No baking brownies

Here are very quick, possibly quite healthy brownies. No baking, no flour, no eggs. No beauty either, but boy what a taste!
Inspired by Minimalist baker recipe for a 5 minutes espresso and walnut brownies

Ingredients are measured in cups (1 cup = 250 ml glass)

No bake dates, apricots and nuts brownies

Ingredients: 
2 cups of mixed roasted and plain (no salt) nuts (pecans, hazelnuts, Brazil nuts, almonds)
2 cups of Medjool dates pitted and dried apricots roughly chopped
3/4 cup cocoa powder
1 tsp instant coffee
pinch of salt
1/2 cup roughly chopped walnuts

2 tbsp date syrup
2 tsp whole cane sugar or brown sugar or muscovado sugar

Let's do it:
In a food processor blitz two cups of mixed nuts until powdery. Adds cocoa powder, pinch of salt and coffee and blitz again. Remove from the processor and set aside. Next blitz dates and apricots until pulpy little chunks. Remove and set aside. Put the dry mixture back to the food processor add sugar, date syrup and when blitzing keep adding a bit of dates/ apricots pulp. All should come together and remind a dough a bit dry though. Have a little baking tray with a baking parchment prepared. Using a spatula transfer all the mixture and even it up. Refrigerate before cutting. Yam! 

Quorn bacon warm salad with carmelised onions and sundried tomatoes

Here is what I served on Saturday night with a great bottle of red (Lust Colides by Some Young Punks) and tortilla (this one unfortunately shop bought)

It's a very hearty vegetarian salad but a delicious combination for a windy cold February evening.

Glazed Quorn rashers salad with carmelised shallots and sun-dried tomatoes
Serves 2 as a side dish 

Ingredients:
50g mixed salad leaves - spinach, watercress and rocket
a pack of Quorn bacon style rashers halved
2 medium banana shallots peeled and thinly sliced
handful of black olives halved
handful of baby plum tomatoes halved
a few sun-dried tomatoes rubbed gently in a paper towel to removed excessive oil then cut in thin strips
1 tsp of sugar
1 tbsp oil
1 tbsp chopped parsley

Glaze:
3 tbsp olive oil
1 tsp red wine vinegar
2 tbsp balsamic glaze
salt and pepper

Let's do it:
In a frying pan heat the spoon of oil and add shallots fry gently for 5-8 minutes until soft but do not let them brown. Sprinkle salt and sugar and gently cook for another 15 minutes until starting to carmelise then add sun-dried tomatoes. 
In the meantime arrange the leaves in a salad bowl, scatter olives and plum tomatoes halves over the leaves. Prepare the glaze mixing all above ingredients. 
Heat a little oil in a grill pan and fry rushers but do not let them become too brown or burnt, glaze using a brush and turn to the other side. Glaze on the other side and turn again. 
Arrange rushers in the salad bowl and scatter on the top carmelised onions with sun-dried tomatoes. Sprinkle parsley and the rest or some more of the glaze. Serve immediately with bread, Spanish tortilla or on its own as a modest but hearty supper.

Squash production - soup and cheescake

Hubby is out tonight so what do I do all evening ? Of course I am spending it in the kitchen!
Two cakes and a soup. My result tonight. The second cake is still in the oven so must become a part of a different story.

Coquina squash soup and squash& curd cheese cheesecake with a blueberries sauce

Coquina squash soup
Serves 4

Ingredients:
1/2 a leek - only green top part sliced
1 parsnip peeled and sliced
1 carrot peeled and sliced
600g peeled and cubed coquina squash
1 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp chili flakes
1/2 tsp ground ginger
20g butter a little oil
3 cubes of vegetarian oxo 
salt and pepper

Let's do it:
Melt the butter with a little bit of oil in a big pan. Add leeks and spices - chili flakes, cumin, ginger and fry for a few minutes.Then add all vegetables and crushed oxo cubes with your fingers and mix well until coated in spices, fry until starting sticking to the bottom. Pour hot water from the kettle - enough to cover vegetables and simmer until they are tender which takes around 15 minutes. Blend with a hand blender. Serve with creme fraiche and almond flakes if you like. Toasted or not toasted if you like. 

Squash & curd cheese cheesecake with blueberries sauce

This is an oddity, I used Dan Lepard's recipe Pumpkin cheescake as an inspiration but had my crazy professor moment and did all differently. I recommend using Dan's recipe. 
Aah and then there was the catastrophe when trying to transfer the cheesecake to a plate! Cutting long story short it became an upside down floor cheesecake! I wasn't sure if I should laugh or cry. Managed to rescue most and covered it with the blueberries sauce to keep its dignity!

Ingredients:
Base
For the base I recommend using Dan's recipe as I did a very odd thing - I crushed all sorts of biscuits - to be specific salted crackers, caramel digestives and hobnobs but kept the weight of 170g and then added around 50g of butter, blitzed it in a food processor and transferred to the spring form loose bottom tin. Left in the fridge to solidify.

Cheesecake
Now this is a bizarre concoction, again you may choose Dan's recipe. I simply experimented with what I had available so here they are:
300g coquina squash peeled and cut in small cubes
250g curd cheese (this can be replaced with quark)
150g  of vanilla cheese (serek waniliowy) easy to find in a polish shop but can be replace with a thick yogurt like onken or creme fraiche and added more sugar to compensate
3 eggs
1 tsp of vanilla extract
50g of brown sugar or more if using creme fraiche or yogurt
1 tbsp of lemon juice


Blueberry sauce
1 punnet (250g) of blueberries
30g brown sugar
1 tbsp of lemon juice

Let's do it:
Preheat the oven to 140C fan assisted. Boil the squash until soft, drain in a colander and leave to cool completely. In a food processor blend the squash with vanilla extract and sugar. Add curd cheese or quark and blitz again. Using a spatula scrape the bottom and sides each time you add another ingredient, add serek waniliowy or replacement and blitz briefly, finally add lemon juice eggs and do the final blitz. Transfer to the tin with the base, the mixture may seem a bit liquid but it will be fine. Bake in the preheated oven for 50 - 60 minutes. 
In a small sauce pan boil blueberries with sugar and lemon juice until start bursting. Leave it to cool completely. Pour over the cheesecake when both are completely cold.

Very quick cake for a weekday at work

This is a very quick and easy to make cake, one of those coffee cakes (tea loafs) that it's nice to have at work during week with a cup of coffee. Inspired by Taste of Home

Cinnamon, prunes and mixed peel tea loaf 

Ingredients:
2 cups ( 1 cup is a 250ml glass or mug) of flour
half a cup of light brown sugar
1 egg
1 cup buttermilk (1tsp of white vinegar or lemon juice mixed with milk, left to stand for 15 minutes)
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp bicarb soda

1/4 cup of sunflower oil
1/3 cup of dried fruit of your choice - in this recipe I used mixed peel and chopped dried prunes but I think it could be anything you like raisins, cranberries, cherries or a combination of some of them
1tbsp of cinnamon mixed with half 1/3 cup of muscovado sugar set aside
which could be replace with 1tbsp cocoa mixed with the same amount of sugar set aside


Let's do it:
Preheat the oven to 180C (fan assisted). Sieve flour with bicarb soda and salt into a bowl and mix with sugar. In another bowl mix egg with buttermilk and oil. Pour the wet ingredients into the dry ones and mix briefly until just combined. Add dried fruit of your choice and transfer to a small tea loaf tin greased with a bit of oil and baking parchment lined in the bottom. Sprinkle over sugar with cinnamon or sugar with cocoa and using a knife swirl into the cake. Bake for 40-50 minutes until a clean skewer.