In the last few weeks I started my new big kid job. I also bought a car and moved out of my temporary living space
(aka my parents house) and into a new flat.
Read More
Asparagus, Feta and Pesto Tart
I don't ever want to see pastry again. Sweet nor savoury. At least not for a good month or so anyway.
Read More
Caramelised Onion and Feta Tart
When I first made this tart it was one of the first times I had used my food processor to make pastry. It was a dream to make and my mind was blown at how great the result was.
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Chocolate and Hazelnut Brioche Scrolls
I am practicing my brioche making skills.
Last weekend a handsome young man took me to get chocolate brioche at the farmers market. It was glorious. Why we only got one I do not know.
Read MoreBlueberry and Frangipane Tart
What a terrible blogger I've been. It has almost been a month since I last wrote here even though it seems like I have been baking every day! I feel like such a bad person. I kinda wish I hadn't been baking within that last month (I dread the day I have to put my skinny jeans back on).
Wow so much has happened since I last posted here. I had an early 21st Mexican fiesta birthday party back home! Which was awesome. The photos are on my instagram feed :). What else, oh I moved back to Dunedin back into my wee little flat. Lucy and I got a new flatmate; Alex, to replace Alix who moved up to Auckland. Just to clarify, this Alex is male. You never know with the name Alex. Oh and I turned 21! Yay me for surviving childhood illness in this hardship that is the 1st world. Slash yay me for not screwing up so far. My parents can proudly call me a success and no longer have to take the bad parenting blame for anything dumb I do now. But most exciting were the arrival of my two new babies.
For a whole week before my birthday there were these two HUGE gift wrapped and bowed boxes
sitting in the corner of our tiny lounge.
Then on my birthday two glorious machines emerged! My 21st presents from my family and family friends were a beautiful Kitchenaid stand mixer and its (almost) matching Kitchenaid food processor. Holy mackerel! They are beautiful. Wonderful. To die for. Amazing! They are brilliant. I have named my cake mixer Nigella (because she is a goddess) and my processor Annabel (it was going to be a Jamie but I have trust issues with Jamie recipes at the moment).
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| Annabel |
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| Nigella |
Seriously, who needs a man when you have two perfectly smooth, stunning, robust, high quality kitchen appliances in your life? They do the job and they do it well. They don't complain and they are forever reliable. So. Much. Great.
Anyway since receiving these beautiful machines I have been baking and processing almost everyday. I think my flatmates need to stage an intervention on the baking front. Pretty sure I will be obese in no time.
Do you remember that Little and Friday cookbook I got for Christmas? I made the wee banana cakes from it about two months back. Ever since I got it I have been wanting to make one of the beautiful tarts they have pictured. The only problem is that you had to make pastry, then the frangipane then the creme patisserie and so on and so forth. The recipes were tricky and bitsy.
But! Now that I have my beautiful toys making these tarts (and finally using the tart dishes I bought) was be a dream.
I managed to find some cheap blueberries ($2.49 a punnet!) at Vege Boys and I wanted to use them in something special. Blueberries are still a treat food for me and I feel like their glory is wasted when they are just thrown into a smoothie or sprinkled over yoghurt.
Now what better way to celebrate the wonder that is the humble blueberry that by placing it on a pedestal of vanilla bean and lemon pastry, a layer of delicious frangipane as well as cushioning each and every berry with the soft caress of creme patisserie. Ok I got a little carried away there. . .
I adapted this recipe from the Little and Friday book (Treats From Little and Friday). I started off thinking I was going to make six small tarts. I was going to line all six of my small tart tins then freeze four of them and only bake the other two. Since Lucy is away this weekend it seemed silly to have an abundance of tart in the house.
I made this pastry up yesterday in my food processor and left it wrapped up in the fridge overnight. When I went to go roll it out (after softening it in the microwave for 20 seconds) I realised that I had far too much pastry and that the recipe I used was whack as crack when it said it would do for 6 small tart cases. I ended up lining my long rectangular tart tin as well as 10 small muffin holes for when I need to make mini pecan pies next. Its not a problem at all, its actually a good thing. It saves time in the future. It makes access to tarts far more . . well accessible.
So I am saving the small individual tarts for another day and instead using my long rectangular one. Winning!
This was definitely a learning process for me so along the way i'll point out mistakes to avoid and things to remember! :)
Also, you can buy food processors from Kmart for $59. I'm not sure what they would be like but I bet they would do the job for pastry.
Blueberry and Frangipane Tart
Makes one long rectangular sized tart
Loosely adapted from Treats from Little and Friday by Kim Evans
You will need 2 punnets of whatever berry fruit you desire. I would avoid strawberries though, they have too high a water content and would turn to mush on top of the tarts. I recommend raspberries and blueberries.
