Chocolate Caramel Slice & Lemon Cupcakes

One of my colleagues, Ruth, is a big fan of my baking, and I recently made a couple of things at her request. After all, you don't let your fans down!

Last week, when Ruth asked for some baking to help her day go better, I made chocolate caramel slice, pictured above. (No matter how many photos I seemed to take of this, none of them turned out well - the above shot is the best of a bad bunch). This slice started out life as my school chum Katrina's caramel marshmallow slice, the recipe for which is printed out on an old dot matrix printer on the paper with the holes up the side to feed through the tracks on the printer. (Remember those printers?? As you can guess, it's been a while since I have been at school.) Unfortunately, when I got to making the marshmallow, I realised that I had no gelatine, and there are no shops open near my place that are open at 9pm at night. Accordingly, the marshmallow topping was hastily ditched for a chocolate topping, as I had plenty of chocolate in the pantry cupboard.

This slice is relatively easy and quick to make (hence why it was a "school night" choice), and is an amalgam of the base recipe for ginger crunch minus the ginger (as alas, Katrina's recipe merely states that you put the topping on a "biscuit base"), Katrina's caramel topping and melted dark chocolate. The "recipe" (if this is what you call this mish-mash from various sources) is as follows:

Base
(adapted from the Ginger Crunch recipe in Cook by Kate McGhie)

125g butter
125g sugar
215g plain flour
1 teaspoon baking powder

Preheat your oven to 160 degrees Celsius, and grease an 18cm x 28cm slice pan.

Beat the butter and sugar in a stand mixer with the paddle attachment until light and fluffy.

Sift the flour and baking powder together into a bowl, and fold into the butter mixture. You will end up with a sandy textured dough. Press this dough into the prepared slice tin, and bake in the prehated oven for 25-30 minutes or until golden brown.

Caramel topping

1/2 cup condensed milk
1 tablespoon golden syrup
1 egg yolk
1/2 tablespoon sugar
2 tablespoons butter

Place all of the imngredients into a small saucepan, and bring slowly to the boil over medium heat. Reduce the heat, and simmer the mixture for 5 minutes, stirring constantly, until it thickens and pulls away from the sides of the saucepan and turns a caramel colour. Remove the pan from the heat and spread the caramel over the hot biscuit base. Allow the base and the caramel to cool completely.

Chocolate topping

Melt 125g dark chocolate in a saucepan over a pan of simmering water. Once melted, pour over the caramel and spread out to cover the slice evenly. Leave the chocolate topping to set at room temperature.

Once the topping has set, cut the slice into squares (makes ~24 slices).

I also made these lemon cupcakes topped with white chocolate ganache when Ruth requested lemon cupcakes (as she is thinking of having cupcakes at her wedding):

The recipe is the Crabapple Bakery Vanilla Cupcakes, with part of the milk substituted with the juice of a lemon, and with the zest of a lemon in the batter. The ganache topping was leftover from the Pineapple Dacquoise.

Unfortunately, the cupcakes did not taste very lemony, so I will have to work on this, as I prefer a stronger lemon flavour.

Hope you enjoy these random recipes, and that you all had a good weekend.

Pecan honey sticky buns

We'll build a world of our own
That no-one else can share

The Seekers, A World of Our Own

Don't you love sleeping in on the weekends, then waking up to the smell of freshly baked bread? Sticky buns remind me of Sunday mornings, sleeping in, then waking up pretending that the world doesn't exist while you continue to snuggle up under the covers and just be.

Accordingly, I was instantly attracted by Dorie's pecan honey sticky buns, although they are not really the kind of breakfast treat you can just decide on a whim to make. No - they require hours and hours of rising time, although you can make the dough the day before and rise the next day to bake these deliciously gooey, nutty, caramel covered treats.

I cheated on the risings, having fewer than suggested and cutting down on time by placing the dough in an oven that was just barely on (~30 degrees Celsius). However, these buns were so worth it - sticky and finger-lickingly delicious.

I think that I am one of the last baking bloggers on the planet to make these, so you can find the recipe all over the place, including here at Cathy's blog.

