TWD - Carrot spice muffins

This week's Tuesday with Dorie choice is positively healthy - it contains no butter, and has oodles of carrots!  Nancy of The Dogs Eat The Crumbs has chosen Dorie's Carrot Spice Muffins, described by Dorie as a muffin-version of a carrot cake, but less dense and sweet. 

As well as a cup of grated carrots (thank goodness for the grater attachment on my food processor), these muffins contain walnuts for some crunch, and a good dash of cinnamon.

 

I think these muffins tasted best the next day, once all the flavours had melded.

Thanks to our host, Nancy, who will post the recipe.  To see what the other TWD members thought of these muffins, visit the LYL section of the TWD website. 

Passionfruit friands and lemon curd

Do you like friands?  I had not experienced the joy of a friand for a few years until this week, when I finally got around to making Kate McGhie's recipe for passionfruit friands from p4 of the Taste section of the Herald Sun, published 12 July 2011.  These buttery yet light little cakes are an absolute joy to eat, and the passionfruit pulp in Kate's version added contrasting tang and crunch. 

As you can see, my friands were left a tad too long in the oven:

however, they still tasted delicious, with the browner bits having a nice, caramelised crunch.

To make these friands, you will need:

5 egg whites (I had heaps in the freezer left over from making pastry)
76g self raising flour
200g icing sugar
125g almond meal
189g melted butter
2 passionfruit

friand or mini muffin moulds (Kate made 20, I got 12 in a regular sized 12 hole friand tin)

Preheat your oven to 200 degrees Celsius.  (I wonder was this a little hot - my large friands baked to a dark brown within 20 minutes at this temperature, so I suggest 180 degrees.)

Grease your muffin tin or friand tin well.  (I sprayed mine with cooking oil.)

Whisk the egg whites to the soft peak stage.

Sift the flour, icing sugar and almond meal over the egg whites.  (I find that almond meal is too coarse to sift, so I just added it after the flour and icing sugar.)

Pour the melted butter around the inner edges of the bowl, and add the passionfruit pulp.

Using a rubber spatula, carefully fold all of the ingredients together, being careful not to deflate the egg whites.

Spoon the batter into your friand moulds (I always find that an icecream scoop is perfect for this - it picks up around the right amount of batter and prevents spills.)

Bake the friands for 15 minutes in the oven (remember, this timing is for 20 small friands - I think that 15 minutes would have been enough for my 12 regular sized friands at this temperature, so keep an eye on them!) until the friands have risen and are springy in the middle when touched.

Remove the baked friands from the oven and allow them to cool for a few minutes in the tin before unmoulding.  Be careful when turning out onto a wire rack to cool completely - I ran a knife around the edge of mine, but still found that they stuck a little resulting in a few casualties.

Enjoy with a nice cuppa for arvo tea (as Sunday Reed was so fond of).    

I also made a half batch of Stephanie Alexander's lemon curd using the two egg yolks left over from my meringue making adventures earlier in the week:

Stephanie's recipe is my favourite lemon curd recipe - it has the right balance of tart and sweet, and doesn't end up sugary. (My brother, bless his heart, buys me home-made lemon curd every now and then from a market stall at Cabarlah, and it is always very grainy and sugary.)

You can enjoy this lemon curd with the friands, or spread on muffins, scones, or toast, as a cake filling, or as a sauce for icecream.  And it's a great way to use up any egg yolks left over from friand making!

FFwD - Simple slow-roasted tomatoes

I have just finished watching The Supersizers Go - Wartime episode on SBS.  I love this show, and I am so glad that it is back, albeit in repeats.  I haven't seen this episode before, so I chuckled all the way through.  It is a great way to spend an hour on a Thursday night, and Giles and Sue crack me up with their take on food during each era.  They are not afraid to look silly or to subject their poor taste buds and stomachs to some of the most hideous meals one could conjure.  If you have never seen this show before, I highly recommend checking out a couple of episodes - if you like food and a laugh, as I do, you will be hooked.


Onto the main program ...

This week's FFwD recipe title says it all - simple slow-roasted tomatoes.  Basically, this involves dousing cherry tomatoe halves (or in my case, Kumatoes) with olive oil, salt and pepper, then roasting them in a slow oven for around 3 hours.

The end result is a surprisingly tasty little snack, even a tad overdone like mine.  Although I would never go out of my way to make this, if I have some leftover cherry tomatoes from another recipe, I would happily use them up like this.

To catch a gander at what everyone else thought of these, you can maybe check them out at the LYL section of the FFwD website in a day or two.

