TWD - Transluscent Maple Tuiles

This week's Tuesday with Dorie host is my blogging pal Clivia of Bubie's Little Baker. She selected Dorie's Translucent Maple Tuiles (pronounced "tweals" and named because they resemble roof tiles when curled).

These little biscuits have next to nothing in them, and the dough is a breeze to make. Unlike normal tuiles, there is no fussy template required - you just roll the dough into small balls, and the cookies do their thing in the oven, emerging like a caterpillar from a coccoon as beautiful, lacy butterflies.

Unfortunately, my butterflies gave me a few headaches - the bottom tray burned, while the top tray was not cooked quite enough and had to be returned to the oven. The tuiles that I tries to curl around a rolling pin proceeded to stick to said rolling pin, so I gave it up and am happy with the lacy flat tuiles that you see at the top of this post.

These cookies have a buttery, rich flavour, and look gorgeous, so I will try them again at some point.

Thanks to Clivia for hosting us this week - she will have the recipe, or you will find it in the book, Baking From My Home to Yours. To check out how the other TWD members went, visit the TWD blogroll.

Presenting Desserts at William Angliss

I was off on another self-improvement session on the weekend. Not content with spending a whole weekend close to Christmas making cheese, I devoted last Sunday to attending Presenting Desserts at William Angliss Institute of TAFE. My reason for attending this course is that I am fairly rubbish at food styling, so I thought that a course on presenting desserts would help me to learn some new skills to improve that.



Our teacher was Emma Mackay of Cakes of Our Lives, who can also be seen regularly on Huey's Kitchen (although I am never home to watch it). Here is Emma whipping up a mango coulis for our first dessert:

Emma is a great teacher in that she is bright and breezy and fun, and doesn't get narky if you make a botch of anything; given that the short courses are hobby courses for adults, not industry training, that is how it should be.

Emma and her trusty assistant, Lulu, had made many of the dessert components before class so that all we had to do was to learn how to put them together.

Our first dessert was a mango brioche tart with coconut sorbet. The tart consists of a brioche base, topped with a thin layer of frangipane, then slices of mango and baked. To plate up, we added a rocher (one spoon quenelle) of coconut sorbet on top of the tart, which was then sprinkled with nutmeg, and garnished the plate with mango coulis.

This one is Emma's:

Umm, and this one is mine:

My poor old rocher wouldn't come off the spoon, so I had to "man-handle" it to get it off the spoon - which of course resulted in indentations.

Next, we made biscotti for the purpose of plating up an expresso panna cotta dish with marscapone foam, panforte, biscotti, dried fruit compote and candied oranges:

Although the biscotti were a bit of a nightmare because they crumbled when being cut, this dessert was otherwise a cinch to make because it was just an assembly job from pre-made components. Emma says that this dessert is therefore perfect for functions. Note the serviette on the tray to stop the crockery from sliding.

After a refreshing lunch of creamy quiche and salad, we moved on to make a vacherin. The components of this dessert were unset turkish delight (in a piping bag), meringue, strawberry soup, fresh sliced strawberries, micro basil, guava sorbet, a snow egg, Persian fairy floss and a sugared rose petal.

This is Emma's, where you can clearly see the components:

And this is mine (taken from a glamorous angle so that you can't see where the sorbet doesn't quite meet the meringue):

The dessert was layered as follows: Place a dob of turkish delight on the plate and top with the meringue. Ladle in some strawberry soup and arrange sliced strawberries around the meringue in the soup, and top each slice with micro basil. Using a pastry ring as a mould, position guava sorbet on top of the meringue. Add another dob of turkish delight on top of the sorbet, then position a snow egg on top of it. Zhoush some Persian fairy floss and put on top of the snow egg, and crown it all with a sugared rose petal.

The sugared rose petals were easy enough to make - just organic rose petals painted with egg white then dipped in caster sugar. However, the snow eggs were a bit of a pain, as they had to be formed between two spoons like quenelles, and they had to be smooth to look good. One of mine had a hole in the bottom because I didn't press the Swiss meringue batter down hard enough into the spoon. The snow eggs were simply poached meringues, a la the Floating Islands dessert (bad memories there!).

