TWD - Tea and Honey Pots de Creme

“I don’t feel very much like Pooh today," said Pooh.

                  "There there," said Piglet. "I’ll bring you tea and honey until you do.” 

                                                                      A.A. Milne, Winnie-the-Pooh


This week's Tuesdays with Dorie recipe is Tea and Honey Pots de Crème.  We have made a few different versions of this dessert, which is a baked custard flavoured in different ways.

This particular version of pots de crème is flavoured with tea and honey, as its name suggests.  The recipe called for rose tea; I didn't have that, so I used passionfruit and hibiscus tea instead.  The pots de crème are also flavoured with a little rosewater, which blended just fine with the slightly floral taste of the passionfruit and hibiscus tea.

Left to my own devices, I might never have made this recipe, but I am  glad that I did, because I enjoyed this dessert very much.  I made two, just for me, from a quarter of the recipe.

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

Royal Chocolate Cupcakes for Mother's Day

Today is Mothers Day, a special day set aside to celebrate mums everywhere.  Because of lockdown restrictions, many people (myself included) could not be with their mums physically today, and instead had to catch up via technology.

I thought that these Royal Chocolate Cupcakes were a special recipe to post to celebrate  Mothers Day.  The recipe was posted by the Queen's pastry chefs to celebrate her recent birthday, but I think they are adaptable to any occasion.

Here are the cakes unadorned:

I love this recipe - the cupcakes were amazingly light and fluffy, whereas I had expected them to be quite dense.  My preference would have been to leave out the white chocolate chips, which in my case all sank to the bottom of the cakes and didn't add much to the flavour. 

I made the chocolate icing and decorated the cupcakes with sprinkles: 

Here's a close up of a cupcake - look at that luscious chocolate icing:

Nom!

To make these cupcakes, you will need:

15ml vinegar
300ml milk
50ml vegetable oil
60g melted butter
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla essence
250g self raising flour
75g cocoa powder
300g sugar
10g bicarbonate of soda
100g white chocolate chips

For the icing:

90g dark chocolate
100g butter
125g icing sugar

Preheat your oven to 160 degrees Celsius and line a 12 hole muffin tin with cupcake papers.
Put the flour, sugar, cocoa and bicarbonate of soda into a mixing bowl.  

In  jug, whisk together the eggs, vanilla, melted butter, oil, vinegar and milk.

Slowly mix the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients, and fold through the chocolate chips (if using).

Using an icecream scoop, scoop the batter into the cupcake cases.

Bake the cupcakes in the oven for 15-18 minutes or until cooked through (they will spring back when you press on the top of them).

Remove the cakes from the oven and allow them to cool slightly in the tin before unmoulding to cool completely on a wire rack.

Once the cupcakes are cool, make the icing by beating the icing sugar and butter together until light and creamy, then folding through the melted chocolate.  Spread the icing on top of the cupcakes with a spatula or knife, and decorate as desired.

Finally, I could not let the day pass without posting a photo of me with my mother:

Happy Mothers Day Mutti!

TWD - Salt and Pepper, Sugar and Spice Galettes

This week‘s Tuesday with Dorie recipe is Salt and Pepper, Sugar and Spice Galettes.  These are roll out biscuits flavoured with salt, pepper, cinnamon, ginger and cloves.

I made a third of the recipe and ended up with 23 biscuits. Admittedly, I had rolled some too thin, but I was glad I didn’t make the full recipe.

These were tasty biscuits, not a stand out, but good.

To see what everyone else made this week, visit the LYL section of the TWD website.

TWD - Green Tea Sables

This week’s Tuesday with Dorie recipe is Green Tea Sables.  These are short cookies flavoured with crushed green tea. 

I used Tulsi lemongrass ginger tea, which my Google search said was a green tea:

I didn’t buy this tea - someone at work was giving them away. I was glad to have a use for it.

For some reason, my cookies never spread in the oven. They stayed as little discs about the same size as I cut off the dough log.

These cookies tasted ok, but at the risk of making a pun, were not my cup of tea.

To see what everyone else made this week, visit the LYL section of the TWD website.

ANZAC Biscuits - Maggie Beer’s recipe

But where our desires are and our hopes profound, 

Felt as a well-spring that is hidden from sight,

To the innermost heart of their own land they are known

As the stars are known to the Night.

                           Extract from For The Fallen (Laurence Binyon)

Today is ANZAC Day.  ANZAC stands for Australia and New Zealand Army Corps.  The day was chosen because it is the anniversary of the first major military action fought by the ANZACs in World War I at Gallipoli, but  it now commemorates all Australians and New Zealanders who served and died in all conflicts, wars and peacekeeping operations.

Traditionally, ANZAC Day is marked by dawn services throughout Australia and New Zealand, where a wreath is laid, followed by a recitation of  Ode to the Fallen (being a stanza from the poem  For the Fallen), then a minute's silence in honour of those who served, then the Last Post is played on a bugle, and finally the New Zealand and Australian national anthems are sung while the flags of each country are raised from half mast to full mast.  Afterwards, there is an ANZAC Day parade through the main streets of various cities and towns, in which those who served march or are driven past crowds of citizens who have come to pay their respects. 

