Aileen's Vegetarian Beanstack

Jack and the 'Beanstack'

I had made a beanstack for the July Cake and Bake meet, but unfortunately was unable to be there on the day.  I did bring my bake into work with me and managed to raise some money for Marie Curie Cancer Care in the process!

1 1/2 tsp olive oil
1 Spanish onion, finely chopped
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
2 chillies, deseeded and finely chopped
1 red pepper, deseeded and finely chopped
1 yellow pepper, deseeded and finely chopped
1 green pepper, deseeded and finely chopped
3 carrots, peeled and diced
1 ¼ kg cooked kidney beans
5 large tortillas (make sure they're big enough for the dish you use!)
2 tbsp of Greek yogurt (I use way more than that, the more the better in my book)
50g grated Cheddar
Handful fresh coriander to serve
Salsa Verde to serve
31.5 cm round spring form tin, greased and lined

1.  Preheat oven to 200ºC
2.  Heat oil, sauté onions

3.  Add garlic and chillies and sauté for 1 more minute
4.  Add peppers, carrots and cover.  Leave on low heat for 10 minutes.
5.  When cooked place in large bowl.  Add beans and blend roughly, we don't want beans totally blended.
6.  Season a little more than normal as beans absorb flavour
7.  Place tortilla on base of tin, then 1/3 bean mix, then yogurt
8.  Repeat ending with yogurt
9.  Cover with foil and bake for 25 minutes

10.  Remove, sprinkle with cheese and return to oven uncovered for a final 5-10 minutes

11.  Allow to cool before removing from tin (I may not have waited for it to cool, hence the partial collapse in the photo below, still super tasty though!)

Aileen's potato style bites

Potato style bites

Makes 60

55g butter, softened

110g cream cheese

1 tsp vanilla extract

480g icing sugar

185g flaked coconut

7g cinnamon (or as required)

1. In a medium bowl, beat the butter and cream cheese together until smooth. Add the vanilla and icing sugar; beat until smooth.
2. Using your hands if necessary, mix in the coconut. Roll into balls or potato shapes, and roll in the cinnamon.
3. Place onto a cookie sheet and chill to set. If desired, roll potatoes in cinnamon again for darker colour.

Aileen's Irish potato and peanut butter roll

Irish potato and peanut butter roll

1 potato, peeled and chopped

910g icing sugar

65g peanut butter

1.      Place potato into a saucepan with enough water to cover and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to medium-low and cook potato until very tender, about 15 minutes. Drain and allow to steam dry for a minute or two.

2.      Transfer potato to a large bowl and mash with a fork until smooth.

3.      Gradually stir icing sugar into mashed potato a little at a time until the mixture forms a stiff dough. The dough will be runny until all the powdered sugar is used.

4.      Place a large square of waxed paper onto a work surface. Roll or press dough into a 12-inch square rectangle on the waxed paper.

5.      Spread peanut butter over top of dough, covering it entirely.

6.      Pick up one edge of waxed paper and start rolling the dough to make a 12-inch-long log. Wrap log tightly with waxed paper.

7.      Refrigerate for 1 hour. Unwrap log and slice candy into cross-sectional pieces about 3/4-inch thick to serve.

Note:  A nice floury potato works best for this recipe, I didn’t have any in at the time and attempted the recipe with a less floury variety.  The result was a very soft dough which prevented me from slicing it nicely despite it having spent longer in the fridge.

  

Aileen's Apricot Tartlets

Apricot tartlets

Makes 10

Pastry

1 large egg

30g sugar

20g ground almond

130g flour

50g butter

2 pinches salt

Curd

300g fresh apricots, pitted

80g sugar

2 eggs

1 tbsp cornflour

1 tbsp lemon juice

Meringue

3 egg whites

180g sugar

60ml water

1 pinch of salt

Making the pastry

1. In a large bowl mix together the egg, the sugar, the ground almond and the salt.
2. Fold in the flour then add the butter. When properly blended, make into a ball and place in the fridge for 1 hour.
3. Preheat your oven at 190°C.
4. Dust some flour on your tabletop and roll out your dough until you obtain 3mm of thickness. Cut out dough circles so that they are slightly larger than your moulds. This way the dough will fall over the edge. Place the dough onto each mould and put in the freezer for 10 minutes.
5. Place some baking beans on the bottom of your moulds and put in the oven for 10 minutes at 190°C.
6. Get rid of the beans and cut off the extra dough at the top. Doing so will give you a perfectly shaped tart. Put back in the oven for some more minutes then put aside to cool down.
   
   

Making the curd

1.  Blend the apricots with the lemon juice and 2 tbsp of water until you obtain a purée.  Pop this mixture through a sieve to get rid of the fruit bits and fibres.
2. Heat up the apricot purée on medium heat. 
3. In a separate bowl, beat the eggs, the sugar and the cornflour together.
4. Pour the heated apricot over the egg mix and return to the heat.
5. Keep mixing until you have a smooth texture.
6. Pop this mixture into each tartlet case, once they have cooled.

Making the meringue topping

1. Make syrup by heating up the sugar and water. Meanwhile, beat the egg whites with the salt. When the syrup reaches 118°C, pour it slowly over the egg meringue while mixing.  If you don’t have a thermometer like me, the soft ball test worked fine.
2. With a piping bag, cover the top of your tarts.  I tried a couple of different piping patterns to mix it up a bit.  Finally put under the grill to give it a golden finish.

Aileen's 'Sangria' jelly with wheaten biscuits

Beetroot jelly ‘Sangria’ with carrot, orange and cardamom jelly ‘slices’, served with wheaten ‘straws’ (and additional wheaten biscuits!)

Beetroot jelly

4 whole beetroot, roughly chopped.