We finished off with a chocolate plate, comprised of chocolate soil topped with a tuile that had been wrapped around a cannoli tube, then filled with choc-mint mousse and topped with micro- basil, sago "sushi" filled with pineapple and raspberry jelly and a chocolate collar to imitate seaweed and surrounded by chocolate sauce (applied with a squeeze bottle), a square of passionfruit jelly with a peanut butter truffle on top, a smear of strawberry sauce (applied with a pastry brush) topped with a glass biscuit filled with white chocolate granita and crowned with a slice of star anise that had been painted with red sugar syrup then dried, a chocolate "jammy dodger", topped with a maraschino cherry and sprinkled with icing sugar and surrounded by dots of raspberry coulis (applied with a syringe), and a square of opera cake topped with a gold dusted pistachio. We did this in pairs, and this is the handiwork of my awesome benchmate Claudia and I:

The parts that we made were the tuile and the glass biscuit (both from pre-prepared batter), the truffle (using prepared ganache scooped with a melon baller before being dipped in chocolate, dried, then dipped in cocoa) and the chocolate collar on the sago sushi, whereby melted chocolate was painted onto acetate strips the same height as the slices of "sushi", then wrapped around the sago, which was frozen to ensure a quick set for the chocolate. The choc mint mousse and the chocolate sushi were not to my liking taste-wise, but I enjoyed the rest.

The hardest part of the day was having to eat as much of each dessert as you could on the run, as the components were not "take home" friendly. I never thought I'd say it, but sometimes, you can have too much dessert.

I enjoyed the class, and did learn some interesting new techniques to take on board. Thanks to Emma for being such a great teacher.

FFwD - Speculoos

I have made it to Friday - hooray! It's been a long week in which I haven't had one decent night's sleep, for one reason or another. I won't be getting that tonight either - I have tickets to see U2 at Etihad Stadium in Melbourne, and I am stoked. Years ago when I was at Uni, someone asked me to go to the Zoo TV/Zooropa tour, but I declined because of lack of cash to buy a ticket. It is therefore great to be able to have the chance to see U2 now. I am not up on their latest music so much, but a band like U2 will always throw in some old favourites. All I Want Is You, a U2 song that featured in the movie Reality Bites, is one of my favourite songs of all time, so I hope they play it.

What has all of that got to do with French Fridays with Dorie? Nothing actually, apart from the fact that both events occur on a Friday.

This month, FFwD is once again free choice within the 5 recipes. I decided to start with the Speculoos - as a baker, it seemed like a natural choice, and I was curious to know what they tasted like. Ever since seeing David Lebovitz's post on Speculoos in a jar, I have been keen to try them, so now is my big chance.

Speculoos are spice cookies with cinnamon, ginger and cloves, making them appropriate Christmas fare. I didn't have any cloves, so I left them out - and at 1/8th of a teaspoon, I don't think it made much difference. I rolled my dough thinly with the thought of making my Speculoos into sandwich cookies, but apart from one that I filled with dulce de leche for myself (and which tasted excellent!), I didn't bother making sandwich cookies.

The dough was very hard to work with because it was incredibly soft - after just a couple of minutes out of the fridge, it became almost impossible to remove the scraps from around the cut out cookies, so I resorted to carving out the scraps with a knife and leaving the cookies on the baking paper on which I cut them out. (Warning - don't try using fancy shaped cutters to make these, as it will be way too hard to get them out in one piece.) So that I could space them on the baking tray with enough room to spread, I cut around the cookies on the paper and reassembled them on a baking tray like a jigsaw. The softness of this dough surprised me, as my friend Anna gave me two Speculoos kits with moulds for my birthday a couple of years ago. The use of moulds would indicate that the recipe used in the kits yielded a far more robust dough than Dorie's recipe.

And the verdict? These cookies are delicious, crisp spice cookies, similar to many others in my Christmas repertoire. This means that, due to the difficulty of working with the dough, I am unlikely to choose these over some of the other more robust spice cookies that I have made. I highly recommend sandwiching a teaspoon of dulce de leche between two of these cookies - the spices and the caramel were made for each other, and I imagine tastes something like David Lebovitz's Speculoos a Tartiner.

To check out what the other FFwD members made this week, go to the LYL section of the French Fridays with Dorie website.

Gills Diner

Melbourne is renowned for its alleys and laneways, many of which conceal hidden gems. You need to keep your eyes open when walking down the streets of the Melbourne CBD, and if you see an alley or a laneway, take a peek down it - you never know what treasure you might find.

Gills Diner is one such treasure, hidden in Gills Alley off Little Collins Street (between Queen and Elizabeth Streets). It is one of those "blink and you'll miss it" kind of places, with only a metal sign on the unassuming concrete outer wall to let you know that it exists.

Inside, Gills is a popular, bustling eatery, from which the devine smell of freshly baked bread beckons (as Gills operates as a bakery during the day):


The dining area at Gills is packed with bare topped timber tables, set neatly with blue rimmed plates and starched white napkins:

On the evening that Tim and I visited, we did not have a reservation, but the friendly and efficient staff promptly found us a place at a white-painted bench with stools that divides the main dining area with large tables from the smaller side area with tables for two. I preferred the quieter area where we were seated, as it was out of the bustle of the main dining room, making it a better option for conversation, and was slightly darker and more mysterious. Think the main dining area of Ricks Diner in Casablanca versus the back room where Rick splutters, "Of all the gin joints in all the towns ..."

