Wednesdays with Donna Hay - Easy Apple Tart

Don't be fooled by the title of this post - this was supposed to be an Easy Apple Tart, but it didn't turn out that way for me.

The trouble for me is that the puff pastry did not puff at all.  Was it because the kitchen was hot and the pastry oozed into itself?  Was it making the scores in the edges of the pastry that bound the layers together so they didn't puff?  Or was it the egg wash that may have run over the edges and stuck the layers shut?

Whatever it was, I was glad that there was barely anything in these tarts, because I ate the apple off them and threw out the pastry, which remained resolutely as flat as a tack and tasted like cardboard.

Go visit Kayte, Chaya and Margaret to see if they had better luck.

Next week:  Bacon and Roasted Tomato Omelette - join us if you like.

Daring Bakers - Applesauce Bread for Quick! Gimme a Flavour!

February has been a busy month for me, and it has taken me quite by surprise that we are already almost at the end of the month.  And the end of the month means Daring Bakers! 

The Daring Bakers’ February 2012 host was – Lis! Lisa stepped in last minute and challenged us to create a quick bread we could call our own. She supplied us with a base recipe and shared some recipes she loves from various websites and encouraged us to build upon them and create new flavor profiles.

We didn't have to use the recipes that Lis supplied - we could create a quick bread using any recipe that we wanted.  The only rules were:

No yeast

Can’t take more than 1.5 hours to prepare and bake through.

Only loaves or muffins/popovers

With those broad criteria, I chose to make this recipe for Applesauce Bread that I had bookmarked on the New York Times website.  I included raisins instead of walnuts, and made this delicious concoction:

I highly recommend this quickbread recipe and would definitely make it again.

To see what the other Daring Bakers made this month, visit the slide show at the Daring Kitchen website on 27 February US time (not sure if they operate on the East Coast or West Coast).   

Fig Jam

Every year, the fruit man at work shares his home-grown figs with the lucky person who collects the fruit from him each week.  As Karen has sadly moved on, Sandra, our receptionist, is now the lucky recipient of the figs.

I am lucky in that Sandra passed the figs on to me.  I decided that a great way to use the figs would be to make fig jam to preserve them for weeks to come.

The recipe that I used for fig jam comes from p227 of The Country Show Cookbook, and comes from Margaret Bradley from the Trundle Show.  The recipe is as follows:

1kg figs
750g white sugar

(I used 700g figs and 500g sugar)

Cut the thick, milky part of the fig stems off.  Place the whole figs (skin and all) in a large saucepan and cover them with water.  Simmer the figs until they are tender.

Drain the cooked figs, then mash them with a potato masher.  Pour the sugar on top of the figs, then boil the mixture until it reaches setting point.  (To tell this - put a saucer in the freezer; when you think the jam is ready, drop a small amount of teaspoon onto the frozen plate, put in the fridge for a couple of minutes, then run your finger through the jam on the plate.  If it doesn't run back in to fill in the track you made with your finger, it has reached setting point.)

Pour the jam into sterilised jars and seal.

Spread your jam on bread or cakes:

or just eat it out of the jar!

Cheese-topped onion soup

This week's French Fridays with Dorie called on me to make something that I would never have made on my own - onion soup.  Yes, it's called cheese-topped onion soup, but the cheese is actually on a slice of bread that sits on top of the onion soup.

First you caramelise some onions:

then you had some chicken stock and spices and boil it all up to make soup:

then you grate some Gruyere, slap it on a slice of toast, grill it to melt the cheese, then float it on top of your soup.

Surprisingly tasty!  I lied it.  If you hate onions, this recipe is a bust, but I actually enjoyed it more than I thought I would.

Check out some more onion soup at the LYL link on the FFwD website.

Wednesdays with Donna Hay - Blue Cheese and Caramelised Onion Brioche

This week's rather unusual Wednesdays with Donna Hay recipe was Blue Cheese and Caramelised Onion Brioche, chosen by Kayte of Grandma's Kitchen Table.  Kayte and I were joined by Margaret and Chaya in making this snack/side dish.

I live in a suburb with a large Jewish population and apparently not that much of a French influence, because I couldn't get brioche even at the French bakeshop, but I could buy challah at the supermarket:

The onion jam that I used was given to me for Christmas by my Pilates instructor, Emilia:

It is homemade, and no, you can't buy it.  But if you ask nicely I might be able to get the recipe from Emilia :)

You spread your brioche slices (umm, challah) with onion jam:

then top it with Granny Smith apple slices: 

and sprinkle some crumbled blue cheese (I used gorgonzola) on top.  You then take the brave move of tipping it upside down into a pan to toast, then flip it over and toast the other side.

