Bastille Day - Macarons with White Chocolate and Raspberry Ganache & Hearty Lamb Stew

Ah, France! Doesn't it conjure up images of beautiful, picturesque countryside, the elegance of Paris, the musical language, and of course, wonderful food?

Today is Bastille Day in France, so to mark the occasion, I have made two French-style recipes.

Pictured at the top of this post are macarons with white chocolate and raspberry ganache. I have wanted to make macarons for a very long time, but I have read about how difficult they are to get right (for example, see Duncan's article on Melbourne's "finest"). (For a list of desirable macaron qualities, see this article on Serious Eats.)

I decided to bite the bullet and aim just to make them, rather than for perfection. After all, I have never made them before! And for the record, I think I did OK - it's not Laduree, but it's not bad either. My macarons tasted very good (IMHO), and - best of all - they had feet!! (To read about feet on macarons, which puzzled some of my friends no end, see Helen's terrific article on demystifying macarons in Desserts Magazine.)

I used the recipe for Macarons with White Chocolate and Raspberry Ganache on page 40 of the July 2009 edition of Australian Gourmet Traveller. Interestingly, the recipe said that I would end up with 40 macarons (presumably counting each half as one) - I ended up with 19, so I halved the ganache recipe.

If you would like to take up the macaron challenge, the recipe that I used is as follows:

130g pure icing sugar
110g almond meal (I made my own from blanched almonds)
105g (~2) egg whites left at room temperature overnight*
65g caster sugar (I used granulated sugar - probably made my macarons coarser, but it worked)
4-5 drops pink food colouring (or perhaps more - note that mine are a pale egg shell colour)

(To see why, read Helen's article referenced above. She mentions that you can age them quickly by microwaving them on medium heat for ~10 seconds - but be careful, because I ended up cooking half of my first batch of egg whites.)

Ganache

50ml heavy cream
100g white chocolate
45g raspberries, coarsely chopped

Line baking trays with baking paper.

Put the almond meal and icing sugar in a food processor and pulse until finely ground, then sift into a separate bowl and set aside.

Whisk 90g of egg whites with the whisk attachment of a stand mixer to the soft peak stage (or if you are me, you forget and whisk all of them!) to the soft peak stage. Add the caster sugar in tablespoon batches while continuing to whisk the egg whites, until the mixture is thick and glossy, then beat in the food colouring (if using).

Remove the bowl from the stand mixer, and fold in the almond meal/icing sugar mixture in batches until well combined and the mixture slides down the sides of the bowl. Add the remaining egg white to loosen the mixture (if you remembered to save some!), then spoon the mixture into a piping bag fitted with a 1cm plain tip. Pipe 3cm diameter circles onto the paper lined baking trays, leaving 3cm between each one, and tap the trays on the counter to remove air bubbles. Leave the raw macarons to stand for 4-5 hours or until a crust begins to form. (This crust will seal in the heat and cause the "feet" to form at the base of the macaron.)

Preheat your oven to 140 degrees Celsius and bake the macarons in it for 10-12 minutes until they are firm but not coloured. Remove them from the oven and allow them to cool completely on the trays. Use a small flat egg lifter to carefully remove the baked macarons from the trays once cool (or follow Helen's tips for loosening them).

To make the ganache, bring the cream to the boil in a saucepan. Remove the pan from the heat and add the chocolate. Leave the pan to stand for 5 minutes to give the chocolate time to melt, then stir the mixture until it becomes smooth. Refrigerate for about 45 minutes, then stir again until smooth.

Stir the chopped raspberries through the ganache, then spoon one teaspoon of ganache onto one half of the macarons, and spread it out to the edges. Place another macaron on top of each half, then refrigerate the macarons until set. (They keep in the fridge for 1-2 days.)



My other Bastille Day recipe was a Hearty Lamb Stew (Civet d'Agneau). This recipe is from page 314 of On Rue Tatin by Susan Loomis, a delightful autobiography peppered with recipes. The recipe is from Susan's butcher in Louviers, M. Jean-Louis Richard. It is a truly wonderful stew - it is rich and full-flavoured, and smells devine. Susan states that this stew is "an uncommonly delicious treatment for lamb". If that doesn't tempt you, I don't know what will!

