Thomasina Miers' Pumpkin Spice Cake with Ginger Icing

Another gem of a recipe that I recently found in The Guardian was Thomasina Miers' Roast Pumpkin, Olive Oil and Nutmeg Cake with Ginger Icing.  I just loved the sound of this cake, and I already had some of the ingredients, including the  pumpkin.

Of course, I didn't make the recipe exactly as written.  Instead of roasting my pumpkin, I boiled it - the weather was too warm for me to want to put the oven on for the extra time to roast the pumpkin.  Also, since I tidied out my pantry cupboard, I cannot find my nutmeg.  This is why I have changed the name of the cake to just Pumpkin Spice Cake.

I think it turned out nicely - here's a peek inside the halved cake:

The ginger buttercream was a revelation - so tasty that I would make it again for other applications.

And the finished cake - it was devine:

Tempted?  To make this cake (with my modifications), you will need:

300g mashed pumpkin
300g plain flour
½ teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
2 teaspoons ground ginger
1 teaspoon ground nutmeg (if you find it!)
3 eggs
125g brown sugar
175g white sugar
100ml buttermilk (or a tablespoon of lemon juice used to sour 100ml milk) 
150ml olive oil
1 teaspoon vanilla extract 

For the icing:

150g softened butter
100g cream cheese
1 x 3cm piece of fresh ginger, peeled
280g icing sugar

Preheat your oven to 180C and grease and line an 8" round springform pan.

Sift the flour, salt, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda and spices into a large mixing bowl.

Break the eggs into a small bowl and beat lightly with a fork.

Put the pumpkin puree, eggs, olive oil and vanilla into a food processor and blitz. Make a well in the centre of the flour and pour in the pumpkin mixture, and quickly fold together. 

Pour the cake batter into the prepared springform pan and bake for 45-50 minutes or until cooked through. Remove the cake from the oven and cool in the tin for 10 minutes before unmoulding it onto a wire rack to cool completely.

To make the icing, beat the butter for five minutes in a stand mixer until pale and creamy. Chop the cream cheese into cubes then beat it into the butter until smooth. Finely grate the ginger and beat it into the icing.  Add one third of the icing sugar to the mixture and beat in, then repeat with the remaining icing sugar in two lots.  Place the icing in the fridge to set. 

Cut the cooled cake in half, and spread the bottom half with half the icing.  Place the other half of the cake on top,  then spread the remaining icing on the cake however you please to decorate.

Slice the cake and enjoy!

Tuna with spaghetti, peas and borlotti beans

I am very proud of me.  I recently commenced on the seemingly insurmountable task of weeding out my cooking magazines, which  had started to take over my apartment.  I started this mammoth task with a set of about 10 magazines that were still in their plastic  and had lived under the bed three apartments ago ands been lugged around ever since.  I opened the mint condition plastic around those magazines and went through them one by one, tearing out recipes I might make and discarding the rest.

I have since done the same with the mountains of food magazines perched on furniture in my spare room.  I have gone though nearly five years worth of food magazines.  Now all that is left are the more fortunate magazines that found a place in my bookshelves.

One of the recipes that I tore from that first batch of magazines was a recipe for Spaghetti with Tuna, Peas and Borlotti Beans, on p 88 of the February 2009 edition of Delicious magazine.  I am forever searching for work lunch dishes - I need something hearty and filling, and I get bored easily. 

This dish exceeded my expectations.  Spaghetti with borlotti beans sounded - well weird.  However, the combination of ingredients was really flavourful, and the beans make it a really filling dish.  I made it even heartier by using wholemeal pasta.

To make this dish, you will need:

2 tablespoons olive oil
1 finely chopped onion
3 finely chopped cloves garlic
1/3 cup tomato paste
pinch of dried chilli flakes
4 tomatoes, skinned, deseeded and chopped
400g borlotti beans, rinsed and drained
400g can tuna in springwater,  drained and flaked
1 cup thawed frozen peas (I used frozen mixed vegetables)
400g spaghetti (I used 250g - heaps!!)

