flavours: Paprika, Tahini & Strawberry Gum
December's Festive Hop - Chocolate Ice-Cream Christmas Pudding

This time round, being December - the theme is "Sweets for Santa". It is at this point I must confess a secret, I've had this dessert going round in my brain since last Xmas! Last year, right after the rush of Xmas - I happened upon a box of crushed up mini candy canes in the reduced section of my supermarket. Because they were all smashed, and because Xmas is over, they were 99c for the box! I bought them immediately and squirrelled them away. They've been sitting in my cupboard ever since and now I finally get the chance to bring you my Candy Cane Brownies (in parfait form!).

Ingredients

Brownies
1 cup wholemeal plain flour
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 cup cocoa powder
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 cup water
1/2 cup vegetable oil
50g dark chocolate
2/3 cup smashed candy canes

Vegan Brandy Whipped Cream
2 cans coconut cream, refrigerated for at least 24 hours
2 tbsp soft icing mixture
2 tsp brandy
More crushed candy canes, to garnish

To Make:
1. Preheat oven to 180 degrees C.
2. Combine the flour, sugar, cocoa and baking powder in a bowl.
3. Add the water and oil and mix into a thick batter.
4. Melt the chocolate in a metallic bowl sitting on top of a bowl of boiling water (make sure NO water gets into the actual chocolate, just use the heat from the boiling water to heat up the metallic bowl).
5. Stir the melted chocolate and the smashed candy canes (see note below on smashing up candy canes) into the mix.
6. Grease a small-medium square baking dish and line with greaseproof paper (this is important, as the candy canes will melt as they bake and become very sticky). Spread the batter evenly into the dish.
7. Bake for 20 minutes. Remove from the oven and allow to cool completely, it is best if you can refrigerate them before assembling the parfaits, so the brownies can firm up.
8. To make the whipped cream: When you open the tin of coconut cream you will notice that the top is a very solid thick cream. Scoop out all of the solid thick cream on top (you can reserve the liquid to use in another meal – like a curry or a smoothie).

9. Put the thick cream into a bowl and mix well using a hand held electric mixer. Move the beaters up and down to try and get as much air into the cream as possible. Add the sugar and brandy and beat until it pretty much resembles thick cream.
10.To assemble, break up pieces of the brownie and place in the bottom of a glass (tumbler, martini glass, wine glass, beer glass - all work well!). Layer some cream on top and then repeat with another layer of brownie and then cream. Decorate with a layer of crushed candy canes

Makes 6 parfaits (varies, depending on the size of your glasses)

Tip: If you make these in advance, add the crushed candy canes on top just before serving, so they stay nice and crunchy.

What is the best way to smash a candy cane?

Smashing up candy canes into fine pieces can be easier said than done. Food processors don't work too well for candy canes - so here are some tips. The easiest way to smash your candy canes is if they come already in individual wrappings - just leave the candy cane in the plastic wrapping and then go to town on it with a meat tenderiser (yes, for some reason I own a meat tenderiser although I have never used it for tenderising meat) or a mallet. Or a hammer, for that matter. If you find they're not smashing up as easily as you'd like, you can put them in the freezer for a bit to make them more brittle. I didn't find this step necessary though.

If they're not in individual packaging, just put them all in a ziplock bag and then bash at them the same way, you'll end up with some holes in the bag but that doesn't really matter. Once they're all smashed up, snip the corner off the bag and you can pour out your shards easily and without making a big mess.

Happy Smashing!

Vegan Kladdkaka (Gooey Swedish Chocolate Cake)

Only 2 days left of August! The year is going by so fast, we're almost into all the months that end with "ber" and to me that means that Xmas is practically here. There are also only 2 days left in Swedish Food month on this blog, which is sad in a way - although I'm sure my body won't mind eating less carbs, rich foods and chocolatey creamy desserts! It is just as well that Sweden month fell in winter, as I'm not sure how I would have coped with the rich and heavy foods during Sydney's summer months!

I've left my favourite Swedish dessert of the month until last. It's absolutely deliciously decadent! Kladdkaka is essentially a rich chocolate cake which is left slightly undercooked, so that the outer edge is chewy like a brownie and the inside is still gooey. It is very easy to make and is one hell of a fantastic comfort food! It's just like a big gooey chocolate brownie. What is not to love about that?

