Kestrel's Reviews
8 recipe(s) reviewed. Showing 1 to 8Sort by: Title 
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Sweet: Desserts from London's Ottolenghi
By Yotam Ottolenghi, Helen Goh
Ten Speed Press - 2017
Banana, Date and Walnut Tin Can Cake : page 140
These cakes were very good. I liked the method of heating the dates with the sugar, butter and water since that softens the dates making them easier to cut in the finished loaf. I'm glad I made the date mixture ahead of time as it takes quite a while to cool. I cut back the sugar by about 10% and it was still plenty sweet. Again there is self raising flour in this recipe so I used all purpose plus 2.25 teaspoons of baking powder for the flour. Along with the extra baking powder as stated in the recipe, this seemed about right. Three mini loaves took 40 minutes at 350 convection in my oven. In the future I will make this again when I want a sweeter loaf and/or I have only 1 banana, and I will continue to make the Smitten Kitchen banana loaf for a less sweet/more bananas version.
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Butternut, Honey and Almond Tin Can Cake : page 136
My first recipe from the book, this is definitely a dessert. It's very sweet and I would possibly reduce the sugar slightly next time. The flavours are excellent and I liked the toasted almonds with the orange and raisins. I used 3 small loaf tins instead of cans; for this, the baking time needs to be reduced to about 35 minutes. I'm disappointed that the book (Canadian edition) calls for self raising flour which we don't have in Canada so I used 2.25 tsp baking powder in the flour, and this seemed about right. I froze one loaf and it reheated beautifully. Great with a cup of tea as an afternoon snack; will definitely make again.
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Coconut, Almond and Bluberry Cake : page 151
I wanted to make a gluten free dessert so I chose this cake to try as it has relatively little flour in it. The resulting cake worked well and tasted very good. I subbed the flour with the gluten free blend from bulk barn and added 1/2 tsp of baking soda in my half recipe. This smaller cake took 30-35 minutes to bake at 350 convection. I also used unsweetened coconut.
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I liked these a lot. I didn’t have any white chocolate so we had them unadorned, my second batch had the chocolate and that made them really stand out. These cookies are quite a bit of work to make, more than your average cookie. I cut them at 3” and the recipe made 23 cookies.
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Festive Fruitcake : page 167
Made this yesterday to compare it to my family’s traditional recipe. I soaked my fruit for about a week and cut back a bit on the raisins and currants so I could add some pecans and crystallized ginger. Baked at just under 300 fan and covered for first 1 hr 40 min to control browning. I used a 7” springform pan and did the double parchment they recommend. Recipe says to cover near the end but I find covering at the start works better. Cooked the full 2.5 hours; check frequently towards the end of baking time. Extremely easy to make, will update when we eat it. For now I’m rating 5 stars since it was so easy and baked beautifully.
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Persian Love Cakes : page 74
These were nice cakes with a very nutty flavour. I used the almond extract option and would slightly reduce the amount next time. In the recipe, a silicon loaf pan is recommended. I don't have this so I used metal tins of the same size, and found lining with parchment was important to extract the cakes after baking. Very pretty little cakes.
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Rhubarb and Strawberry Crumble Cake : page 148
I've rated this as "very good", as this was a nice cake, but it didn't blow me away. I'm not sure if I will make this one again since I have other rhubarb recipes that I like a bit better. I reduced the sugar in both the cake and the crumble and it was still more than sweet enough for me. I made a half recipe and baked about 40 minutes at 375 convection. I also covered with foil for the last bit of baking. I found the crumble topping to be quite hard so maybe I overbaked a little.
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Woodland Meringues : page 319
These are so so good. I made my meringues way ahead of time as I was sure they would last well in an airtight tin. I did the chocolate hazelnut coating the night before and they held up well. That being said, these are quite fragile and are really finicky to dip and coat so be sure to have plenty of time set aside to finish them. They are very sweet, but are as light as air and the flavours blend beautifully. Everyone loved these! These are worth the time and are definitely on my repeat list for special occasions.
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