Posted in Recipes

Superfood dessert – Avocado Cheesecake

For those that have emailed and asked about the ‘green’ dessert, here it is…

Packed full of goodness and lightly sweetened with raw honey, this is our take on a New York-style cheesecake.  Free from refined sugar, flour, vegetable oils and dairy, this superfood dessert of avocado, limes and coconut oil.

The creamy, lime-flavoured mousse sits on top of a nutty, chocolaty base made from toasted pecans, cacao nibs and coconut bound together and sweetened with dates; it’s good enough to eat on its own.

Unlike most raw and dairy-free cheesecakes, the topping is completely free of nuts. For anyone with a tree nut allergy, just swap the pecans in the base for sunflower seeds. For delectable little dessert canapés, try making these into little squares, or spoon the avocado lime mixture into small glasses, crumble over the base mixture and drizzle with a little melted 85% dark chocolate for a ‘deconstructed’ take on the traditional dessert.

From: thecoveteur.com

INGREDIENTS

Use Organic where possible Serves 12

FOR THE BASE 125 g pecans (preferably ‘crispy’ activated) 45 g desiccated coconut 70 g cacao nibs 185 g pitted dates 3 tbsp coconut oil, melted and at room temperature

FOR THE FILLING 560 g avocado flesh (from about 5 medium-large avocados) 200 ml lime juice (roughly 8–10 limes) 1 tsp lime zest (avoid the bitter white pith) 190 g raw honey 175 ml coconut oil, melted and at room temperature a few drops of stevia, to sweeten (optional)

DIRECTIONS

  1. Preheat the oven to fan 150°C/300°F. Line the base and sides of a springform or loose-bottomed 7-inch round cake tin with baking paper.
  2. Toast the pecans and desiccated coconut on a lined baking tray in the oven for 7–8 minutes, until golden.
  3. Transfer the pecans and coconut to a food processor and add the rest of the base ingredients. Blend until the mixture is crumbly and holds together when pinched (don’t let it go completely smooth).
  4. Tip the base mixture into the prepared tin. Press it down firmly and evenly with the back of a spoon, ensuring it is neat and flat where it meets the sides of tin. Transfer to the fridge while you prepare the filling.
  5. Place all of the ingredients for the filling into a food processor and blend until the mixture is completely smooth and silky. Check for taste and add more lime juice, zest or sweeten with a little more honey or stevia according to preference, but it’s best to keep this deliciously tangy.
  6. Remove the cake tin from the fridge and pour the filling over the base. Cover the tin, using a plate, and return it to the fridge for a couple of hours or overnight, if possible, to set.
  7. To serve, run a knife around the inner edge of the tin and carefully push the base up from the bottom. Transfer to a plate and serve immediately.
Posted in Red Wines

Malbec from Argentina

Argentina a land of extreme landscapes and impossibly high vineyards has made its name with big, rich Malbecs. I love, love, love this wine. It’s a food friendly wine too, particularly with meat which comes as no surprise really.

Malbec would be little more than a relic of Bordeaux and Cahors were it not for Argentina who adopted the grape when most of the vines were wiped out in Bordeaux by the devastating phylloxera. Malbec suited the land in Argentina perfectly and they now make the world’s most impressive examples.

My Dad recently gave me an article about Argentine Malbec by Jamie Goode which prompted this post. There is also list of wines to try… so not to disappoint my Dad, I am going to work my way through some them…No, not all in one sitting !

These are the ones I am going to track down & try, I’ll add my tasting notes to see how they compare to the official ‘blurb’.

Malbec
Malbec

J Opi Malbec 2014

Price                £7.99 – available from Laithwaites

Style                Medium bodied

Colour             Deep rich purple

Aroma             Dark Bramble fruit, blackcurrants, hints of violet & spice

Taste               Intense & full flavoured, smooth tannins, lovely finish

Alcohol             13%

My Tasting Notes: To follow

Vinalta Malbec

Vinalta Malbec 2015

Price                 £8.00 – from M & S

Region             Mendoza

Colour              Deep rich purple

Taste               Juicy plum, blackcurrant, cherry , spice and some green notes

Alcohol             14%

..wonder what the green notes are then ? ..the old £1 note maybe !!

My Tasting Notes: To follow

Tesco Finest

Tesco Finest Malbec 2014 

Price                 £6.00 – from Tesco

Region             Mendoza

Colour              Deep rich purple

Taste               Rich, Blackberry, plum, gentle blueberry & cherry

Alcohol             13.5%

My Tasting Notes:  Really liked this full flavoured wine. Nice and fruity but the cherry taste took the sweetness off in a good way. Very drinkable

Posted in Our Wine Club

Welcome to Uncorked

UNCORKED

Be under no illusion we are not a SERIOUS wine club, we get on well and have fun. Someone said to me once, that we were the worst kind of wine club (how very dare they) needless to say they were from one of those ‘snobby ’ clubs. We are ’50 somethings’ with some of us a tad older; I’ll mention no names, who enjoy drinking wines that are affordable. We do swirl and sniff the wine, make random comments about the flavours and aromas, just like those ‘others’ BUT WE DRINK IT!

So a little background to our Wine Club ‘Uncorked’ and an insight into what goes on (or is supposed to)

My friends and I enjoy getting together for a chat and a glass of wine (or two), so I thought it might be fun to start a wine club, I remember the first one it was in the summer outside in our garden we all brought along a bottle of wine and ‘had a go’ at wine tasting, it went okay so we held another and another, we never thought we’d still be doing it.. we have met every month (with the odd exception of August) since about 2002, none of us can quite remember the year, its fuzzy after all that wine drinking…sorry I mean tasting, anyway not bad going..

The formula has changed over the years but we have settled into meeting every third Saturday in the month, each taking a turn to host, the host decides which wine will be tasted, could be a country or grape, each couple brings a bottle that has been wrapped for a blind tasting. The host supplies the food, again no pressure here; it can just be bread & cheese or a full blown meal.

We have tasting sheets and make notes about the wine and vote at the end for the best one of the evening. Now this sounds as if we know what we are doing, however, we like to DRINK the wine so usually after the first two have been tasted the note making gets less and the conversation gets louder, much louder!

However, there are some among us, I mention no names here, that rarely put pen to paper the whole evening, there are a few that hardly drink (!) and then there are the rest of us…you will meet us all over the coming months, not in the literal sense of course but that out there in cyber space kind of way !

The group grew at one point to sixteen, as friends of friends joined, you can imagine this is a squeeze round most tables, we are now settled at ten which works well, most of the time we are all there. We recently added the extra dimension that the host could invite a ‘guest/s’ to join the evening…how friendly are we ?!?!

This Blog is new but you can read about what’s gone on over the years on my old Blog www.wineclubuncorked.blogspot.co.uk

I have started afresh so to speak because I was having trouble loading the photos onto blogspot (drove me mad in the end) I think it is somehow possible to transfer it all over but after reading through the process a few times and each time it was becoming more foggy, I thought forget it just start again .. so hope you enjoy reading & if you do please click the link to follow the blog so I know you are out there somewhere reading this.  (Opps now sounding a bit desperate)

This new Blog is also going to feature a few extras:

  • Recipes that go with the wines we are tasting
  • Food & Wine Pairing suggestions each month
  • Dinner with friends home or out & about

Feel free to contact me e. friendsofuncorked@gmail.com

Well as tradition has it –

Time to stick a cork in it

Bye S x

Learn more – Wine Follys Guide to Tasting Notes – Take note !

http://winefolly.com/review/write-excellent-wine-tasting-notes