Ingredients
1 1/2 cups wholemeal flour
1 1/2 cups sugar
1/4 cup almond meal
1/8 tsp nutmeg
150g nuttelex (or other non dairy margarine)
2 tbsp golden syrup
1/2 cup almond milk (you can sub soy milk)
100g dark chocolate (vegan variety), chopped up
Chopped almonds to garnish (or other nuts if you like)

To Make
1. Preheat the oven to 180 degrees.
2. Combine the flour, sugar, almond meal and nutmeg in a large mixing bowl.
3. Put the nuttelex and golden syrup in a saucepan and put over a low heat to melt.
4. Stir in the almond milk and heat until it is almost simmering, the milk should be hot but not simmering.
5. Remove from the heat and stir through the chopped chocolate. Stir continuously until all the chocolate has melted.
6. Pour the chocolate mixture into the dry ingredients and mix well.
7. Grease a 22-23cm springform cake tin and line the bottom with greaseproof baking paper.
8. Pour the batter into the tin and bake for 20-22 minutes. The edges should be cooked and a skewer/knife should come out clean when inserted. The middle will be gooey.
9. Allow to cool a little. Sprinkle with chopped nuts. Can be eaten warm or cold, great served with vanilla ice cream.

Makes 1 cake.

~TIPS~
~ Remove the sides of the springform pan and then just serve it still resting on the base. As the middle is gooey it is not very stable and your cake may not respond well to being moved, so just leave it on the base to serve.

This month I'm featuring lots of amazing recipes from Sweden!

Check out my other Swedish recipe posts:

Ärtsoppa (Split Pea & Mustard Soup)

Vegan Smörgåstårta (Swedish Sandwich Cake)

Chokladdarraksbolls (Chocolate & Aniseed Balls)

Vegan Swedish Meatballs

Almond and Cranberry Semla

Jansson's Temptation (Creamy Potato Bake)

No-Knead Cardamom Braid 

Garlicy Field Mushrooms with Rödkål 

Easy Bosnian Chocolate Walnut Cake

This cake is completely different to any other vegan cake I have ever made! To be honest this made me pretty nervous. I have already got a pretty amazing basic recipe which I base all my vegan cakes and cupcakes on. It makes a light, fluffy and flavourful cake which always makes me happy and wows everybody I bake cake for. So, I was reluctant to try a completely different cake when I'm so happy with the cake I've got now. It's kind of like working hard at the gym and finally getting the awesome fit body you want and then somebody (presumably some sort of magician/witch/genie/gypsy/robot devil) offers you the chance to have a completely new body instead - but you don't know whether it will be worse or better (that is possibly a bit of an extreme parallel to draw - but that just tells you how passionate I am about my perfect cake). Do you take it???

So - last Saturday afternoon I met up with a wonderful friend and decided that I had to get over my nerves and bake this cake. It is based on a cake which I found on several different websites called the "Bosnian Easy Cake". At first glance I couldn't see much about this cake which made it special or particularly Bosnian (perhaps a Bosnian reader can tell me this!!), but it was conveniently vegan! So I decided to make my own version - adding real dark chocolate to make it rich and adding walnuts (because it seems like all the Bosnian desserts I have found are full of walnuts!!).

When we mixed the cake batter together we were worried. Understatement. The batter was dense, thick, oily and heavy. I was having people over to dinner to help me eat this cake so I had a mild panic attack (which mostly consisted of me hopping from one foot to the other and saying "What should I do? What should I do???") and wondered whether I should try and alter the recipe or whether I should trust it and see what happened.

When we pulled it out of the oven and I saw the beautiful dense brownie-like cake I actually jumped from one foot to the other with joy!! It had cooked through! It looked like a cake!! It wasn't a big blob of sticky dough!! My relief was phenomenal. Not only had it worked..... it looked delicious!! It smelt like rich chocolate and baked walnuts, it felt firm and dense under my touch (so different from the light fluffy cakes I usually cook!) with a crunch hard top like a moist brownie! It tasted rich, chocolatey and fudgey with crunchy chunks of walnuts littered through it like hidden treasure. I'm so glad I took the chance and found something new which I will definitely be making again!

