This week's Tuesday with Dorie recipe is Parmesan Galettes. These savoury biscuits comprise a simple dough of flour, butter and grated parmesan, blitzed in a food processor into a dough, then rolled into a log and the biscuits are sliced from the log.
You could bake them in a muffin tin so they don't spread and stay round, but I couldn't be bothered and baked them free form. The biscuits did not stay neatly round, but they still tasted good - a very strong parmesan flavour, as you can imagine.
To see what the other Dorie bakers made this week and what they thought of it, visit the LYL section of the TWD website.
A friend of mine recently had a Lemon Macadamia Shortbread Cake at a work morning tea. Everyone seemed to like it, and someone asked for the recipe. The recipe was then passed on to me as a suggestion for something to bake.
This recipe was out of someone's home recipe file, so it didn't contain a lot of the niceties that one finds in a modern cookbook for the instructions, nor was there a photo so that I had an idea of what the cake would look like. However, I have been baking for long enough that I was happy to give this recipe a go.
I was expecting a cookie cake from the name of the cake, but this is what it actually looks like (which I am told is an accurate representation of the original):
This is a lovely cake with a soft, buttery base that you press into the tin, topped with a thin layer of lemon curd, then topped with the same dough as the base but crumbled instead of pressed on. The whole thing is then topped with macadamia nuts for crunch:
It really is a lovely cake that is easy to make. If you would like to try it, you will need:
Base
2 cups self-raising flour
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
125g butter, softened
(Double the recipe if you'd like a try bake.
Filling
1/2 cup lemon juice
grated zest of one lemon
2 eggs, slightly beaten
125g butter
1 cup sugar
1 cup macadamia nuts, chopped
(Triple the recipe for a tray bake.)
Grease and line a 20cm springform tin (mine was 22cm and it was fine.) Preheat your oven to 180 degrees Celsius.
For the base, sift the flour and sugar into a bowl. Rub the butter in with your finger tips (I recommend grating the butter to help with this), to form crumbs. Add the eggs, and mix until combined but the dough is still slightly crumbly.
Press two thirds of the base mixture into the springform tin, and set the rest aside.
For the filling, melt the butter and the sugar in a small saucepan (do not allow to boil). Remove the mixture from the heat, then mix in the lemon juice and zest.
Whisk in the beaten eggs, then return the saucepan to the heat and stir constantly until the mixture thickens (it will coat the back of a spoon). Don't panic if some of your egg scrambles in the mixture - just strain it out once the curd has cooked.
Pour the curd over the base in the springform tin. Top with the reserved base dough, sprinkling it over in little blobs to cover the curd. Finally, sprinkle over the macadamia nuts.
Bake the cake for 40 minutes until golden on top, then remove it from the oven and cool it in the tin on a wire rack.
Release the cooled cake from the springform tin, and dust with icing sugar to serve, if desired.
This week's Tuesday with Dorie recipe is Cream Cheese and Toast Tartlets. At first, I was a little skeptical as to what this recipe would be like, especially as it included a toasted bread topping (which seemed a little weird to me).
I needn't have worried - these little tarts were good. I quartered the dough and topping recipe and halved the filling recipe (after realising that I could get two tart shells out of my dough instead of just one), and ended up with two tartlets.
These little tarts are pretty and elegant. The easiest tartlet tins for me to find were some heart-shaped ones that someone gave to me recently (I don't often use tartlet tins), which explains the shape (ie no deliberate decision to make heart-shaped tartlets).
I was worried that the filling would not set as only a miniscule amount of gelatine was involved as the setting agent, but the tartlets set beautifully.
The filling of these tarts is smooth and silky, and the topping on top adds a nice contrast crunch.
To see what everyone else made this week and what they though of it, visit the LYL section of the TWD website.
For Tuesday with Dorie this week, the recipe is for White Chocolate and Poppy Seed Cookies.
These cookies take Dorie's basic good for almost anything cookie dough, and combine it with white chocolate chunks and poppy seeds. After baking, the cookies are topped with more white chocolate and poppy seeds.
These are rather attractive cookies which taste quite good. Perfect for the white chocolate or poppy seed lover.
To see what everyone else made this week and what they thought of it, visit the LYL section of the TWD website.
Are you a fan of cheesecake? I find that people sit firmly in one of two camps - they either love cheesecake or they loathe it. I sit in the former camp, and adore cheesecake in all of its forms, whether baked or unbaked. The only thing that makes me sad is when someone has turned a cheesecake recipe into a cloggy dense mess, instead of a smooth and silky thing of wonder.
