Diced! Dessert Challenge Finals – Trilogía de Postres (Spanish Dessert Trilogy)

Diced! Dessert Challenge Finals!

The Diced! Dessert Challenge is coming to an end with the finals.

Each participant won several rounds. For this round, I am allowing the participant to choose any dessert category.

The posts will run Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. The poll will run from Friday to the following Friday. To date the winner will receive:

• Dodo Book for Cooks
• A beautiful Bamboo Cutting Board with a Butterfly Motif, graciously donated by competitor Lindy (The Kozy Nook)

This finals highlight:

• Luis from The Chef Cat (Wednesday)
• Stephanie from The Haute Meal (Thursday)
• Jenee from JCooksGlutenFree (Friday)

Here’s Luis…

Trilogía de Postres (Spanish Dessert Trilogy)

Imagine you are having lunch or dinner somewhere in Spain. Usually after the main course the waiter will ask you if you want dessert. And then there is the problem: A regular Spanish restaurant will offer you to choose from 3-5 home-made desserts. The desserts are all delicious and even the waiter won’t be able to tell you which is the best one to choose.

If you are a good negotiator you might be able to convince the waiter to give you several desserts to try. If not…here are the recipes to three very popular Spanish desserts.

Home-Made Spanish Rice Pudding

Although there are hundreds of recipes around the world to make rice pudding the Spanish have a particular method to do it.

You need:

• 1 cup milk
• 1/3 cup paella rice (YES YOU HAVE READ RIGHT)
• 1 cinnamon cane
• 3 spoon brown sugar
• lemon peel
• 3 spoons whipped cream

How you do it:

Heat up the milk in a pot together with the cinnamon cane, sugar and lemon peel. When the milk starts boiling withdraw the cinnamon and the lemon peel and add the rice. Keep cooking the rice for approximately 20-30 minutes. When the milk s almost completely absorbed add the whipped cream stir until it melts with the rice. Withdraw the pot from the stove and let it cool down for 10 minutes before serving.

Mom’s 1-2-3 cake

This is an easy and famous cake among children. You do not need a scale or special cups to measure the quantities. All you need is a yoghurt cup to measure and do everything. (In this recipe “cup” refers to the yoghurt cup you use in the recipe – usually it is a cup with 125g of yoghurt). and by the way you just need to remember 1, 2, 3 (Have a look at the quantities)

You need:

• 1 cup yoghurt (you can use anyone, e.g. if you use a lemon yoghurt you will get a lemon flavored cake)
• 2 cups sugar
• 3 cups flour
• 1 spoon butter
• 2 spoons baking soda
• 3 eggs

How you do it:

Separate egg yolks from the egg white. Mix the egg yolks with sugar and butter until you get a creamy texture. Add the yoghurt. Mix baking soda and flour and add them slowly to the mix. Stir until you get a homogenous batter. Whip the egg whites until they are foamy and add them with a wooden spoon to the batter.

Put the batter in a big form or divide it into cupcake forms. Bake the cake for 15-20 minute at 185ºC.

Crema Catalana

A regional specialty from Catalonia but also very famous among the rest of the country.

What you need:

• 1 cup milk
• 3 egg yolks
• 3 spoons brown sugar
• 1 cinnamon cane
• 1 lemon peel.

How you do it:

Heat up the milk with the sugar, cinnamon cane and the lemon peel. When the milk starts boiling withdraw the pot from the stove. Withdraw the cinnamon cane and the lemon peel from the milk. Let the milk cool down for 5 minutes. Meanwhile stir the egg yolks. Add the egg yolks slowly to the milk while stirring the milk. Put the milk-egg mix into in the forms in which you are going to serve the Crema Catalana. Put then the forms into a water bath and bake the Crema Catalana for 25-30 minutes in the oven at 180ºC. Remove the Crema Catalana from the oven and let it cool down.

Before serving the Crema Catalana spread out some sugar on top of it and caramelize it with a kitchen torch.