TWD - Roasted Rhubarb with Bitters

This week's Tuesday with Dorie recipe is Roasted Rhubarb with Bitters.  This recipe is what it says on the tin - chopped rhubarb, macerated in sugar, and flavoured with bitters before being roasted in the oven.

The resulting ruby roasted rhubarb is a perfect accompaniment to icecream for dessert, or on porridge for breakfast.  It's sweet and it's simple - you can't go wrong.

To see what the others made this week and what they though of it, visit the LYL section of the TWD website.

Helen Goh's Chocolate, Pear and Olive Oil Cake for World Chocolate Day

Today is World Chocolate Day, thought to be the date of introduction of chocolate to Europe in 1550.  I am all for a day that involves the consumption of chocolate, so I baked a cake in which chocolate features front and centre for the occasion.

This cake is Helen Goh's Chocolate, Pear and Olive Oil Cake.   It appeared magically from my pile of recipes when I was tidying up yesterday, which as far as I was concerned was a sign.

This cake comprises a soft, velvety chocolate cake base, topped with sliced fresh pear, then crowned with a sandy chocolate crumble - perfect!  The moist sweet pears really make the cake for me, although I did enjoy the soft, melting texture of the cake itself. 

To make this cake, you will need:

Crumble

75g self-raising flour
1 1/2 tablespoons cocoa powder
45g brown sugar
50g slivered almonds (I used flaked almonds)
3/4 teaspoon cinnamon
pinch of salt
3 tablespoons olive oil

Cake

80g chopped dark chocolate
125ml boiling water
2 eggs
150g brown sugar
100ml olive oil
120g plain flour
25g cocoa powder
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 small ripe pears, peeled cored and cut into 1cm thick slices

For the crumble:

Put all of the dry ingredients into a small bowl.  Pour over the olive oil and mix together with a fork until a sandy crumble forms.  Chill in the fridge while you make the cake.

Preheat your oven to 190 degrees Celsius and grease and line a 20cm x 10cm loaf tin, leaving some paper overhanging on each side of the cake tin to help to remove the cake later.

Put the chopped chocolate in a small bowl and pour over the boiled water.  Allow the mixture to stand for 30 seconds before whisking together until smooth. Allow to cool.

Beat the eggs, brown sugar and olive oil together in the bowl of a stand mixer until pale and creamy.

Sift the flour, cocoa, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon and salt together in a small bowl.

Reduce the mixer speed to low.  Beat in one third of the flour mixture, followed by half of the chocolate mixture, then repeat, alternating the flour and chocolate, with the final third of the flour last.  Beat until just incorporated.

Scrape the batter into the prepared loaf tin.  Top the cake batter with the pear slices, overlapping them to cover, and finally, scatter over the cocoa crumble.

Bake the cake in your preheated oven for 60 minutes or until cooked through.

Remove the cake from the oven and allow it to cool completely in the tin on a wire rack, before lifting the cake carefully onto a serving plate, using the baking paper overhang to assist.

Serve with cream or icecream.

Happy World Chocolate Day!      

TWD - Triscuity Bites

This week's Tuesday with Dorie is a savoury cookie known as Triscuity Bites.  They are named after a whole wheat cracker called Triscuits.  I am not aware of any true substitute for Triscuits in Australia, so I used Vitawheat, which are wholegrain crackers - as close as I think I am going to get.

The Triscuits are crushed in a food processor and mixed with flour, butter, sugar and cream cheese, so that the finished product does taste somewhat like a cracker with cheese in one.

I didn't have any trouble with the dough, and my cookies broke apart readily along the cut lines once baked.  They also had a pleasing snap.  I quite liked the flavour, and would not be adverse to making these again.

To see what everyone else made this week and their thoughts on it, visit the LYL section of the TWD website.  

TWD - Pistachio and raspberry financiers

For Tuesday with Dorie this week, I made the very attractive red and green Pistachio and Raspberry Financiers.  How pretty are they!  Wouldn't they be perfect at Christmas?

These financiers are based on ground pistachios instead of the traditional ground almonds, giving the financiers a lovely green hue.  This colour is enhanced by a smidge of matcha.  I also added a splosh of Chambord to the batter, as suggested by Dorie as an optional extra.  The financiers are topped with a fresh  raspberry, like a ruby crown.  They also taste good - the perfect bite-sized morsel.

To see what the others made this week and what they thought of it, visit the LYL section of the TWD website.

Gingerbread Dachshunds for World Dachshund Day

                           Dachshund: A half-a-dog high and a dog-and-a-half long (H L Mencken)

I recently joined Instagram after years of resisting because I wanted to view a private account hosted by my work, and I had to have an Instagram account so that the site owners could verify who I was.  However, I am now hooked - it is so easy and instant, and I can post all manner of things that might not otherwise be seen outside my phone.