Despite the effort, these are so worth it - go on, I know you want to make 'em.

Cauliflower mustard pickles

When I attended Regional Flavours recently, one of the stall holders was selling jams and cauliflower mustard pickle. Everyone was raving about the pickle, so I tried it too, despite it being visually rather repulsive to me (being cacky yellow). Boy, was I pleasantly surprised! It was delicious - just the right blend of sweet and sour to tickle my tastebuds.

When I mentioned the pickle to my Mum, she said that she used to make it. I honestly can't remember her making it, but it inspired me to have a crack at it myself.

Armed with a cauliflower, a bottle of white vinegar and some mustard, I looked up a recipe for cauliflower mustard pickle in the Schauer Fruit Preserving Book. (Later, I found a few recipes on the Internet that were a lot less vinegary - oh well, maybe next time!)

Because this recipe was in old measures, and I was only making a half batch, I had a guess at a lot of things, including how much cornflour to use as thickener. However, my pickles worked out OK in the end, and are delicious in corned beef sandwiches, where the salty meat and the sour pickles play off against each other.

To make your own cauliflower mustard pickles, you will need:

1/2 head large cauliflower, divided into florets
salt solution (50g salt dissloved in 500ml cold water)
500ml vinegar (recipe suggested malt vinegar; I used white vinegar)
1 tablespoon mustard (I used Masterfoods Australian mustard)
1/2 tablespoon turmeric
1/4 cup cornflour
extra cold vinegar

Soak the cauliflower in the salt solution overnight, then drain. Mix the cornflour with just enough vinegar to make a paste. In a large saucepan, combine the 500ml of vinegar, the mustard, the turmeric, and the cornflour paste, and bring to the boil. Add the salted cauliflower, reduce the heat and simmer for 10 minutes or until thickened. (You may need more or less cornflour; you need just enough to thicken the pickle.) Spoon the pickled cauliflower into sterilised glass jars (I used 2 x 300ml jars for this quantity of pickle).

Spread the pickle on thick, crusty bread in place of margarine, and top with corned beef, tomato and cheese, then toast in a sandwich maker - delicious!

Ginger Lime Loaf

Like many food bloggers, I have a cookbook addiction. There, I've said it. I am not sure if they have CBAA (Cook Book Addicts Anonymous) meetings, but I don't think I'd want to go - I'd have to be dragged there kicking and screaming. I love cook books - there is nothing like cosying up under the doona with a pretty recipe book full of enticing photos and seductive recipe titles.

Recently, Nanette of The Gourmet Worrier posted about a cook book that she had learned about through the Air New Zealand in flight magazine called Gran's Kitchen - Recipes from the Notebooks of Dulcie May Booker by Natalie Oldfield. You can read Nanette's enchanting post, which explains the story behind the book, here.

After resisting for about 5 seconds, I decided that I had to add this book to my collection. After all, it contains lots of baking recipes (among others) of the kinds of things that mother used to make, and I have found that New Zealand and Australian women seemed to make the same sorts of things, so it would appeal to my taste buds.

This book did not disappoint - it is a truly beautiful book, with lots of photographs of Dulcie May Booker and her family, and a photo of each dish. The lovely people from whom I bought my copy, Cook The Books, suggested that I try the honey gems - and I will. However, for my first outing, I made Dulcie's Ginger Lime Loaf, which apparently was one of her "new" favourites. This is a lovely dense loaf cake flavoured with lime and fresh ginger, and with the most devine lime icing on top.

To make your own Ginger Lime Loaf, you will need:

250g butter
1/2 cup brown sugar
2/3 cup golden syrup
2 tablespoons freshly grated ginger
1 tablespoon lime zest
1 cup plain flour
1 cup self raising flour
2 lightly beaten eggs
3/4 cup plain yoghurt

Icing

2 cups icing sugar
1/4 tablespoon melted butter
2 tablespoons lime juice
1/4 tablespoon lime zest

Preheat your oven to 180 degrees Celsius and grease a loaf pan. (The book doesn't specify size, so I just used what I had.)

