Little chocolate and almond cakes

I was craving for a bit of chocolate cake today and whipped this up from scratch. Very happy with it. Light, super moist, crumbly, yummy.

Makes 6 - cupcake size.
120g dark chocolate buttons (I used Callebaut)
65g almond meal
120ml of milk (1/2 cup)
60g castor sugar
60g butter - chopped
1 XL egg
2 tbsp self raising flour
1 tsp cocoa powder
Pinch of salt
1/4 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp of cinnamon powder
Optional: Rasberry or blueberry for decorating.

Preheat oven to 170 deg.
Line muffin tray with baking paper cups.

Melt butter and chocolate on bain marie.
Lightly whisk in 3/4 of the sugar, and all the cinnamon, salt, cocoa powder.

Fold in almond meal and milk progressively in 3 batches.

Fold in SR flour, baking powder.
Separately, whisk egg till very pale yellow and creamy, to aerate the egg as much as possible, slowly adding in remaining sugar after egg turned creamy as you continue whisking.
Fold egg into cake mixture in 2 batches, until well incorporated.
Pour into baking paper cups in muffin tray.
Bake 15 minutes for a slightly goey middle, or 17 minutes for a very moist cake with crispy top.
Rest for at least 30 minutes before serving.

Bon Appetite!

Lemon & Lime Curd Tart

This is a Masterchef website recipe, tested with a 41/2 star rating. I like it because of its simple tart shell recipe and the lemon curd recipe seems right too. Have yet to test it for myself though.

Canola cooking spray oil

¾ cup desiccated coconut
¼ cup caster sugar
1 egg white
100g butter
½ cup lemon juice
½ cup caster sugar
1 egg
3 egg yolks
Coulis

1 punnet raspberries
2 tablespoons caster sugar

Sugar Raspeberries

½ cup raspberries
1 egg white
2 tablespoons caster sugar

 

1. Preheat oven to 150'C. Grease four 7cm non-stick loose base fluted tart tins.

2. Combine coconut, sugar and egg white in a bowl and mix to combine.

3. Press mixture into prepared tins and bake for 20 minutes or until golden. Remove and cool for 10 minutes.

4. Place butter and juice into a medium sauce pan over a low heat and gently mix until butter has melted.

5. Whisk together sugar, egg and egg yolks in a jug and gradually whisk into butter mixture. Stir continuously over a low heat for 4-5 minutes or until mixture begins to thicken. Divide mixture among cooked tart cases and refrigerate to cool.

6. For coulis, puree raspberries and sugar in the chopper attachment of a stick blender until smooth.

7. Brush raspberries with egg white and sprinkle with caster sugar.

8. Dress tarts with sugared raspberries and serve with raspberry coulis.

Bon Appetite!

Lemon Curd, Buffalo Mozarella and Toasted Sesame Seeds Tart

If have ready made frozen puff pastry and lemon curd:
- Prep and cooking time: 30 minutes
If have ready made frozen puff pastry but making lemon curd from scratch:
- Prep and cooking time: 1 hour.

Serves 6
2 pieces ready made puff pastry ( I used Pampas).
120g fresh/buffalo mozarella - sliced thin (about 5 mm thick)
About 20g toasted sesame (small handful)
+ Lemon Curd ingredients
Juice of 2 Myer lemons (about 100ml)
90g butter - diced
80g sugar
3 L eggs (or 2 yolks plus 1 XL egg).

Preheat oven 180 deg.

