White chocolate brownies for Tim's birthday

On Wednesday, it was Tim's birthday.  Tim loves white chocolate, so I wanted to make him a birthday treat containing white chocolate, but which was not too time consuming to make and was portable.

I selected Allyson Gofton's white chocolate brownies from her book, Bake.  She has also published the recipe for the brownies and the white chocolate icing on her website.  These brownies contain white chocolate and pistachios.  I sprinkled my brownies with gold stars instead of extra pistachios, which I thought was more festive and fitting for a birthday.

In the interests of research and review only (so I tell myself), I cut a couple of slivers off the brownies to taste.  These brownies are dense and sweet, as you can imagine from the amount of white chocolate in them, and the pistachios add a lovely crunch.  The white chocolate icing is not strictly necessary, but adds another element of sweetness to the brownies.

Happy birthday Tim!

Florentine Slice

I love Florentine biscuits, but they can be rather fiddly to make.  For this reason, I was pretty excited when I found a recipe for Florentine Slice on Alice in Bakingland.  It is really simple - the slice is made all in one bowl (except for melting the chocolate), and is simply a matter of mixing cornflakes and condensed milk with nuts and fruits, baking, cooling and topping with melted chocolate.  Easy peasy!

The recipe (with my adaptations) is as follows:

400g can sweetened condensed milk
1/2 cup sultanas
1/2 cup chopped Medjool dates
70g slivered almonds
1 cup toasted blanched almonds
½ cup diced dried prunes
½ cup chopped glace cherries
3 ½ cups cornflakes
200g roughly chopped dark chocolate
 
Preheat your oven to 180 °C.  Grease and line a slice tin (mine is roughly 20cm x 30cm).

Place everything except the chocolate into a large bowl and combine well.

Press mixture into the prepared slice tin and bake for 20-25 minutes or until golden brown.  Remove the slice form the oven and cool in the tin on a wire rack then chill it in the fridge until cold.

Melt the chocolate  and spread evenly over the top of the slice.  Return the slice to the fridge and chill it until the chocolate is set.

Cut the slice into squares and store in the fridge. 

Caramel Speculoos Blondies

Over the Anzac Day long weekend (created by taking Friday off as well as the official Thursday holiday), my family and I travelled to Adelaide for a mini break.  My favourite part of that trip was going to Hahndorf, an originally German settlement in the Adelaide hills.  Hahndorf is very beautiful at this time of year with the autumn leaves all yellow and red, and it has been kept cute-sy and touristy to attract visitors.

While in Hahndorf, at the Bavarian deli, I spied what is a very difficult to obtain product here - Speculoos spread (known as Biscoff spread in the US).  I had seen the mania over this product in the blogging world, and I was keen to get my hands on some.  I had tried a Speculoos chocolate bar from Trader Joes when I was in the US last year, but the Speculoos spread had eluded me until now.

Speculoos spread has a similar appearance and consistency to peanut paste, but it tastes of the spicy biscuits from which it is made.  It is rather thick and cloying in the mouth, like peanut butter, so while I am glad to have tried it, it is not a favourite of mine.

To ensure that I don't fall into the trap of eating the Speculoos spread all from the jar (although it tastes very nice on a warm crumpet), I decided to make Caramel Speculoos Blondies.  You can find the recipe that I used here.

I didn't put the soft caramels on top of my blondies, but these were not necessary, as the brown sugar makes the blondies very caramel-like without any help.  These blondies had a chewy quality to them - which didn't surprise me, as the batter was very thick. The verdict at work was that these blondies are rather good.  Though only one person commented on them, the fact that the blondies all disappeared speaks for itself.

In closing, I want to congratulate my friend Craig, who became an Australian citizen on Thursday night:

This lovely photo is courtesy of my friend Steve.  I was firmly wedged into a row of seats, replete with paper Australian flags, so I couldn't really get up to take photos.  Congratulations Craig!!!!!

Liquorice allsort slice

Do you ever have projects that you put off forever, and then when you finally get around to them, they disappoint you somehow?  This liquorice allsort slice was one of those projects for me.  I spied the recipe in The Country Show Cookbook, but cannot remember the number of packets of liquorice allsorts I purchased in anticpation of making this slice, then ate them without doing so.

Last night, I finally made the slice, but alas - all did not go to plan.  First, my liquorice allsorts were not all the coloured square kind - there were also bits of licorice twist and the licorice balls with hundreds and thousands attached.  No matter, I thought, I will use all of it.  Next, I realised that what I thought was a baked slice was in fact a refrigerator slice.  My next nasty surpise was that I needed a lot of crushed biscuits to make it, so I had to scrounge around my cupboard for what I had (in the end, a combination of shortbread and gingernuts).  My next discovery was that I was supposed to add copha (vegetable shortening) to the chocolate topping - I didn't have any of that either.  No matter, I thought, I will leave it out and use straight chocolate.  Finally, as I was making the recipe, I realised that an entire step had been left out of the recipe in the book - sure, I could guess what it was, but it would have been nice for it to be printed.

