WWDH - Tabouli

For Wednesday with Donna Hay this week, Margaret chose Tabouli from Modern Classics I.

This salad was easy, fresh and delicious.  The hardest part was finding the cracked wheat in a store.  I'd make this again.

To see what the others thought of this dish, visit the LYL section of the WWDH website.

Lamaro's Bodega, South Melbourne

For Tim's birthday, I took him to dinner at Lamaro's Bodega, a Spanish and South American bar and restaurant in South Melbourne.  I chose this venue after reading a review in The Age.  The essence of the menu at Lamaro's Bodega is  to highlight fresh local produce.

When we are seated, we are provided with some delicious bread to share, dipped in oil:

Lamaro's Bodega is about share plates, so Tim and I order some smaller dishes to share for entrée before ordering a main each.

Our first share plate was the black pudding  with chickpea salad and apple ($18):

Whether or not you like this dish depends on whether or not you like blood sausage, but Tim and I both do, so it was a winner for us.

 Our second share plate was a selection of grilled vegetables with hummus:

Again, this was delicious, and left plenty of room for the other courses.

 

We each chose a separate main.  Tim selected the signature dish of suckling pig and pork gravy ($42):

I tried the crackling on top, which was super crispy and delicious.

My main was John Dory over wood with capers, lemon, olives and tomato ($43):

I found this dish a little challenging to eat, because it was a whole fish minus the head.  I was also a little hesitant because the fish was very pink along the spine - I would have preferred it to be cooked a little longer.  However, the overall flavours were winners.

For sides, we ordered (to share) a jacket potato ($12):

and broccoli with fontina and hazelnut ($12):

Both sides were good.

For dessert, we couldn't go past the sweet potato icecream sandwich with dulce de leche ($10):

 

Both pieces were included in the price.  This dessert was a choux pastry éclair filled with sweet potato icecream, and topped with chocolate and a fat squirt of dulce de leche.  It tasted as good as it looks.

 

The service was friendly and prompt, and the atmosphere was dark and smoky.

 

We liked Lamaro's Bodega and would go back.

 

Lamaro's Bodega

273-279 Cecil Street

South Melbourne VIC

Ph: 03 9690 3737

Beechworth Bakery Christmas Cake

The Beechworth Bakery is famed for its delicious baked goods.  We visited the Echuca branch in 2013.

Somewhere online, I found the Beechworth Bakery Christmas Cake recipe and printed it off.  For the life of me, I cannot find it again.  It could have been taken down, as it appeared to be part of a brochure promoting the bakery.

Luckily for me, I had a copy of the recipe, and decided to make it for my Christmas cake this year.  What I love about this recipe is the gorgeous jewelled fruity top.

Here is my cake before going into the oven: 

 
and after coming out:

Beautiful!

If you want to eat one of these beauties, you can order them from the Beechworth Bakery website.  However, if you want to make one, you will need:

Cake

1 cup butter
1 cup brown sugar
5 x 60g eggs
1 tablespoon cornflour
2 1/4 cups plain flour
1 teaspoon nutmeg
1 teaspoon mixed spice
2 cups sultanas
1 2/3 cups raisins
1 cup currants
2/3 cup chopped pecans
1/2 cup mixed peel (optional - I skipped it)
1/3 cup red glace cherries
1/3 cup green glace cherries
1/4 cup rum
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder

(The original recipe also had 3 teaspoons Parisian essence and 1 tablespoon glycerine - I skipped them both.)

Topping

1/3 cup flaked almonds (I used slivered almonds)\
1/4 cup mixed peel (again, I skipped it)
1/4 cup glazed pineapple
1/3 cup red glace cherries
1/3 cup green glace cherries

Halve cherries and put into a large bowl with the sultanas, raisins, currants, peel (if using), pecans and rum (and glycerine, if using).  Cover and stand for 2 days, stirring each day.

Grease a 20cm square cake tin and line with 2 layers of baking paper, and line the outside of the tin with thick cardboard (I got an old cardboard box and folded it around the outside of the tin, and tied it in place with string).

Put the plain flour, cornflour, nutmeg,   mixed spice and baking powder in a bowl.  The recipe says sift all of this twice - I didn't bother.

For the topping, chop the cherries in half and chop the pineapple to a similar size.  Mix all of the topping ingredients together.

Preheat your oven to 140 degrees Celsius.

