Guacamole with pomegranate

This is my favourite guacamole recipe: guacamole with pomegranate. The deliciously fresh taste of avocados and lime is accompanied by pomegranate and its wonderful crunchiness and sweetness, love it. Just make sure that the pomegranate you use is sweet, as a sour pomegranate and lime can make it too sour.

Guacamole can be varied with corn, different chili peppers, nuts, watermelon etc., but it always has the same base with avocados, lime, onion and cilantro. And it never ever, I repeat, never ever contains cream or any kind of diary product. That is, if you want the original Mexican version called Guacamole.

The chips, called “totopos” in Mexico, are made of tortillas that are dried in the oven or fried in the oil until crunchy.

Guacamole with pomegranate
3 avocados
1 smal onion
some chili serrano
3 tbsp pomegranate
1 tbsp lime juice
2 tbsp chopped cilantro
some salt

Mash avocados and lime juice with a fork. Add the rest of the ingredients and mix. Done!

Almond paste "muffins"

These sweet little “muffins” are one of my favourite treats. But they are not really muffins, the shape reminds of muffins but that would be it. These are maid with almond paste and barely any flour. My favourite one is with orange flavour. It is also typical version from the west coast in Sweden where I live. Not that almonds or oranges grow on the west coast :-), or else where in Sweden.

I was actually planning to post this recipe for SHF-going local, but despite they are west-coast they are really not west-coast. In general there are not many sweet local-specialities in Sweden like in rest of the Europe. Here everything is kind of national and international, I guess a bit like IKEA. Anyway, here comes the recipe.


Almond paste "muffins"
10 pieces
200 g almond paste
100 g butter at room temperature
2 eggs
1,5 tbsp flour
½ tsp baking powder
1 tsp freshly grated orange zest

1 dl icing sugar
1-2 tsp water
3 tbsp candid orange zest

Butter and flour the muffin moulds. You should use the smallest cups you have, mine hold 1 dl of liquid.

Grate the almond past and add the butter. Mix everything until smooth and fluffy. Add eggs one at the time. Stir in the flour mixed with baking powder and orange zest. Fill the cups, a bit more than half and bake at 180 C for about 15 minutes. Let cool for some minutes and take them out of the cups. Let cool completely. When cold frost them with the mixture of powder sugar, water and candid orange zest.

Browniebabe

Browniebabe is a wonderful food-blog event founded and hosted by Myriam at Once upon a tart. A babe who can bake an ultimate brownie of the month will get the honour to be a “Browniebabe of the month”.

As the month is August I thought I wanted to bake a summer inspired brownie. Recently I made Cocadas and having Caribbean on my mind I decided that coconut should definitely be one of the ingredients in my brownie.

And for some reason whenever I think of Caribbean I also think of this drink called Coco-Loco. A wonderful coconut-pineapple cocktail, similar to piña colada but better, so you can imagine. So to my recipe I added fresh pineapple as well. And what can I say….. Brownie+August+summer+Caribbean+Coco-Loco = Browniebabe of the month

Coco-Loco Brownie
300 g dark chocolate (at least 65%)
200 g butter
180 g sugar
4 eggs
200 g flour

150 g fresh coconut
1 dl water
0,5 dl sugar
150 g fresh pineapple
2,5 dl milk
1,5 dl sugar
2 tsp corn starch


Start with the Coco-Loco batter. Shred coconut finely. Put 100 g shredded coconut in a saucepan together with 1 dl water and 0,5 dl sugar. Cook for about 30 minutes on a low high-heat until coconut gets transparent and water is gone. In the meantime, cut pineapple in small pieces, the smaller the better. Squeeze out all juice and mix with the cooked coconut.

In another saucepan put 2,5 dl milk and 1,5 dl sugar and cook on a medium high-heat for about 30 minutes. The mixture needs to get thick, a bit thicker than condensed milk. Pour into the coconut-pineapple mixture, add corn starch and blend well. Set aside.

Now make the brownie dough. Melt chocolate and butter together over bain marie. Whip sugar and eggs; add melted chocolate and butter, blend well. Add flour and blend until incorporated.

Pour the batter into a buttered and floured pan (I use cacao instead of flour). The pan should be 20x30 cm. Take a small spoon and “dot” the brownie with small amounts of coco-loco mixture. Bake in preheated oven 200 C for about 20 minutes. When done, let cool and put in the fridge over the night. I really think all chocolate cakes taste better the next day.

Next day roast 50g of shredded coconut, cut the brownie into small pieces, role the sides in the roasted coconut…delicious delicious, simply delicious.

Berry pudding

 
As the berry season is at its peak I needed a new berry recipe. I found couple of different recipes for the ”Summer pudding” on BBCs Good Food but I really didn’t follow any of them. I just got an idea how it should be and then I made 3 individual puddings. Next time I think I will add a vanilla bean and instead of bread loaf use brioche.


 


Berry pudding
500 g different berries (I had blackberries, red currants, blueberries, strawberries and bilberries, on the picture)
½ dl water
as much sugar as u like
3 slices white bread (one day old)
3 tea cups (mine hold 2,5 dl and have 4 cm in diameter)


Put sugar and water in a pot and cook on medium high until sugar is dissolved. Add strawberries and blueberries and cook on a low heat for 2-3 minutes. Add the rest of the berries and cook for another 2 minutes. Set aside to cool down a bit.

Line the tea cups with cling film, leaving an overhang. Cut the crusts of the bread and cut out a circle of each slice. The circle should be big enough to cover the base of the tea cups. When you have 3 circles cut the rest of the bread into smaller cubes.
Put some of the berry juice in a separate bowl. Dip the bread circles in this juice and place on the bottom of the tea cup. Cover with a bit of berries. Now dip the bread-cubes in the juice, they do not need to be soaked completely and fill the cups mixing berries and bread-cubes. Cover with cling film and put something a bit heavy on the top. I had a 100 g tuna can on the top of each cup. Let chill in the fridge for about 4 hours. Invert on a plate and serve with some more fresh berries and maybe some whipped cream.

Amedei chocolate

“Chocolate is a concept. An exotic aspiration of beauty and flavour, embodying the bitterness and darkness of sin, with the sweet captivation of seduction. Chocolate is a subtle form of the inaccessibility of perfection, the flavour of sensual beauty that only intelligence can contemplate, elevating it…”
Cecilia and Alessio Tessieri
(founders of Amedei)

This week I got this "Amedei" chocolate box from my boyfriend, thank you babe! Is the first time I try this brand and I am loving it. This particular box “La Selezioni” has 5 different bars, each bar containing 12 pieces.

One of the bars is "Porcelana" which is made with the finest cacao bean of them all, criollo. Amedei makes about 20 000 Porcelana bars every year and each bar gets a handwritten number on the back. I got the lucky number 03179.

The main advantage of criollo is that it tastes aromatic and not bitter despite the high percentage of cacao, 70% in this case.

By the way, my name is Mila and I am chocoholic…absolutely and unconditionally chocolate lover!