Dessert Day: almond edition

Yesterday was Melbourne Cup Day, which means that the whole of Melbourne has a day off to go and watch a three minute horse race. Yeah. That happens.

Anyway, I spent the day watching absolutely no horse racing and instead baking up a storm with Deidre. We'd both been jonesing for a Dessert Day for a while, but were uncertain about what to make. That all became a lot simpler when Deidre was given a bag full of nut products from Lucky Nuts to try!

We decided on three recipes - a pumpkin cheesecake, some almond paste biscuits, and raspberry and white chocolate friands. Because, you know, you can never tackle too many dessert recipes at once! We started out with making the crust for the cheesecake. We used Lucky Nuts' new oven roasted almond meal, mixed with butter and brown sugar (as suggested on the packet), and it made for a phenomenal crust. Unlike your usual gluten free crusts, it wasn't oily or soggy. It had exactly the same consistency as a typical cheesecake crust, which was incredibly exciting. Most gluten free crusts come out quite gluggy. Or turn out to be a complete disaster.

The filling came from this recipe, which I think we were both a little disappointed in. Although having just checked the recipe, it appears we left out the cinnamon (it's not Dessert Day without making things up as we go along!), which may account for why it seemed a little flavourless... I still feel like it could have used some nutmeg though, and the recipe doesn't call for that.

Anyway, the pumpkin cheesecake turned out like this:

Next up, we made the biscuits, which were from a recipe book that accompanied the nuts. They were insanely easy to make, but a bit of a struggle for the food processor given the quantities of ingredients!

This was after it had been running for about a minute. We ended up having
to process everything in two batches. 

Things got kind of messy in making these - I covered myself and the bench in dough, and then did the same thing when we dipped them in chocolate. But the end result? Was DEFINITELY worth it!! They're completely delicious.

Finally, we made raspberry and white chocolate friands from the Australian Women's Weekly book, Bake. Except we used a muffin tin to make them, because who has the time and money to acquire a friand pan?!?!?  I mean, honestly. They were much easier than I thought they would be (although that could be because Deidre did the dreaded egg separating!) - I always made the assumption that friands would be complicated and somewhat temperamental. But they're not! The final verdict was that in the future, we'd smush up the raspberries and mix them through that way, rather than plopping them in on the top just before putting them in the oven.

They probably wouldn't look as pretty, but I think it would give them a more uniform raspberry flavour. Which can only be a good thing!!

Aaaaaaaaaaaand then we proceeded to taste test everything, resulting in epic food babies. Because, as is Dessert Day tradition, we'd already stuffed ourselves on cheese and corn chips and hummus and spicy pumpkin dip. And, you know, Mr Darcy:

Source

Frankly? If given the choice between watching a horse race and baking while watching Colin Firth smoulder his way around the screen, I'll take the latter every time...

K xx

Dessert Day: World Nutella Day edition

In case you've missed all my squealing about it over the past few weeks (and if you follow me on Pinterest, I apologise heartily for for the entire board dedicated to it), today is World Nutella Day. (You're welcome - there's still enough time to celebrate.)

Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!

Obviously, World Nutella Day was far too good an opportunity for Deidre and I to pass up, and we promptly scheduled a Dessert Day in honour of it. After much dithering and "OHMYGODLOOKATTHISRECIPEWEHAVETOMAKETHIS!!!!-ing, we decided upon two recipes: Nigella Lawson's Nutella cake, and a Nutella pound cake.

You really can't go wrong when you start with ingredients like these:

Yes, TWO jars of Nutella. And yes, it was entirely necessary.