1. Melt butter and sugar on medium heat on a small pot, add lemon juice, stir.
2. Remove pot from heat (for about 1 minute). Otherwise, eggs will scramble a bit as it hits super hot liquid.
3. Meanwhile keep heat on, place trivet. (Trivet makes it easier, less likely for egg to scramble. If you dont have a trivet, never mind, just stir more continuosly!)
4. Place pot on trivet and start adding egg one by one, continuosly stirring and whisking until egg is well combined into the mixture.
5. Continue stirring and whisking until thickens to curd consistency (this should take about 30-40 minutes). It is okay to take your eyes off the pot and stop whisking now and then to attend to other tasks, but do not leave unstirred/unwhisked for more than 1 minute at a time.  Set aside when cooked.
6. While lemon curd is cooking, take pastry out of freezer to thaw. Usually takes about 10-15 minutes in winter, or 5 minutes in summer. Once pastry becomes soft and pliable it is ready. Arrange pastry to fully cover tart tin (25cm).
7. Poke holes evenly on pastry and blind bake. Follow instructions on pastry pack for blind baking. (10 minutes is about enough).
8. When baked pastry is cooled, spread lemon curd evenly onto pastry.
9. Arranged the mozarella pieces, on top of the lemon curd.
10. Sprinkle toasted sesame seed all over mozarella cheese.
11. Bake in oven for 5-7 minutes until cheese has melted.
12. Remove from oven, sprinkle pinchful of cinnamon powder all over tart.

Serve warm.

Note: Fresh Vanilla beans or cinnamon powder can be added onto lemon curd for a more fragrant curd.

Bon Appetite!

Slow cooked beef in red wine with mash potatoes and yorkshire pudding

This recipe is just for the slow cooked beef. The recipe for yorkshire pudding is labelled under "cakes and pastries".

This is not hard to make, the prep work is just a bit time consuming. Best cooked over 2 days, to allow the beef to marinate overnight in red wine. I have divided up the recipe into 2 parts, i.e for day 1 and for day 2.

Day 1 - 1/2 hour prepping and marinating beef .
Day 2 - 40 minutes prepping, 3 hours for slow cooking beef.
I took about 6 hours altogether for Day 2, to make a whole meal of :-
- red wine beef stew,
- yorkshire pudding,
- mashed potatoes,
- 2 types of sousvide greens :-)
(1. fennel with crushed toasted mustard seed, olive oil, orange juice, zest of 1 orange and zest of 1/2 a lemon), 1 tsp of honey, salt and pepper.
2. green bak choy with slightly burnt garlic, olive oil, Braggs soy sauce, 1/4 tsp of sugar), and
- a dessert (puff pastry tart of lemon curd and melted buffalo mozarella, with toasted sesame seeds)

For 5p

DAY 1
1.2 kg of gravy beef or chuck steak or wagyu beef cheeks
Beef Marinade
1/2 bottle of red wine (500ml)
A handful of herbs (e.g 1 sprig of rosemary OR bunch of thyme, AND 3 bay leaves)
Pinch of salt (1/2 tsp)
Pinch of cracked pepper (1/2 tsp)
Swirl of olive oil (1 tbsp)

Remove any "fat" or "membrane" from the beef.
Cut the beef to slightly larger than 2 x 1 inch. It will melt and reduce in size when cooking.
Put beef into a large mixing bowl.
Add all the beef marinade ingredients except the red wine, and gently massage it into the beef.
Pour marinated beef into a 1 gallon ziplock bag.
Pour red wine into the ziplock bag.
Try and press out all the air before zipping the bag.
Leave in fridge to marinate overnight.

DAY 2 - steps written in order of prep and cooking
Preheat oven to 150 deg (fan force)

Remove marinated beef from fridge.
Use thongs to pick up the pieces of beef and place on a strainer, sitting on top of a plate. This is to "dry" the beef so that it will brown and crisp up with flour when searing.
Pour marinate juice from the ziplock bag and those collected at the bottom of the plate, into a pot and boil to burn off the alcohol. Skim and throw away the layer of "foam" that bubbles up. Set aside the red wine.
You can pat dry with paper towel but will waste all the marinate juice.

While beef is dripping dry, prep the rest below.