Heat the olive oil in a saucepan over medium heat.  Add the onion and cook for 1-2 minutes until soft.  Add the garlic and tomato paste and cook for 1 minute, stirring from time to time.  Add the chilli flakes, fresh tomato, borlotti beans and 1 cup water, then bring the mixture to a simmer.   Reduce the heat to low and simmer for 20 minutes or until the sauce has thickened, stirring from time to time.

Stir in the tuna and the peas/vegetables, and cook for around 3 minutes or until the vegetables soften.

While the sauce is simmering, cook the spaghetti according to the packet instructions.  Serve the spaghetti topped with the sauce and ton basil leaves (if desired).

TWD - Cocoa Linzer Cookies

Happy Boxing Day!  I hope that you had a wonderful Christmas Day.

Being Tuesday, our last Tuesdays with Dorie recipe for 2017 is Cocoa Linzer Cookies.  Dorie adds cocoa and chocolate to the traditional Linzer cookie to create a new treat.

I made a few tweaks to the recipe to match the ingredients I had in the house.  Almonds were replaced by hazelnuts; raspberry jam was replaced with strawberry jam.  I also just plain forgot to dust the finished cookies with "snow" (icing sugar).

While these cookies tasted good, I think I like the traditional Linzer cookie better.  I found that the chocolate flavour in these took away some of the sweetness without adding richness.

However, these cookies looked the part, and someone at work told me that they thought I had bought them. 

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

Merry Christmas from Melbourne!

Collins Place

 101 Collins St

 833 Collins St

 Brunettis, Flinders Lane

Brunettis, Flinders Lane

 Collins Square

 Federation Square

The Skinny Dog, Kew

Spiced Christmas Nuts

The last item in my Christmas treat boxes was Spiced Christmas Nuts.  I made these as a contrast to the sweet items.  I used a Julie Goodwin recipe which seemed to have the right amount of kick, but not too much.

These nuts are very easy to make, which persuaded me to go ahead even when I thought I couldn't be bothered making anything else.  They are very moorish, so if you are giving them away, you will have to try hard not to snack on them.

For these nuts, you will need:

1/2 cup white sugar
1 teaspoon smoked paprika
 1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
1/2 teaspoon ground chilli
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
2 egg whites
50og unsalted mixed nuts

Preheat your oven to 160 degrees Celsius.  Line a baking tray with baking paper or a silicone mat. 

Put the sugar, paprika, salt, pepper, chilli and cinnamon in a bowl.  In another bowl, beat the egg whites until frothy. 

Add the nuts to the egg whites and toss to coat.  In small handfuls, coat the nuts in the spices.

Place the nuts on the lined baking tray and bake for 20 minutes, then remove from the oven and allow to cool on the tray.

Here are the boxes that I used for my Christmas treats this year:

I also added Soft Salted-Butter Caramels from Tuesdays with Dorie to the boxes.  Some people also received peach jam:

I wish you and your families and friends a wonderful festive season.

Hazelnut strawberry macaroons (Haselnussmakronen)

My second cookie recipe in my Christmas treat boxes is Luisa Weiss's Hazelnut Raspberry Macaroons - or, in my case, Hazelnut Strawberry Macaroons.  The recipe again was in The Guardian.  They are the perfect colours for the season, in red and white.

These cookies, like the Cinnamon Almond Stars, are gluten free and dairy free, so they are perfect for people who are intolerant of or just want to avoid either gluten or dairy or both.

The hazelnut macaroons are much simpler to make than the Cinnamon Almond Stars, with no cutter required and no fiddly meringue topping to apply.  If you are looking for bang for your time buck, these cookies are the money pick.  Just be aware that they don't travel as well as the Cinnamon Almond Stars because the jam stays sticky. (I wrapped these in Glad Wrap to ensure that they didn't coat everything else in the treat box in jam.)

I saved even more time by buying roasted skinned hazelnuts.  Hazelnuts can be a pain to skin so I was happy not to have to do it.