My only tip is - be prepared to wait. The meat marinades for 48 hours before cooking (I only had 24 hours up my sleeve), and it rests for an hour outside of the fridge before you begin to cook. You also need to cook the prepared stew for 1 1/4 hours, so this dish is best made over a leisurely weekend.

I altered the recipe by using less meat, correspondingly less wine and garnishing with baby spinach rather than parsley. However, the original recipe is as follows:

1.5kg lamb, diced
750ml red wine
2 dried bay leaves
20 sprigs fresh thyme
20 black peppercorns
3 tablespoons butter
2 carrots, peeled and cut into thin slices
1 onion, cut into thin slices
3 tablespoons plain flour
salt and pepper
1/2 cup parsley for garnishing

Put the lamb in a shallow, non-corrosive casserole dish, and pour over the wine. Add the herbs and peppercorns, mix to combine, then place on the regrigerator to marinade for 48 hours, stirring every now and again.

On cooking day, remove the lamb from the fridge an hour before cooking.

Preheat your oven to 220 degrees Celsius. Remove the lamb from the marinade (which you should reserve) and pat it dry. Melt the butter in a heavy bottomed frypan, and lightly brown the lamb. Remove the lamb from the pan.

In the same pan, cook the carrots and the onions until golden and soft, then remove from the pan.

Still using the same pan, add the flour and cook, stirring, until it becomes golden. Pour the marinade into the pan with the flour, and cook until it thickens into a sauce.

Put the lamb and vegetables back into the casserole dish used for the marinating process. Season with salt and pepper, and pour over the thickened marinade. Cover the casserole dish, then place into the oven to cook for 1-1 1/4 hours.

Remove the cooked stew from the oven and allow it to stand for 5 minutes before sprinkling over the chopped parsley and serving.

I served my stew with mashed potatoes, but you could try a traditional French potato dish in its stead.

I loved this stew - it was thick and rich and delicious, and except for the time factor, I would make it often.

Happy National Celebration to those who are French. Vive la France!

TWD - Plum Brioche Tart

Having recently conquered Dorie's sticky buns, I was delighted this week to find that, courtesy of Tuesdays with Dorie and our host, Denise of Chez Us, I would be making another recipe based on Dorie's golden brioche. This time, it was a Plum Brioche Tart.

Plums are not in season here, so I used canned plums, which I dried between paper towels for around half an hour. Despite this, my finished tart was still very juicy, with pools of juice on top. However, I didn't think that this detracted from the flavour - it was not so soggy as to turn my brioche to mush, and I enjoyed the fact that this was not an overly sweet baked treat.

The only other change that I made from the recipe was to use chopped pistachios in the topping rather than walnuts or almonds, primarily because that was what I had in the cupboard.

Doesn't it look lovely with its golden centre:

To see how the other TWD bakers went with this tart, visit the TWD blogroll.

Chocolate Caramel Slice & Lemon Cupcakes

One of my colleagues, Ruth, is a big fan of my baking, and I recently made a couple of things at her request. After all, you don't let your fans down!

Last week, when Ruth asked for some baking to help her day go better, I made chocolate caramel slice, pictured above. (No matter how many photos I seemed to take of this, none of them turned out well - the above shot is the best of a bad bunch). This slice started out life as my school chum Katrina's caramel marshmallow slice, the recipe for which is printed out on an old dot matrix printer on the paper with the holes up the side to feed through the tracks on the printer. (Remember those printers?? As you can guess, it's been a while since I have been at school.) Unfortunately, when I got to making the marshmallow, I realised that I had no gelatine, and there are no shops open near my place that are open at 9pm at night. Accordingly, the marshmallow topping was hastily ditched for a chocolate topping, as I had plenty of chocolate in the pantry cupboard.

This slice is relatively easy and quick to make (hence why it was a "school night" choice), and is an amalgam of the base recipe for ginger crunch minus the ginger (as alas, Katrina's recipe merely states that you put the topping on a "biscuit base"), Katrina's caramel topping and melted dark chocolate. The "recipe" (if this is what you call this mish-mash from various sources) is as follows:

Base
(adapted from the Ginger Crunch recipe in Cook by Kate McGhie)

125g butter
125g sugar
215g plain flour
1 teaspoon baking powder

Preheat your oven to 160 degrees Celsius, and grease an 18cm x 28cm slice pan.