100ml red wine vinegar

25g sugar

Salt and pepper to taste

Agar agar (1g per 100ml of mix)

1. Blend beetroot with vinegar and sugar.
2. Season to taste.
3. You can strain it through muslin at this point if you want a nice clear jelly.  I thought it would just result in too much waste of the lovely beetroot so I skipped this stage
4. Heat the mixture over a steady heat and sprinkle in the agar agar. 
5. Stir to dissolve.
6. Spoon the jelly into moulds or glasses depending on the desired affect and pop in the fridge overnight.

Carrot, orange and cardamom jelly

300g carrots roughly chopped

300ml orange juice

3g agar agar

5x black peppercorns

2x cardamom pods

2 tsp gin

1. Put the chopped carrots in a pan and fill with orange juice.  Add the peppercorns, cardamom and gin and bring to the boil.
2. Leave this mixture to boil until the carrots are mushy.
3. Pop it all in the blender and blitz until smooth.
4. Pour through a sieve to remove any lumps and the spices.
5. Cool down the mixture in the fridge.
6. Put the mixture in a saucepan, sprinkle with agar agar and bring to the boil until dissolved.
7. Pour mixture into moulds to create the desired effect.  I used a muffin tray and halved the set jelly to make them look like orange slices to garnish my ‘sangria’. 

Wheaten biscuits

Makes about 30

155g whole wheat flour

20g sugar

½ teaspoon salt

¼ teaspoon paprika

55g unsalted butter, cut into small bits

1. Combine the flour, sugar, salt, paprika and butter in a medium bowl. 
2. Work the buter into the mixture until mixture resembles breadcrumbs.
3. Add 60ml of cold water and stir with a spoon until combined.
4. Knead once or twice on counter.
5. Heat oven to 200ºC.  Lightly grease the baking trays or line with baking paper.
6. Roll out the dough, half at a time to a large very, very, very thing rectangle shape.  Make sure the dough is not sticking, but make sure it is as thin as you can.  Cut a number of strips and curl (for the ‘straws’) and cut the remainder into 4cm squares.  Dot these with cocktail stick.
7. Transfer biscuits to the baking trays.  There is no need to space them, they won’t spread.
8. Bake biscuits until crisp and bronzed. It will only take 5-7 minutes so stay with them!
9. Transfer onto wire rack to cool. 
10. The recipe tells me that the biscuits will last for a week in an airtight tin. From my experience, they normally get eaten the very same evening!

Aileen's Neapolitan Ice Cream Macarons

Neapolitan Ice Cream Macarons

Makes 10-15 macarons

Macarons

100g icing sugar

100g ground almonds

2 medium egg whites

Small pinch salt

55g castor sugar

Filling

150g unsalted butter

75g icing sugar

Quarter teaspoon vanilla essence

Strawberry jam

1. Preheat oven to 160ºC
2. Sieve icing sugar into a large mixing bowl.  Then sieve ground almonds into same bowl.
3. In a separate bowl, whisk the eggs and salt until they form soft peaks.   Add castor sugar, a little at a time, until the egg is thick and glossy.
4. Gently stir the dry mix into the egg mix.   The mix will loose some air and become loose.
5. Spoon this mixture into a piping bag with 1cm nozzle (See note at end).  The recipe recommended a plain nozzle, which I don’t own so while the end product doesn’t look like a traditional macaron, I quite like effect created by the star nozzle I used.
6. Using a macaron template (they can be bought-I made my own by drawing on baking parchment) on a baking tray, pipe small blobs onto the sheet.  Do not pipe right up until the edge of the template, the mixture will settle.
7. Tap the baking tray a number of times to remove any trapped air.
8. Leave to dry for twenty minutes.  The surface of the macarons should be smooth and shiny and not stick to your finger.
9. Bake for 7-8 minutes.  Open door to release steam, close and bake for a further 7-8 minutes.
10. The macarons are cooked when they feel firm and are slightly risen.
11. Cool completely before removing from the parchment.  If they are not completely cooled, they are more likely to stick to the parchment and break as you lift them.  Resist the urge!
12. Make up a butter icing using the butter, sugar and essence.  It’s a less sugary version of butter icing, but necessary when working with the sweetness of the macarons. 
13. To assemble, take one chocolate shell and pipe a line of butter icing around the edge.  Pop a small amount of jam in the centre and join the chocolate shell with a pink shell.

Note: As this recipe is for making Neapolitan ice cream style macarons, the mixture should be halved before piping, and the necessary colourings and flavourings added.

As I was adapting this recipe from a standard macaron recipe and was unsure of amounts I made two batches of mixture.  I coloured one batch pink using red food colouring paste and I added cocoa powder to the other mixture.  As you can guess the extra dry in my chocolate part of the Neapolitan made a thicker mixture and I didn’t achieve the trademark ‘pied’ as I did on the pink batch.  I’ll know better for next time!

Aileen's mini walnut and date brownies

Mini walnut and date brownies

Makes approx. 25

110g walnuts

6 tablespoons cocoa powder

200-250g pitted dates (depending how ‘fudgy’ you want them)

1 tablespoon vanilla extract

100g dark chocolate (optional for covering)

1.      Put the nuts and cocoa in food processor and blitz until mixture resembles breadcrumbs.

2.      Add the vanilla extract and the dates and blitz until the mix starts to stick together.

3.      Divide the mixture into uniform sizes of whatever shape you want (I stuck to the standard bite size ball)

4.      Place onto greaseproof paper and pop into the freezer for ten minutes while you prepare the chocolate for covering.

5.      Melt chocolate and cover each bite. Allow to set. 

6.      Store in airtight container in fridge.

Note: Covering these bites in chocolate is an optional step.  I decided they were sweet enough, but each to their own I suppose!