Put the butter and golden syrup into a medium sized saucepan, and melt over medium heat on the stovetop. Add the sugar, ginger and lime to the saucepan, and stir over low heat until dissolved. Remove from the heat.

Sift the flours together in a large bowl.

In a separate small bowl, whisk together the eggs and yoghurt until combined.

Add the egg mixture and butter mixture alternately to the flours in two to three batches, stirring until just combined.

Pour the batter into the prepared loaf tin, and bake in the preheated oven for around 50 minutes or until cooked through. (My cake ended up being a little cracked and domey on top, but tasted fine.)

When the cake has cooled, ice it by combining all the icing ingredients together and spreading over the top of the cake. (I used more than the suggested 2 tablespoons of lime juice in the icing - I just used up the juice from the whole lime, but the consistency of the icing is up to you.)

Enjoy sliced for morning tea with a hot cuppa.

TWD - Tribute to Katharine Hepburn Brownies

I never lose sight of the fact that just being is fun.
Katharine Hepburn

This week is a special TWD, because we are baking with a non-TWD host, Lisa of Surviving Oz, who is the designer of our brilliant new logo:

She has chosen the Tribute to Katharine Hepburn brownies.

Apparently, Kate once said that you should never have too much flour in your brownies, and these brownies are a testament to that. They are of the gooey, fudgy variety rather than the cakey, firm type.

I baked my brownies according to the directions, and I think they were just perfect. The chocolate chunks were just on the right side of oozey, and when served warm - mamma mia, they were devine! This has to be one of my favourite Dorie recipes by a country mile.

To check out how the other TWD bakers went with these brownies, please check out the TWD blogroll. Here's hoping that Kate would approve.

Puff Pastry - Diplomat Torte and Strawberry Tart

I find baking very zen; it usually soothes my nerves and gives me a sense of accomplishment. Each week, in addition to my baking group and blogging event projects, I love to be able to make a little something just for me.


In July last year, I attended a Baking Essentials class at The Essential Ingredient at Prahran Market, taught by Loretta Sartori. On the strength of Loretta's class, I purchased Loretta's book entitled The Cook's Book - Patisserie. It is a very useful book, because it teaches you how to make the various individual components in most well known pastries and cakes, so that you can mix and match them as desired.

Ever since I did Loretta's class, I had wanted to make the Diplomat Torte that we made as a class, and which appears as one of the recipes in Loretta's book. The Diplomat Torte is comprised of two well-baked discs of puff pastry, between which is sandwiched a sponge layer with creme patisserie, and which is decorated with icing sugar and toasted flaked almonds.


After almost 12 months, I had the perfect opportunity to make the Diplomat Torte, because courtesy of Tuesdays with Dorie, I had made Nick Maglieri's rough puff pastry and had enough egg yolks to make creme patissiere.


Behold the fruits of my labour:




I took my photo at the most flattering angle I could find; I will confess that in reality, my torte looked a little wonky on one side. However, it worked (hooray!) and tasted great.


If you would like to try your hand at the Diplomat Torte, the recipe for which is on page 167 of The Cook's Book - Patisserie, you will need:


2 discs of puff pastry ~ 30cm in diameter


Sponge (1/2 recipe from p35 of Loretta's book)


3 eggs
60g sugar
50g plain flour
25g cornfour


Creme patissiere (from p244 of Loretta's book)


500ml milk
50g sugar
1 vanilla bean, split with seeds scraped out
3 egg yolks
50g sugar (yes, there's 2 lots)
50g cornflour



Sugar syrup (from p263 of Loretta's book)

100ml water
50g sugar
1 tablespoon Cointreau


Toasted flaked almonds for decorating the sides of the cake


Puff pastry discs

Preheat your oven to 200 degrees Celsius.

Lay each disc on a baking tray and prick all over with a fork, then bake in the preheated oven for 30 minutes or until golden brown.

Remove from the oven and allow to cool completely.

Sponge


Preheat your oven to 180 degrees Celsius, and grease and line 1 x 26cm cake pan.