If you love a festive looking, totally delicious cookie that is easy to make, these are the ones to make.  
To bake them, you will need:

230-290g hazelnuts, roasted and skinned 
2 egg whites
¼ teaspoon salt
150g white sugar
150g red jam

Preheat your oven to 200 degrees Celsius and line two baking trays with silicone mats or baking paper.

Grind the nuts in a food processor into a fine meal..

Whip the egg whites and salt in a mixing bowl until frothy, then gradually add the sugar to the bowl, beating until soft peaks form. Using a rubber spatula, fold in all but ¼ cup of the ground hazelnuts. Add some or all of the remaining ground hazelnuts only if needed to make a thick mixture that keeps its shape when dolloped onto a tray.

Place heaped teaspoons of cookie mixture onto the baking trays, leaving around an inch between them. Bake in the oven, one tray at a time, for 10 minutes or until golden brown. Remove from the oven and immediately press a hollow or "thumbprint" into the middle of each cookie with the back of a teaspoon. Cool on a wire rack, while repeating with the second tray of cookies.

While the cookies are still warm, heat the jam in a microwave until liquefied. Spoon a small amount of liquefied jam into the hollow of each cookie. Allow the jam to set and the cookies to cool completely.

TWD - Chocolate Salami

This week's Tuesday with Dorie recipe is Chocolate Salami.  Sounds weird, yeah?  It's not actually salami but rather a candy-like concoction containing sugar eggs, cocoa, biscuit pieces, dried apricots and pistachios.  It gets its name solely from its appearance.

The chocolate salami looks pretty, but is very rich and does not maintain its shape well out of the fridge for too long.  It was OK, but not something I'd make again.

To see what the others thought of their recipe this week, visit the LYL section of the TWD website. 

Fig, Apricot and Pistachio Fruit Cakes

My second Christmas box treat this year was Fig, Apricot and Pistachio Fruit Cakes.  The recipe for these individual fruit cakes came from page 98 of the November 2017 Coles magazine.

The recipe made 4 mini loaves.  Instead, I made 18 cupcake sized cakes.

The recipe was not originally gluten-free, but I made it so by substituting the flour with a commercial gluten-free flour mix.

I really loved this recipe.  With 18 cakes, there was one spare for me to try.  It was so lovely - unlike a traditional fruit cake, it was not at all heavy, and was satisfyingly fruity and nutty.  The marmalade glaze also added a beautiful shine and colour, and a contrasting tart flavour.  

Convinced to make these?  The recipe is as follows:

160g mixed dried fruit (I just used commercial fruit cake mix)
190g dried figs, coarsely chopped
150g dried apricots, coarsely chopped
105g pistachios, chopped
60ml Cointreau
85g orange marmalade
250g butter
220g sugar
1 teaspoon finely grated orange rind (I omitted this)
 4 eggs
150g plain flour
150 self-raising flour
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
extra orange marmalade to glaze the cakes

Put all of the dried fruit, pistachios, marmalade and Cointreau in a large non-metal bowl, and stir to combine.  Allow to soak for 1 hour.

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius and line muffin trays with papers (I ended up with 18).

Cream the butter, sugar and orange rind in the bowl of a stand mixer.  Add the eggs, one at a time, beating well between each addition.

Add the flours, cinnamon and fruit to the bowl and fold in with a rubber spatula.

Divide the cake batter evenly between the muffin cases using an icecream scoop.  Bake in the oven for 30 minutes or until cooked through and golden on top.

Microwave about a quarter of a cup of marmalade for 20 seconds or so to loosen.  Brush the tops of the hot cakes with the marmalade to glaze.  Cool completely in the pans.

Roasted Honey Mustard Vegetables - Red Tractor December

Wow, we have reached the end of the year, and it's time for the Red Tractor calendar December recipe.  Fittingly for those having a traditional Christmas lunch or dinner, the recipe is Roasted Honey Mustard Vegetables.

