TWD - Popcorn Streusel Tops

 This week’s Tuesday with Dorie recipe is Popcorn Streusel Tops. These are buttery cookies containing triple corn - cornflour, corn kernels and popcorn. They are topped with streusel.

They are impressive looking cookies:

The cookies are delicious - the corn kernels and popcorn provided great texture. I would be happy to eat them without the streusel (although they would not be streusel tops).

I made the streusel in the food processor and it worked fine. It was a handy timesaver.

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

Maggie Beer’s Pumpkin and Chickpea Soup

I was watching a morning show on TV this week when Maggie Beer popped up to discuss the success of her online cooking videos because of the surge in home cooking during lockdown. One of the hosts mentioned Maggie’s pumpkin and chickpea soup video and I was in - I had the ingredients, it sounded delicious and I was good to go.

I am not a huge lover of soup, but I really enjoyed this soup. It had a nice kick of spice, and the chickpeas gave it body.

If you like pumpkin soup, try this:

800g pumpkin, peeled and chopped

400g can chickpeas

200g brown onion, diced

2 cloves garlic, diced

1L chicken stock

5 tablespoons olive oil

1 tablespoon verjuice (I skipped this)

1 teaspoon cinnamon 

2 teaspoons ginger

1/4 teaspoon paprika

2 teaspoons salt

2 tablespoons olive oil, extra

Preheat your oven to 220 degrees Celsius. Mix the spices and olive oil together in a bowl. Add the pumpkin and toss to coat.

Put the pumpkin on a lined baking tray, and roast for 20 minutes in the oven. If using the verjuice, add it now to deglaze the pan and roast for another 3 minutes.

While the pumpkin is cooking, heat the extra 2 tablespoons olive oil in a large saucepan and add the onion. Fry the onion, adding the garlic after 5 minutes. Cook until the onion is golden and translucent. 

Add the roasted pumpkin, chickpeas and stock to the saucepan and bring to a boil. Turn down the heat and simmer for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Remove the pan from the heat and allow the soup to cool for 5 minutes.

Put the soup into a food processor and blend until smooth.

Enjoy with whatever you fancy - I used a splodge of Greek yoghurt and chopped coriander.

Courtesan au Chocolat

“... then go to Mendl’s and get me a courtesan au chocolat.”   Gustave H, Grand Budapest Hotel

One of the iconic features of the Wes Anderson’s movie, Grand  Budapest Hotel, is Mendl Bakery’s courtesan au chocolat. These were made by Zero’s girlfriend, Agatha. It has been on my list to make for a long time, so I finally bit the bullet and made it.

The courtesan au chocolat is a fictional dessert that only exists in the movie, but has taken on a life of its own via the World Wide Web.  Slate has a good theory that the dessert was named to be the converse of la religieuse (the nun), which is similarly a stack of profiteroles filled with creme patisserie. The courtesan au chocolat is much showier, being filled with chocolate custard instead of vanilla custard, topped with a trio of pastel hued glazes (cf la religieuse, which are traditionally dipped solely in chocolate or coffee glaze), and having three layers instead of two.

The recipe for courtesan au chocolat is all over the Internet. The one released by the movie studio is here. However, some of the measurements and details are vague. I found that the pate a choux recipe did not work for me - the puffs did not rise. I therefore made the puffs over using Dorie Greenspan’s recipe.

I also used this recipe for the chocolate custard filling, as the ingredients were clearer and used all chocolate, no cocoa. 

I used my favourite buttercream recipe for the white and blue piping, and I used a chocolate coated coffee bean on top rather than a cocoa bean.

Here is a peek inside the courtesan au chocolate:

 The top puff is meant to be empty.

Although my courtesan au chocolat are not perfect, and I hated the fact that there were so many fussy steps to make them (not to mention having to make the choux pastry twice), I am glad I finally made this dessert.  Oooh, and it’s delicious!!

Will I make courtesan au chocolat again? Probably not - but as my homage to Grand Budapest Hotel, I am proud I made the effort.

Lemony Pear-Pineapple Preserves

I recently had the strange dilemma of having a bowl of pears on the turn, and a piece of sour pineapple in the fridge.  What do you do with that combination?  I thought of making pear jam after seeing Patty's post on Instagram, but found it hard to locate a recipe in my usual cookbooks.  Turning to Sarabeth's Bakery - From My Hands to Yours, a book I had owned for years but never used, I struck gold - Sarabeth had a recipe for Lemony Pear-Pineapple Preserves.  Fabulous - I could kill two birds with one stone, figuratively speaking.