What can I say - yum!  A really nice combination.  Thanks for choosing Kayte.  You can visit Kayte, Margaret and Chaya in a few hours to see what they thought.

Next week: Easy apple tart 

BWJ - Chocolate Truffle Tartlets

For chocolate decadence, you can't go past this week's Baking with Julia recipe - Chocolate Truffle Tartlets, hosted by Steph, Spike, Jaime and Jessica.  These tarts contain not one but three types of chocolate, and are studded with biscuit pieces.  Even the tart shells are chocolate.

Step one - make and bake your chocolate tart shells:

The dough is very soft, so it wasn't easy to work with in a hot kitchen, but luckily it responded well to the patch technique.

Next, fill your tartshells with a mixture of dark chocolate and butter, studded with white and milk chocolate cubes and biscuit pieces:

I wasn't buying amaretti or biscotti just for this, so I used shortbread.

Allow to cool for 20 minutes, then eat:

Go on, I know you want some ;)  But beware - they pack a chocolate punch - I could only cope with a quarter of one of these tarts at a sitting, and gave most of them away.

You can drool over some more chocolate tarts at the LYL section of the Baking with Julia website.

Sunday Snippets

Hello, you fool, I love you,

C'mon join the joyride

Roxette, Joyride

My friend Kayte has a regular Sunday Snippets post to tell her family and friends what she's been up to.  Kayte knew that I was going to a Roxette concert this weekend, so I thought that my very own (once off) Sunday Snippets post might be a good way to update Kayte and everyone else about how the concert and my weekend in general went.

The Roxette concert was held  on Saturday night at Rod Laver Arena in Melbourne, which many of you would recognise as the centre court of the Australian Open.  The show was sold out, so you can imagine how many people were there.  The warmup band was 1927, an Australian band who had a number of huge hits in the 80's.  My favourites are That's When I Think of You and If I Could.  It was great to see them live, and brought back plenty of memories.

After 1927 came Roxette.  Both Marie and Per are still very dynamic with great voices, and belted out hit after hit in an enthusiastic and energetic performance.  My favourite Roxette song from way back is It Must Have Been Love, courtesy of its appearance in the Pretty Woman soundtrack.  However, I came across lots of fun songs that I hadn't known they sang (eg How Do You Do; The Look), and stumbled across a brand new favourite - Joyride - from which the quote at the top of this post comes. Marie is such a tiny woman in reality, but is so dynamic - her performance was amazing. Per and the guitarist, Kristian (?), were jumping around the stage like jumping beans - and Kristian won over the audience with his rendition of Waltzing Matilda.  Again, Roxette brought back so many memories of high school and University for me.  They had not been to Melbourne since January 1995 - before I started work!  It's incredible to think that they came all the way from Sweden to Australia to perform for us on a very hot summer's night - and I thank them for that.

On Sunday morning, I went to brunch with my friends V and C.  We went to The Green Grocer in Fitzroy North, a new area for me. The Green Grocer is an organic cafe and providore, with particularly delicious food.  I had already had breakfast, so I went straight for the good stuff for brunch - the buttermilk pancake with lavender, lemon curd, ricotta and berry coulis:

The pancakes were light and fluffy, just as they should be, and the lemon curd and ricotta topping was delightful - I made sure that I had a smear of each in every mouthful.

Afterwards, we headed to the DFO at South Wharf to grab some bargains before moving on to Albert Park for a beer (or in my case, a cider) at The Beach, overlooking the waterfront, then on to the Scout About Festival in Coventry Street, South Melbourne.

On the telly, I time-shifted the new Sherlock Holmes from Wednesday night, and watched episode one of the second series entitled A Scandal in Belgravia.  The dialogue was absolutely delicious, as Holmes and Miss Adler coo and purr through whipsmart repartee in their smooth British accents.  There were so many twists and turns, it was essential to pay attention, right to the end.  Loved it!  If there were more television like this, I would watch more of it.

Tonight, it is a quiet night catching up on some cooking for the week, including making some fig jam from the lovely figs that the fruit man at work gave Sandra - more to come on that later.

Hope you have had a great weekend.