Both the cakes were remarkably easy to make. Although roasting the hazelnuts for the top of Nigella's Nutella cake was a) a learning experience (because we had to Google "how to get the skins off hazelnuts") and b) rather painful - turns out hazelnuts that have been heating in a cast iron skillet for 15 minutes are really rather hot when you pick them up with your bare hands to peel the skins off! #whoknew

Hazelnut skin massacre

In hindsight, we may have gotten ever so slightly carried away with the number of hazelnuts we added to the top of the cake:

But it was pretty delicious. (Although I think if I were to make it again, I'd ditch the hazelnuts on the top and replace them with strawberries to cut through some of the richness. There's enough hazelnut flavour in it already, between the hazelnut meal and the entire jar of Nutella...) It's a really moist cake, almost like mousse. A small piece is definitely enough, despite Nigella's claims that it serves 8 people!!

When making the pound cake, we made a slightly fatal error, and didn't read the recipe properly. Which resulted in us not flouring the tin as well as greasing it. Which is how it ended up looking like this:

Despite appearances, it was quite possibly one of the most delicious cakes I've ever eaten. You basically make a standard pound cake, and then swirl an entire jar of Nutella through it. Uh, EPIC NOMS. I'm definitely going to have to make it again as soon as possible. But I might try lining the tin to avoid any "oh crap, it's stuck and falling apart at the same time" dramas!

So there you have it. World Nutella Day 2012. Who else is baking up a Nutella-y storm? Or, you know, just eating it off a spoon straight out of the jar? You can tell me - I won't judge! ;)

K xx

Brownies? Or blondies?

A year or so ago, a bunch of curators gathered for a brownie baking masterclass. And no, I wasn't the one supplying the brownies or doing the baking. That fell to Leah. Leah's an awesome baker, and makes her own chocolate truffles as well as her own line of spiffy accessories, Dressed for Sunday.

Anyway, one of the recipes she provided was for white chocolate brownies. And I decided, one year on, that it was about time I made them! Leah calls them brownies, but considering the lack of cocoa powder or dark chocolate, I think they're technically blondies. But when they taste as good as they do, who really cares what they're called!!

Right, let's get baking. Here's what you'll need:

Yes, that really is THREE blocks of white chocolate... Start by greasing and lining a baking tin, and preheating the oven to 180 degrees.

Dump 1/4 teaspoon of salt into a mixing bowl. It doesn't need to be a particularly large bowl, something I would have realised if I'd read more than just the ingredients list before starting!!

Sift 1.5 cups of plain flour in with the salt.

Then set the flour/salt mixture to one side.

Put three large, room temperature eggs into a mixing bowl. Now THIS time, you'll want to use a large bowl. Something I again would have realised if I'd read more than the ingredients...

Beat the eggs until frothy.

You'll need 3/4 cup of sugar, but the proportions of caster and brown sugars are up to you. The brown sugar gives them a fudgier (is that a word??) characteristic. So I used half brown sugar...

...and half caster sugar.

Beat the sugar into the eggs one tablespoon at a time.

Next, melt 3/4 cup of butter. I did weigh out how much it was, but now I can't for the life of me remember what it worked out to... I think it worked out to being just about the 3/4 cup line in the bowl in chopped chunks of butter.......

And chop up 1.5 cups of nuts. I used a combination of macadamias and cashews, but you can use whatever you like really!

And melt 300g of white chocolate. You can do it in the microwave in 30 second bursts, stirring in between. You don't want it to overheat, or it'll go completely feral and lumpy and you'll have to throw it out and start again:

Gently fold the melted chocolate and the melted butter into the sugar and egg mixture.

Then add 1.5 teaspoons of vanilla. Extract, not essence, obviously. Vanilla essence is the devil... If, however, you DO decide to use it, you'll need to use 3 teaspoons.

It may look a little curdled at this stage. According to Leah's recipe, this is normal and nothing to worry about.

Fold in the flour and salt mixture:

And stir gently until combined:

Finally, fold in the 1.5 cups of nuts, along with 210g of chopped white chocolate:

Mmmmm, lumpy goodness...