Shortly after being seated, we were served with a bread basket containing a variety of breads:

We had eaten the best slices (a salt-crusted sourdough with a soft, snowy interior) before I remembered to take a photo of the remaining slices of baguette. Drinks followed shortly thereafter - in my case, a refreshing peach Bellini (haven't had one of those since Hakkasan in London over 8 years ago!), and in Tim's case, a glass of red.

The menu is written on a number of chalkboards around the restaurant, and presumably changes daily. On the night of our visit, there were many tempting entrees, including stuffed zucchini flowers (which I am yet to try), but we decided just to go for mains. It says a lot that I could have ordered anything on the menu and been happy - it all sounded very good. However, I settled on roast duck with a pine nut and pumpkin risotto:

The duck skin was coated with a lovely sweet, sticky sauce (which I could not identify), and was moist and tender within. The skin was not particularly crisp, although it was flavoursome. The risotto was a perfect accompaniment, because its flavours were subtle enough that they did not compete with the duck, but were not so subtle as to make the risotto bland. It was also perfectly done - the grains of rice came apart easily, and it did not leave a "gloggy" mouth-feel. (I can appreciate the skill in this, having made a disastrous risotto or two myself.)

Tim chose a rabbit and pea ravioli, topped with goats cheese:

The ravioli refused to be photographed nicely, despite Tim and I both attempting it. (I think the yellowness resulted from a street light that flooded in from the alleyway through the window.) Tim enjoyed his choice, but as a duck lover, I have a feeling that he preferred mine; however he was not left duck-less, as I was happy to share the duck.

We rounded out our meal with a very decent coffee.

Gills prices are on the medium side, with most mains costing around the $25-$30 mark. Our meals with drinks and coffee cost around $45 per head.

My Gills Diner experience was very positive - the atmosphere, the staff and the food combined to make it a memorable evening that left a warm afterglow.

Gills Diner
Gills Alley, Melbourne
Phone: (03) 9670 7214

TWD - Devilish Shortcakes

Have you ever looked at a recipe and gone, hmmm, I am not sure about this? I have many times - and sometimes I have been pleasantly surprised, other times, not so much. So It was for me with this week's Tuesday with Dorie pick. Our host, Tania of Love Big, Bake Often, chose Dorie's Devilish Shortcakes.

Devilish Shortcakes are effectively big chocolate scones, that you can fill with cream and fruit, or in my case, raspberry ripple icecream and dulce de leche. I wasn't really sure about a chocolate-flavoured scone, but ultimately, these are pretty inoffensive. However, a good tip from Caitlin in the forum is that these shortcakes do not taste good plain because they are not sweet. This turned out to be true - in my half batch, there is only 1/4 cup of sugar for 7 shortcakes. Caitlin's other good tip was to only make these shortcakes with 1/4 cup of dough, not the 1/3 cup suggested by Dorie. I found that 1/4 cup of dough gave me fairly big shortcakes, so I am glad that I didn't go any bigger.

I didn't love these shortcakes, but they were OK - ultimately, they turned out how Dorie said they would, and tasted just fine. However, I don't think I'll make them again.

Thanks to Tania for hosting us this week. She will have the recipe, as will Dorie's book. To check out what the other TWD members thought of this recipe, visit the TWD blogroll.

Baked cheesecake and homemade pizza

Although my cheesemaking class was last weekend, the beauty of it is that it doesn't stop there. I have a lovely selection of cheeses to use now, and others that I am tending dutifully until they ripen. I am especially proud of my Camembert, which is growing a perfect silky white mould on it, just as it should, despite my "cheese cave" being an esky with ice in it.

I wanted a recipe to use up some of my soft fresh cheeses while they were still in their prime, and after a quick Web search, I found this recipe for a Fromage Blanc Tart on a beautiful blog that is new to me, Know Whey by Sue. Sue is from Vermont and began making cheeses when she moved there, and her earlier posts are about cheesemaking and cheese recipes.

Sue's recipe uses 2lb (~900g) of fromage blanc; instead, I used 300g fromage blanc plus 300g of quark and 150g each of whole milk and whey ricotta. The end result was a beautiful creamy cheesecake which was smooth and silky on the tongue:

I liked the fact that the cheesecake shell was a pastry rather than the crushed biscuit base which is more usual with cheesecake - I thought that the pastry housed the filling beautifully while letting the flavour of the cheese shine, rather than dominating it.

It would be dangerous for me to have this in the house for too long, so I took it to work and shared it. It went down like a house on fire - it's good to know that there are many fellow cheesecake lovers among my colleagues.