Other ingredients
1 1/2 large pieces of bacon (or speck) - about 200g
3 spanish onion or 6 shallots - peeled and finely diced
3 cloves of garlic - peeled, crushed and chopped
1 stalk of celery - finely diced
3 carrots - peeled and finely diced.
Herb and Spice Bouquet garni (1 small sprig of rosemary, 6 bay leaves, 1/2 stick cinnamon, 1 star anise)
A bunch of parsley, chopped.
2 tbsp of flour - spread over a large plate - for coating beef before searing.
Olive oil - 1 tbsp.
1 tsp salt
1 cup of beef stock.
1 cup of red wine.
About 20 button mushroom - cleaned, left whole.
About 25g of butter (the French would put 50g if not more!)
About 15g of chopped dark chocolate

Chop up bacon.
Fry the bacon in medium heat in a good cast iron stew pot e.g. Le Creuset/Chasseur etc, till golden brown/most fat rendered. Everything else after this step will be cooked in the same pot - more layering of flavours, less washing up !
Remove fried bacon - set aside.
Keep heat on. Add olive oil.

Prepare for searing beef.
By now, the beef should be pretty drip dried. Divide for searing in 2 batches. Do not pile up all the beef on top of each other in one big batch or it would end up braising in its own juice instead of browning.
One by one lightly powder the pieces of beef with flour, and sear evenly on both sides till golden brown, sprinkling a pinch of salt all over the beef for seasoning in the process.
When beef are seared, remove beef onto a bowl/plate and set aside. Keep heat on the pot.
Into the pot, add  the garlic and onions, sautee/sweat, then add carrots and celery, saute/sweat (about 1 or 2 minutes).
Add the bouquet garni and half the parsley. Pour in red wine and deglaze pot/burnt alcohol off.
Return the seared beef and juices that oozed out back into the pot.
Make sure there are enough liquids to just cover the beef, if not add a little beef stock.
Cut aluminium foil into round shape - slightly bigger than the circumference of the pot by about 1 cm.
Gently depressed foil to sit just on top of the ingredients and cover it, there will be a bit extra sticking up the sides of the inside of the pot - covering with the foil helps to prevent burning while slow cooking in the oven.
Cook in preheated oven for 2 hours.
After 2 hours, remove pot from oven. Set aside foil. Give it a gentle stir to prevent/remove sticking ingredients.
Add the mushrooms and remaining stock, making sure meat just covered by liquid.
Cover with foil again.
Return to oven, cook for 1 more hour.
Remove from oven and heat.
Let it rest and cool for about 1 hour - to allow excess oil to separate for easy removal.
Remove foil.
Slowly remove excess oil from the pot using a spoon. (I removed almost 1 cup of oil). Put oil and keep in fridge for use another day - this beef "dripping" is great to simply stir through noodles/pasta for a easy lunch! I used some to make the yorkshire pudding as well)
Reheat pot on low heat, add butter and dark chocolate, and stir through to melt and combine.
Just before serving, sprinkle the remaining parsley onto beef.
Serve on top of mash potatoes.

Bon Appetite!

Yorkshire Pudding

I had no intention of making this when I started to roast beef today. But as I was looking at recipes for roast beef, the recipe for yorkshire pudding was there and it had so few ingredients and was easy. And its a perfect complement to roast beef as I can bake it while the beef is resting, and it will be cooked and still warm by the time dinner is served! So, before I knew it I was on the way to making it. I looked up more yorkshire pudding recipes to get a better understanding - Encyclopedia and Food of Cookery (Margaret Fulton), In the Kitchen (Allan Campion and Michele Curtis), The Butcher (Leanne Kitchen).

The resulting yorkshire pudding I made had crispy skin, and moist, light, fluffy and tasty on the inside.

Makes 6 (double the volume if for 12)
1 cup self raising cakeflour (125g)
Less than 1 cup milk (roughly 200ml)
A pinch of salt
1XL large egg
A tbsp of olive oil for the batter
A full tsp of olive oil for each of the muffin holes
1/3 tsp cream of tartar

Preheat oven to 210C (fan force)

Batter
Whisk egg till bubbly, then add cream of tartar and continue whisking till creamy and pale yellow.
Gently drizzle milk around edges of whisked eggs and fold gently. 
Repeat same with the olive oil.
Then sift 1/3 flour and salt, and fold, then another 1/3 and fold and finally, the balance till well combined.

Baking
Pour olive oil into muffin moulds
Heat in preheated oven for 5-6 minutes.
Remove from oven. Pour the batter into moulds - roughly each about 2/3 full.
Bake in oven for 15-16 minutes till golden brown.
Puddings will rise and puff up.

