Thee met Aimée

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Thee met Aimée

Pumpkin bread with cheesecake swirl

If you ever feel like having cheesecake, but you don’t have enough cream cheese in stock, or you just have a package of mascarpone about to hit the expiration date, this recipe will suit your needs. It combines the best of cakes and cheesecakes, and looks great when cutting through the marbled layers. I got the recipe from Peabody’s blog Culinary Concoctions (thank you), and made some alterations plus converted the ingredients to SI measures. I experimented a bit, and concluded that if you don’t have a pumpkin or can of pumpkin puree lying around, a great alternative is to grate a large carrot and mash a ripe banana. The taste, color and mushy texture of the resulting cake are fairly similar.

Pumpkin bread with cheesecake swirl by Thee met Aimee [recipe at www.theemetaimee.nl]

For the cake

– 240 g unsweetened pumpkin puree (or 1 cup) OR 1 large carrot + 1 banana
– 120 ml vegetable oil (or 0.5 cup)
– 2 eggs
– 300 g sugar (or 1.5 cup)
– 256 g plain flour (or 2 cups)
– 1 tsp baking powder
– 0.5 tsp salt
– 1 tsp cinnamon – 0.5 tsp ginger – 0.5 tsp nutmeg (or 2 tsp ready-made pumpkin pie spice, or Dutch speculaas spices)
– 120 g of your favorite nuts (or 1 cup)

For the cheesecake swirl

– 252 g mascarpone (or 9 oz)
– 75 g muscovado sugar (or 0.4 cup)
– 6 tbsp maple syrup
– 1 tbsp flour
– 1 egg

Pumpkin bread with cheesecake swirl by Thee met Aimee [recipe at www.theemetaimee.nl]Method:

For the cake batter, mix together the pumpkin puree, oil and eggs, and in a separate bowl the flour, baking powder and sugar. Then gently mix these two together and fold in the nuts. For the cheesecake swirl, mix together the mascarpone, sugar, syrup, flour and egg. Now poor about 2/3 of the cake batter in a butter or oil-greased pan, poor on the cheesecake mixture, and finish with the remaining cake batter. You could go through the concoction with a skewer to create a more marbled cake. Bat it at 160 degrees Celcius (or 325 Fahrenheit) for about 60 minutes. To bake the cake in my pictures, I used a round cake pan, just because I wasn’t in a loaf-pan-kind of mood, but you could of course pick whichever way you fancy.

Coconut pound cake

This variation on a traditional pound cake recipe is really easy to make (really! I’m not just saying that) and easy to get rid off. You can keep the finish basic, with a little powdered sugar, or give it a little extra, like I did: I cooked some coconut cream together with sugar (amount: to taste) until it had a nice cream cheese-like consistency, and smeared this on top.

Ingredients:

100 g raisins/sultanas, soaked (15 min. in boiling hot water) and drained

200 g butter

175 g white muscovado sugar

55 g grated dried coconut

2 eggs

2 tbsp syrup

200 g self-raising flour (or flour with a teaspoon of baking powder)

some powdered sugar, or coconut cream + sugar

Melt the butter (on low heat in a small pan, or in the microwave). Mix together all other ingredients, and add the butter last. Bake the cake for 30-35 minutes, in a 24 cm diameter cake pan, at 180 degrees celcius. You know it is done when a skewer comes out clean.

(Original recipe source – in Dutch)

Lemon & poppy seed bundt cake [Citroen & maanzaad tulband]

If you’re looking for a light treat that looks great on the table –but doesn’t take too much time to make– this is it. All this cake needs is a little powdered sugar on top to bring some rustic glamour to your brunch, tea or coffee.

The base is formed by a classic sponge cake [or, in Dutch, biscuit cake], which is very light & fluffy and doesn’t contain fats like butter or oil. The most important factor in the preparation is handling the egg whites and yolks separately, so you can beat in as much air as possible. As long as you keep the yolks out of the whites, you’re golden!

Ingredients:

5 large eggs, separated

150 g granulated sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla sugar / 3 drops vanilla extract

125 g plain flour

pinch of salt

grated lemon zest – to taste, but at least from 1 lemon

poppy seeds – to taste (and tasting the batter is fortunately not too unpleasant)

  1. Preheat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius.
  2. Beat the egg yolks and sugar until light and creamy (and tripled in volume), and add the vanilla & lemon zest
  3. In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites to a fluffy foam.
  4. Gently spoon together the mixtures, add the flour and salt (through a sieve) and also gently spoon the flour into the mixture. Make sure it is mixed thoroughly, but try to work the batter as little as possible to keep in the air bubbles.
  5. Poor the mixture in the (buttered) bundt cake pan.
  6. Bake for about 25 minutes.
  7. When finished, the cake should feel elastic and a toothpick should come out clean.