For the vanilla bean and lemon pastry (of which there will be plenty left over to line around eight or nine small tart cases):
2 3/4 cups plain flour
1 cup icing sugar
250g butter
1 large egg
3 teaspoons of lemon juice (about the juice of half a lemon)
zest of one lemon
1 teaspoon vanilla essence or 1/2 teaspoon vanilla bean paste
In a food processor (buy, borrow or steal yourself one), pulse together the flour, icing sugar and lemon zest. This is to mix it together and to aerate it. Add the butter in cubes and pulse until the mixture looks like fine golden sand. Add the egg, juice and vanilla and pulse until the mixture comes together. It will look dry and crumbly but trust me, it does come together. Turn the dough onto a floured bench and bring it together into a smooth ball. Flatten the ball into a disc then wrap in glad wrap and refrigerate for at least two hours. Apparently this pastry can be kept in the fridge for up to two weeks. Or if you aren't going to use it all at once, do what I did and line spare tart tins. Wrap them in glad wrap then pop them in the freezer. When you go to use them you don't need to thaw them, just fill them and bake!
To line your tins, roll the pastry out onto a floured bench until it is about 3mm thick. Try spraying the top of the pastry lightly with cooking spray to stop the pastry sticking to the rolling pin. If you are making the rectangle shaped tart roll the pastry out until it is about 4 cm larger on each side than the tart tin. Drape the pastry over the tin and gently press the pastry into the corners of the tin with your fingers. Use large cooks knife to trim the edges. Prick the base with a fork and then return to the freezer while you preheat the oven (about 30 minutes).
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| Press the pastry into the tin gently with your fingers |
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| You don't have to wrap it in gladwrap if you are going to use it that day. At the time of wrapping I still thought I was going to make the small ones. |
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| Dock your pastry with a fork |
For the frangipane (enough for just the rectangular tart or six small tarts i.e. about a cup and a half):
62g butter, softened
1/4 cup + 2 tablespoons caster sugar
1 large egg
3/4 cup ground almonds
1 1/2 teaspoons plain flour
Cream together the butter and sugar. When light and fluffy, add in the egg and beat until voluminous and airy. Add the almonds and flour and stir until combined.
For the creme patisserie (enough for just the rectangular tart or six small tarts i.e. about a cup and a half):
250 ml (1 cup) milk (trim or full fat it doesn't matter)
1/4 cup caster sugar
4 teaspoons plain flour
1/2 teaspoon vanilla bean paste
2 egg yolks (from small eggs)
Beat together the sugar, egg yolks and vanilla until thick and pale. Add the flour and beat until thick. In a medium sized saucepan (don't use a small one like I did!), bring the milk to a simmer whilst stirring so it doesn't burn on the bottom. Whilst beating the egg mixture start carefully pouring the hot milk into the mixing bowl making sure the addition is gradual. Beat until all the milk has been added and there are no lumpy bits at the bottom of the bowl. Return this mixture to the saucepan. Heat the custard whilst quickly whisking until just before boiling point (Ie a trembling simmer). If you heat the custard mixture to beyond boiling point it totally collapses and the egg curdles and it becomes a total unusable disaster. Don't do this. Thankfully we had enough milk in the fridge for me to start again. Take it off the heat immediately and pour into a clean bowl. Leave to cool before using. you should see it become nice and thick as soon as you take it off the heat. Check out this video to see if you are doing it right.
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| Heat the milk (in a much larger saucepan than this!) |
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| In a bowl, beat your eggs, sugar, vanilla and flour until thick and pale. Then gradually pour in the hot milk. Beat this until everything is mixed in then return to the saucepan. |
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| Whisk until just until it starts boiling. No later! |
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| It should start thickening as soon as you take it off the heat. Don't be tempted whatsoever to keep it cooking. |
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| If you leave it to boil too long it will end up looking like this. |
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| If in doubt, google!! |
To assemble the tarts:
Preheat the oven to 180 degrees on bake. Place a baking tray in the oven to also preheat. You will put the tart on this and it will enable a crispier base.
Spread the frangipane over the base of the tart. Then spread the creme patisserie over the top of that. Top the tart with the berries. Bake for 30 minutes or until pastry is golden.
Leave the tart to cool before removing from the tin.
To serve, dust with icing sugar and some long strips of lemon zest.
