Il Pumpkin Pie Spice

L'autunno porta con sé una stupenda galleria di colori, di tonalità, di profumi e di sapori. Noi al Bowl siamo davvero appassionati dell'autunno, la riteniamo una stagione per artisti, per animi sensibili e per grandi mangiatone! Oggi vogliamo condividere con voi un ingrediente molto speciale, legato a uno dei sapori più meravigliosi dell'autunno: la zucca! 

Per meglio poter assaporare la nostra cara ed amata zucca, in America si sono inventati un insieme di spezie volte a potenziare il sapore della stessa, e hanno chiamato il mix "Pumpkin Pie Spice". Si tratta di sapori molto intensi presi singolarmente, ma che insieme danno vita a un gusto molto gradevole e per nulla sbilanciato. Si usa il chiodo di garofano, il peperoncino Giamaica "Allspice", cannella, zenzero e noce moscata. Il pumpkin spice viene usato anche da una nota catena di caffetterie per il loro "Pumpkin Pie spice Latte", un cappuccino assai speziato. Nonostante il nome, non contiene affatto zucca, e questo ha dato luogo in passato a lamentele da parte dei clienti della catena di "fast coffee". In ogni caso, il mix è delizioso con un buon cappuccino ben fatto!

Va detto che in realtà il peperoncino Giamaica "Allspice" che si trova in giro non è peperoncino vero e proprio (il peperoncino Giamaicano è della famiglia del mirto), e il suo sapore può ricordare un mix di varie spezie, come la noce moscata, lo zenzero e la cannella.

Il Pumpkin Pie Spice viene usato per molti dolci a base di zucca, e anche per molte bevande. Un prodotto insomma assai versatile, vediamo come prepararlo!

Ingredienti:

1 cucchiaio di chiodo di garofano in polvere
1 cucchiaio di peperoncino Giamaica "Allspice" in polvere (sminuzzatelo bene)
3 cucchiai di cannella in polvere
2 cucchiai di zenzero
2 cucchiai di noce moscata

Procedimento:

Pronti? Mescolate tutti gli ingredienti fino ad avere un mix abbastanza omogeneo. Una volta mescolato, sentirete il profumo magico delle spezie sapientemente mescolate: potrete metterlo in un barattolino e tenerlo pronto per l'utilizzo. Vi avvertiamo, questa spezia può creare davvero dipendenza, andateci piano! Usate il Pumpkin Pie Spice per le vostre torte zuccose autunnali o per le vostre bevande e frappè. Non c'è maniera migliore per godersi l'autunno e il cambio delle foglie che non sia deliziarsi con i sapori di questa magnifica (e sottovalutata) stagione!

Un saluto!

Pumpkin cheesecake with salted caramel and pecan nuts

Today we bring you a special recipe to celebrate Halloween! We and our friends bloggers have decide to make something special and fun at once. We decided to fill up the internet with Pumpkins!

Have you ever heard of a Hop Blog? We neither...or at least we didn't until a week ago or so. How can I describe it? Well, it's a sort of "flash mob" made by bloggers: many different blogs decides to post about a single topic all at once at a given hour of a given day. This Hop Blog is pumpkin-themed. So, at the end of our post you'll find a lot of links that are our friends' blogs. They all talk about the same thing, there's a lot of fuss about the pumpkin there! You can find a lot of great blogs about many different areas of interest, DIY, decoration, recipes, you name it! Don't miss this chance, hop from a blog to another!

We all know how truly and deeply american Halloween is, so...what's better than having a great cheesecake? We love cheesecake, and to adapt it to this occasion, we decided to add a little bit of pumpkin to it, along with salted caramel (yummy!) and the uber tasty pecan nuts.

Detail of our Pumpkin cheesecake, or "Pumpcheese cake" 

Ingredients: (for a 20 cm wide mould)

For the base:

• 1 pack of Digestive cookie
• 2 tbsp of brown sugar
• 1/2 cup of well minced nuts (or the dried fruit you've chosen)
• 1/2 cup of melted butter

For the cake:

• 800 g.approx. of Philadelphia-like cheese
• 200 g. of sugar ( 150 brown + 50 white)
• 400 g. of mashed pumpkin*
• 1/4 cup of heavy cream ( 60 ml aprox.)
• 4 middle-sized eggs
• 1 tsp of Pumpkin pie Spice*
• 2 Tbsp of corn starch
• 1 1 tsp of vanilla

Pumpkin pie Spice

For the caramel topping: 

• 1 cup of sugar
• 1/2 cup of water
• 190 ml. of warm heavy cream
• 20 ml of unsalted butter
• 1 tbsp of salt
• 1/2 tsp of vanilla
• Pecan nuts to taste

Preparation: 

We'll use a springform cake tin some 20 cms wide. We'll start by greasing the pan and putting the baking sheet on the base to prevent the cake to stick to the pan.