Separate the eggs. Whisk the whites with a stand mixer until soft peaks form, then gradually add the sugar while continuing to whisk.


Reduce the mixer speed, then beat in the egg yolks until just combined.


Sieve the cornflour and plain flour together into a bowl.


Using a rubber spatula, fold through the flour mixture.


Pour the batter into the prepared cake pan, and bake for approximately 30 minutes or until cooked through.


Remove the baked sponge from the oven, and turn out onto a wire rack to cool completely.


Creme patissiere

Put the milk, vanilla bean and first batch of sugar in a small saucepan, and bring to the boil over medium heat.

In a separate bowl, whisk the egg yolks and second lot of sugar together to form a paste.

Pour small amounts of the hot milk onto the egg yolk mixture while whisking continuously to temper the eggs. Once half the milk has been added to the egg yolk mixture, return the other half of the milk to the stove and bring back to boiling point, then to that saucepan add the tempered egg mixture, whisking continuously, until the mixture thickens and returns to the boil.

Once the custard has thickened, remove it from the heat and spoon (or if lumpy, sieve) into a clean bowl, and press cling film against the top of it. Allow to cool, then refrigerate until required (up to 5 days). When you are ready to assemble the torte, beat the chilled custard until smooth.

Sugar syrup

Put the sugar and water into a small saucepan, and stir to combine. Bring the mixture to the boil over medium heat, then simmer for 3 minutes. Remove from the heat and stir through the Cointreau. Transfer to a sterilised jar and refrigerate until required.

To assemble

Trim each pastry disc until it is only 1cm larger in diameter than the sponge cake.

Put one pastry disc onto a cake plate or cake board, and spread with a 1cm layer of creme patissiere.

Place the sponge on top of the creme patissiere layer, and brush with enough sugar syrup to wet, but not soak, the cake.

Spread another 1 cm layer of creme patissiere on top of the sponge cake, then place the second pastry disc on top of that, with the puffy top side facing downwards.

Spread creme patissiere over the sides of the cake to mask the layers, and press the toasted almonds into the sides of the torte.

Dust the top of the torte with icing sugar. Refrigerate to set, and bring back to room temperature before serving.

******************************

With the leftover puff pastry, I made a simple banded fruit tart, filled with the leftover creme patisserie, sliced strawberries, and toasted flaked almonds:

The technique for making the banded tart base is on page 163 of Loretta's book.

Both desserts were delicious, although I think that I enjoyed the simpler strawberry tart the most. If you find yourself with some spare puff pastry, either of these projects would be a perfect way to use it up.

Rhubarb Strawberry Muffins

Here comes the sun, do do do do ...

George Harrison, Here Comes the Sun

I am having a marvellous time reading all the summery recipes posted by folk in the Northern Hemisphere using summer fruits. It makes me feel all cheery and summery myself, even though we are smack in the middle of winter here. (Mind you, winter in Queensland is pretty mild.)

These recipes inspired me to buy up big at the local fruit shop - I bought a basketful of fruit and veg that I really had no clear idea what I was going to do with, but it looked wonderful. My purchases included 2 punnets of strawberries and a bunch of rhubarb stalks.

The challenge then was - what should I make?? Initially, I was tempted by Dorie Greenspan's rhubarb and strawberry (well, cherry) cobbler, then Margaret Fulton's rhubarb and strawberry crumble. However, the practical genie kicked in and suggested muffins for work. A Google search later, and I came up with this recipe for rhubarb muffins by Fiona Haynes, to which I added about 8 strawberries, chopped into quarters. As a member of TWD (think lots of butter and chocolate), I need some low fat recipes in my life, so I was delighted to read that this recipe is also low fat. Bargain!

The verdict? I think these muffins turned out very pretty, and they tasted devine with the wonderful juicy rhubarb and strawberries in them. For all of you lucky enough to be in the middle of summer fruit season, you could do a lot worse than give these muffins a go. And just think of all the extra Katherine Hepburn Tribute Brownies I can eat next week for TWD after being so virtuous ;).