I have attended an ANZAC Day parade in Brisbane, but I have never attended a dawn service.  This year is the closest that I have come to participating in a dawn service by watching the Melbourne dawn service at The Shrine on TV.   It was very moving.  I especially enjoyed the singing of the New Zealand and Australian national anthems.  Our work choir was going to perform those anthems yesterday for ANZAC Day, but because of the current physical distancing requirements, we were unable to do so.

Another ANZAC Day tradition is to make ANZAC biscuits.  The origin of ANZAC biscuits is thought to be that they were made by women to send to soldiers serving abroad as the ingredients  didn't spoil easily and they transported well.  Regardless, ANZAC biscuits are delicious, and people make them all year round, although they have special significance on ANZAC Day.  There are many different recipes for ANZAC biscuits, but the basics remain the same - oats, golden syrup, butter, coconut, bicarbonate of soda, flour, brown sugar.  Some people like their ANZAC biscuits to be chewy, others like them crunchy.  Bought ANZAC biscuits tend to be quite hard, so I much prefer making my own.

I have posted about ANZAC biscuits before here, here, here, here, and here.  I have also made ANZAC slice and ANZAC Pear and Ginger Loaf.  This shows just how many and varied recipes there are for ANZAC biscuits.

This year, I decided to make Maggie Beer's recipe for ANZAC biscuits.  I chose this recipe because it had a couple of twists in the ingredients - lemon zest and verjuice, neither of which are traditional in ANZAC biscuits.  I really loved the result - my biscuits were delightfully chewy, and the lemon added a lovely scent and flavour to the biscuits.

I made a half recipe (which is lucky because I could easily scoff a whole batch of these) to make 8 biscuits, as follows:

1/2 cup plain flour
1/2 cup shredded coconut
1/2 cup rolled oats
1/4 + 1/8 cup brown sugar
grated zest of half  lemon
62g butter
1 tablespoon golden syrup
1 tablespoon verjuice
1/8 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda

Preheat your oven to 180 degrees Celsius, and line a baking tray with baking paper or a silicon mat.

Put all of the dry ingredients except the bicarbonate of soda into a medium bowl and stir to combine.

Put the butter, golden syrup and verjuice into a small saucepan and stir over medium heat until the butter is melted and simmers.  Add the bicarbonate of soda and stir the mixture - it will foam up.  Remove the saucepan from the heat.

Pour the wet ingredients over the dry ingredients and mix until just combined.  Roll teaspoonsful of  the mixture into balls and place them at least one inch apart on the lined baking tray.  Flatten the tops of each ball slightly.

Place the biscuits into the preheated oven and bake for 18-20 minutes until golden brown (note that they will still feel soft to the touch at this stage).  Remove the biscuits from the oven and allow them to cool for 5 minutes on the tray, then use a spatula to carefully lift each biscuit onto a wire rack to cool completely.

Eat and enjoy.

Ricotta Cake with Brandy Sultanas and Chocolate Ganache

Panettone smells and tastes of Christmas. The moist sweet raisins contrast with the sharp, tangy citrus peel and rich, pillowy bread.  However, to make a panettone takes serious time . What if you could get the flavours and feel of panettone with a lot less effort?

Helen Goh provides the solution with her Ricotta Cake with Amaretto Raisins and Chocolate Ganache. You can find the recipe here.

I made a half recipe in an 8” tin (being the smallest that I had). My cake would have been a little taller if I’d had a slightly smaller tin, but it was fine as it was.

I substituted the amaretto for brandy and the raisins for sultanas.  I also used chopped candied oranges instead of the candied peel.

The soft, fruit studded ricotta cake is enrobed in dark chocolate ganache that has been flavoured with the alcohol used to soak the fruit.

The end result is a soft, moist, luscious cake that smells and tastes like Christmas - and panettone!

If you are someone who likes the flavour of Christmas treats, then this cake may be all of your Christmases at once.

TWD - Every-Way Shortbread Fans - The Lemon Poppyseed Version

Life handed me lemons, so I made lemonade, lemon cake, lemon drops, and I even used the rinds to make lemon art. So, the joke is on you, life, haha! (Emilyann Allen)

This week’s Tuesday with Dorie recipe continues last week’s lemon theme. It is Every-Way Shortbread Fans - the Lemon Poppyseed Version.

These delicious biscuits are easy to whip up, and are baked in a round cake tin to help them get and keep their shape.

The lemon poppyseed version involves rubbing lemon zest into sugar, and poppyseeds being folded through the dough.

A fork is used to mark out the shortbread sections and decorate the edges of the biscuits. The biscuits are cut when still warm after baking.

To finish, a lemon icing is drizzled over the biscuits - not necessary but pretty.

To see what everyone else made this week, visit the LYL section of the TWD website.