Minted zucchini tagliatelle with cucumbers and lemon

It's Friday, and I wanted to announce that chivalry is not completely dead.  I was struggling with a suitcase at the railway station this morning, and a young man in his twenties asked me if I was alright.  I said that I was (I wasn't really), but if I had said no, it sounds as if he would have gladly helped me to lift it up the stairs.  Thank you kind sir, you made my day.  The simple act of asking me if I was alright is such a rare thing in the hurly burly of city life, and I appreciate it. 

This week's FFwD recipe was minted zucchini tagliatelle with cucumbers and lemon.  It is not actually pasta, as I first thought - it is thin strips of zucchini with chunks of cucumber in a tangy dressing.

I don't have much to say about this - I really didn't like it much, so I stir fried it and ate it as a warm side.

To see what everyone else thought about this dish, visit the LYL section of the FFwD website.

WWDH - Baked Carbonara

This week's Wednesday with Donna Hay pick was Baked Carbonara, chosen by Margaret.  This dish is a baked fettucine with cheese and bacon.  

I used spinach fettucine, red leicester cheese instead of parmesan, and light evaporated milk instead of cream:

It was tasty, but quite rich.  To see what Margaret, Kayte and Chaya thought of this dish, go visit their sites.

Pear, Almond and Marscapone Tart

Each Sunday, Neil Perry has recipes featured in Sunday Life magazine in The Age.  If I fancy making the recipe, I'll tear it out in the hope that I'll remember it in the future.

A couple of weeks back, Neil featured a recipe for Pear, Almond and Marscapone Tart, which is published online here.  It looked right up my alley, and besides, I had some marscapone to use up from another project.

Instead of using store bought pastry, I made Maggie Beer's  sour cream pastry for the tart shell. 

I used a Corella pear instead of a Beurré Bosc. I hadn't realised that you had to poach the pear for the tart, as Neil has written it in the ingredients instead of the method (grrrr).  I used Orangette's directions for poaching pears, a la Nigel Slater. 

Here is the golden, baked frangipane filled tart:

 

Once the tart has cooled, it is topped with a mixture of whipped cream, beaten egg whites and marscapone, then decorated with toasted slivered almonds:

Again, Neil put part of the method in the ingredients, so my egg whites were not beaten and my cream was not whipped.  As a kind of after-the-fact attempt at fixing my topping, I beat the whole lot together with a hand held electric mixer.  This did give it some volume, and in the end, I thought it tasted pretty good, even if it was not as fluffy as Neil's version.

I thought this tart was elegant and delicious.  I had no occasion to make it other than that I wanted to, but isn't that half the fun?

Daring Bakers - Filled Pate A Choux Swans

Kat of The Bobwhites was our August 2012 Daring Baker hostess who inspired us to have fun in creating pate a choux shapes, filled with crème patisserie or Chantilly cream. We were encouraged to create swans or any shape we wanted and to go crazy with filling flavors allowing our creativity to go wild!

I wasn't even sure if I was going to participate this month, but two days before reveal day, I dragged my ass into the kitchen and made Choux Swans filled with vanilla pastry cream.  I had to make the choux twice - luckily, the first time, I only made a half batch, as the choux did not rise.  Not wanting to leave anything to chance the second time around, I abandoned Kat's Good Housekeeping recipe and turned to Australian kitchen legend, Margaret Fulton, instead.  That recipe requires the flour to be added while the butter mixture is boiling on the stove top, and for the oven to be 200 degrees Celsius (gas mark 6) - slightly hotter than Kat's recipe. To add that extra chance of success, I borrowed Delia's tip of wetting the greased trays slightly to make a "steamier" environment in the oven.

Hooray - second time around, I had success:

The pastry cream recipe from the challenge notes gave me no such issues - it worked just right first time around.

Thanks to our host Kat for taking us with her on living a childhood memory.  To see what everyone else did with their choux pastry and filling, visit the slide show at The Daring Kitchen once it is loaded on 27 August, US East Coast time.

Double chocolate Mars Bar cookies aka Death By Chocolate

Happy weekend people!  Are you looking for the ultimate chocolate indulgence for the weekend - chocolate on 'roids, so to speak?  Well, look no further, as I present to you - the Double Chocolate Mars Bar Cookie!  These cookies contain no less than three types of chocolate - dark, white and Mars Bar.  They also contain cocoa. 

The recipe for this decadent creation came from The Kitchen Coquette's Daily Life feature in The Age.  You can find it online here. 

The recipe is a bit light on as to how to space the cookies on the baking tray, so let me tell you - leave a good inch or two between them on the tray when baking, as they spread quite a bit.   Some of mine were not so pretty because they spread into each other and I had to cut them apart - best to do this when the cookies are fresh out of the oven and are still very soft so that you can cut them without breaking them.

Here is a perfect example of the end product:

 

 

These cookies are soft and cake-like, almost like a flat brownie.  If you like your chocolate full on, these are the cookies for you.  Enjoy!

FFwD - Peach Melba

It's the end of the week and that means French Friday with Dorie.  This week's dish has an indirect personal connection - it is Peach Melba, named after Dame Nellie Melba, who, like me, was Australian, and lived in Melbourne (sometimes!).  Here is a statue in her honour at Melbourne Docklands:

 
This dessert is comprised of poached peaches, raspberry sauce, icecream, cream and almonds.  I used creme de cassis in my poaching syrup, and used Greek yoghurt instead of icecream in assembly.

The verdict - delicious!  I wondered whether all the steps were really worth it until I tasted it - but it was good, and surely one of the healthier desserts one can indulge in.

Check out what the rest of the gang thought of Peach Melba at the FFwD website.  Have a great weekend!

RSPCA Cupcake Day August 2012

On Monday, it was the RSPCA Cupcake Day 2012.  I was keen to participate, so I obtained permission from my work to sell cupcakes for the RSPCA in the breakout room at morning tea.

I baked 78 cupcakes all up, using free range eggs:

Suzanne at work also baked some chocolate cupcakes, which was great as we had more to sell.

My cupcakes were Crabapple Bakery Cupcake Cookbook's Very Vanilla and Dinosaur Rock Chocolate cupcake recipes, and Martha Stewart's Red Velvet Cupcake recipe:

I made my vanilla cupcakes into sheep from Martha Stewart Cupcakes, which you can find via video tutorial here: 

I made the chocolate cupcakes into koalas using the technique that I found online here:

And I made the red velvet cakes into dogs using ideas out of my own head - I cut ears out of cola sour straps, a tongue out of strawberry sour straps, the eyes were mini M&Ms and the nose was a regular sized M&M.  I piped on the mouth using black ready made writing icing:

The sheep and koalas were iced with the Crabapple Bakery's vanilla buttercream, as described in the link for the vanilla cupcake recipe, and tinted half of it grey for the koalas with a little black gel colouring.  On the red velvet cakes, I used the cream cheese frosting recipe from The Country Show Cookbook that I used for my recent carrot cake here. 

Suzanne and I raised over $300 for the RSPCA - thanks to my wonderful work colleagues for their support in this fundraising venture.