The end result reflected the shemozzle that the whole exercise had been - my slice didn't seem to set firmly, and I am not sure what it was.  Didn't I use enough biscuits?  Or were the butter shortbreads not quite right for a recipe that originally called for the very sturdy Marie biscuits?  I tasted a piece of the gooey confection, and immediately fell in love.  From that moment on, I knew I couldn't throw it out, but  I couldn't take it to work in its present condition.

My light bulb moment was this - I flipped the slice over, so that the sturdy chocolate topping formed the base, and the sticky base formed the top of the slice.  I then liberally sprinkled the slice with coconut so that although sticky, it could be picked up without getting covered in goo.  Problem solved!

I found a very similar recipe online here at Taste.com, but I notice it uses about half the condensed milk.  Methinks that the recipe I used is flawed in the amount of condensed milk cited, as there is not enough dry ingredients to hold it together. 

If you are a liquorice lover, I say go ahead and make this slice, but use the Taste.com recipe so that you don't have to do the same patch job that I did.

Chester squares

Have you ever had leftover fruit cake that you are at a loss what to do with?  I always make a Christmas cake and end up with heaps leftover, which sits sad and neglected in a dark corner of my cupboard.  Given that fruit cake is not cheap to make, you don't want to throw it away.  Today, I have one solution for what to do with that stale fruit cake - the Chester Square!

Chester squares are a memory from my childhood.  Certain bakeries in my regional hometown made Chester squares, which were pieces of shortcrust pastry filled with a pitch black filling made of treacle and crumbled stale cake, and topped with bright pink buttercream icing.  I haven't seen them anywhere else - perhaps making Chester squares is a "country" habit?

Alas, I have not yet found a recipe for Chester squares that gives me the same aesthetic result or quite the same flavour, but I have found an alternative that uses golden syrup.  I used this recipe for the pastry and this recipe for the filling, and made it in a 20cm by 30cm slice (bar) tin.  Instead of sugaring the top of my Chester squares, I iced them with lemon icing - not quite the pink buttercream of my childhood, but close enough.

The end result, as I mentioned, is not the soft squidgy black cake of my memory, but it is still pretty good.  Although it is a bit of a faff to make, it's a great way to serve fruit cake in a different way if it has gone stale or you are just sick of fruit cake.

Easter egg brownies

Unbelievably, I still have a few Easter chocolates in the house.  No wanting to waste them, I decided to make Lorraine's Easter egg brownies. 

I had an issue with some of the butter seeming to separate out and form a liquid layer on top during baking, but I poured it off and kept baking, and the brownies seemed fine.

Verdict - extreme chocolate experience, but ultimately delicious.

Caramel apple streusel cheesecake bars

When I was in San Franciso, I tried caramel apple cheescake from the cheesecake factory.  It has now given me a taste for this delicious flavour combination.

Accordingly, when I saw a recipe for caramel apple cheesecake bars with streusel topping on Tracey's Culinary Adventures, I was hooked right in and had to make them.

Luckily, I had just made caramel sauce, so that part of the recipe was easy.

Here are the fruits of my labour: 

Doesn't this photo just speak for itself.  These are dangerously good.  Next time, I think I would add less spice and more sugar to the apple, but otherwise I wouldn't change them.  These bars are just downright delicious!

Drunk Blondies

One of my favourite bloggers is Adam Roberts of The Amateur Gourmet, primarily because he makes me laugh and has a unique food voice.  If he stuffs up, he isn't afraid to say so - and I love that.  I am also secretly envious of the cool places that he has lived (New York City and now L.A.), and love reading about his life there.  However, I have been rather remiss in reading his blog lately due to the behind-the-scenes craziness of my existence, so it had been ages since I visited until the other day, just by chance, I thought of his blog and took a look.

Kaboom!  Up front and centre was a post on some Drunk Blondies that Adam had made from The Back in the Day Bakery Cookbook.  And I just knew that I had to make them.  And make them I did, subbing walnuts for pecans and Glenfiddich for Bourbon.  The results of my labours are pictured at the top of this post.  Gorgeous, huh?  And super easy - no mixmaster required.  I couldn't really taste the whiskey, but that didn't matter a jot (even though the word "drunk" was what caught my eye in the first place).

I would love to buy this cookbook too, but I have to stop buying baking books - I think I have hundreds of them now, even though I try to limit myself to something a little different from the norm.

Thanks to Adam for posting this great recipe and for bringing this cookbook to my attention.  Now perhaps I should go and make some of Adam's bourbon caramel sauce .... 

Red White and Blue-berry Buckle

Happy 4th of July to everyone in the US!  I wanted to celebrate with you, even though I am in Oz, so I made Red, White and Blue-Berry Buckle.  You can see the red, white and blue better in this daytime photo:

The recipe that I used for this Berry Buckle was from p222 of Sugar, Sugar  by Kimberley Reiner and Jenna Sanz-Agero, and was originally the recipe of one Dolly Dougherty, a commercial aviation graduate, which is pretty cool and trail-blazing for a woman who was born in 1920.  Instead of just using the traditional blueberries, I used mixed berries so that I ended up with the red, white and blue effect.

