TWD - Apricot and Pistachio-Olive Oil Cake

This week’s Tuesday with Dorie recipe is Apricot and Pistachio-Olive Oil Cake. This cake mixes chopped dried apricots and pistachios through a cake batter flavoured with black tea, orange zest and olive oil.

The cake is cut in half and filled with apricot jam, and topped with more apricot jam and chopped pistachios.

 This cake is delicious served with Greek yoghurt.

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

TWD - Maybe This, Maybe That Ham and Cheese Loaf

This week’s Tuesdays with Dorie (Dorie’s Anytime Cakes) recipe is Maybe This, Maybe That Ham and Cheese Loaf.

This savoury cake contains ham, three cheeses (mozarella, parmesan and in my case, Gouda), roasted capsicum, thyme and chives.

It is rather tasty. I much preferred it cold to warm.

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

TWD - Meringue Snackers

This week’s Tuesdays with Dorie recipe is Meringue Snackers. These are big meringues - pretty self-explanatory.

I piped my meringue into nest shapes instead of making big balls, coloured them pink (which is only really visible on the inside) and flavoured them with Queen Flamingo flavouring (rose-like). 

I then filled my baked nests with white chocolate ganache (more transportable than whipped cream), and decorated them with mini chocolate eggs and wine gums. They tasted good to me!

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

No-bake Mango Cheesecake

Tonight’s dessert is a delicious no-bake mango cheesecake. We originally got this recipe from the label of a Nestle condensed milk tin, and have been making it for decades. It is a no- bake cheesecake, which is simple to make and creamy to eat.

To make this cheesecake, you will need:

1/2 of a 250g packet Arnotts Chocolate Ripple Biscuits

50g melted butter

500g cream cheese

395g can condensed milk

425g can mango slices in syrup, drained

Juice of 1 lemon

2 tablespoons gelatine

Hot water

 Line the base and sides of a 9” springform pan with baking paper. Leave the cream cheese out of the fridge to soften. 

Crush the biscuits until fine either in a food processor or using the end of a rolling pin.

Melt the butter, then pour it over the biscuit crumbs and mix well. Press the biscuit crumb mixture over the base of the springform pan and refrigerate while you make the filling. 

Cut the cream cheese into small cubes. Put the cubed cream cheese into a bowl and, using a hand mixer or stand mixer, mix the cream cheese until smooth. 

Pour the condensed milk into the cream cheese and mix until well combined. Puree the mango slices in a blender or food processor, and mix the puree through the cream cheese mixture. Mix the gelatine with just enough hot water to liquify it, then mix it and the lemon juice through the cream cheese mixture. 

Pour the cream cheese mixture over the chilled biscuit base, then return the cheesecake to the fridge to set (4 hours or overnight).

Unclip the springform tin and slice the cheesecake to serve. You can serve the cheesecake with cream or icecream, and you can decorate it with extra fruit.

TWD - Brioche Sticky Buns

This week’s Tuesdays with Dorie (Baking with Dorie) recipe is Brioche Sticky Buns.

It starts with making a half recipe of Dorie’s brioche dough. It is then proofed, chilled, rolled, filled, put into a caramel sauce and baked.

And this is the end result:

It is definitely a labour of love requiring a fair amount of time, but the end result is delicious:

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

TWD - Banana Cappuccino Cake

This week’s Tuesdays with Dorie (Dorie’s Everyday Cakes) recipe is Banana Cappuccino Cake. Dorie created those cake as a riff on banana bread, combining the flavours of things that grow together -  bananas, coffee and coconut.

When I read the recipe, my initial thoughts were that these ingredients are pretty wild together. Bananas and coconut I could understand, but with coffee? 

My fears were unfounded - this is a beautiful cake. Bananas and coffee is not something I’d be drawn to normally, but it just works in this cake.

To flavour the cream cheese icing, I used coffee essence, as I only had instant coffee rather than espresso powder, and I knew it would not dissolve.

This cake is delicious - if you are not a fan of banana cakes, the other flavours in this one really balance out the banana flavour.

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

TWD - Classic Chocolate Chip Cookies

 This week’s Tuesdays with Dorie recipe is Classic Chocolate Chip Cookies. For me, they were not classic as they contain walnuts as well as chocolate, but you know, tomayto, tomarto.

These cookies didn’t turn out great for me. I made them at my mother’s house using spreadable butter out of a tub (which is all I had), which may have contributed to them spreading like mad in the oven and coming out as flat as pancakes. The round cookies in the photo were cut out of the joined up blobby mess on the baking trays. 

My cookies also did not crisp up - they were quite soft.

Onwards and upwards I say!

To see what everyone else made this week and whether they had better luck than me, visit the LYL section of the TWD website.