TWD - Perfect Party Cake

This week's Tuesday with Dorie brought back memories for me, some good, some bad, because I had made the chosen recipe once before for the Daring Bakers. The recipe was for was Dorie's Perfect Party Cake, chosen by Carol of Mix, Mix Stir.

I had some issues with my previous Perfect Party Cake, as it was the first time that I had ever cut cake into layers (or holes!) or made a meringue buttercream frosting, and the cake stuck like crazy to everything it touched. In that case, "Perfect Party Cake" was a misnomer.

Making the buttercream this time came off without a hitch and reminded me of how far I've come, although the cakes themselves were still pretty "sticky". However, I didn't want to make exactly the same cake again, so I went for minis, with cherry jam in the middle and crushed toffee on top for decoration.

I found these cakes awfully sweet, and unfortunately, I still did not like the buttercream. However, my colleagues really liked these, just as my previous colleagues liked the big "snowball" cake I made last time. This brought back plenty of ghosts for me - friendly ghosts though, of sharing the Party Cake in Melbourne, of Simon our resident photographer taking a photo of the cake, and of people being in almost religious awe of it (even though I knew that those layers of frosting hid some cake-making sins). I also posted about it while I was in New Zealand for a Split Enz concert, where I saw the thermal springs for the first time, visited the historic Treaty House, went for a "sail" on Auckland harbour, dared to go through the Hole in the Rock, and met Sonny, our hilarious Rotorua tour guide, and Martin Bosley, restauranteur extraordinaire.

Thanks to Carol for bringing back some pretty special memories for me. You can check out how the other members of TWD fared with the Perfect Party Cake by visiting the TWD blogroll.

The Daring Bakers - Bakewell Tart

Earlier this decade, I had the pleasure of living in London for around 9 months, working as a lawyer at a City firm based near the Petticoat Lane Markets in East London. When I was hired, it was initially for the firm's new Oxford office, but for various reasons I worked in the London office for the entire duration of my employment. This turned out to be a bonus for me, because I had wanted to live and work in London, but being a technology lawyer looking to work in the UK just as the tech bubble burst, I had thought it would be an unattainable dream.

I lived in West London near Lancaster Gate tube station, in a flat which was advertised as being in Bayswater but which in reality was closer to the slightly less fashionable Paddington. My flat was located in what had once been a house which had been divided into flats, and was situated in a lovely square of white buildings with a small square garden in the centre.

It was a wonderful life until I, too, became a late casualty of the tech bubble bursting. However, I do not regret a second of it, and I think that my life would be much poorer if I had not had the opportunity to do it or the courage to go ahead with it, despite strong opposition from my family and the long period of feeling displaced on my return.

One of the pleasurable things about life in London was experiencing the food. Back then, I was not half as interested in food and cooking as I am now, so to some extent, I did not take full advantage of the opportunities to visit the various markets and try all of the wonderful produce there. However, I had friends who lived near Spitalfields Markets, and I adored the German cake stall (do try the sour cherry cake - delicious!) and the exotic dried fruit and spice stall there. I also was amazed every time I visited Notting Hill markets to see the seafood displayed in ice buckets out in the open - it would never happen here because our weather is far too warm and the fish would spoil.

I also developed a taste for certain supermarket treats - Sainsburys banoffee pie (which was no longer available when I visited 4 years later), M&S Percy Pigs (which kind friends have sent me a supply of from time to time), McVities jaffa cakes (which you can now buy here), and Mr Kiplings cherry bakewells ("exceedingly good" and which can also now be purchased here). The latter were a favourite at the firm where I worked, as they made an appearance at almost every birthday afternoon tea during my stay.

Accordingly, it was with a fond touch of nostalgia that I made this month's Daring Bakers challenge.

The June Daring Bakers' challenge was hosted by Jasmine of Confessions of a Cardamom Addict and Annemarie of Ambrosia and Nectar. They chose a Traditional (UK) Bakewell Tart... er... pudding that was inspired by a rich baking history dating back to the 1800's in England.

The bakewell tart consists of a shortcrust pastry shell, which is topped with jam and an almond frangipane. It can be decorated with almonds or, as with Mr Kiplings cherry bakewells, it can be iced and topped with a glace cherry. We were also invited to make our own jam for the tart filling.

