I wasn't going to mention my disastrous cupboard bake this week, but I think I will as it emphasises the fact that you can't always make cunning substitutions in baking. I wanted to reprise the gluten free apple cake, but halfway through making it I realised that I had run out of baking powder. I did have some bicarbonate of soda, so thought that I would use that instead. Sadly, the two are not interchangeable. Bicarb is four times as strong, and my heavy handed use of it made it absolutely inedible. Even K couldn't eat it :(
Luckily, with my baking from the cupboards mindset on, I managed to salvage the situation so that K could still have some pudding when he got back from his cycling session and finally made my own recipe No-bake-Nutella-chocolate-cheesecakes (and finally, I took a picture that I can show off!). All I did was to bash up two little mini packets of chocolate animal biscuits (leftover from taking K's nieces to the ballet before Christmas) and stir the crumbs into half the amount of melted butter. I put that into the bottom of two Nutella glasses, and then beat some cream cheese with about 1/3 of a small pot of Nutella and spooned it on top (as you can see I didn't do a terribly tidy job). And then I got out my white chocolate stars to decorate it with.
The other cupboard bake that I produced this week were some slightly blobby jam flower biscuits, to use more of the apricot jam that I had rediscovered, and also as I discovered we had some strawberry jam lurking (oh the shame of all of the food that I have accumulated). They weren't quite as successful as the last time I made this recipe, but I put this down to the fact that I used more expensive strawberry jam which I should have sieved as the pieces of fruit made it a little difficult to pipe.
Oh I love that your 'No bake nutella chocolate cheesecake' is even served in Nutella jars. Perfect!
ReplyDeleteMmmm Cheesecake one of my favourite! And a no bake one is even better.
ReplyDeletePass the spoon!
ReplyDeleteBoth of those look lovely!!
ReplyDeleteOh dear regarding the baking powder incident, but how honest of you to mention it when you didn't need to.
ReplyDeleteWhen I make scones I use a combination of cream of tartar and bicarb, wonder if that would have worked better as a substitute for baking powder?
The Nutella cheesecakes look very moreish, well done on that creation.
I don't think you need to beat yourself up over what you've got stashed in your store cupboard. So many recipes call for just a small amount of an ingredient and you have to buy it in a larger volume, so your cupboards are going to fill up with things that have been only partially used.
Have you come up with a good GF recipe for pancakes? So far I've not been very successful with those, and of course Shrove Tuesday is coming up. I've tried some GF batter packet mixes, but not been impressed.
Joan - they are such wonderful little glasses to use; I use them all the time!
ReplyDeleteJo - it was surprisingly healthy as I used low fat cream cheese.
Darlene - absolutely not - I'm keeping it for myself :)
Dot - thank you!!
Geraldine - some of the things in my cupboard though have been bought on a whim and not used at all! I have not tried GF pancakes I am afraid; I do have a mix made by Ogran which I was wondering about giving a go - I tend to do scotch pancakes rather than the sort that you have to tiss as they don't go so wrong... I think possibly I needed to add something to the bicarb, but I'm not sure what. I have more baking powder now...