My Instagram feed informed me that today is World Dachshund Day.  Hooray, I am up for that.  I have had a dachshund as a pet, and I love the little long backed, short legged dogs.  I am guilty of owning numerous pairs of Peter Alexander's Penny the Dachshund pajamas, so even though I no longer have a dachshund living with me, I am a card-carrying dachshund lover.

I have had a dachshund cookie cutter for a long time, so I decided to make dachshund cookies to celebrate World Dachshund Day.  I was reminded of why I had never used this cutter much - the skinny tail is a major pain to deal with.  However, I persevered to make 18 dachshund gingerbread cookies, using the gingerbread recipe from Margaret Fulton's The 12 Days of Christmas:   

I still had lots of gingerbread dough left over but I was over struggling with dachshunds, so I just cut out squares instead for the rest:

I also hate the endurance required to decorate cookies with royal icing, which plays havoc with my back and neck, but I once again persevered for all 18 dachshunds, and breathed a sigh of relief that there were not any more. 

These cookies are very cute, so I am happy with them, despite their flaws and the endurance task of making them.

If you would like to try Margaret Fulton's gingerbread, you will need:

1/4 cup golden syrup
1/4 cup brown sugar
1 tablespoon ground ginger
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves (I substituted ground nutmeg)
1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
125g softened chopped butter
1 beaten egg
2 1/4 cups plain flour

Put the golden syrup, sugar and spices in a heatproof bowl over simmering water and stir until the sugar melts.  Add the bicarbonate of soda, and as soon as the mixture bubbles, remove it from the heat.

Add the butter to the warm golden syrup mixture and stir until the butter has melted and the mixture is smooth.  Once the mixture has cooled, stir in the egg and 1 cup of the flour.  Add the rest of the flour and combine the ingredients with your hands to make a dough.

Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured bench and knead lightly until it comes together.

Divide the dough into 2 equal pieces.  Roll out each piece between two pieces of baking paper to a 5mm thickness, then chill in the fridge for half an hour.

Preheat your oven to 180 degrees Celsius and line two baking trays with baking paper.

Remove the chilled dough from the fridge and cut out whatever shapes you desire, re-rolling the scraps and cutting until there is no more dough left.

Place the cut out cookies onto the baking tray and bake for 10-15 minutes, rotating the trays top to bottom and front to back half way through the baking time.  Once the cookies are golden and firm, remove them from the oven and leave them to cool on the trays on wire racks.

Decorate as desired.

Lorraine's Bitter Lemon and Poppyseed Cake

Sunshine on a rainy day

Makes my soul, makes my soul, 

Trip, trip, trip away

                                      Christine Anu 

It has been grey and cold and wet for most of this week, and today is the winter solstice.  Winter has settled in with a vengeance, and has left us scrabbling for puffer jackets, umbrellas and beanies to shut out the cold while we huddle up and shiver on freezing tram stops. While the days will start to get longer now, the weather is likely to get worse before it gets better, which will be months away. 

A little piece of sunshine in this cold weather is Lorraine's Bitter Lemon and Poppyseed Cake from Not Quite Nigella - recipe here. Just looking at this sunny yellow cake makes me smile:

My cake was not so bitter because I used some beautiful Meyer lemons given to me by Emma at work.  They were the most glorious, blemish-free, bright yellow lemons that anyone could wish for - definitely sunshine on a rainy day!  

I used candied lemon slices to decorate my cake rather than fresh lemon slices and thyme, as I wanted the decoration to be edible. You can find out how here. I think it was well worth the effort (and the extra lemon) to make them.  They are little orbs of sunshine all by themselves.

I thoroughly recommend making this delicious cake.  The bright, sharp lemon flavour melds with the crunchy nuttiness of the poppy seeds in this soft, fluffy, tea-time worthy cake.

Enjoy the shortest/longest day of the year (depending on where you are), and see you on the other side!

TWD - Blondies

This week's Tuesdays with Dorie recipe is Blondies.  Dorie suggested making them in mini muffin pans to get a crisp outside and a chewy middle; however, it is a big effort for me to pull out my mini muffin pans, so I just baked my blondies in a square cake tin and cut them into squares.

These blondies contain coconut, chocolate and nuts (in my case, walnuts).  They were really delicious, and I'd definitely make them again.

To see what the other Dorie bakers made this week and what they thought of it, visit the LYL section of the TWD website.

Happy birthday to Sir Paul McCartney, who turns 77 today!