Use a tsp to lift muffins from the hot mould. Place a paper towel on top of wire rack, and place the puddings on it, to soak up any excess oil off the puddings.

I wished I had taken the pictures, they looked pretty good.

Tip: As I tasted my puddings and its teture, I can't help but imagined making yorkshire puddings for dessert or tea i.e. as sweet puddings using this method. Next time, I will add sugar and cinnamon, and then coat with cinnamon when cooked - it may taste as good if not even better than cinnamon doughnuts! And when bananas are cheap again, to add some bananas in as well! And for an indulging dessert, to have it with good vanilla bean ice cream.

Bon Appetite!

Apple Frangipani Tart

Andrew's sister and family from Melbourne are in Sydney for a visit. I made this tart for 12 people for the dinner which we had tonite at his parent's place. I researched a few recipes for frangipani filling, including that of Guillame Brahimi's, Nick Nairn's and Allison Thompson's. The shortcrust pastry is essentially adapted from Maggie Beer's pastry recipe which I love, it has a lovely crumbly melt in the mouth texture, simple to make. I have adapted all these recipes essentially reducing sugar, and substituting some butter and fat content (for eg extra egg yolks) with yoghurt. The tart was well liked and I am very happy about it. The frangipani texture was nice and moist without being overwhelmingly buttery rich as is sold in most cafes.

Ingredients - 12p
Shortcrust Pastry
250g flour
150g butter
125g sour cream (about 1/2 cup)
A pinch of salt
Frangipani Filling
225g of almond meal
150g butter
4 eggs
25g flour
1/2 cup of vanilla bean yoghurt
110g castor sugar
1 tsp of seasalt
2 tbsp of contreau
Apple topping
2 pink lady apples, sliced thinly
30g castor sugar
2 tsp ground nutmeg
2 tsp of ground cinnamon

Preheat oven to 200 deg (fan force)

Pastry
Put the flour and butter and 1/2 of the sour cream into a food processor.
Pulse until light breadcrumb texture.
Add remaining sour cream and pulse till mixture comes together in few clumps (you will know it is ready, when it starts to come off the sides of the processor).
Lay a large sheet of cling film on clean table.
Pour the mixture onto the cling film, and lightly knead to form a rectangle. Dont overwork the dough if you want a light crumbly texture pastry.
Wrap the mixture and rest in fridge for 20 minutes.
Once rested, rub some flour onto large rolling pin and kneading surface, and roll pastry in one direction, about 2mm thick.
Pastry should be large enough to fill tart dish and overflowing on sides by at least 1 cm extra, to allow for shrinkage.
Using the rolling pin, lift the pastry, and work into tart dish.
Using a fork, prick all over the top of the pastry ( this tiny holes helps to prevent "bubbles" forming as the pastry is being baked).
Cover the top of pastry with baking paper, and fill top of baking paper with either baking beads or rice. (to stop it from rising).
Bake for 10-12 minutes.
Take out of oven, remove baking beads/rice and baking paper. Bake for another 5 minutes. (till slightly golden).
Set aside.
Reduce oven temperature to 170deg.

Frangipani filing
Cut butter into squares and place into a hot bowl (place in toaster oven at say 120deg for 10 minutes). The heat will melt the butter gently. Leave to cool.
Mix almond meal, flour, sea salt and 30g of the sugar in a large mixing bowl.
Whisk eggs till creamy and very pale yellow, adding in remaining sugar, slowly and progressively.
Add butter, yoghurt, contreau and then finally egg mixture into flour mixture, and fold till combined.
Spread the mixture evenly onto pastry.

Apples
Peel the apples.
Cut the apples in halve and soak in salted water (to prevent from browning/oxidation)
Thinly sliced the apples.
Dip apples into sugar, nutmeg and cinnamon mix.
Lay apples, slightly overlapping each other, on top of frangipani mixture. Press the apples down into the mixture, without submerging them.

Cut a long thin strip of aluminium foil and cover the sides of the pastry, to prevent it from burning.

Bake at 170 for 40 minutes. Then turn off heat, leave in oven for 5 minutes.