I loved the pastry recipe used to make the tartshell, because it did not shrink or lose its shape at all during baking. For that reason, I would definitely use it again.

Here is my tartshell toped with my homemade mixed berry jam, which I strained to remove the seeds and blueberry skins:



then the tart with the almond frangipane poured on top:

and finally, here is the tart after it has finished baking, and has been sprinkled with flaked alonds:

Don't you just love the golden brown crust, concealing the jam as shown at the top of this post?

Because of my nostalgic fondness for Mr Kiplings cherry bakewells, I used the leftover tart dough and reserved some of the frangipane to make 10 little bakewell tarts filled with store-bought cherry jam, iced with water icing and topped with half a glace cherry:

To give you an insiders glance at these mini tarts, here they are pre-decorating:

and here is a rather blurry peak inside:

This was a fun challenge, and I thank Jasmine and Annemarie for being our hosts this month. (You can incidentally find the recipe for the bakewell tart on their websites.) To check out all the other amazing variations on the bakewell tart by the other Daring Bakers, check out the Daring Kitchen blogroll.

Peanut butter cookies

Peanut butter (or peanut paste as it is known here) is one of those things that I sometimes crave, and other times am weirdly repulsed by. Its smell is always heavenly, but sometimes, its heaviness gets the better of me and I just don't want it.

My favourite type of peanut butter is the crunchy variety, but I recently bought a large jar of the smooth variety, using the logic that it contains slightly less fat. Who am I kidding? You don't eat great quantities of peanut butter at once, so the difference is negligible.

Recently, I bought The Greyston Bakery Cookbook (by Sara Kate Gillingham-Ryan), which I learned about on Baking Bites and have had on my Amazon wishlist forever. It was a terrific purchase - it is not big on pictures, but the recipes sound delicious and easy enough to make, and use sensible quantities of ingredients that you are (for the most part) likely to have in the pantry.

Drawing my two threads together, I had one large jar of peanut butter that needed using, and The Greyston Bakery Cookbook just happens to have a recipe for peanut butter cookies on page 160. Brilliant!! A plan was born.

As stated by the authors, these cookies "are shockingly simple to make". Much of the butter normally used to make cookies is replaced by peanut butter. The resulting cookies are neither very crunchy nor very soft - they are somewhere in between - and taste delicious. The peanut butter does not overwhelm the taste of the cookie, and I personally prefer these cookies to peanut butter itself. They are also rather cute with their fork-mark design.

To make these cookies, you will need:

1 1/4 cups plain flour
1/4 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
1 1/4 cups brown sugar
1 cup peanut butter at room temperature
1/4 cup (~60g) softened butter
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Preheat your oven to 180 degrees Celsius and line two large cookie sheets with baking paper or silicone mats.

Whisk together the sifted flour and bicarbonate of soda in a bowl, and set aside.

In a stand mixer, beat the sugar, peanut butter and butter together until light and fluffy. Add the egg and vanilla to the mixture and continue to beat it until just blended. Reduce the mixer speed to low, add the flour mixture, and beat until just combined.

Roll teaspoonsful of the mixture into balls, place on the cookie sheets leaving room to spread a little, then make a criss-cross pattern in the dough balls by flattening them slightly in both directions with a fork.

Place the cookies in the oven to bake for 12 minutes or until golden brown. Cool the cookies on the cookie sheets for a few minutes before tranferring to wire racks to cool.

The recipe makes around 36 small cookies (I got 35).

TWD - Coconut-Roasted Pineapple Dacquoise

This week's Tuesday with Dorie recipe is the Coconut-Roasted Pineapple Dacquoise, chosen by Andrea of Andrea in the Kitchen. It is three layers of meringue (the dacquoise) sandwiched together with white chocolate ganache and layered with roasted pineapple.

Once again, this is a dish that I would not have chosen of my own accord, as I was skeptical about the flavours (pineapple desserts never call "eat me!" at my house). However, I enjoyed the melded flavours of the finished product.