With the mozzarella from class, the obvious choice was to make pizza! I used the Daring Bakers thin crust recipe taken from Peter Reinhart, which Zorra had kindly divided down into a two person recipe which was a more friendly quantity for me to use.

I used one of the resulting two pizza dough balls to make a Hawaiian pizza - tomato paste, mozzarella, shredded ham and drained pineapple pieces:

Looks pretty good, yeah? I took the pizza to work for lunch over two days - it made a great change from my usual toasted sandwich.

In closing, I want to thank Marcellina of Marcellina in Cucina for awarding me the Lovely Blog Award:

For the 15 blogs to pass the award on to, I would like to take this opportunity to highlight some great Aussie blogs that I read on a regular basis:

Not Quite Nigella

Eat Almost Anything

Almost Bourdain

Gourmet Green Giraffe

Leave Room for Dessert

Vicious Ange

Audax Artifex

Hold the Beef

The Cake Mistress

Lemonpi

Winos and Foodies

Trissalicious

The Island of Dr Gateaux
For the Love of Food

Melanger

To enjoy some fine Aussie food blogs, you can't go wrong if you visit these sites. Trissa's last post is the recipe from a Sydney restaurant for their take on the Weiss mango fruit bar - check it out!

Daring Bakers - Crostata - Crostata di Prugne e Fromage Blanc

Do you like to try new recipes, or do you prefer to stick to the tried and true? I remember one year in which nearly every dinner that I made was the same stir fry, with the only variation being the type of meat I put in it. I had just lost a fair bit of weight at the time, and I think I was scared that if I diverged from what I knew, I would pile it all back on.

Fast forward a few years, and I have put some of the weight back on, but certainly not all of it, and I eat way better now than I did before the weight loss. Having this blog and joining various groups and blog events has helped me to expand my culinary horizons, so that it is rare that I make the same thing twice.

This brings me to this month's Daring Bakers challenge.

The 2010 November Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Simona of briciole. She chose to challenge Daring Bakers’ to make pasta frolla for a crostata. She used her own experience as a source, as well as information from Pellegrino Artusi’s Science in the Kitchen and the Art of Eating Well.

I had made a crostata before. For this reason, I wanted to make a different filling for my crostata this time around that was stll very Italian. In the notes for the challenge, Simona, our host, referred us to a couple of different crostatas that she had previously posted on her blog. After checking them out, I couldn't resist making Simona's Crostata Di Prugne e Fromage Blanc for this Daring Bakers Challenge.

This tart is comprised of the pasta frolla tart shell (the only compulsory component of this month's challenge), lined with Marsala-soaked sliced plums, then topped with a cream made of soft cheese - or in my case, as suggested as a substitute by Simona, Greek yoghurt. The cream is infused with the juices that the plums soaked in and flavoured with vanilla, and my Greek yoghurt was also vanilla bean flavoured for an extra vanilla-flavoured hit. As plums are not yet in season, I had to use tinned plums.

I really enjoyed this tart. It was sweet without being too sweet, and the yoghurt gave the filling an extra tang. The softly textured, juicy plums were blanketed by the smooth, velvety filling, giving a delightful contrast on the tongue. The pasta frolla tart shell was crisp and not overly sweet or buttery, making it more of a supporting vehicle for the filling than the star of the show. It is very different to Dorie Greenspan's Good for Almost Everything pie dough, which is rich and buttery. The smell wafting from the oven while the tart was baking was delightful - the tart gives off a subtly sweet, fruity perfume that makes it irresistible.

Making the pasta frolla is fairly easy. For the first time in ages, I made the dough totally by hand. Using the trick of grating the butter that I learned from Chocolatechic:



it did not take long to cut the butter into the flour. An egg mixture is then poured into a well in the middle of the flour crumbs and mixed in:


Once the dough is able to be kneaded into a ball, you press it into a disc, wrap it in cling film, then refrigerate it for at least two hours (or in my case, overnight):



Now comes the part where I found the pasta frolla a little cantankerous. The chilled dough is rolled out until 1/8" thick, and then used to line your greased tart pan. I found the pasta frolla to be very soft and it became sticky quickly, so I had to patch it quite a bit in the tart pan.

You then layer the drained, marinated plum slices over the base of the uncooked tart shell:



and bake it for 20 minutes. In the meantime, you beat together Greek yoghurt, an egg, the plum juice and vanilla (and cornflour if you think you need it for thickness), then pour that mixture over the par-baked plums and bake for a further 20 minutes. And voila:


The end result is a pretty, pale-pink tart which tastes delicious:


Thanks to Simona for hosting us for Daring Bakers this month, and for this lovely recipe. To see what crostata delights the other Daring Bakers made, visit the Daring Bakers blogroll.