There is no quote this month - just lots of summertime Australiana:

These vegetables are mainly root vegetables, roasted until soft and then drizzled with a honey mustard dressing.  I am not much of a parsnip fan, as I find them woody and bland, but the rest of the veges were good.

I won't give you the exact vegetable blend suggested - you can roast what you like.  The honey mustard dressing recipe is as follows:

125g butter
2 tablespoons honey
2 tablespoons wholegrain mustard
2 tablespoons soy sauce
freshly grated ginger to taste

Mix everything together, pour over the roasted vegetables, and bake for a further 10 minutes.

Enjoy!

Cinnamon-almond meringue stars (Zimtsterne)

Christmas is not far away now.  A lot of people in my workplace finish up today to commence their Christmas holidays, and for those of us who are still working, things seem jollier and lighter.

Long-time readers will know that every year, I make Christmas treat boxes for colleagues and friends, stealing the idea from some American bloggers that I read back in the early days of my blog (can you believe it, 10 years ago!).  Half the fun is deciding what to put in the treat boxes from the myriad choices that I could make.  

This year I did not spend a lazy afternoon planning what to put in the treat boxes, as life has seemed very fast this year.  I just randomly noted recipes of interest in my head as I saw them, and when the time came to actually make the treats, I seized on the top few recipes plus a Dorie Greenspan recipe that  I had to make for Tuesdays with Dorie, and lo, I had my treat boxes.  I belatedly added in a savoury item, as I had selected all sweets with no savoury, and I know that most people like a little of both. 

The other interesting thing this year is that a few items that have been staples  in the past did not appear in the treat boxes.  There was no traditional style Christmas cake, no plum pudding, no rum balls and no apricot balls.  There has been a lot of change in my life in the last 18 months, not all of it by choice, so I feel that in an unconscious way, my treat box choices reflected that.

On my mother's side of the family, I am of staunchly German heritage, with both sets of great grandparents being German immigrants to Australia in the late 1800s.  I can't imagine how they might have felt, taking a very long journey on a ship half way across the world, to a place sight unseen with a climate dramatically different to what they were used to.  Today, travel is faster and safer, and there is a wealth of information about other countries, so we have so many advantages over my ancestors.

Despite only possessing some rudimentary German vocabulary learnt in Grade 8 German and having only visited Germany once on an Insights tour, I enjoy exploring my German heritage through baking.    When Luisa Weiss published some recipes for German Christmas cookies in The Guardian, they went "straight to the pool room" of recipes for my treat boxes. The beauty of the majority of these recipes is that they are gluten free - I had three gluten-free people to make for this year, so as a result, everyone received gluten free goodies.

First up, I made Luisa's recipe for cinnamon-almond meringue stars.  I foolishly did not study the recipe in advance, and airily believed that the snowy white tops on these cookies were white icing.  After all, the recipe contained icing sugar, didn't it?  Nope, wrong.  The snowy white top of these cookies is meringue that is painstakingly coaxed over the top of the star-shaped cookies to cover them in a pristine white blanket.  

Other things to note abut making these cookies is that the dough is very, very sticky and unco-operative, so do take Luisa's tip about dipping the cutter in water to stop it from sticking - and keep the dough cold!  Also note that once the cookies are formed, you need 12-24 hours to dry them before baking - they only bake for 3-4 minutes.  I only dried mine for about half that time and they turned out fine (I am in Australia in summer where things dry quicker than in wintery Europe), but regardless, you will need a few hours of drying time.

However, these cookies are worth the effort - so good!  Chewy, nutty, not overly sweet and very pretty.  If you want to take the plunge and make these cookies, you will need:

3 egg whites
pinch of salt
200g icing sugar
300g almond meal 
2 tsp cinnamon

Whisk the egg whites and salt together in the bowl of a stand mixer, then slowly add the sugar, whisking until the mixture forms stiff peaks. Remove three heaped tablespoons of the meringue mixture from the bowl and set aside.

Using a rubber spatula, fold 225g of almond meal and the cinnamon into the large quantity of meringue. Add the rest of the almond meal until a firm but sticky dough forms. Wrap the dough in cling film and chill for half an hour.