Start with the base of the cake. To do so, mince the cookies and toss it all (the cookies and the rest of the ingredients) into our pan and press them with a spoon or a spatula until we get an uniform base. We want a base without edges and smooth. We put this aside.

For the filling, add the creamy cheese to our Kitchen Aid (with the leaf on) or our handheld mixer and mix it until you get a very uniform cream.

Next, add the mashed pumpkin and the sugar. Keep on beating at slow speed to avoid that the air enters into our cream.

Add the heavy cream and the corn starch. Add the eggs, one by one. We do not add another egg until the previous one is still not well incorporated.

Add the spices and the vanilla. Beat it all well (at minimum speed) and pour the mix into our mould, above the cookie base.

Next, we pop it into the oven at 150°C, we will cook it with above and below heat without fan for about an hour approximately.

When you take it off the oven, let it cool completely in a rack. To remove the cake from its mould it's better to avoid until it's cool. The best thing is to cook it the day before you eat it, in order to let the cake develop a great texture in the fridge. It's a very smooth cheesecake that will surely reminds you of a pudding.

Preparation of the salted caramel:

While our cake is in the oven, we can cook the salted caramel for our topping. To do so we take a pot, we add the sugar and the water and we heat it at medium-low heat until the sugar melts. Very important is to never stir.

When the sugar will have completely melted we rise the heat until we start seeing a golden brown colour (or about 8 to 10 minutes). Then we low a little bit the heat and we pour paying great attention and little by little the heavy cream (that we've previously warmed it up) and we stir energically with a wooden spoon. Be very careful on this step because the caramel cause painful burns (personal experience)

We turn the heat off and we add the butter, the vanilla and the salt, we stir it and there you have it! Let it cool and...try to resist the temptation to put the finger inside the caramel, because it burn!

We decorate our cake as we want, with the caramel, the pecan nuts and...let's enjoy it!

Do not forget to visit the other pumpkins!

Pumpkin time | . | Topper para cupcakes de calabaza | . | Calabaza en tacha | . | DIY: Calabazas pintadas | . | Calabazas, castañas, boniatos y bomboncitos | . | Blog hop Halloween | . | Calabaza tré chic | . | Bizcocho de calabaza especiado | . | Pumpikinized Portraits | . | La noche de Halloween, la leyenda de la calabaza | . | La magia de las calabazas | . | En otoño, calabazas… |. | Happy Halloween la calabaza scrappi | . | Pumpkin Cake with Ginger-Mascarpone Frosting |. | Detalles con calabaza | . | Smoothie de calabaza, piña y manzana |. | Y a ti, ¿te dan calabazas? |. | Globeando | . | Cheesecake de calabaza con caramelo salado y pecanas | . | Un cupcake para Hallowen: Pumpkin spiced cupcakes | . | Jugando con calabazas | . | La calabaza y la luz | . | Calabazas para Halloween : sello handmade & freebie | . | Kreativity | . | Adoptar tradiciones: calabazas de halloween  | . | calabaza + miel | . | Bruna Bruneta: Contes macabres

Pumpkin sweet in 3 simple steps

The pumpkin cake or sweet we're talking about today is one of those recipes perfect for any time of the year, since it has to be eaten cold and without a spoon. It's perfect for celebrations, snacks or even party where guests help theirselves, everyone with a piece of this cake and happy with that!

Furthermore, it's so easy that you've no excuses! You can prepare it in a few moments and for the rest you've got your dear friend: mr. Oven! ;)

Ingredients:

• 1 Kg. of pumpkin
• 4 eggs
• 300 g. of flour
• 200 g. of sugar
• 250 ml. of milk
• 125 ml. of olive oil
• 1 drizzle of liquor (optional)
• 1 Tsp of Royal
• 1 Tsp of Vanilla extract
• 1 tin can of condensed milk ( 370 g. aproximately) 
• lemon zest

Preparation:

1- We cut, peel and cook well the pumpkin, then we let it dry well, and we shred it with a food processor.

2- We add all the remaining ingredients to the shredded pumpkin, and stir it well until we obtain an homogeneous mix. Remember to sift the flour befor adding it to the mix, in order to avoid bulks.

3-Grease with butter or with olive oil your mould (in my case, a rectangular mould of 30x18 cms), pour the mix in it and we cook it in a preheated oven at 120°C for some 75 minutes or so.

Our cake in the oven

And there you have it! Ready! Let it cool down, take it off from the mould and cut it into pieces. Once it's completely cold you can put it into the fridge to preserve it longer.

It's a very smooth and creamy sweet. If you're like me and you don't dig pumpkins, you'll surely like it anyway, as I do! Try it and it will surprise you!

Greetings!