Another one of my favourite things is caramel, so when I saw the photo of a salted caramel and pretzel cheesecake on the cover of the September issue of Delicious magazine, I was sold. Is this not a thing of beauty:
Even better, I already had all of the ingredients needed to make it, accumulated from random purchases and leftovers from other recipes.
I am so glad that I ventured to make this indulgent cheesecake - it was everything I'd hoped for. Sweet, salty, smooth, luscious and altogether a treat to be savoured. The pretzels are incorporated into the crust, and the caramel flavoured cheesecake is topped with a layer of store bought dulce de leche to up the ante on the caramel flavour.
To make this cheesecake, you will need:
200g crushed salted pretzels
200g digestive biscuits
350g butter, melted and cooled
400g brown sugar
450ml thickened cream
3 titanium strength gelatine leaves
450g cream cheese, softened
250g store bought dulce de leche
Grease and line a 22cm wide, 5cm deep springform pan.
Put the pretzels in a food processor and finely chop. Add the biscuits and process until fine crumbs form. Add 250g of the melted butter and process to combine. Press the mixture into the base and up the sides of the springform pan, and chill until needed.
Put the remaining melted butter into a saucepan with the brown sugar over medium heat, and stir until the sugar has dissolved. Add the cream and simmer for 10 minutes or until the mixture thickens.
In the meantime, soak the gelatine leaves in a bowl of cold water for 5 minutes. Squeeze out the excess water from the gelatine and stir the gelatine into the hot cream until dissolved. Remove from the heat and cool to room temperature.
Put the cream cheese into the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the whisk attachment and whisk until smooth. Gradually whisk in the cooled cream mixture until smooth, then pour into the chilled biscuit base. Refrigerate the cheesecake for 6 hours or until set.
To serve the cheesecake, spread the dulce de leche evenly over the top of the set cheesecake. Slice and serve. Devine!
Roast chicken is such a comforting dish. It reminds me of being ten years old, and when I came home from Sunday school, Mum would have a fabulous roast chicken lunch put together. The wonderful smell as the chicken finished roasting made me impatient for lunch to be served, so I would try and quell my impatience by watching Barbara Woodhouse train dogs and their owners on TV. Hey, it worked for a would-be vet!
One of the most delicious roast chicken dinners that I have made in recent times comes from the New Zealand version of Cuisine magazine. It is a Roasted Miso and Ginger Chicken. A miso, garlic and ginger butter is sld under the skin of the chicken before roasting, and the chicken is served with roasted spring onions and broccolini. It is really good, especially if you are a fan of Asian flavours.
If this sounds like a recipe that would tickle your tastebuds, you will need:
1 tablespoon white miso
50g softened butter
2 minced cloves garlic
5cm piece of ginger, peeled and grated
2 tablespoons rice wine
1 chicken
250ml chicken stock
1 bunch spring onions cut into 5cm lengths
1 bunch broccolini, trimmed
2 tablespoons roasted sesame seeds
Preheat your oven to 180 degrees Celsius. Combine the miso, butter, garlic, ginger and 1 tablespoon of rice wine in a bowl.
Pat the chicken dry with paper towel, loosen the skin from the flesh on the breast, and smear half of the miso butter under the skin of the breast of the chicken. Smear the rest of the miso butter into the chicken's cavity and over the outside of the chicken.
Put the chicken breast side down into a roasting tray. Season the chicken with salt.
Roast the chicken for 30 minutes, then turn it breast side up in the roasting tray. Add the chicken stock and the remaining tablespoon of rice wine, and cook for a further 20 minutes.
Add the spring onions and broccoli to the roasting dish, return the chicken to the oven, and roast for a further 30 minutes.
Remove the chicken from the oven and rest for 10 minutes before scattering it with the sesame seeds and carving to serve.
This month's last Tuesday with Dorie recipe is Fall Market Galette - except that in my part of the world, it is actually spring, so mine is technically a spring market galette.
To make this galette, Dorie's galette dough (made flexible for easy folding) is filled with grapes, figs and plums. However, I can't get figs and plums at this time of year, so I substituted peaches (US imports) and pears in my galette.
The dough bakes up all flaky and crisp, and the juicy fruit and walnuts are the stars of the galette:
This galette was absolutely delicious, and matched the devine smell as it baked. I served my galette with a little vanilla icecream.
My galette is reposing on a tea towel from the Margaret River region o Western Australia, where I recently took a short vacation. You can just see Cape Leeuwin peeking out from under the galette - this is the most south-western point in Australia, and has a lighthouse that was manned until the early 1990s. It is also the point where the Southern Ocean and the Indian Ocean meet. It is windy and cool up there, but worth a visit.
To see what everyone else made this week and what they thought of it, visit the LYL section of the TWD website.
