Scrumptious picnic recipes

Food, dessert, cakes. pic Sam Linsell

Food, dessert, cakes. pic Sam Linsell

Published Feb 14, 2016

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Cape Town - Picnics are the craze this summer. The ideal picnic basket should have something for everyone, from sweet to savoury treats.

Here are some ideas for your basket.

 

Strawberry Cheesecake

Nut crumble

250g flour

170g butter

110g macadamia nuts

110g almonds

110g Demerara sugar

½t vanilla extract

To make the apple crumble topping, preheat the oven to 160degC. Combine all the ingredients in a food processor and blend until the mixture is the texture of breadcrumbs.

Spread out the crumble on a baking tray and bake for 30-40 minutes, being sure to stir the crumble mixture every 10 minutes.

Remove when the mixture is golden brown and set aside to cool.

Cheesecake

125g crème fraîche

225g Philadelphia cheese

100g icing sugar

150ml strawberry syrup (plus extra to garnish)

250ml cream

3 leaves gelatine

Fresh strawberries for garnish

For the cheesecake, soak the gelatine in a bowl of cold water for about 5 minutes, and use a little bit of the cream and melt the gelatine over a double boiler. Set aside to cool.

Mix together the crème fraîche, cream cheese, sugar and strawberry syrup.

Put the cream in a separate bowl and whisk until stiff. Gently fold the gelatine into the cream mix and gradually fold the stiff cream into the cream cheese mixture little by little until completely combined.

To assemble the cheesecake, spoon out a layer of crumble at the bottom of your serving glass and top with a good dollop of strawberry cheesecake mix. Refrigerate until ready to serve.

Decorate with a drizzle of strawberry syrup and a few slices of fresh strawberries.

 

Red wine caramelised onions & goats cheese tartlets

Prep time: 30 minutes

Cook time: 30 minutes

Total time: 1 hour

Yield: 8 medium tartlets

Ingredients

3 onions, thinly sliced

3 T olive oil

1 cup of red wine

3 T brown sugar

3-4 sprigs of thyme leaves removed and a few extra for garnishing each tart

Salt & black pepper

2 sheets of puff pastry 23c x 23cms

200g goats cheese (25g per tartlet)

splash of milk to brush the pastry rim

Instructions

Heat the oil in a pan and fry the onions over a low heat until softened but not browned, about 15 minutes.

Add half the red wine and deglaze the pan, allowing all the liquid to cook off.

Add the sugar, thyme, salt and pepper and cook for 5 more minutes.

Add the remainder of the red wine and once again continue cooking and stirring until the liquid has cooked off.

Place your puff pastry sheets on a floured surface and cut out the circles to desired size. You could also cut the pastry into 4 x squares.

This way you better optimise the pastry sheet with no wastage through offcuts. This recipe makes 8 tartlets that are 8cm in diameter.

Score the inside of the pastry with a small cookie cutter or a knife, but don’t cut all the way through, to make a small rim.

Brush the rim of each case lightly with milk or egg and milk mix (the egg just makes it a little darker but isn’t entirely necessary), and bake in an oven that has been preheated to 180ºC for 10 minutes.

Remove from the oven and press down on the inner circle piece so that it drops down, it should come away where you have scored it, and fill each pastry case with the caramelised onion.

Top with the goats cheese (you can either crumble this or cut into discs), scatter over fresh thyme leaves and return to the oven to bake for a further 20 minutes.

Serve warm or cold on their own or with a salad.

Cape Times

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