AnGie

Spearmint, coconut and lemon cake

Today we bring you one of those cakes that comes off almost by chance, and the result...well, you keep the recipe you've invented forever and ever! 
I absolutely love aromatic and medicinal herbs, I use them so much, and lately I have many of them planted everywhere around my house he he he! So I thought: why don't we use them in sweets too?


This cake is made with spearmint, which gave to the cake a fresh and different touch.
it's made with olive oil instead of butter too, which makes it lightier too, without losing the moisture of this sweet. I suggest you to try it!



Ingredients:

• 1 coconut yogurt (or a natural one)
• 125 ml. of olive oil
• 250 of brown sugar
• 4eggs
• 125 ml of buttermilk*
• 450 g. of all purpose flour
• 1 lemon (juice and zest too)
• 1 pinch of salt
• spearmint (some 20 leaves)
• 80 g. of grated coconut
• 15 g. of baking powder

* You can buy the buttermilk, but I tend to prepare it at home. Some 15 minutes before you start doing your cake, prepare in a mug the needed quantity of milk, and add the juice of an half of a lemon. Let it rest enough time, and you'll see a sort of sour milk: do not worry, it's good like that! Stir it and use it as it is. This ingredient add will help your cakes to be super moist.

Preparation:

1- In a bowl, put the eggs (both the yolk and the egg white) and the sugar. Mix it well at medium speed.

2- We add to the mix of the eggs the olive oil, the lemon juice and the yogurt. Mix it well.

3- Mince finely the spearmint with a knife and toss it into our mix, together with the lemon zest.

4- In another bowl, put some flour, the yeast and the salt. Sift it all and put it aside.

5- We add our mix of flour little by little, mixing it well, after that we pour some buttermilk and then return to flour. Repeat the operation. We want to add 1/3 of our flour, then 1/3 of our buttermilk, and go on like this until there's no flour and buttermilk left.

6- Grease the mould, add the mix and pop it into the preheated oven at 180°C, for about 45 to 50 minutes. Be careful to put the mould in the middle rack of the oven, and if it starts to becoming golden brown the surface but the interior is still not baked, cover the surface with an aluminium foil or a baking sheet.

7- When it is baked, we take it off its mould and we let it cool completely over a rack, and after that we sprinkle with icing sugar to decorate it.

It is quite perfect to be eaten with a good ol' cup of tea, so...please, prepare the tea, that we'll bring the cake! ;)

Greetings!

AnGie

Canary Island's Vilana Cake

In the month of May we celebrate the day of Canary Islands, and therefore we want to share with you regional recipes from the rich gastronomy of these islands.

Today we start with a traditional sweet dish from the Gomera Island, the Vilana Cake!
It is called vilana because it is named after the rectangular tinpot called vilana or milana. This sweet dish looks like a traditional cake, but its peculiarity is that its dough has potatoes as the main ingredient, and in addition almonds and currants. Canary islands have a huge variety of potatoes, as we previously mentioned in other posts, and the almonds and dried fruits are very presents in the islands, and therefore those products are often used in the gastronomy of Canary islands.

Blossoming almond flowers. Tenerife Island.

The vilana cake is a traditional cake with a very smooth taste and texture that we can find in every typical Canary feast, like feasts of artisans, school's feasts, family celebrations, romerias...this delicious dish is also so easy to do! Today I bring to you the vilana recipe of my mother.

ingredients

Ingredients:

• 250 g.of flour
• 200 g. of sugar (or according to your taste) 
• 500 g. of potatoes
• 30 g.  of royal yeast
• 6 eggs
• 150 g. of butter
• 200 g. of almonds
• 200 g. of currants
• 1 spoonful of cinnamon
• 1 lemon zest

Preparation:

1º- We peel the potatoes and we put them to cook. Once they're ready, we mash them with a fork.

2º- In a bowl, we put the mashed potatoes with sugar, the butter, the eggs, the cinnamon and we mix it all well.

3º. Add the sifted flour, the yeast, the almonds (that we previously peeled and minced in not so small pieces), the currant and the lemon zest. Mix it all well.

4º-  Put some butter on the interiors of a rectangular baking pan in order to not let stick our cake to the pan and we put our dough inside of it, and decorate the surface with almonds (no need to peel or mince them here).

5º- Bake it in a preheated oven at 150° Celsius for about an hour. We will keep an eye to the oven every time, because as we all know every oven it's a world of its own. If we see that it's getting too much golden brown on the surface, we can cover it with an alluminium foil or a baking sheet, and we'll just keep baking. To be sure that our cake is ready, we'll put a kitchen needle of a knife inside of the cake, and if it get out of it clean, then the cake's ready!

6º- Let it cool until it's warm, then put it out of the baking pan, and let it cool completely on a rack, and if you can, try to resist the urge to eat it until it's cool!

Enjoy it!

AnGie