TWD - Swedish Fika Cake

 This week’s Tuesday with Dorie recipe is Swedish Fika Cake. It’s a buttery cake topped with a caramel-almond mixture that is designed to be enjoyed with coffee or tea for a morning or afternoon break.

All I can say about this cake is yum!! Caramel + almonds + buttery cake is my idea of delicious.

Do yourself a favour if you can and make this cake!

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

TWD - Potato-Parm Tart

This week’s Tuesday with Dorie recipe is Potato-Parm Tart.  This involves making a savoury galette dough, rolling it out flat, putting a cream-cheese-milk-parmesan mixture on top, then arranging thin slices of red potato (and in my case, apple) on the cheese mixture, with more parmesan and thyme. The base is pre-baked, and then baked again to cook the topping. 

This tart was delicious- I would definitely make it again. It was a little time consuming to make  with its various steps, but not difficult.

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

TWD - Iced Honey-Apple Scones

 Today’s Tuesday with Dorie recipe is Iced Honey-Apple Scones with Spelt. In my case, the scones are sans spelt, as I replaced it with wholemeal flour.

These are not like any scones I know - they are more like little apple cakes, and they remind me of the apple cakes you buy from old fashioned bakeries in Australia.

I think I would have preferred these scones without the icing, as they are already quite sweet from the honey in them.

I made a half recipe to yield six scones.

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

Berry Ricotta Baked Cheesecake

 

Cheesecake is one of our family's favourite desserts, so while I was on vacation with my mother, she hankered after a berry cheesecake.  Mum had seen a raspberry baked cheesecake on Good Chef Bad Chef, so I found the recipe online here. 

The recipe creates a vast cheesecake, so I halved it, which still created a very nice sized cheesecake.  We also used frozen mixed berries instead of fresh raspberries.

I really liked this cheesecake.  The mixture of ricotta and cream cheese makes for a cheesecake that is less dense than its all-cream cheese counterparts, and the digestive biscuit base gives it a nice earthy flavour.

To make this cheesecake (half size), you will need:

Base

150g digestive biscuits

50g softened butter

15g brown sugar  

Cheesecake

250g cream cheese

375g ricotta

125g sugar

2 1/2 large eggs

1 tablespoon lemon zest

250g berries, fresh or frozen

pinch of salt

Preheat your oven to 180 degrees Celsius and grease and line an 8" round springform tin.

Process the biscuits, butter and brown sugar together in a food processor until crumbs form.  (Interestingly, there is no need to melt the butter - I will use this technique again.) Scrape the crumb mixture into the prepared springform tin, and spread out evenly, pressing into the tin to create a flat base for the cheesecake. (I think your fingers work just as well as anything for this purpose.) Place into the fridge to chill while you make the filling.

Put the cheeses, eggs, lemon zest and sugar into a food processor  and process until smooth.  Remove the bowl from the food processor, take out the blade, and gently fold through the berries with a spatula.

Pour the cheesecake mixture over the chilled base, and bake the cheesecake in the oven for 40 minutes or until cooked through (ie firm to the touch on top but still a bit jiggly).  Mine took ~ 50 minutes.  You can turn off the oven and leave the door slightly ajar with a wooden spoon, leaving the cheesecake to cool in the oven.  However, I just removed the cheesecake from the oven immediately and left it to cool on a rack without any ill effect.

Once cool, chill the cheesecake in the fridge for at least a couple of hours or overnight to allow the flavours to meld and the texture to smooth before slicing and serving.     

TWD - Chocolate Babka

 This week's Tuesday with Dorie recipe is Chocolate Babka.  This epic recipe takes at least 2 days to make due to the need for the dough to rise, then chill.

However, the end result is simply stunning, and tastes great.  The bread component is a buttery brioche dough, its filled with spices and cocoa, and finally topped off with streusel.

It was pretty exciting shaping the dough - when the rolled log is cut in half, you get some impressive stripes:

Th dough is then braided - pretty, right! 

And after all of that effort, you get a rather handsome looking chocolate babka:

I can't tell you how it compares with the Bread's Bakery chocolate babka, but it was really good.

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

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas all!!

Here’s my Christmas box treats for this year. At the top are macaroons from Anja Dunk’s excellent German baking book, Advent.

And these gingerbread men are made from Anja’s gingerbread house dough recipe.

These rum balls are a perennial favourite family recipe.

These are candied nuts from a David Lebovitz newsletter recipe for candied pecans.

Here’s this year’s Christmas cake, a Sunbeam recipe snipped from a magazine.

Of course, we had to have fudge. The recipe is from The Australian Women’s Weekly Sweet.
 

And here is a gorgeous light display of Australian flora on Brisbane City Hall.

Have a wonderful and blessed festive season everyone.

TWD - Cinnamon-Anise Stars

 This week’s Tuesday with Dorie recipe is Cinnamon-Anise Stars. These bikkies are made from a cinnamon/star anise/coffee spiced dough, topped with a white glaze (sprinkles optional).

They were fairly plain to my taste, but icing makes everything good. And they are pretty cute.

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