Vanillicious.com – Easy Desserts

Crépes

Crepes are also known as Palacsinta in the Hungarian cuisine. Can be served as either savoury or sweet dish, and this is up to you.

Over the last few weeks we’ve been having crepes every Sunday. I figured it’s so much fun, very irresistible and absolutely unhealthy solution for a family (or friends) brunch or dinner. And most importantly: it’s a win-win! Everybody’s happy and can never really get bored of it, since you can have it with different delicious fillings or toppings. The perfect solution! I remember my first childhood crepes were at a friend’s, whose mom used to fill them with a spread of cream cheese, sugar and cinnamon and that’s it. It was amazing, and I never felt the urge to fill it with anything else. Ahhh, nostalgia!

Crepes are very easy to make. Preparing the batter is very simple, quick and can be made up to one day in advance and kept in the fridge. If you do so, the butter will separate from the rest of the batter. In that case, just whisk it again until well combined again.

Once you have your crepes served, you can go wild and find your favourite combination of flavours:

Spread  with some: Nutella, honey, dulce de leche, berries purée, custard, maple syrup

Add fresh fruit: strawberries, bananas, fresh berries, apples

Sprinkle with some ground or crushed: coconut, almonds, walnut, hazelnuts or any other type of nuts

Spice it with cinnamon

And of course, serve with some custard, ice cream or whipped cream. If you choose to whip cream, I suggest to sweeten it with sugar to taste and flavour it with 1 tsp of vanilla extract.

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Dulce de Leche

Dulce de Leche is a milk based sauce which is very popular in Latin America. The idea behind its making is simmering milk with sugar (and other ingredients) for several hours, letting most of the milk liquid evaporate, the sauce is becoming thicker and being caramelised.

Dulce de Leche is used mainly in cakes and cookies (one can’t forget the magical taste of the divine Alfajors!) but also as an ice cream sauce.

I couldn’t find Dulce de Leche in most Dublin city centre stores. It left me with two choices: either make it myself or cheat by boiling a can of condensed milk.

If you feel like making it yourself, have a look at the recipe below. If you don’t feel like stir litters of milk for several hour, you can make dulce de leche out of condensed milk. The only ingredient will be a can of condensed milk, and this can be found in the nearest shop (hopfully…).

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White Chocolate and Mascarpone tartlets

This dessert is very easy to prepare, the outcome looks impressivly sophisticated and tastes wonderful!

There are two phases when preparing the White Chocolate and Mascarpone tarts: 1. preparing the pastry cases 2. preparing the filling

The cases will be baked without the filling and this is called Blind Baking. When baking blind, we need to put some weight over the pastry base, so it won’t puff or rise. This is where the baking beans come for our rescue. You should line the pastry base with baking paper and fill it with baking beans. Baking beans can be either ceramic or dried ones. I usually use red kidney beans as they seem to be the haviest available, relatively cheap and are re-useable.

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Walnut Cinnamon Cake

Sponge cakes are very easy to bake and will take so little of your time to prepare. The idea for this cake came from a very simple orange sponge cake that my mom used to bake. I exchanged some of the flour with ground almond because I just love what it does to the cake’s texture and the juice with sour cream (Creme fraiche can be used as well). And just so the cake won’t be too boring, I added the walnut-cinamon mix as filling and topping. The end result is just lovely. If you want a cake with no effort, here’s a cake for you!

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Berry fool

Fool is a British summery dessert (though I don’t see any reason why one should not have it all year long), which is probably hundreds of years old. This amazingly elegant, simple and delicious dessert is basically made by a sweetend fruit purée, stirred and folded into whipped double cream (single cream when it’s not available, or when you want your dessert less fatty, of course).

The name fool is derived from the French word foulé, which means crushed, and refers to the crushed fruit. In the following recipe I’m using mixed berries. My favourites for the purée are blackberries, raspberries, blackcurrant, redcurrants and strawberries. Though it can be made with any berry or berries of your choice. Remember to serve in sophisticated looking glasses (ice cream or wine glasses), just to make it look even more delicious than it already is, and top with some fresh berries!

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Maple pecan cookies

Once I was at a friends house and couldn’t stop eating the cookies she baked. I made sure the cookies were right next to me the whole evening. By the end of that evening, I went home with a box full of those cookies.

The next day, when I had friends over and nothing to serve with their tea, I had no choice but offer some of the precious cookies. They liked it and with each and every cookie they ate I felt something deep inside me. I think I was grieving…

Anyway, few months later I found a recipe online and the outcome is similar to my precious ones. I hope you like it as much as I do.

Click here to read up this recipe!