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

A salad that wasn't made for rabbits!

The past couple of months, I've been buying those cheap recipe magazines from the supermarket in an attempt to expand my cooking repertoire. So far, I've added a grand total of two dishes to my list. But they were both pretty good, although I'll make alterations to the first recipe if making it again, and I already made alterations to the second. I'll post about the pumpkin and ricotta cannelloni eventually (I actually took step by step photos when I made it three weeks ago and still haven't sorted through them...), but for today, here's the spiced lamb and couscous salad:

Sorry about the ugly flash photo and the mess on the bench. I was using my point and shoot, and I was starving.......

I didn't take photos for this one, because I already had half the stuff left over from the Halloween party last weekend, so we'll have to do this the conventional way.

Spiced lamb and couscous salad - adapted from Recipes +

2 tablespoons olive oil
250g lamb steak (I used eye of loin because it was the nicest looking cut the supermarket had. The recipe calls for 500g lamb rump steaks. But I figured it was a waste of money because at least half of the 500g is fat!)
2 tablespoons Moroccan spice mix
450g butternut pumpkin, peeled and cubed
1 red capsicum, chopped
1.5 cups couscous
400g chickpeas, drained and rinsed
60g rocket leaves (I used baby spinach because I think rocket tastes like pesticide)
1/4 cup honey mustard dressing (I used reduced fat)
100g reduced fat feta, chopped (my addition - I had it left over and didn't know what else to do with it!)

Mix 1 tablespoon of the oil with the spice mix. Coat both sides of the lamb, then cook in a grill pan until done to your liking (I, for once, actually succeeded in not obliterating the hell out of my meat!). Transfer to a plate and cover with foil.

Add the pumpkin to the pan and cook for a couple of minutes (or, if you're me, use leftover roast pumpkin from making mini pizzas!). Then add the capsicum and the chickpeas (the recipe doesn't call for heating these, but I think they're gross cold...), and cook for 5 minutes or until tender.

Place couscous and remaining oil in a bowl, add 1.3 cups boiling water. Cover with Glad Wrap and set aside for five minutes. Use a fork to fluff up the grains.

Slice the lamb thinly, and add it into the pan with the vegetables to warm up for a minute. Add the chopped feta at the last minute (unless you like your feta melty... I don't know why it didn't occur to me that feta melts like any other cheese!), along with the spinach/rocket. Stir through the dressing. Dump the whole lot into the couscous and toss to combine.

Serves four as a main course.

This was really good, although I don't know that I'd be as taken with it if I hadn't added the feta. It just gave it a little extra kick. Recipes + calculated it at $3.65 per serve, but I can't really judge that because a) I used a cut of meat that cost double what the one in the recipe did, and b) I had half the ingredients already... But regardless, it was a quick and easy meal that classifies as a salad without the need for cucumber and radishes and olives and all manner of other vile things that get put into salads!

$3.30 a month for over 300 recipes? I think the magazine is worth it, even if I do end up adapting things!

K xx