Coffee and Walnut Streusel Cake

Hi
Thought I'd share my latest baking effort. A Coffee & Walnut Streusel cake. You can't tell from the picture, but it is a ring cake. The recipe was from the March issue of Australian Good Taste, so you'll be able to get the recipe from the Taste website soon. The Streusel part came from a layer of crumbled shortbreads and candied walnuts through the middle and on top. Next time I'll probably be a bit more heavy handed with the middle layer as I thought it kind of melted into the cake a bit. The funny part was that I had just picked up my new Kitchenaid Hand Beaters from Myer (to match my growing collection!) and was so excited to get home and bake something. Anyway, I get all the ingredients out only to discover the recipe came from a whole collection of melt and mix cakes!! No beaters required...bummer! On any other day this would be a great discovery I suppose. I will have to make some cupcakes or something to give them a test run. I was also dissapointed to discover that the Australian Good Taste home cook competition only applied to recipes from the June and July issues of the mag. Oh well, means more recipes to try I suppose :)

I sent half the cake off with my husband for a work morning tea and kept the other half for a visit from Louise and Xavier. We both managed to enjoy our cake and coffee while the little ones played. Oh and Bree thanks for the tip on the Bodum double walled latte glasses! For some reason, the same nespresso coffees seemed to taste nicer out of those glasses!

Anyway, take care and happy cooking!

Toni

Baked Ricotta Tart with Polenta and Parmesan Pastry and Grilled Vegetables

Hi
A friend recently asked how come I don't blog my food anymore, so when I posted this pic on facebook someone asked me for this recipe recently, it prompted me to get started again.

Now that Sophie is able to sit on her own and play, I seem to have a little more time to get stuff done.

So, here is the recipe for this vegetable tart (if you can call it a recipe). It all actually came from discovering this lovely bunch of baby leeks at the supermarket and thinking wow...what can I make with those?? I had seen the recipe for the pastry in a magazine at the doctors and suddenly the idea just came about. The filling I used was just made up on the spot. It was supposed to be a mixture of mascapone, goats cheese and lemon juice (served cold), but I am actually not 100% sure if I really love goats cheese, so I didn't want to waste $12 on cheese if it was a fail. I bought ricotta and danish fetta instead and when I tasted the mixture I suddenly remembered that ricotta is extremely bland on its own and cold. So, I added an egg and wacked it in the oven. Pretty happy with the result. Not sure if it was a proper baked ricotta tart...but anyhoo.

Pastry
1 1/2 cups plain flour
1/4 cup fine polenta
1/4 cup finely grated parmesan
125 g butter
salt
1 egg
1-2 tablespoons cold water

Pulse dry ingredients with butter in a food processor (or if you're really keen, by hand). Add egg with machine running and then gradually add the water until it comes into a ball. Gently bring together into a ball and wrap in cling wrap and rest in the fridge for 20-30 mins.
Roll out and put into lightly greased tin (I used a long square flan tin with a removeable base and there was enough pastry left for probably another one). Put baking paper over the top and weight down with dry rice or pie weights and blind bake for 13 mins at 180ish.

Add filling and then bake again for another 15-20 mins or until filling is just set on top. If I made this pastry again, I would probably use a tad less polenta. The polenta gave it this lovely crisp/crunchy texture...but maybe just a tad too much, so I'd take a tablespoon out and see how that went.

Filling
1 tub ricotta cheese
probably 50g danish fetta crumbled
Heaped tablespoon of sour cream (not sure if this made any difference or not)
bit of lemon rind
1 tablespoon lemon juice
salt and pepper
1 egg.

Top with a mixture of your favourite vegetables in season which have been grilled. I used baby leeks (which were first caramelised in a saucepan until tender first), asparagus (same treatment as leeks), finely sliced zuchinni's and roasted capsicum. I also intended to top with pumpkin chips (peeled strips of pumpkin fried off until crisp), but they didn't happen.

Perhaps I'll try the recipe again with the original idea of mascapone (250g) and goats cheese (120g) and chives.... or maybe you will and tell me which is better??

Oh and just on a side note, I also prepared 21 days worth of Sophie's vegetables at the same time, just in case you were thinking that Sophie was missing out!

Happy cooking!

Toni

Banoffee Pie

Banoffee Pie from the latest Masterchef Magazine (the one with Matt Moran on the cover). Made it for my Mum for her birthday dinner as a surprise. Two words....Big Hit! And another two words ..... Too Easy!

Can't really offer any words of wisdom here other than you should definately try it. I boiled my own cans of condensed milk but I'm sure you could use top'n'fill if you really didn't have time.

