TWD - Basic Biscuits

Sometimes, it's good just to make something quick and easy.  So it was for this week's Tuesday with Dorie, for which Jennifer of Cooking for Comfort chose Dorie's Basic Biscuits.

For an Aussie like me, a biscuit will always be a slightly flatter version of a scone.  I spread mine with rhubarb and raspberry jam, and put cheddar cheese on another (not just any cheddar - the cheddar I made at cheesemaking classes last year):

These took mere minutes to whip up, with minimal effort.  Although Dorie loves using her hands to rub in the butter, I prefer my pastry cutter - one of the best gadgets I have ever bought.  It saves my fingers from becoming caked with goo.

I brushed the tops of my biscuits with milk before baking to brown the tops a little - I am glad that I did, as they never did become really golden.

Thanks to Jennifer for this week's mercifully easy pick.  To see what all the other TWD members thought of these biscuits, visit the LYL section of the TWD website.  

Mirka Mora's Walnut Cake

Ever since I acquired Ramona Koval's Jewish Cooking Jewish Cooks, I have wanted to make Mirka Mora's Walnut Cake.  The recipe comes with a charming story about Ramona's meeting with Mirka in the kitchen of her home.  Mirka is a well known Melbourne artist, originally from France, and you can find out more about her fascinating life here and here.

Why wouldn't I want to make this cake - it is packed with caramel-coated walnuts!  Sounds like a winner to me.  Also, the outside of the cake is easy to make - everything is whizzed together in a food processor.  You can find the recipe online here.  Curiously, in the book, the pastry uses 90g of butter, and the filling uses 90g each of brown sugar and butter, so you may wish to substitute those measures for the online version.

The outside of this cake is a soft, tender pastry, and the filling is whole, unchopped walnuts embraced by smooth caramel laced with rum.  After I egg washed my cake, I sprinkled it with castor sugar for extra crunch before putting it in the oven. In the book, instead of putting castor sugar on top, they sprinkled the top of the cooled cake with icing sugar.

This is a simple but delightful cake for which I received plenty of compliments.  Definitely give it a try if this is your kind of cake! 

FFwD - Olive-Olive Cornish Hens

It's Friday again - can't you hear the birds singing and smell the hope and joy in the air as the weekend beckons ever nearer?

This week's French Friday with Dorie challenge was  Olive-Olive Cornish Hens (in my case, poussin) - little birds butterflied and with their skins stuffed with homemade olive tapenade (green, in my case), olive-oiled and seasoned to perfection, and roasted until their skins are crispy and the tapenade flavour has melded into the bird.  Bliss!

I served my hens with asparagus roasted with lemon and salt, good old mixed vegetables out of a packet, and wild lime pickle - devine:

 

Look at how wonderful and crisp the outside is and how tender the meat is:

 

It oddly reminded me of my Mum's Sunday roast, though there was never any olives in my mother's house.

To see what everyone else thought of this week's dish, visit the LYL section of the FFwD website for this week (once available).

Chocolate Orange Cake for Steve's Birthday - Gluten Free and Dairy Free

It was my friend Steve's birthday on the weekend, so I decided to make him a cake.  However, there were a couple of important restrictions on my choice of cake - first, it had to be gluten free and dairy free; second, it had to be robust enough to last while standing out on Steve's doorstep for an indefinite period of time.

After a quick Google search, I found this recipe for a Spiced Chocolate Orange Cake on Cook Sister!, which is out of Nigella Lawson's Feast.  I own this cookbook, so it is quite funny that I turned to the Web to find a recipe. 

The key change that I made to fit in with my two criteria was to replace the cream cheese frosting with water icing.  This turned out to be a good move, as Steve did not find the cake until the next day, as he had been away.

This cake is a very handsome burnished brown before icing: 

I made myself a small taster cake, and can tell you that this cake is dense and very chocolatey, with strong orange undertones.  I used one of my precious blood oranges from St Kilda Farmers Market to make this cake, so I like to think this made it especially good.

