TWD - Graham Cracker Cookies

This week's Tuesday with Dorie recipe is Graham Cracker Cookies.  Graham crackers are not something that is sold in Australia, but to me, the taste and texture of these cookies resembled Arnotts Shredded Wheatmeal biscuits.

These cookies were simple to make.  I made a half batch and only froze them for an hour before cutting and baking (instead of three hours).  

I am pleased to have them as next week's Dorie recipe is a tart with a Graham cracker base - that worked well.

To see what everyone else made this week and what they thought of it, visit the LYL section of the TWD website.

Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds Cake

For my birthday this year, I thought it would be apt to make a Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds themed cake, it being 50 years since Sergeant Pepper came out (I am younger than Sergeant Pepper!).  One of my favourite songs on the Sergeant Pepper album is Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds, and the imagery that accompanies that song  in the Yellow Submarine movie lends itself well to cake decorating.  

In Yellow Submarine, the cartoon Beatles find themselves in the foothills of the headlands, when John strikes up singing Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.  The first image in that song is a woman (presumably Lucy) inside the heads in two different colour schemes.  That is the image I used on my cake, using coloured rolled fondant.

I was too lazy to colour my own fondant, so I just used colours that I could buy in the supermarket.  It was interesting the different textures that different brands of fondant had - some was hard to roll out, like elephant hide, while some was very sticky and fragile. 

I drew on Lucy's features with edible pens.

The underlying cake was a chocolate cake recipe that I had not used before from Chocolate Coffee Caramel - A Cook's Book of Decadence.  I chose it because it contained blackberry jam, like Nigella's chocolate cake. Here is the inside of the cake:

To make this chocolate cake, you will need:

125g butter

125g sugar

40g icing sugar

2 lightly beaten eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

80g blackberry jam

155g self raising flour

60g cocoa powder

1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda

250ml milk

Preheat your oven to 180 degrees Celsius.  Grease a 20cm round cake tin and line the base with baking paper.

Beat the butter and sugars together in a stand mixer until light and fluffy.  Add the eggs, vanilla and jam and beat 'til combined. Fold in the sifted flour, cocoa and bicarbonate of soda alternately with the milk in three batches, starting and ending with the flour mixture. 

Pour the batter into your prepared cake tin and bake for 45 minutes or until cooked through.  Turn the cake out onto a wire rack to cool.

Decorate as desired once cool.

TWD - Brown Butter Peach Tourte

This week's Tuesday with Dorie (Baking Chez Moi) recipe is Brown Butter Peach Tourte.  This luscious creation involves encasing peaches marinated in browned butter in Dorie's sweet shortcrust pastry:  

It's still cold here so fresh peaches were not an option, so I used canned peaches which I drained and patted dry.  I also rolled out Dorie's Sweet Shortcrust dough for the first time - I normally go for the press-in version, but the rolled out version was easy enough to do.   

The resulting pie was just delish - I served it warm without any accompaniments, as none were necessary.

To see what the other Dorie bakers made this week, visit the LYL section of the TWD website.

Ottolenghi's Coffee and Walnut Financiers

I am an avid reader of The Guardian's recipe section, and was delighted to find an article on the release of a new book by Yotam Ottolenghi, Sweet, which is released in Australia today. As the name suggests, this book, by Ottolenghi and Emily Goh, is a book about making sweet treats.

The article contains 10 recipes, and I couldn't wait to set to work making the Coffee and Walnut Financiers.  (I am glad I did as I have just discovered that the gas lighter on the oven in my rented property has stopped working - so these pages might be a bit slow until that is hopefully fixed.)

I had all of the ingredients for the financiers, give or take.  Take the expresso powder, which I left out, as I didn't have any and there is plenty of coffee flavour from the coffee granules.  Substitute ground almonds for ground macadamias, as that is what I had!

These were so caramelly and delicious.  I ate one and took the rest to work.  I went to get a coffee at around 10.30am and saw that there were one and a half of them left - when I came back, they were all gone.  Glad people liked them!!

I loved the icing recipe because it set hard.  (The above photos were taken before the icing set.) The secret must be the liquid glucose, because ordinary glace icing does not set hard and tends to wrinkle when disturbed.  The glucose trick is one that I will apply often.

I now have my trigger finger on the button to buy Sweet - if the recipe sample in The Guardian is anything to go by, it will be amazing.

TWD - Two- Bite One-Chip Cookies

This week's Dorie's Cookies recipe is Two-Bite One-Chip Cookies.  The name says it all - these are light, small cookies embracing a single chocolate chip, that you can eat in just two bites.