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| On goes the frangipane |
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| Then the creme patissiere |
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| Then the fruit :) |
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| Place it on the preheated baking tray |
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| and voila! |
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| So. Much. Great. |
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| Prepare for your friends to weep when you serve them up a slice. |
Enjoy!
xx
Baby Banana and Caramel Cakes with Vanilla Bean Cream Cheese Icing
I tried to explain to my parents that baking Jack banana cakes was a sibling bonding activity and that they should appreciate the fact that we don't fight and hate each other and therefore is totally necessary.
They bought it.
Yuss another baking escapade completed without too much parental hate. Having me in the house is like living in a bakery. You get chubs. There is always cake or something delicious around to munch on. I think they enjoy it when I leave. Wait, there is no 'I think' about it. I know they love to see me hop on that plane to Dunedin where they don't have to see/live with me for months at a time.
Anyway Jack and his friend Will (Hi Will!) were going to the gym together and they needed post gym nutrition. I don't know where they got the idea that banana cake was a good option for post exercise sustenance but regardless, I was going to be the source of this cake.
Ever since receiving my Treats from Little and Friday book for Christmas I have been wanting to try something out.
The problem with this book, whilst it looks beautiful, all the recipes have hideous quantities of ingredients and last time I checked I didn't have my body weight of eggs and chocolate lying around the house. The same with the ground nuts that are required for a few of the cakes. Seriously, who can afford 4 cups of ground hazelnuts for a spot of afternoon treat baking?
The one small cake recipe that wasn't atrociously expensive to make was the mini banana cakes. They used the recipe from the Edmonds cookbook but frilled it up with a few lashing and dashings of cream cheese icing, mascarpone and caramel.
It said it would make 12 small texan muffin pan sized cakes.
Negative.
It said to use a texas muffin tin that had the sides lined up with baking paper so that the cakes could be made quite tall. I ended up making 6 smallish texas sized ones (I didn't know how far to fill them so a erred on the side of caution) and used some of the left over batter to make 3 small baby bundt ones. The batter definitely wouldn't have made 12 large ones. Awkward.
The next weridity was the amount of mashed banana the recipe required. Your standard banana cake recipe calls for around about 3 ripe bananas.
Haha but not this one.
It called for three CUPS of mashed banana. I mashed up four bananas and that only achieved one and a half cups. Who has eight bananas lying around for SIX wee cakes. I am hoping it was a typo. I only added four bananas worth. You could probably increase this to five bananas and that would make it quite moist but also a wee bit on the dense side.
I don't know about you but I am all into simple methods. Methods that are minimalist on the word front because seriously who can be bothered reading methods when there is cake to be had! The method for these had a crazy number of steps (one of which was to sift the flour into a separate bowl - uuuh extra dishes anyone?). So here I am going to condense all these steps into a more manageable and easy to read format.
The caramel I used was from a tin of condensed milk that I had boiled away (in the sealed tin!) for three hours rather than boiling sugar and cream etc for which you need a candy thermometer (which I don't). I boil up around three tins at a time and then keep them in the cupboard for when we need it.We also didn't happen to have any mascarpone in the fridge so I left that out too.
I think it is cake time.
Individual Banana Cakes with Caramel and Vanilla Bean Cream Cheese Icing
Adapted from Treats from and Little and Friday
Makes 8
125g butter, softened
3/4 cup caster sugar
2 large eggs
5 very ripe bananas, mashed
2 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
4 tablespoons hot milk
Cream cheese icing:
30g butter, softened
50g cream cheese
3 cups icing sugar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla bean paste (or one teaspoon vanilla essence)
Preheat the oven to 160 degrees on bake. Line a texas sized muffin tin with baking paper. Cut a circle for the bottom then a long strip around 25cm long and 10cm wide and place that around the edges of the tins. Make sure the strip is long enough to overlap at the ends when in the tin. It will stand up in a tall cylinder but as you place the cake batter into it it will stretch out and line the edges of the tin exactly.
Cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in the eggs one at a time then continue to beat until fluffy and voluminous.
Beat in the mashed banana.
Dissolve the baking soda in the hot milk.
Gently fold in the milk and sieved flour and baking soda in three equal lots.
Divide the mixture evenly between the tins. If you want really tall cakes then you may only get 6 but the shorter ones may be better if you or your guests aren't very good at tackling huge quantities of sickly sweet food.
Bake for 25-30 minutes or until a skewer comes out clean. Leave to cool before removing from tins and removing baking paper.
To make the cream cheese icing, cream together all the ingredients until light and fluffy.
To assemble the cakes, cut the cakes in half horizontally. You may need to level the tops of the cakes if they have domed substantially. Spread around two teaspoons of caramel over the base of the cakes then follow with a good dollop of the cream cheese icing. To the top layers, spread over the cream cheese icing followed by a small drop of caramel. Place the top halves onto their matching bottoms. Garnish with a slice or two of banana or some banana chips if you wish.