Beat the butter and sugar in a stand mixer with the paddle attachment until light and fluffy.

Sift the flour and baking powder together into a bowl, and fold into the butter mixture. You will end up with a sandy textured dough. Press this dough into the prepared slice tin, and bake in the prehated oven for 25-30 minutes or until golden brown.

Caramel topping

1/2 cup condensed milk
1 tablespoon golden syrup
1 egg yolk
1/2 tablespoon sugar
2 tablespoons butter

Place all of the imngredients into a small saucepan, and bring slowly to the boil over medium heat. Reduce the heat, and simmer the mixture for 5 minutes, stirring constantly, until it thickens and pulls away from the sides of the saucepan and turns a caramel colour. Remove the pan from the heat and spread the caramel over the hot biscuit base. Allow the base and the caramel to cool completely.

Chocolate topping

Melt 125g dark chocolate in a saucepan over a pan of simmering water. Once melted, pour over the caramel and spread out to cover the slice evenly. Leave the chocolate topping to set at room temperature.

Once the topping has set, cut the slice into squares (makes ~24 slices).

I also made these lemon cupcakes topped with white chocolate ganache when Ruth requested lemon cupcakes (as she is thinking of having cupcakes at her wedding):

The recipe is the Crabapple Bakery Vanilla Cupcakes, with part of the milk substituted with the juice of a lemon, and with the zest of a lemon in the batter. The ganache topping was leftover from the Pineapple Dacquoise.

Unfortunately, the cupcakes did not taste very lemony, so I will have to work on this, as I prefer a stronger lemon flavour.

Hope you enjoy these random recipes, and that you all had a good weekend.

Pecan honey sticky buns

We'll build a world of our own
That no-one else can share

The Seekers, A World of Our Own

Don't you love sleeping in on the weekends, then waking up to the smell of freshly baked bread? Sticky buns remind me of Sunday mornings, sleeping in, then waking up pretending that the world doesn't exist while you continue to snuggle up under the covers and just be.

Accordingly, I was instantly attracted by Dorie's pecan honey sticky buns, although they are not really the kind of breakfast treat you can just decide on a whim to make. No - they require hours and hours of rising time, although you can make the dough the day before and rise the next day to bake these deliciously gooey, nutty, caramel covered treats.

I cheated on the risings, having fewer than suggested and cutting down on time by placing the dough in an oven that was just barely on (~30 degrees Celsius). However, these buns were so worth it - sticky and finger-lickingly delicious.

I think that I am one of the last baking bloggers on the planet to make these, so you can find the recipe all over the place, including here at Cathy's blog.

Despite the effort, these are so worth it - go on, I know you want to make 'em.

Cauliflower mustard pickles

When I attended Regional Flavours recently, one of the stall holders was selling jams and cauliflower mustard pickle. Everyone was raving about the pickle, so I tried it too, despite it being visually rather repulsive to me (being cacky yellow). Boy, was I pleasantly surprised! It was delicious - just the right blend of sweet and sour to tickle my tastebuds.

When I mentioned the pickle to my Mum, she said that she used to make it. I honestly can't remember her making it, but it inspired me to have a crack at it myself.

Armed with a cauliflower, a bottle of white vinegar and some mustard, I looked up a recipe for cauliflower mustard pickle in the Schauer Fruit Preserving Book. (Later, I found a few recipes on the Internet that were a lot less vinegary - oh well, maybe next time!)

Because this recipe was in old measures, and I was only making a half batch, I had a guess at a lot of things, including how much cornflour to use as thickener. However, my pickles worked out OK in the end, and are delicious in corned beef sandwiches, where the salty meat and the sour pickles play off against each other.

