Cauliflower crust pizza

Pizza pre-cooking.

I am a big fan of the cauliflower. Roasted, puréed, in curries, covered in cheese sauce- it's basically very hard to go wrong. The one area I was very sceptical about however, was the cauliflower crust pizza. Much beloved of the low-carb movement, I just couldn't see how it this could possible work. I was imagining, at best, a sort of thin cauliflower cheese with added tomato sauce. And at worst, well something worse than that.

However when I spotted this recipe listed on the Guardian site a few weeks ago, it all sounded rather promising. And even more so when I saw the original blog post the recipe came from with its lovely photography.

Pizza post-cooking.

I followed all the steps required for cooking the cauliflower (using a food processor makes grating it a doddle but it's probably still feasible by hand), but did allow it to cool a bit before shaping into the bases. And the only minor substitution to the recipe was using a regular Philadelphia-style cream cheese rather than a goat's cheese. I was convinced at every stage that the mini-bases would fall apart, but they didn't at all. I let them fully cool while making a tomato sauce, and once this was done the bases were topped with a selection of cooked mushrooms, anchovies, red onion, and mozzarella or cheddar. They then went back in the oven until the cheese was golden and melted.

I was fully expecting the transfer from baking sheet to plate to result in pizza disintegration, but they even held up to being poked and prodded with a fish slice. The final pizza could be easily cut into segments, and tasted damn good (perhaps even more so as I did not have high expectations). This is not something you are going to mix up with a proper, thin-crust Italian pizza, but as the cauliflower base is very neutral the main flavours that come through are all the pizza toppings. And what's not to like about tomato sauce and melted cheese? So if you're looking for a slightly lighter pizza option, a gluten-free version, or just something a bit different, I would thoroughly recommend this recipe (which coincidently also reinforces my views on the usefulness of food blogs).

A fantastic chocolate and prune cake

I really like prunes. For some reason, people often find this funny and start sniggering. I'm not sure why, as for me (really nice) prunes are super-juicy, succulent, and full of sweetness. They are also fab paired with chocolate in puddings and cakes. So when I had a bag of prunes that had been hanging around in my cupboard for a while, and some friends coming over for lunch, I sought out a chocolate and prune cake recipe.

Luckily one of the first I found was this one by cook and food writer David Lebovitz, which was fantastic. It produced an ultra-moist but mega-rich chocolate cake, which had a dense, almost mousse-y texture. The recipe also contained the great idea of soaking the prunes in black tea rather than booze for non-alcohol drinkers. I served the cake with a scoop of creme fraiche, and it disappeared quite rapidly (thus my lone slice picture above). I would make this cake again at the drop of a hat, but probably won't for a while due to the risk of me eating it all myself.

Olive oil chocolate cake from Meemalee's Kitchen

I spotted this recipe for a chocolate cake made with olive oil on one of my favourite blogs Meemalee's Kitchen a few weeks ago. It appealed to me, as with its lack of flour and relatively small amount of sugar, it looked like quite a healthy cake option. And it also seemed to be quite a simple recipe. In fact it is a very simple recipe, but I turned making this cake into a very stressful experience by firstly not being able to locate the motor for my hand-held electric mixer; and then resorting to using the mixer attachment for the food processor but with only the single beater that I could find in the drawer. I do not recommend this methodology. It leads to mid-recipe washing up, swearing, and going red in the face a lot.

However, this cake was totally worth the (self-inflicted) stress. It was densely chocolate-y, but also mousse-like so still very light. Basically it was bloody delicious, and I was very tempted to make it again the next day. I used vanilla as an extra flavouring, rather than the original orange, but I suspect it would work well with a range of others such as cardamon, pistachio or cinnamon.

Recipe (adapted from Meemalee's Kitchen from an original recipe by Jose Pizarro)
Enough for around 6 decent slices, depending on greed

125g very dark chocolate (I used 100g of 90% and 25g of 85% cocoa solids chocolate)
125ml standard olive oil (not extra virgin)
4 large eggs (yolks and whites separated)
50g caster sugar
2 tsp good quality vanilla extract

Firstly put the oven on to pre-heat at gas mark 4. Break the chocolate into pieces and melt it along with the olive oil in a bowl set over a pan of simmering water. When fully liquid and melted, set aside to cool. In the meantime cream together the egg yolks and sugar, until they look pale and light. An electric whisk is ideal for this. Once the chocolate mixture has cooled, slowly add it into the eggs and sugar together with the vanilla extract. In a separate clean bowl, whisk up the egg whites until they form stiff peaks and you can do that classic trick of holding the bowl upside down without the contents falling out. An electric whisk is also ideal for this. Gently mix the egg white into the rest of the cake mix, and pour into a 28cm cake tin that has been lined with greaseproof paper. Bake in the middle of the oven for at least 15minutes. Mine was still quite liquid in the centre after this time though, so I gave it an extra 10minutes. Wait until the cake has cooled before taking it out of the tin.
Serve with a splodge of clotted cream, fresh strawberries, or both.

NB The above is how it's supposed to work. In my stressed state I managed to balls things up by adding all the chocolate to the eggs and sugar in one go. Or maybe it hadn't cooled enough. But basically I ended up with one giant lump of sticky chocolate sitting in a pool of pale brown 'water'. I managed to 'rescue' this by slowing adding the egg white to the mix and doing a lot of stirring. It did eventually come back together, but I suspect I knocked most of the air out of the cake mix, so it didn't rise much. But the texture and taste remained fab.

Crust-less mini quiches

A quick post on these super-simple mini quiches which are perfect for a summer picnic, afternoon tea or a general snack. As they lack any pastry they are also suitable for people on a gluten-free diet, or for those who can't be bothered to make pastry.

I used the same filling as I've previously written about, caramelised red onion and mushroom, which was divided between 12 cupcake cases lined with grease-proof paper (I was worried about sticking issues but it probably would have been fine without the double layer). The liquid part of the filling was again what I'd use in a regular quiche- 300ml of double cream, 2 eggs, 2 handfuls of emmental cheese, a little salt and a generous grind of black pepper. This was ladled into the cases, and the tray placed into the middle of an oven pre-heated to gas mark 6. The quiches take around 20minutes to cook, and should be golden on top and set, but still have a little bit of a wibble. They also look very light and puffy initially, but will collapse back down as they cool.

Eat hot or cold while being quite surprised that pastry is not absolutely essential for a quiche.