I quartered the recipe to make roughly twenty cookies.  Instead if dark chocolate chips, I used the white chocolate chips that I already had.

The resulting cookies were delicious.  I was a little dubious as there is no rising agent in these cookies and they are so small, but they bake up into tasty morsels - I ate four in a row, no problems.    These would be great for filling gift boxes as they are small enough to fill spaces without awkwardness.

To see what everyone else made this week, visit the LYL section of the TWD website.

Date and Frangipane Tart

I love dates - they are lollies from a tree. When I saw Neil Perry's recipe for a date and frangipane tart, I was immediately on to it - delish!

This tart combines dates boiled in brandy and apple juice with plum jam and frangipane.  I wasn't a fan of the pastry recipe (Dorie Greenspan's is better), but if I made it again, I would just use Dorie's recipe for the pie crust.

If you are a fan of dates and would like to try this tart, the recipe is as follows:

Dates

250ml apple juice
125ml brandy
12 halved fresh dates, seeded
150g plum jam icing sugar, to dust
300ml thickened cream, whipped to serve

Pastry

250g plain flour
70g butter, softened
pinch of salt
90g icing sugar, sifted
60ml milk
2 egg yolks

Frangipane

125g butter, softened
125g icing sugar, sifted
3 eggs
125g almond meal
25g plain flour

Pastry

Put the flour, butter, salt and icing sugar in a food processor and process until they have a fine breadcrumb like texture. Add the milk and egg yolks and process into a dough.

Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured bench and knead before forming into a ball, wrapping in plastic wrap and chilling in the fridge for 1 hour.

Spray a 24cm round pie dish with cooking oil. Roll out the pastry on a floured bench to a thickness of 3mm. Line the pie dish with the pastry, cut off the excess, prick the base with a fork, and allow the crust to rest in the fridge for 30 minutes.

Preheat your oven to 180C. Line the pie crust with alfoil sprayed with oil on one side (oil side down), fill with rice and blind bake for 20-25 minutes. Remove rice and baking paper and return the pie crust to the oven and bake for a further 5-10 minutes.

Put the apple juice and brandy in a saucepan, bring to the boil, then add dates and simmer, uncovered, for 2 minutes. Drain the dates and set aside, reserving the liquid.  Set aside 25ml of the liquid, then reduce the remaining liquid in a saucepan over medium high heat until syrupy, about 6 minutes. Set aside to cool.

To make the frangipane, beat the butter in a stand mixer until light and creamy. Add the sugar and mix until well combined. Add the eggs, one at a time, mixing well after each addition. Stir through the almond meal, flour and 25ml reserved liquid and mix well. Cover and refrigerate for 30 minutes.

Preheat your oven to 180C. Spread the plum jam over the base of the tart shell, top with the drained dates and gently spoon enough of the filling over the jam and dates to cover. Bake for 35-40 minutes. Cool until just warm, dust with icing sugar.

Serve the tart with icecream and drizzled with reduced apple-brandy liquid.

Tasty Beef Casserole

The weather has been less that salubrious lately (by Australian standards - I realise that we have it easy compared with some of you).  Cold, wet, windy grey days have become the norm, and even the sunshine has no real warmth.  I have also had a cold for the last week or so which has made things rather unpleasant - I am over the worst of it now, but I had quite a few sleepless night coughing and spluttering, and the dreaded feverish sweats.

The August Red Tractor recipe is a very appropriate hearty stew - a Tasty Beef casserole.  Here is the calendar quote for this month:

It's so true for dogs isn't it - they get so excited when they think adventure is on the way.

This stew contains fruit chutney for additional richness - it really was good, and hit the spot on cold, wintery nights.

To make this stew, you will need:

1kg chuck steak, cubed
1/2ablespoon olive oil
2 brown onions
2 carrots
2 cloves garlic
1 tablespoon tomato paste
1 heaped tablespoon plain flour
1 lemon, zested and juiced
1 cup beef stock
400g tin tomatoes
1/2 cup sweet fruit chutney
(I also added some frozen peas)

Preheat your oven to 180 degrees Celsius.

In a large casserole dish, brown the beef in batches in the oil on the stovetop, then transfer to a plate.  Fry onions until soft.  Add carrot slices, garlic, tomato paste and flour.  Stir to combine.  Add lemon rind and juice. stock, chutney, beef pieces and tomatoes.  Season with salt and pepper to taste.  Cover and cook in the oven for two hours or until the beef is tender.

Serve with potato mash or rice.