Rhubarb Custard Melting Moments

To truly appreciate food you have to know how to cook and Food Bloggers are no exception. With the upcoming Brisbane Food Bloggers Picnic I knew I had to plate up something unique, tasty and visually splendid so I turned to my book shelf. I settled on Rhubarb Custard Melting Moments from the Women's Weekly Cookies cookbook as there something so appealing about the bright red rhubarb custard nested between two golden discs. I started by stewing 3 large stems of chopped rhubarb with 3 tablespoons of sugar and three tablespoons of water on low heat until the rhubarb was pulpy. Try to avoid taste testing as you could quite easily polish off the stewed rhubarb at this stage.

I then placed 2 tablespoons of custard powder, 2 tablespoons caster sugar and 1 cup of milk in a saucepan. I stirred it until the mixture boiled and thickened. Once I was happy with the consistency I removed it from the heat and added 2/3 cup of stewed rhubarb and was disappointed with the colour.

Thankfully my red and pink food colour pastes came to the rescue and gave the custard the desired colour. Once the custard had cooled, I covered the bowl in cling wrap and placed it in the fridge to set.

I preheated to 160°C before whipping 500g softened butter, 1 teaspoon vanilla extract and 1 cup of sifted icing sugar until light and fluffy. I then sifted in 2 cups of custard powder and 2 cups of plain flour and combined.

Lightly grease a cookie sheet and roll rounded teaspoons of mixture into balls. Place then approximately 5cm apart and flatten slightly with a floured fork. Bake for 15 minutes and allow them to stand for at least 5 minutes.

Once they are cool, take two golden discs and sandwich them together with your rhubarb custard. If you pad your container, they travel quite well and are best enjoyed with a cup of tea. Yum!

Apple Pie

I used to work with a lady who used to bake when she was angry. Maybe it's just me, but I can't cook when I'm emotional as I will most certainly will stuff it up. My first attempt at this pie ended up with mushy apples and over worked pastry. I retained the apple, binned the pastry, took a break before starting again. I then peeled, cored, sliced 7 large Granny Smith Apples. I then halved those slices and added them to a saucepan with 1/2 cup of water.

The apple and water was then brought to boil. I then reduced the heat to a simmer, covered the saucepan for approximately 10 minutes. The halved apple slices should be slightly softened. Drain the apples and then add 1 teaspoon of lemon rind and 1/4 teaspoon of ground cinnamon. Leave the mixture to cool.

In a bowl combine 2 cup plain flour, 1 cup self raising flour, 1/2 cup cornflour, 1/2 custard powder, 2 tablespoons of caster sugar and 200g of cool coarsely chopped butter. Rub the butter and the flour between your finger until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs. Then add two egg yolks and 1/2 cup of cold water (use your judgement as you may need more water) and knead until smooth. Halve the dough, roll and then smooth the pastry into a 25cm pie dish. I decided to use a flan tin.

Here is the lined tin. I then placed the tin in the fridge for 30 minutes to rest and preheated the oven to 220C/200c fan forced.

After the 30 minutes had pasted, I then brushed the case with egg white, filled the pie with the apple mixture, rolled the remaining dough out to create a lid. I brushed the lid with more egg white and sprinkled it with sugar. I made a small cross in the center before popping the pie into the oven for 20 minutes. After 20 minutes passed, I reduced the oven to 180C/160C fan forced and continued for 25 minutes or until golden.

Here is the finished pie and I was tell you it is delicious. It's the perfect winter warmer and smoothing balm for my soul.

Mandarin, Polenta and Macadamia Cake

The whole pack are off to visit Carla and her little one tomorrow so I thought I would make a cake. I was looking for something no fuss and would travel well so I decided to make this Mandarin, Polenta and Macadamia Cake from the Australian Womens Weekly Bake cookbook. Before you begin you need to cover four small mandarins with cold water in a saucepan and bring them to a boil. Repeat this another two times before leaving them to cool to room temperature. Then take a large mixing bowl and add 1 cup of polenta, 2 cups of coarsely ground macadamia nuts and one teaspoon of baking powder.

In a smaller bowl whip 250g room temperature butter, 1 teaspoon vanilla extract and 1 cup of caster sugar until light and fluffy. Then add three eggs, one at a time.

Take your small bowl of cream and eggs and combine them with the dry mixture. At this point you are ready to preheat your oven to 170°C/150°C for a fan forced oven as it will take you a little while to prepare the mandarins. Peel your cooled mandarins, blitz them with a stick blender, strain the juice and carefully remove the seeds before adding the pulp to the cake mixture.

Here is a photo of the completed batter in a lined and grease 23cm springform pan. I then cook the cake for a little over an hour. There is some variance depending on how juicy your mandarins are.

Here is the finished product with a dusting of icing sugar. I can only hope it tastes as good as it smells!

Flourless Chocolate Cake

The lovely Kath decided to host an Easter Barbecue at her abode so I put up my hand to make dessert. I decided to make the Flourless Chocolate Cake from Australian Womens Weekly Bake. Preheat the oven to 180°C/160°C fanforced and then grease and line a 20cm spring form pan. Take a large mixing bowl and blend 1/3 cup cocoa powder with 1/3 cup of water.

Then stir in 150g melted dark chocolate, 150g melted butter, 1 1/3 cups brown sugar, 1 cup of almond or hazelnut meal and four egg yolks. Mix until combined.

In a separate clean bowl beat four egg whites until soft peak form.