Beat the butter and sugar together in a stand mixer until light and fluffy.  Beat in the eggs one at a time, together with one tablespoon of dry ingredients per egg.  (Then beat in the Parisian essence if using.)

Add the rest of the dry ingredients and mix until all of the dry ingredients have been incorporated into the batter.

Fold the dried fruit in by hand.

Spoon the batter into the prepared cake tin, and with a damp hand, press the mixture down until evenly distributed and the cake is flat on top.

Place the topping on top of the cake and press in slightly to secure it.

Bake the cake in the preheated oven for 4 hours and 15 minutes, turning once every hour.  To stop the top of the cake getting too dark, cover with alfoil if necessary.

Once the cake is cooked through, remove it from the oven, then melt a couple of tablespoons of apricot jam in the microwave and brush it over the top of the warm cake to make it shiny.

Wrap in baking powder and alfoil and put in a cool dark place to mature until Christmas!

Cake Bake & Sweets Show, Melbourne

Last Saturday, I attended the Cake Bake & Sweets Show in Melbourne.  I had a bright and early start, as I was doing a workshop class that started at 8.30am.

The class that I chose to do was Katherine Sabbath's icecream cone cake course.  For the uninitiated, Katherine is a Sydney high school teacher who became an Instagram sensation with her bright and colourful cakes.  You can check out her creations here.

In real life, Katherine is sweet and bubbly and enthusiastic - the nicest instructor I have ever had in a baking class.  We made her famous icecream cone cake on a foam dummy - my effort is pictured at the top of this post.  Katherine also provided her cake recipe on request so that if you want to try it at home with real cake, you can.

We also iced some cupcakes with bubblegum flavoured buttercream so that we had something edible to take home: 

 
Katherine very graciously posed for photos after the class:

 
Having completed my workshop, I hit the displays at the Show.  Here are some of my favourites from the decorated cakes competition:

 
I was pleased to see Agathé  Patisserie had a stall, and so I took the opportunity to buy one of their famed cruffins - croissant dough baked in the shape of a muffin and filled with crème patisserie and Nutella:

 
This little beauty was delicious; I shared it with Tim.

Savour Pastry School had a chocolate river a la Willy Wonka:

However, it looked quite watery and not very appetising.

I enjoyed the Show better this year as there were fewer stalls and hence less craziness.  My experience can be summed up by the following sign from the Show:

Day of the Dead Cookies

It is Halloween tomorrow, so to get into the spirit of the season, I wanted to bake something Halloween-ish.

Recently, Lorraine of Not Quite Nigella made these Day of the Dead Cookies; I loved them and I had the cutters, so I decided to make them. 

Lorraine decorated her cookies with gel pens.  I knew I would have transport issues if I used those, so I used edible markers instead.

I think my cookies turned out rather cute:

They were fun to make, even if the decorating process took quite a while.  The cookies themselves are delicious. 

If you are looking for a fun but tasty item to bake for Halloween, I can highly recommend these cookies.

Pandan Chiffon Cake

Recently, my colleague, Sally, asked if I would try to make a pandan chiffon cake.  Sally is originally from Singapore, where pandan chiffon cake is a popular treat.  She even recommended a recipe, being this one.

I decided to take up the challenge, and this post documents the results.  I didn't use pandan leaves - I just used pandan essence and green colouring.  I overbaked it a little (the 55 minutes in the recipe ended up being too long), but otherwise, I was happy with it.

I asked my colleague, Swee, what she thought of it, as she is familiar with pandan chiffon cake.  She said the flavour was good, but it was a little denser than it should have been.  That's an OK assessment from my perspective, given that I have never previously eaten pandan  chiffon cake, so I have nothing to compare it to.  I used a bundt tin rather than a ring mould to bake the cake as I wasn't going to buy a special tin for this trial.

I quite liked the flavour of this cake, which was more interesting than an angel food cake from my perspective.  If I have a lot of eggs (it uses 9 eggs) and someone asks me, I might make pandan chiffon cake again.

WWDH - Thai Chicken San Choy Bau

For Wednesdays with Donna Hay this week, Kayte chose Thai Chicken San Choy Bau.  I am a fan of the Chinese equivalent, so I was happy to make these.

The san choy bau were delicious.  The chicken mince is chilli spiced to give it some kick, so was quite tasty even without the lettuce cups.  It is also quite a colourful dish.

This dish is quick and easy to make as well, which has much to recommend it.

To see what the other group members thought of this dish, visit the LYL section of the WWDH website.