Bosnian Chocolate Walnut Cake


Ingredients
2 cups plus 2 tbsp wholemeal flour
1 cup raw sugar
1/2 cup cocoa powder
1 tsp baking powder
1 cup water
1 cup oil
100g dark chocolate
1 cup walnuts, roughly chopped

To Make
1. Preheat your oven to 180 degrees.
2. Mix all the dry ingredients together in a bowl except the walnuts.
3. Make a well in the middle of the dry ingredients and add the wet ingredients except the chocolate. Mix well with a wooden spoon (or maybe you electric mixer - but it is a very thick mix so depends how good your mixer is, I've always been a bit old fashioned and like mixing my cake mixes by hand).
4. Melt the chocolate in a double boiler (if you are already a pro at melting chocolate properly then skip ahead now to step 5). If you don't have a double boiler (who does?) then bring a small amount of water to the boil in a saucepan and balance a ceramic or metal mixing bowl over the top of the saucepan. Chop up the chocolate roughly and add it to the bowl. Stir continuously until the chocolate is almost completely melted. Remove from the heat and continue to stir until the chocolate is completely melted and smooth.
5. Mix the melted chocolate and the walnuts into the cake batter.
6. Grease a medium sized cake tin well (as you can see I used a cute heart shaped one) and line the bottom of the tin with greaseproof paper (I found that it didn't tend to stick to the pan much at all so you needn't be anxious over it).
7. Pour the cake batter into the prepared tin and bake for 40 minutes. Test the cake after 40 minutes by inserting a sharp  knife into the centre of the cake. If it comes out clean the cake is done, if it comes out dirty give it another 5 minutes in the oven.
8. Turn the cake out to cool. When cooled dust with icing sugar and serve.

Check out our other Bosnian recipes:

Bosnian Zeljanica (Spinach, Leek and Cheese Pie)

Razlevjak (Bosnian-style Cornbread)

Prebranac (Bosnian Baked Beans)

Bosnian Spinach and "Cheese" Plait

Vegetarian Cufte

Bosnian Walnut Baklava 

Tufahija (Walnut-stuffed Poached Apples in Syrup!)

Temporary Vegan Trifle

Why temporary? Because the combination of chocolate brownies, berry compote and chocolate-coconut ganache in trifle form is almost certain to disappear as soon as it's created.

Vegan Trifle

Chocolate brownie ingredients:

1 cup of soymilk

1 tsp of apple cider vinegar

1/4 cup of rice bran or canola oil

1 1/4 cups of sugar

1 tsp of vanilla extract

1/4 cup of dark chocolate, chopped and ready to melt

2 cups of plain flour (you can replace this with gluten free flour if you wish)

3/4 cup of cocoa powder

1 tsp of baking powder

1/2 tsp of salt

Berry compote ingredients:

400gm of fresh or frozen berries of your choice (I used mixed)

2 Tbsp of raw sugar

Chocolate-coconut ganache ingredients:
2oogm of dark chocolate

3/4 cup of coconut milk

How to make:

Brownies:

1. Preheat oven to 180 degrees (c)

2. In a large bowl, whisk the soymilk and apple cider vinegar and let stand for a few minutes.

3. Melt the chocolate (boil water in a saucepan, place the chocolate in a bowl and place the bowl in the saucepan, making sure no water enters the bowl. Whick chocolate until it is melted.

4. Add the sugar, oil, vanilla extract and salt to the soymilk mixture and whisk.

5. Add the dry ingredients and stir until combined.

6. Stir the melted chocolate through the mixture.

7. Line a 33x23cm baking tray with baking paper, pour the brownie mixture in and bake for 30mins.

Berry compote:

1. Put the berries into a small saucepan over a low heat, sprinkle with the sugar and cook until they have released their juices. The mixture should look like a lumpy jam (in a good way...). This should take no longer than 10minutes.

Chocolate-coconut ganache:

1.Heat the coconut milk in a small saucepan until just boiling, take off the stove and whisk in the chocolate until all melted.

Trifle assembly:

1. Find/buy/steal 4 martini glasses.

2. Fill 1/4 of the glasses with the berry compote

3. After cutting the brownies into squares, place one in the glasses.

4. Cover brownie with ganache.

5. Add another brownie

6. Cover with compote.

7. Add a layer of ganache and top with some sliced almonds. Refrigerate for an hour.

Finally, eat it, eat it good, eat it real good.