Pour into the prepared tin, and stick it in the oven. Leah's recipe says to cook them for 25 minutes, which will result in a slightly undercooked brownie/blondie. But mine were nowhere NEAR being slightly undercooked. They were just liquid. I ended up putting them in for 40 minutes, which resulted in the edge pieces being ever so slightly overcooked. So I'd go with around 35 minutes. Oh, and DON'T USE THE TOP TRAY OF THE OVEN! ;)

Cool in the tin, then cut into as many pieces as desired. I did 36, because that's what I do for my triple chocolate brownies and because I suck at cutting square things into five pieces. Six is much easier!! Check out how full of goodies they are! And no, those really white bits aren't feta cheese. That's the white chocolate. (Anyone else think they look like feta, or is it just me?????)

Mmmmmmmm, chunky...

Perfect little bite sized bits of deliciousness! I'm still torn over what to call them though...

They met with Leah's seal of approval, more or less. Five minutes less in the oven and putting them in the fridge before serving would have made them perfect! But I'll have to wait until next time to see how much of a difference that makes...

Enjoy!!

What do you think? Brownies? Or blondies???

K xx

Caramelised apple tarts

This weekend, I decided that I was sick of recipes that start with "Melt butter and chocolate together in a double boiler". And I was in the mood for some kind of apple-y thing. I thought about making apple pie, but then realised I don't own a pie plate. Somewhat problematic in the making of pie... So I trawled through my recipe books, and came up with caramelised apple tarts.

Here's the cast:


Start with the apples:

Peel them:

Quarter them:

Core them:

And slice them thinly:

Then melt the butter in a frying pan:

Add the brown sugar:

And the cinnamon. And marvel at the delicious buttery sugary bokeh in the background:

Then mix it all together until the sugar has dissolved:

Strictly speaking, I dumped the apples in a little too early. But I'm impatient, and it didn't really matter in the long run. And because my awesome new toy has continuous shutter mode, I now present a series called 'Tumbling Apples'. Course, it would have been better if the focus has been the apples rather than the caramel, but it's kind of hard to shoot one handed with an SLR while trying to tip apples into a pan, dammit!!!:

Then stir the apples into the caramel (which is now the right consistency...):

And cook until soft:

When the apples are soft, take this awesome new mixing bowl that Nessa gave me for Christmas:

(Ain't it purdy???)

Stick a strainer in it:

And dump the apple/caramel mixture into it. This lets the caramel sauce drain off so that you can put it on top of the cooked tarts later:

When you've done that, grab the pecans (technically, the recipe calls for ROASTED pecans. But I couldn't find any, and couldn't be bothered roasting them myself. They still worked fine) and chuck them in the food processor:

Add the apple puree:

And the lemon juice:

It's there - trust me!!:

And puree until smooth. Well, smooth-ish. I kind of liked the texture of it. But it does look a bit icky...

Then take two sheets of butter puff pastry. And make a note that the SLR is FAR more sensitive to the downlights in the kitchen than the point and shoot, hence half the photo being really dark:

Cut four rounds from one sheet and place them on a tray. And please pretend that the one on the top right isn't slightly deformed... I didn't have cookie cutters and had to make do with a mug and a knife. It was less than ideal...:

Cut four rounds from the second sheet:

Then cut out the middles to form nice rings. And again, please pretend that one in the top left isn't deformed. I'd half peeled it off the backing before I realised I hadn't taken a photo...

Then brush the rounds with egg:

Then place the rings on top and brush those with egg too:

Fill the centres with the nut mixture:

Then artistically (ha!) place the cooked apple slices on top:

Awww, ain't it fancy lookin'? Actually, it reminds me of potato wedges...

And then stick 'em in the oven. Look! The pastry is starting to puff!! It's great when things do what they claim to on the packet...:

And here they are fresh out of the oven:

Then you take the caramel sauce (that stuff around the edge of the bowl is cinnamon, not anything grody):

And cover the apple slices in caramel sauce:

Yuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuum:

Sooooo good. It's like pie, but without having to make pastry or own a pie plate!!! And with the addition of cinnamon-y caramel sauce. How is this a bad thing???

Enjoy!!!

K xx :)