To decorate my creation, I used red writing gel (which came off when I wrapped the cake in cling film) and strawberries and cream lollies.  I rather liked the bright red against the chocolate - it looked suitably festive.

This is a really easy cake to make - and it is all done in a food processor.  The only palaver about it is boiling oranges for two hours, so it is a very handy cake to have in your repertoire.

Happy birthday Steve!

TWD - Apple nut muffin cake

I love fruit in baked goods - baking fruit brings out the rich sugars in the fruit and caramelises them to sweet perfection, and the contrast in textures that fruit affords to a cake adds interest.

This week for Tuesdays with Dorie, Katrina of Baking and Boys chose a Dorie recipe featuring that most versatile of fruit - the apple.  Her choice was the Apple Nut Muffin Cake, which Dorie invented when she was having guests over and didn't have time to prep her muffin tin, so made the muffins into a cake instead.

Apple Nut Muffin Cake is packed with apple chunks, walnuts and spices:

It is delicious - moist, soft and not overly sweet.  It is perfect for your lunchbox or as an afternoon snack with a cup of joe.

Thanks to Katrina for histing us this week - she will have the recipe. You cal check out the other TWD members interpretation of this cake at the LYL section of the TWD website.

Dan Lepard's Sour Cream Chocolate Cake

Melbourne has unfortunately returned to winter weather - icy winds, low temperatures, rain, grey skies.  We received 43mm of rain on Wednesday alone, our wettest September day in decades.  Despite all of this, when I walked into work yesterday morning, it felt great to be in Melbourne.  The streets were quieter than usual (perhaps people took the day off to travel to the football finals tomorrow?), I had a coffee made by the handsome cheery bloke at a cafe in Degraves Street, for the first time in ages I admired the grand old buildings of the CBD, I enjoyed watching everyone walking in their winter coats, scarves and hats (like a street in Europe), and just as I arrived at work, the sun peeked out like a beacon of hope.  My love for Melbourne was reaffirmed, and at that moment, I didn't want to be anywhere else.

The only connection between yesterday and the cake at the top of this post is that I brought it into work yesterday for my colleague Lee.  It is Dan Lepard's Sour Cream Chocolate Cake from The Guardian.  I worked with Lee in a former life, and now at my new job.  Last time, I started first and left first.  This time, the order is reversed - Lee started first and is leaving first.  Lee will be sorely missed, not least of all for his encyclopedic knowledge of 1980s music for which he won the trivia award on our 2007 boat cruise (I haven't forgotten Lee!).

This cake was pretty tasty and moist - given that it contained 375g of chocolate and 200g of sour cream, I am not surprised!  Diet food it ain't.

 

The decorations are silver cachous and Lindt balls - not elegant, but they are what I had around the house.  One bite of this cake, and I am sure that no-one cared what it looked like.

Have a great weekend!

FFwD - Deconstructed BLT and Eggs

This week's French Fridays with Dorie features a nemesis of mine - salad.  I am so not a salad kind of girl.   The salad concerned is a Deconstructed BLT and Eggs - that's right, a sandwich reborn as a salad.

However, this particular salad surprised me - I made it for my dinner, and I loved it!  The salad comprises of aragula (I used baby spinach), sun-dried tomatoes and cherry tomatoes dressed with a mustard vinagrette, topped with chopped crispy pan fried bacon, croutons crisped up in bacon fat, and a hard boiled egg.  (You are also supposed to put mayonnaise on the eggs, but I wasn't buying a product I won't use for one spoonful on top of an egg.)

I was amazed at how well the bacon cooked up without any added fat in the pan - which makes me shudder at how the average fryup feautures bacon cooked in even more fat.

This salad was really very tasty, with its mxture of sharp, sweet and salty flavours, and I would definitely make it again.

To see what the other FFwD participants thought of this salad, visit the LYL section of the FFwD website.