Enjoy! :)
They bought it.
Yuss another baking escapade completed without too much parental hate. Having me in the house is like living in a bakery. You get chubs. There is always cake or something delicious around to munch on. I think they enjoy it when I leave. Wait, there is no 'I think' about it. I know they love to see me hop on that plane to Dunedin where they don't have to see/live with me for months at a time.
Anyway Jack and his friend Will (Hi Will!) were going to the gym together and they needed post gym nutrition. I don't know where they got the idea that banana cake was a good option for post exercise sustenance but regardless, I was going to be the source of this cake.
Ever since receiving my Treats from Little and Friday book for Christmas I have been wanting to try something out.
The problem with this book, whilst it looks beautiful, all the recipes have hideous quantities of ingredients and last time I checked I didn't have my body weight of eggs and chocolate lying around the house. The same with the ground nuts that are required for a few of the cakes. Seriously, who can afford 4 cups of ground hazelnuts for a spot of afternoon treat baking?
The one small cake recipe that wasn't atrociously expensive to make was the mini banana cakes. They used the recipe from the Edmonds cookbook but frilled it up with a few lashing and dashings of cream cheese icing, mascarpone and caramel.
It said it would make 12 small texan muffin pan sized cakes.
Negative.
It said to use a texas muffin tin that had the sides lined up with baking paper so that the cakes could be made quite tall. I ended up making 6 smallish texas sized ones (I didn't know how far to fill them so a erred on the side of caution) and used some of the left over batter to make 3 small baby bundt ones. The batter definitely wouldn't have made 12 large ones. Awkward.
The next weridity was the amount of mashed banana the recipe required. Your standard banana cake recipe calls for around about 3 ripe bananas.
Haha but not this one.
It called for three CUPS of mashed banana. I mashed up four bananas and that only achieved one and a half cups. Who has eight bananas lying around for SIX wee cakes. I am hoping it was a typo. I only added four bananas worth. You could probably increase this to five bananas and that would make it quite moist but also a wee bit on the dense side.
I don't know about you but I am all into simple methods. Methods that are minimalist on the word front because seriously who can be bothered reading methods when there is cake to be had! The method for these had a crazy number of steps (one of which was to sift the flour into a separate bowl - uuuh extra dishes anyone?). So here I am going to condense all these steps into a more manageable and easy to read format.
The caramel I used was from a tin of condensed milk that I had boiled away (in the sealed tin!) for three hours rather than boiling sugar and cream etc for which you need a candy thermometer (which I don't). I boil up around three tins at a time and then keep them in the cupboard for when we need it.We also didn't happen to have any mascarpone in the fridge so I left that out too.
I think it is cake time.
Individual Banana Cakes with Caramel and Vanilla Bean Cream Cheese Icing
Adapted from Treats from and Little and Friday
Makes 8
125g butter, softened
3/4 cup caster sugar
2 large eggs
5 very ripe bananas, mashed
2 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
4 tablespoons hot milk
Cream cheese icing:
30g butter, softened
50g cream cheese
3 cups icing sugar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla bean paste (or one teaspoon vanilla essence)
Preheat the oven to 160 degrees on bake. Line a texas sized muffin tin with baking paper. Cut a circle for the bottom then a long strip around 25cm long and 10cm wide and place that around the edges of the tins. Make sure the strip is long enough to overlap at the ends when in the tin. It will stand up in a tall cylinder but as you place the cake batter into it it will stretch out and line the edges of the tin exactly.
Cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in the eggs one at a time then continue to beat until fluffy and voluminous.
Beat in the mashed banana.
Dissolve the baking soda in the hot milk.
Gently fold in the milk and sieved flour and baking soda in three equal lots.
Divide the mixture evenly between the tins. If you want really tall cakes then you may only get 6 but the shorter ones may be better if you or your guests aren't very good at tackling huge quantities of sickly sweet food.
Bake for 25-30 minutes or until a skewer comes out clean. Leave to cool before removing from tins and removing baking paper.
To make the cream cheese icing, cream together all the ingredients until light and fluffy.
To assemble the cakes, cut the cakes in half horizontally. You may need to level the tops of the cakes if they have domed substantially. Spread around two teaspoons of caramel over the base of the cakes then follow with a good dollop of the cream cheese icing. To the top layers, spread over the cream cheese icing followed by a small drop of caramel. Place the top halves onto their matching bottoms. Garnish with a slice or two of banana or some banana chips if you wish.
Enjoy! :)