The resulting preserves contain lovely chunks of pear, and might have had chunks of pineapple too, except that I suspect I processed the pineapple too finely.  It did not  matter - the end result was a wonderful, golden, sunny preserve, quite sweet, but then again, it is a preserve.

Here it is spread on a crumpet:

If you too would like to try these preserves, you will need:

1/2 pineapple, peeled, cored and cut into 1" cubes

450g pears, peeled, cored and cut into 1/4" cubes

2 cups sugar

1/2 of 1/3 cup lemon juice

1 vanilla bean or 1 teaspoon vanilla essence

Put the pineapple cubes int a food processor and chop coarsely.  Strain the juice into a non-reactive saucepan, reserving the pineapple pieces.

Add the pears to the pineapple juice, and bring to the boil over medium heat, stirring frequently, then reduce the heat to low and simmer the fruit for ~ 15 minutes or until tender.

Add the reserved pineapple, the sugar and the lemon juice to the pan, together with the vanilla seeds (if using a vanilla pod), split the bean lengthwise and put it into the pan as well, and return the mixture to  a simmer.  Cook until the pears are soft and chunky and the mixture has thickened (ie when you run your finger through the mixture on the back of the spoon, it doesn't run in to fill the gap).  This will take around 25 minutes.   Remove from the heat.  (If using vanilla essence, stir it in at this stage).

Pour the mixture into sterilised jars, screw on the lids and allow to cool completely in the jars.

TWD - Caramelized Cinnamon-Milk Chocolate Tart

This week’s Tuesday with Dorie recipe is Caramelized Cinnamon-Milk Chocolate Tart.

This creation is as decadent as it looks - a sweet tart pastry is filled with a milk chocolate ganache flavoured with cinnamon flavoured caramel.

 This combination of flavours was just devine. I halved the recipe and made two mini tarts, one for me and one for my neighbours.

I am not a huge fan of chocolate tarts generally, as I find them too rich, but the milk chocolate toned the richness down and the cinnamon caramel added a lovely flavour. I loved this recipe - dinner party worthy.

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

This creation is as decadent as it looks - a sweet tart pastry is filled with a milk chocolate ganache flavoured with cinnamon flavoured caramel.

 This combination of flavours was just devine. I halved the recipe and made two mini tarts, one for me and one for my neighbours.

I am not a huge fan of chocolate tarts generally, as I find them too rich, but the milk chocolate toned the richness down and the cinnamon caramel added a lovely flavour. I loved this recipe - dinner party worthy.

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

Dutch Appeltaart

A recent recipe for Substitution Cooking School with Jam and Clare was Maria “Oma” Bowditch’s Dutch Appeltaart.  Sadly, Clare’s mum recently passed away, so the group baked this recipe as a tribute to her.

This tart is delicious, but it’s absolutely huge and it ain’t diet food. I totally understand why Alice in Frames’ husband told her she had to get it out of the house.  I gave half of  my tart to my downstairs neighbours and another quarter to a neighbour in a different part of my apartment complex. I hope they enjoy it! I am left with a quarter of the tart, which is much more manageable for one person.

You can see that this apple tart is just delicious, and it smells devine while baking. The pastry is very easy to work with and forgiving. That is just as well, as the tart is baked in a springform pan.

If you would like to make this Dutch Appeltaart yourself, you will need:

Pastry

3 cups plain flour
1/2 cup white sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
pinch of salt
grated zest of half a lemon
280g room temperature butter, cubed

1 egg, beaten

Filling

6-7 Granny Smith apples
1/4 cup sugar
1 teaspoon cinnamon 
juice of 1 lemon

1/2 cup sultanas

1 beaten egg

extra granulated sugar for sprinkling

To make the pastry:

Preheat your oven to 180 degrees Celsius.

Combine the dry ingredients and zest in the bowl of a stand mixer or food processor. Add the butter, a few cubes at a time, and mix on low speed or blitz to combine with the flour. Continue until all of the butter has been added and the mixture looks like crumbs.  Mix in the egg - your dough should come together. If it doesn’t (mine didn’t), add small amounts of ice water until it does. Bring the dough together into a disc and divide it into 2 pieces, being one third of the dough and two thirds of the dough. Put the one third piece aside.

Grease and line a 9” springform pan.