I made a few tweaks here and there to the recipe. I ended up with not quite enough pineapple by about 3 wedges, as I only bought half a pineapple. I also made dacquoise layers that were slightly thinner than recommended by Dorie, as neither my baking trays or oven would take two layers side by side measuring 6 inches across. Because I don't have a broiler, I just roasted my pineapple in the oven for around 20 minutes, and I sprinkled it with granulated sugar because I was out of icing sugar (having used it all in the dacquoise). I also used 2/3 light cream and 1/3 heavy cream in the ganache, which meant that it perhaps did not become as stable as it should have. However, I was happy enough with the result.

Here is one of my dacquoise layers:

and the roasted pineapple:

plus the toasted coconut (which was toastier than I intended because I wasn't paying attention, but it smelt delicious):

and the white chocolate ganache:

which components are layered like so:

to produce the coconut-roasted pineapple dacquoise featured at the top of this post.

This was rather a marathon dessert to make, with the meringue layers taking 3 hours to bake at very low temperature, the ganache taking 3 hours to set, and the assembled cake needing 4-6 hours to set. For this reason, I am unlikely to make this again. However, I did learn the finer points of cutting up a pineapple (which I have never done before).

If you plan to make this dacquoise, you will need to start early in the day, or make the meringue layers and ganache one day and finish it the next. Do leave the finished dessert in the fridge for the specified time, because it allows the layers to soften and meld together so that you can truly appreciate the combination of flavours.

Thanks to Andrea for being our host this week. You can check out what everyone else thought of this dessert by checking out the Tuesdays with Dorie blogroll.

Southern Indian Prawn Curry - Dinner and a Movie - Monsoon Wedding

Colour, flavour and texture - don't we all love this in our food? This month's Dinner and a Movie film, Monsoon Wedding, offers plenty of colour, texture and flavour with its Indian backdrop and interwoven storylines involving some very complex relationships between the members and staff of a Punjabi family preparing for a wedding.

Marc of No Recipes is our Dinner and a Movie host this month, and I loved his choice of movie. I had never seen Monsoon Wedding before, and I have to admit that I found it a little slow in the beginning, but once it began to hot up as the wedding came closer, I became engrossed in all the twists and turns of the various story threads woven into the film.

My favourite storyline was one of the peripheral ones, involving a blossoming romance between the family's housekeeper, Alice, and PK Dubey, the wedding planner. Initially, I found Dubey to be a repulsive character, who was not attractive in either personality or looks. However, once he took a shine to Alice, the finer side of Dubey came to the fore, and I found myself egging him on and hoping that Alice would notice and accept his advances.

To correspond with both the Indian ethnicity, the kaleidoscope of colours and complexity of flavours in this film, I chose to make a South Indian Prawn Curry from The Hairy Bikers Ride Again by Dave Myers and Si King.

To make this curry, you will need:

2 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 finely chopped onion
a finely chopped, thumb-sized knob of ginger
2 green chillies, seeded and finely chopped
4 chopped fresh tomatoes
1 teaspoon turmeric
1 teaspoon tamarind paste
1 teaspoon honey
2 tablespoons dessicated coconut
500g peeled raw prawns
chopped fresh coriander

Cook the chopped onion in the heated oil in a frying pan until translucent.

Place the ginger, garlic and chilli into the frypan with the onion and cook for around 1 minute, then add the tomatoes, tamarind paste, turmeric and honey and stir until combined. Cook the curry slowly for 10 minutes, then stir through the coconut.

Add the prawns to the pan and cook for 4-5 minutes, and season with salt and pepper.

Sprinkle the cooked curry with chopped coriander, and serve with rice.



You can check out the Dinner and a Movie roundup on Marc's blog here.

Toffee-crusted fig and date cake

I have a yen for unusual cakes - sure, I enjoy eating your average pound cake or Victoria sponge just as much as anyone, but the cakes that catch my eye are those that are unique in some way. By "unique", I am not referring to novelty cakes; while I have the utmost respect for cake artists and the talent and time they put into novelty cakes, these are not my thing. I am referring to cakes which have an out of the norm colour, texture, ingredient or appearance, and which are 100% pleasantly edible.

When I saw the bundt cakes in the April/May 2009 edition of Donna Hay magazine, my unique cake button was pressed, big time. There are some amazingly beautiful and unusual cakes in this section, and if life takes me in that direction, I would be happy to make all of them some time. However, as a starting point, I chose to make Donna's toffee-crusted fig and date cake, which looked like a burnished-bronze beauty. I loved the idea of a crunchy outer shell of toffee on the cake, and of course, I am a sucker for dried figs and dates, so it was a no-brainer - I had to make this cake.