Roll the chilled dough out to 6mm thick between two sheets of cling film. Cut cookies from the dough with a 4cm star shaped cutter. Dip the cutter in cold water every so often to keep the dough from sticking (very important!). Put the cookies on baking trays lined with baking paper.

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Spoon small blobs of the reserved meringue on top of each cookie, and spread it evenly over the top of the cookie with a wooden skewer. Allow the cookies to dry on the trays at room temperature for 12-24 hours or until the meringue is dry to the touch (but don't poke too hard or you'll crack the surface!).

Preheat your oven to 180C, and bake the cookies, one tray at a time on the bottom shelf, for 3-4 minutes or until the meringue is set but still white.

Remove the cookies from the oven and allow them to cool on the baking trays on a wire rack.

TWD - Soft Salted-Butter Caramels

This week's Tuesdays with Dorie recipe is Soft Salted-Butter Caramels.  These caramels were easy to make and delicious.  However, "soft" is not a word that I would use to describe my version of them.  They ended up being a firm caramel, kind of like the centre of a Fantale.  They were in fact so hard that when they fell on the floor (oh yes, I had fun cutting these), they shattered in half. 

Dorie said that she rolled her caramels into logs.  This was not a possibility with my caramels.  However, despite their firmness, they still had some degree of flexibility - enough that they bent if left over the edge of the cutting board for too long, and could be straightened out.

I was pleased with these caramels and would make them again if I felt inclined to make sweets.

To see what everyone else thought of their Dorie recipe this week, visit the LYL section of the TWD website.  

Ottolenghi's winter spiced cheesecake with marmalade glaze

In The Guardian recently, I spied an interesting sounding recipe for Winter Spiced Cheesecake with Marmalade Glaze by Yotam Ottolenghi.  The cheesecake was interesting because it contains sweet potato; yep, you read it correctly, sweet potato.

Being a sucker for anything a little unusual, of course I tried it:

As you can see, these cheesecake is a glorious orange colour, and the base has a wonderful earthiness about it from the toasted almonds and sesame seeds.  Don't skip the marmalade glaze - the filling of the cheesecake is not overly sweet, so the glaze gives the cheesecake a delightful sweet hit.

To make this cheesecake, you will need:

550g sweet potatoes cut in half lengthways
60g hard amaretti biscuits (I used morning coffee biscuits)
60g Hobnob biscuits (I used Graham crackers)
60g roasted almonds, roughly chopped
10g toasted sesame seeds
½ tsp ground cinnamon
½ tsp ground nutmeg
70g melted butter
300g cream cheese (I used light cream cheese)
250g mascarpone
90g icing sugar
3 tbsp lemon juice
2 tsp vanilla bean essence
140g fine-shred marmalade
3 tbsp maple syrup

Preheat your oven to 210 degrees Celsius. Line a round 23cm spring-form pan with baking paper.

Line  an oven tray with baking paper and put the sweet potatoes cut side down on it.  Roast the potatoes for 30-50 minutes until soft. Scoop out the potato flesh, discarding the skins, and process in a food processor until smooth.  Refrigerate until cold.

Put the biscuits in a food processor and blitz until fine crumbs form. Mix with the almonds, sesame seeds, spices and butter, then press into the base of the springform pan to form an even layer. Chill in the fridge.

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In a stand mixer, beat the cooled sweet potato with the cream cheese, mascarpone, icing sugar, two tablespoons of lemon juice and a teaspoon of vanilla until smooth. Spread the filling evenly over the biscuit base, then refrigerate overnight or until set.

Bring the marmalade, maple syrup and the remaining lemon juice and vanilla to the boil in a small saucepan and stir for two minutes until the mixture thickens slightly. Remove from the heat and allow to cool.

Release the cheesecake from the pan, discard the paper, and pour the cooled marmalade mix evenly over the top of the cheesecake. Refrigerate again for 10 minutes, then serve.