To make your own cauliflower mustard pickles, you will need:

1/2 head large cauliflower, divided into florets
salt solution (50g salt dissloved in 500ml cold water)
500ml vinegar (recipe suggested malt vinegar; I used white vinegar)
1 tablespoon mustard (I used Masterfoods Australian mustard)
1/2 tablespoon turmeric
1/4 cup cornflour
extra cold vinegar

Soak the cauliflower in the salt solution overnight, then drain. Mix the cornflour with just enough vinegar to make a paste. In a large saucepan, combine the 500ml of vinegar, the mustard, the turmeric, and the cornflour paste, and bring to the boil. Add the salted cauliflower, reduce the heat and simmer for 10 minutes or until thickened. (You may need more or less cornflour; you need just enough to thicken the pickle.) Spoon the pickled cauliflower into sterilised glass jars (I used 2 x 300ml jars for this quantity of pickle).

Spread the pickle on thick, crusty bread in place of margarine, and top with corned beef, tomato and cheese, then toast in a sandwich maker - delicious!

Ginger Lime Loaf

Like many food bloggers, I have a cookbook addiction. There, I've said it. I am not sure if they have CBAA (Cook Book Addicts Anonymous) meetings, but I don't think I'd want to go - I'd have to be dragged there kicking and screaming. I love cook books - there is nothing like cosying up under the doona with a pretty recipe book full of enticing photos and seductive recipe titles.

Recently, Nanette of The Gourmet Worrier posted about a cook book that she had learned about through the Air New Zealand in flight magazine called Gran's Kitchen - Recipes from the Notebooks of Dulcie May Booker by Natalie Oldfield. You can read Nanette's enchanting post, which explains the story behind the book, here.

After resisting for about 5 seconds, I decided that I had to add this book to my collection. After all, it contains lots of baking recipes (among others) of the kinds of things that mother used to make, and I have found that New Zealand and Australian women seemed to make the same sorts of things, so it would appeal to my taste buds.

This book did not disappoint - it is a truly beautiful book, with lots of photographs of Dulcie May Booker and her family, and a photo of each dish. The lovely people from whom I bought my copy, Cook The Books, suggested that I try the honey gems - and I will. However, for my first outing, I made Dulcie's Ginger Lime Loaf, which apparently was one of her "new" favourites. This is a lovely dense loaf cake flavoured with lime and fresh ginger, and with the most devine lime icing on top.

To make your own Ginger Lime Loaf, you will need:

250g butter
1/2 cup brown sugar
2/3 cup golden syrup
2 tablespoons freshly grated ginger
1 tablespoon lime zest
1 cup plain flour
1 cup self raising flour
2 lightly beaten eggs
3/4 cup plain yoghurt

Icing

2 cups icing sugar
1/4 tablespoon melted butter
2 tablespoons lime juice
1/4 tablespoon lime zest

Preheat your oven to 180 degrees Celsius and grease a loaf pan. (The book doesn't specify size, so I just used what I had.)

Put the butter and golden syrup into a medium sized saucepan, and melt over medium heat on the stovetop. Add the sugar, ginger and lime to the saucepan, and stir over low heat until dissolved. Remove from the heat.

Sift the flours together in a large bowl.

In a separate small bowl, whisk together the eggs and yoghurt until combined.

Add the egg mixture and butter mixture alternately to the flours in two to three batches, stirring until just combined.

Pour the batter into the prepared loaf tin, and bake in the preheated oven for around 50 minutes or until cooked through. (My cake ended up being a little cracked and domey on top, but tasted fine.)

When the cake has cooled, ice it by combining all the icing ingredients together and spreading over the top of the cake. (I used more than the suggested 2 tablespoons of lime juice in the icing - I just used up the juice from the whole lime, but the consistency of the icing is up to you.)

Enjoy sliced for morning tea with a hot cuppa.

TWD - Tribute to Katharine Hepburn Brownies

I never lose sight of the fact that just being is fun.
Katharine Hepburn

This week is a special TWD, because we are baking with a non-TWD host, Lisa of Surviving Oz, who is the designer of our brilliant new logo:

She has chosen the Tribute to Katharine Hepburn brownies.

Apparently, Kate once said that you should never have too much flour in your brownies, and these brownies are a testament to that. They are of the gooey, fudgy variety rather than the cakey, firm type.

I baked my brownies according to the directions, and I think they were just perfect. The chocolate chunks were just on the right side of oozey, and when served warm - mamma mia, they were devine! This has to be one of my favourite Dorie recipes by a country mile.

To check out how the other TWD bakers went with these brownies, please check out the TWD blogroll. Here's hoping that Kate would approve.