When my cake had baked for the allotted time, I was a little worried, because it was rather dark on the outside. However, if you make this cake, do not be afraid if this happens - I found that the cake was meant to have a chestnut brown colour on the outside, and be lighter in colour and softer in texture in the middle. I assume that the colour comes from caramelisation of the brown sugar during baking.

My only other mild panic set in when I started making the toffee for the outside of the cake and realised that I could not find my candy thermometer. After the allotted 7 or 8 minutes stated in the recipe, my sugar/water mixture was still clear in colour, and from some past experience with making caramel, I didn't think it was ready yet. Instead of remaining cool, calm and rational, trusting my experience, I hit the panic button - and called my Mum, who confirmed that I should leave well alone, and that she thought it should take much longer for the toffee to be ready than quoted in the recipe. After this reassurance, I held my nerve, and let the toffee continue to boil until I thought it looked about the right colour, even though it smelled to me like the mixture was beginning to burn. And lo, it all turned out just fine - the toffee was neither burned nor underdone, and set to a lovely golden colour. The toffee that slid off the cake set hard on the tray, so I kept it to use as cake decoration for other projects.

Overall, I was really pleased with this cake - it looked glossy, beautiful and impressive. It disappeared at work, so I can only assume that my colleagues shared my love of this cake.

If you are as intrigued as I was with Donna's toffee-crusted fig and date cake, and would like to try it, you will need:

1 cup pitted chopped dates
1/2 cup chopped dried figs
1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
3/4 cup boiling water
1 cup sifted self-raising flour
3/4 cup brown sugar
150g melted butter
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
4 eggs

Toffee

2 cups caster sugar
1 cup water


Preheat your oven to 160 degrees Celsius. Grease a 10 cup (2.5 litre) Bundt tin.

Put the dates, figs, bicarbonate of soda and water together in a bowl, stir and leave sit for 10 minutes, before transferiing to a food processor and pureeing the mixture. Reserve.

In a large bowl, mix together the flour and sugar with a wooden spoon. Add the butter, vanilla, eggs and date puree, and mix until well combined.

Pour the batter into the prepared Bundt tin, and bake in the preheated oven for 45 minutes or until cooked through when tested with a skewer. Remove the cake from the oven and cool in the tin for 10 minutes before turning it onto a wire rack to finish cooling.

For the toffee, put the sugar and water into a wide bottomed saucepan over low heat, without stirring, until the sugar is dissolved, then increase the heat to high and bring the mixture to the boil and continue to boil it until it reaches 150 degrees Celsius (300 degrees Fahrenheit) on a candy thermometer (hard crack stage) - or if you don't have a thermometer, until the mixture turns a golden amber colour and when a drop of it is placed into a glass of cold water, it forms a ball. Spoon the toffee over the cake, and leave to cool and harden.

Slice with a sharp knife (to cut through the toffee) and enjoy!! Eat the cake the same day as you put the toffee on it, as the toffee starts to "melt" and go sticky after a few hours.

TWD - Honey Peach Icecream - it's peachy keen

Oh, baby it's cold outside ...

(Radio announcer, Groundhog Day)

Yep, it's winter here in Oz, and even sunny Queensland has been feeling the cold in the south-east corner. To give us Antipodeans flashbacks of what summer is like, our Tuesday with Dorie treat this week is Honey Peach Icecream, chosen by Tommi of Brown Interior.

As the name suggests, this frozen treat is icecream with a peach and honey flavour. It is easy enough to make if you have an icecream maker, and is rather delicious, especially when sandwiched between two gingernut biscuits:

The only changes that I made to the recipe were: (a) I used canned peaches in natural juice, as peaches and all other stone fruits are out of season here; (b) I didn't add any peach chunks that were not pureed to the icecream, as quite a few TWD members remarked in the forum that these frozen fruit chunks were not a favourable addition; and (c) I added a teaspoon of amaretto to the mixture, as other TWD members said that the alcohol prevents the icecream from setting too hard.

You can check out what the other TWD members thought of this icecream by visiting the Tuesdays with Dorie blogroll. Thanks to Tommi, our host this week, who has kindly published the icecream recipe on her site.