Fold the egg whites into the chocolate mixture in two batches.

Pour the mixture into your prepared pan and bake for an hour. When the baking is complete stand the cake for 15 minutes before removing the collar and allowing it to cool completely.

I must apologise for such an unflatting shot of the cake but I assure you it's beautifully fudgy and goes down well with a generous dollop of double cream and berries.

Baklava

The rumoured origins of Baklava lie with the Ottoman empire and like many imperial Byzantine desserts there are no half measures with this dessert. To make the Baklava, I preheated the oven to 180°C and processed 2 cups blanched almonds, 2 cups pistachios, 4 teaspoons ground cinnamon, 2 teaspoon ground cloves and 2 teaspoons ground nutmeg. After these were finely chopped, I lightly roasted them to add aroma.

While the nuts and spices were roasting in the oven I cut my sheets of filo pastry to the size of a shallow baking pan, melted some butter and started to prepare the dish by laying three sheets of filo pastry for the base. Each sheet is lightly brushed with butter, before laying one third of the nut mixture and repeating the process until you finish with the filo pastry on top. So now you should have completed all three layers. Use a sharp knife to cut your tray into even squares and then halve the squares to form triangles. Pop the entire tray into the oven for 20 minutes.

While the Baklava is baking you can prepare the syrup. Place 2 cups of water, 2 cups of caster sugar, 180g honey and 2 teaspoons of rosewater into a saucepan and reduce until the sugar has dissolved the mixture has thickened.

When the Baklava has finished baking, remove it from the oven and pour the syrup over the pastry. The sound of the syrup hitting the pastry is just gorgeous.

Caramelised Apple Teacakes

My cousin Jacqui has invited me to have dinner at her place as it's been a while since we caught up, so I decided make her and Joel some Caramelised Apple Teacakes from Australian Women's Weekly Bake. Here is two peeled and 1 cm sliced granny smith apples, 80g butter and 1/3 cup brown sugar.

I then creamed 125g butter, 1 teaspoon vanilla extract and 2/3 cup caster sugar until it was light and fluffy. Then beat in two eggs, one at a time, before adding 1/2 cup plain flour, 1 1/4 cup self raising flour, 1 teaspoon mixed spice, 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon, 1 cup of buttermilk and a grated granny smith apple.

With the power of the internet, here are some muffin pans I prepared earlier! I found I had enough mixture to make 15 cakes, so spoon your caramelised apples and sauce into the base before popping some cake mixture on the top. Bake for 30 minutes at 180°C, stand for 5 minutes before flipping onto a serving tray.

There is something wonderful about cooked apples and I think these will be divine tomorrow served warm with a little icecream. I love an easy going cake and these Caramelised Apple Teacakes are just so pretty.

Pea and Ham Soup

The Pea and Ham Soup I'm cooking comes from the Australia Women's Weekly cookbook - Cook.

Pea and Ham Soup is such a wonderfully simple thing, 2 cups of dried peas, 1 chopped medium brown onion, 2 stalks of chopped celery, 2 bay leaves, 1.5kg of ham bone, 2.5 litres of water and a teaspoon of cracked black pepper. Bring to a boil and simmer for two hours.

Remove the ham bone to cool, remove the ham from the bone and chop into bite sized pieces. Return the ham to soup and serve. In my case I portioned the soup into containers, ready for the freezer.

I Like Pie!

There is something comforting about pie. It's full of gooey chunks of meat suspended in warm gravy and wrapped in flaky pastry. But pie hasn't always been this wholesome, in fact in the ye olden days the pie crust was close to inedible as designed to be seven inches thick to withstand hours of cooking.

But back to this delicious Beef and Vegetable Pie, which comes from the cookbook, 1000 Best Ever Recipes from AWW. It's one of my favourites as it used cheap gravy beef and a number of vegetables - potato, carrot, zucchini, onion, celery, peas and mushrooms. It makes an excellent freezer friendly meal but the only thing about the recipe is it tends to be a little liquidy. I would recommend thickening the gravy before you pour it into the baking dish.

For the food pornographers, here is a slice of the pie. It's simple, delicious and makes a great rainy day meal.

New York Cheesecake

There are two things I am certain of - Australian Womens Weekly (AWW) Cook Books and New York Cheesecake. So when Mum brought the AWW Cooking School Cookbook in a book sale I was keen to investigate. Like all the modern AWW cookbooks, it comes in a large, hard cover edition with a handy ribbon to mark your favourite recipes. I've also made Sticky Date Pudding recipe from this book and it's delicious. I tend to prefer using brown sugar as opposed to white sugar as it gives a wonderful caramel taste which compliments the dates. But I'm waffling, this entry isn't about Sticky Date Pudding. It's about New York Cheesecake. I decided to make this Cheesecake for the family New Years Day dinner.

Though you can use any sweet biscuit, I used Milk Arrowroot Biscuits. I think this is my favourite part of making the Cheesecake as you feel like a kid in a sandbox again.

After your shell cooks, you can pour in your cream cheese mixture (cream cheese, lemon zest, sugar, eggs, sour cream and lemon juice). This is then baked for one and half hours, before you cool it and pour on a sour cream layer (sour cream, sugar and lemon juice). This topping is then baked for additional 20 minutes, before you leave it to cool in the oven with the door ajar. I recommend leaving the cheesecake overnight as I feel three hours doesn't give it adequate time to set.

New York Cheesecake in its full glory!