Turn the two thirds piece of dough out onto a lightly floured bench or place it between two pieces of baking paper, and roll it out until it is big enough to line the base and sides of your springform pan (~ 16” round). Carefully line the insides of your springform pan with the rolled out dough - do it in a patchwork and smooth the pieces together if necessary.

To make the filling:

Peel and core the apples; cut the apples into quarters, then cut each quarter into 4 pieces.  Put the apple pieces into a large bowl. Add the cinnamon, lemon juice and sugar to the bowl and toss the apples until well coated. Add the sultanas and mix well.

Place the apples into the pastry shell in the springform pan.

Take the remaining piece of dough and roll it out into a circle large enough to cover the top of the springform pan.  Cut the dough into strips just under 1” wide, and lay them in a lattice pattern on top of the apples. Press the strips into the sides well.

Brush the top of the tart with the beaten egg, then sprinkle with sugar.

Bake the tart for 1 hour and 15 minutes or until golden brown on top.

Allow the tart to cool in the tin before unmoulding and serving. 

Passionfruit Cloud Chiffon Cake

Recently, I purchased a bag of passionfruit on my shopping excursion.  I could not resist them, as they were significantly cheaper than the normal asking price of more than a dollar each.  I wanted to make something special with them, and what could be more special than a light as air chiffon cake?

The beautiful Beatrix Bakes cookbook contains a recipe for a Passionfruit Cloud Chiffon Cake, based on a recipe for chiffon cake by Rose Levy Beranbaum. I had an angel cake pan that I had never used, so it seemed serendipitous that I found this recipe.

After reading the directions, which mentioned what could go wrong, I was a little nervous about making this cake, as I did not want to waste the number of eggs (10!) and precious passionfruit should this cake not work out.  However, Lady Luck was smiling on me and it turned out perfectly:

I decided not to glaze the cake so that I could freeze some of it - because boy, this is a big cake. It defrosts perfectly and is almost as good as the day it was made. The cake is light and fluffy as the cloud its name suggests, and the passionfruit flavour comes through perfectly.  The passionfruit also gives the cake its  gorgeous sunny hue.

Instead, I served my cake with yoghurt and some extra passionfruit pulp:

To make this gorgeous cake, you will need:

8-10 passionfruit to yield 180ml juice

300g sugar

240g plain flour

15g baking powder

Pinch of salt

300g egg whites (~ 10 eggs)

140g egg yolks (~ 7 eggs)

1/2 teaspoon cream of tartar

110ml vegetable oil

9” angel food cake tin

To make the passionfruit juice, halve the passionfruit and scrape the pulp into a food processor.  Pulse briefly - don’t overprocess otherwise the seeds will crack and darken the juice. Strain the juice to remove the seeds and pulp. If you have less than 180ml juice, make up the volume with orange juice or water. Set aside.

Preheat your oven to 150 degrees Celsius.

Put the sugar in a small bowl and remove two tablespoons to reserve for the egg whites. Add the flour, baking powder and salt to the bowl. Put a sieve on top of the bowl and set aside.

Find a bottle whose neck the tube of your angel food cake tin rests over neatly, and set aside.

Place the egg whites and cream of tartar in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the whisk attachment.  Whisk the whites on medium speed until the egg whites are stiff and white.  Gradually add the reserved two tablespoons of sugar - one teaspoon every 30 seconds.  The meringue should be stiff and shiny.  Once all the sugar has been added, reduce the speed to low and whisk for another minute to even out air bubbles.

While the egg whites are whisking, place the oil, egg yolks and passionfruit juice into a wide bowl and whisk together. Sift the dry ingredients over the yolk mixture, and whisk together until smooth.  

Gently fold one third of the meringue into the yolk mixture with a rubber spatula.  Once done, gently fold the remaining meringue through the mixture until no white streaks remain. Pour the batter into the ungreased angel food cake tin, and wipe away any stray splashes from the inside of the tin, as these may stop the cake from rising.

Bake the cake in the preheated oven for 55-60 minutes until golden and puffed up, and the cake around the tube looks dry.  Remove the cake from the oven and immediately invert the centre of the tube over the neck of the bottle. Leave the cake to hang in the tin over the bottle for 2-3 hours until the base of the tin is completely cool.

To release the cake from the tin, run a thin knife around the edge of the tin (but not around the centre tube).  Turn the cake out onto a serving plate and cut it away from the base plate. You can glaze the cake if desired, but if you don’t want to eat it all that day, don’t glaze it. The unglazed cake will stay fresh for 2 days. You can wrap and freeze part of the cake if desired.