Kouign Amann

A couple of weeks ago, my work buddy Lee told me excitedly about a cake she'd seen made on TV the night before.  "It had lots of butter and sugar," she said, "and he rolled it out like a dough.  It has a funny name - I will find it and email it to you."   

Lee emailed me David Lebovitz's recipe for Kouign Amann.  Eh?  Until then, I had never heard of such a thing.  But sure enough, Kouign Amann (pronounced "quinn ah-marn" and translated, literally means "butter cake") is a Briton speciality with a mysterious past - was it created from a failed bread dough?

 

However it was created, it is a buttery, sweet, yeasted, laminated dough concoction with a caramelised, toffee like sugar crust. If you can make puff pastry, you can make this.  It tastes like a croissant, yet has the texture of a brioche.  And  it's delicious!!

My additional tip when making Kouign Amann is to line your pie dish with parchment paper; and flatten rather than cubing your butter for ease of incorporation.  Don't just butter your pan, or like mine, it may weld itself to the pan, and require some serious effort to remove (which is why mine looks a little battered).

Smell the butter and sugar and enjoy!!!

Date Loaf

One of my favourite cakes is my Mum's date loaf.  She made it often when we were kids, and as a grown up, I pestered her for the recipe, which she recited off the top of her head over the phone.  Amazing!!!

We used to eat this cake smothered in margarine, but now I am a grown up and don't need "sauce" on everything, I like this cake without anything on it.  It is a cinch to make, and turns out moist in the middle with a crusty outside.

To make my Mum's date loaf, you will need:

1 cup coarsely chopped dates

1/2 cup brown sugar
120g butter
1 teaspoon baking soda (bicarbonate of soda)
3/4 cup self raising flour

3/4 cup plain flour

1 cup boiling water

1 egg, lightly beaten with a fork

 pinch of salt

Preheat your oven to 180 degrees Celsius.

Place the chopped dates, sugar, baking soda and butter into a medium sized bowl.  Pour over the boiling water, then allow the mixture to stand until it reaches room temperature.

Add the beaten egg to the bowl, then sift and mix in the flours.

Pour the batter into a greased  8" x 5" inch loaf pan, and bake in the preheated oven for ~ 45 minutes or until cooked through when tested with a skewer poked into the centre of the cake.

Remove the cake from the oven, and allow it to cool in the tin for 5 minutes before turning it onto a wire rack to cool completely.  Serve warm or cold, alone or slathered with butter.

This date loaf was made for brekky with my comrades in the marketing department during the couple of days that I was privileged to sit among them.

Cocoa almond meringues

Don't you just love meringues?  They are like ballerina tutus or fairy princess skirts that melt in the mouth.  This week's Tuesday with Dorie challenge is the more robust, masculine, cocoa almond meringue, selected by Mike of  Ugly Food For An Ugly Dude. In fact, Dorie describes these meringues as resembling rocks in appearance, although they still have that wonderful melt in your mouth quality of the more dainty variety.

These are delightfully chocolatey, and tasted good even when they were not quite ready to come out of the oven (I tried one at the end of an hour's baking time and it was still quite wet in the middle).  The baking requirements for this challenge were a little complicated for me because my oven (a) does not work below 160 degrees Celsius; and (b) does not cope with more than one tray in at a time.  To get over (b), I made massive meringues (I had 9 to Dorie's 30).  Tackling (a) was a little more difficult, and I ended up baking the meringues at 160 degrees the whole time instead of starting hotter and switching down.  Even then, my meringues took a good hour and a half to bake properly.

These meringues were well worth the trouble though - they were absolutely delicious, and disappeared so quickly that I am sure that there cannot be any calories in them.

Thanks to Mike for this week's pick - he will have the recipe, or check out Dorie's book, Baking From My Home To Yours.  And to check out what the other members of TWD thought of these  meringues, visit the LYL section of the TWD website. 

Christmas in July

 Recently, Tim and I celebrated Christmas in July at The Elephant and Wheelbarrow in Bourke Street, Melbourne.  So what is Christmas in July?  Australians celebrate a mock Christmas in the month of July so that we can indulge in all of the heavy, hot traditional Christmas fare that many of us avoid in the soaring heat of December.

The Elephant and Wheelbarrow feast did not disappoint - after receiving our choice of a glass of beer or red or white wine, we were served with a Christmas dinner replete with ham, turkey with cranberry sauce, stuffing, baked potato, asparagus, cauliflower and brussels sprouts, topped with a generous splosh of gravy.

Dessert was a mini Christmas pudding with custard and cream - delish!

To ensure that everyone knew what we were there for, the table was topped with Christmas decorations, including a Christmas cracker that contained a stunning green paper hat.

It was definitely a fun evening, and I can highly recommend it.  At $30 a head, it was also a bargain.