Happy baking!

Until next time

Love
Toni

Caramelised Pork Belly

Anyone would think I was obsessed with Masterchef. Here is my attempt at Alvin's Caramelized Pork Belly with Saffron Sesame Rice. It certainly was a hit with my partner. Was it worth the effort though? I'm not sure. The braising liquid was simple enough and it really did have a wonderful flavour. I used golden syryp in place of dark cooking caramel which I can't imagine made much difference. The frying of the pork after braising was a fiddly and dangerous step. I imagine that you would acheive the same result with baking at a high temperature for 10 mins or so. It would be far less messy and less dangerous. I ended up doing this anyway to warm the pork for serving. The sauce itself was quite rich. Had a strong aftertaste which I couldn't quite place. Was either too salty or too sweet...All in all, an interesting dish which I would probably make again with amendments as part of a bigger banquet.

I didn't post the pictures but last weekend I also made the Drunken Chicken which was quite tasty too. Not sure what they were all raving about on the show. It had a lovely sweet and different flavour. But in the end it was fairly simple poached chicken. Maybe I did something wrong? The bruised salad however was really lovely and even without the key ingredients of dried shrimp and cucumber, was still a hit. Who else has been making some interesting things?

I don't know about you, but I could eat Asian every day of the week. I wish I lived somewhere with a Chinatown!

Take care
Love Toni

Classic Apple Pie

Yes, it has been a while I know. I thought I would share this picture of an apple pie I made a few weeks ago. Nothing special, just a recipe from taste.com.au

http://www.taste.com.au/recipes/17448/apple+pie

The recipe was Ok. I probably prefer my pastry a little shorter and would therefore use less self raising flour and a little more butter next time, but all in all it was a success.

I can't quite remember the occassion, maybe I had just bought a bag of apples and felt inspired. Anyway, the reason I posted it is to show that something really simple can look great and give you a sense of acheivement. There's nothing quite like the ooh's and aah's you get from serving warm slice of homemade apple pie to someone.

Would love to hear if anyone as a favourite apple pie pastry recipe.

Take care
Love
Toni

Masterchefing with Adrienne

Here she is. The Masterchef pressure test Black Forest Cake. What better way to spend a Sunday than sharing an ultimate baking test with an equally enthusiastic cook. My friend Adrienne (from the famous bookclub) and I got together to tackle this number. After quite a number of hours (we won't say the exact time it took), equally as many blocks of chocolate and many saucepans later we were very pleased with our efforts.

Has anyone else had a go? It is soooo rich and chocolatey, I could literaly feel the sugar buzz after just a small sliver.

There are heaps of steps and lots of techniques so a lot of effort for one cake. But there are lots of individual parts that would be great on their own. The chocolate sponge was easy and very light and fluffy. Adrienne suggested the hazelnut praline and cherry syryp would be great on their own. Perhaps add the praline to icecream or the syryp to coffee.

Anyway, enough making you crave chocolate, have a go yourself and share your experience!

Happy baking!
Toni

Winter Warmer

Yes, I know it's been a while. PhD's and weddings tend to get in the way of cooking which I really wish wasn't the case.

So, I thought I'd share something simple. I bought this fantasic deep pie dish yesterday so wanted to test it out. That also reminded me I wanted to test out Maggie Beer's sour cream pastry from MasterChef. So, a quiche was on the cards. You already know I'm a fan of making pies, so wanted to do something different.

Here is my bacon and caramelised onion quiche with Maggie Beer's sour cream pastry. The pastry was fantastic and had this short but crunchy texture. You can get the recipe from the MasterChef website. No tips or tricks really, just follow the instructions. Unlike me...I forgot to put the pastry back in the fridge after rolling it into the tin. Then when it shrunk back in blind baking I couldn't work out what went wrong. My Mum kindly reminded me this was the same mistake Aaron made on the show...oops..pays to listen. My exuse was that I was talking on the phone the whole way through making and rolling. Anyway as Maggie pointed out, the pastry is quite forgiving, so a little bit of massaging fixed it all up. I blind baked for about 10 mins before adding the egg mixture.

The quiche mixture was nothing special; eggs, cream, sauted bacon, well caramelised onion, a handful of yummy cheese like gruyere, parmesan and parsely.

So next time bacon is on special at your supermarket think about making a quiche with home made pastry. Even being generous, at about $15 works out to be a great (and cheap) packed lunch for my fiance this week.

Stay tuned I am thinking of sharing my next winter warmer (my very yummy pumpkin soup) really soon.

Take care
Love
Toni