Sprinkle cinnamon powder all over top of apples while semi warm.

Leave to rest at least 30 minutes, preferably 1 hour, before slicing and serving.

Its delicious on its own, but can also be served with cream or vanilla ice-cream.

Note:
In Maggie Beer's pastry recipe, she would use 200g butter, you will have a very rich buttery pastry. I find 150g is good enough for a nice crumbly pastry.

Bon Appetite!

Tiramisu

 

I made this today for Andrew's sister's son, Alex's 18th birthday dinner party. The theme of the party was "Little Italy".  I adapted a recipe from the "Italian Food Safari".  The tiramisu turned out to be nicely creamy but yet light in texture. Everyone at the dinner party, liked it. I am not a fan of rich tiramisu, and I must say even I liked this one. :-). Very happy indeed with it.

Ingredients - Serves 10-12p
3 egg yolks
40g caster sugar
500g mascarpone
50ml Masala
1 tsp whisky
30 savoiardi biscuits
1 large hot coffee
4 tbsp organic cocoa
4 tbsp freshly ground coffee
Zest of 1 orange
50g hazelnut chocolate, grated finely (dark chocolate preferred, but I ran out of it today).

Italian meringue
45ml water
110g caster sugar
125ml egg whites (whites of 4 large eggs)

Place the egg yolks and caster sugar in a mixing bowl, and whisk on high speed until pale to almost white and fluffy. Add the mascarpone and, on a medium speed, whisk until it starts to thicken but smooth. Be sure not to overmix as you may split the mascarpone.

Add the liqueurs and mix until just combined. (You may adjust the quantity of liqueur according to personal taste.)  Place to one side and make the Italian meringue.

Add the water to a clean, grease-free saucepan, then slowly add the sugar, making sure that all the grains get wet. Place over a medium heat and bring to soft ball stage.  ( you can see lots of "bubbles" at this stage)

Making sure that your mixing bowl is completely grease-free, add in your egg whites and whisk on high speed until white and fluffy. As your egg whites reach medium peak, start to slowly add your hot sugar. Do not add sugar any sooner. ( A chef told me this would not overcook the egg whites, the sugar can go up to 120 deg and the egg whites would be fine). Once all the sugar has been added, continue to whisk until the Italian meringue has completely cooled. It would have stiffened such that when you turn the bowl upside down, the meringue would not fall. The meringue would start to look nice and glossy by this stage. Italian meringues are very stable and hold its form for a long time. Note: Use castor sugar otherwise you may get a grainy meringue instead of a smooth one.

Take your Italian meringue, and carefully fold into the mascarpone mix. Feel the mix "airing" as you fold. Taste and adjust the amount of liqueur if necessary.

Take your sponge finger biscuits, and soak in the coffee (add with 20ml of the masala) quickly, one at a time. Give the biscuits a light squeeze to remove any excess coffee. (Do not soak the biscuits all the way through.  There should still be a little portion in the middle that has not been soaked in the coffee so that there is still a little texture to the bite.)

Line the bottom of a serving dish packed with the biscuits. (I used a large pyrex round bowl, as I wanted the lid to cover for "transporting" the tiramisu). Sprinkle the top of the biscuits with cocoa evenly.

Using a large spatula, spoon in 1/2 of the mascarpone mix and level. Sprinkle with the ground coffee evenly.

Add another layer of coffee-soaked sponge finger biscuits.  Sprinkle again cocoa. Spoon in remaining mascarpone mix and level.

Cover the bowl tightly with cling film. Place in the fridge, and allow the tiramisu to become firm enough to cut, minimum 4 hours. ( I was told it is even better if left overnight to allow the flavours to develop)

Just before serving, sprinkle evenly with orange zest, then grated hazelnut chocolate and finally, the freshly ground coffee.

Note: In future, I will add lemon zest to the mascaporne/meringue filling. And try using sambuca/strega instead of masala.

Tip: For achieving light meringue and mascaporne mix, use stainless steel mixing bowls. Or glass, but not plastic. The steel bowls helps the "airation" process.
Bon Appetite!