This berry buckle is absolutely delicious, with a crunchy topping on a soft, berry laden sponge cake base.  It is very easy to make, but because it is in two steps and involves working with butter, it takes a little time.

Basically, the topping is made by grating 55g of butter into a bowl, and adding 1/2 cup of sugar, 1/3 cup plain flour and 1/2 teaspoon of cinnamon.  You rub the butter into the dry ingredients with your fingertips, then put the topping aside.

The base is made by beating together 55g butter and 3/4 cup of sugar.  You then beat in an egg.  In a separate bowl, combine 2 cups plain flour, 2 teaspoons baking powder and 1/2 teaspoon of salt.  Fold half of this mixture through  the butter and sugar mixture, then stir in half a cup of milk.  Finally, fold in the remaining half of the dry ingredients, followed by 2 cups of berries (I used frozen mixed berries). 

Press the batter into a greased and lined 9 inch square baking dish.  Don't leave out the lining or the berries are likely to stick to the tin.  The batter is quite thick, so pressing it out evenly takes quite a bit of muscle.  Once the base has been pressed evenly into the pan, sprinkle the reserved topping evenly over the top, then bake the buckle in an oven preheated to 190 degrees Celsius for approximately 50 minutes or until cooked through. Remove the buckle from the oven and allow it to cool in the tin completely before cutting it into 2 inch squares. Eat and enjoy!

Queen's Gingerbread - belatedly for the Diamond Jubilee

I am a hoarder of recipes that I see online.  Some of them I print, some of them I email to myself.  I have so many of them that I will never make them all.  If I don't act quickly, I forget about them and never end up making them, and discover them years later in a heap of papers or in my email box.

When I saw Dan Lepard's recipe for Queen's Gingerbread in The Guardian online, I knew that I had to make it.  It intrigued me because Dan said that it was what the Elizabethans would have called a sweetbread.  I was also hooked because it contained crystallised ginger - one of my favourite things in all the world. To ensure that I didn't put the recipe in a drawer and forget about it, I printed it off and left it on my kitchen bench until I got around to it.  The first attempt at making it was aborted as I lacked a crucial ingredient - ground ginger. Not to be thwarted, I left my lined cake tin on the counter and bought the ground ginger the next night.

This gingerbread is not a cake or a cookie - it is more like a slice (or what Americans call a bar cookie).  It is very substantial, so a small piece goes a long way.  For this reason, I ended up chopping the pieces in the photograph in half again for serving purposes.

The gingerbread is quite dense, and contains sugar, honey and treacle (or in my case, golden syrup).  It is studded, not only with crystallised ginger, but dried apricots, and features almonds on top.  The spices in this gingerbread are ginger, cinnamon,  nutmeg and mace.  I left out the mace as I didn't have any.

I really enjoyed this gingerbread for a change. I won't say that I loved it so much I would hurry to make it again, but I think it would be a great edible Christmas gift.  Dan published the recipe as Diamond Jubilee baking, so that is the occasion that I dedicate mine to - congratulations to Queen Elizabeth II on a stellar achievement of 60 years on the throne of the United Kingdom.

Coconut Raspberry Slice and 5 Year Blogiversary

Well, it's hard to believe, but this little blog turns 5 today.  That's right - I have now been cooking and photographing food then writing about it for five years.  I am  lucky I wasn't in this game as an alternative career or for fame, because I have got neither, but this blog has made me very happy as a journal of my experiences in the kitchen, and to meet such a variety of other people and see what the get up to in the kitchen.  It is fun to go back to see what I have made, what I have learned, and how my photography has improved (believe it or not, it has).

I have not made anything special for today; however, I will post about the coconut raspberry slice that I made for my friend Camilla's baby shower in Sydney last weekend.  Coconut raspberry slice, with its light cakey base, raspberry jam filling and crunchy coconut topping, is a perennial Aussie favourite, and is easy to make.  You can find the recipe here.

My only negative comment is that the slice is very thin made in a lamington/swiss roll tin. I recommend an ordinary slice/bar tray, like my mum uses, to get thicker slices. 

It is cold and windy and threatening rain here in Melbourne today - it is only very marginally better than yesterday, and only because it hasn't rained yet.  Hope the weather is better where you are.  I am off to California for a holiday soon, and I am elated to be getting a second summer - if only temporarily.

Have a great weekend!

BWJ - Hungarian Shortbread

Well, May has crept up on us quickly, and the weather has asserted that it is in fact autumn.  It is cool, often grey during the day, and the leaves have turned delightful shades of red and gold before they tumble to the ground and turn brown.  Thankfully, the really cold weather has not yet set in, so I can reconcile myself to getting up in the semi-darkness as it is really not too bad outside.

It is also the first Baking with Julia for this month, hosted by Lynette of 1 Small Kitchen and Cher of  The Not So Exciting Adventures of a Dabbler, and our recipe is Hungarian Shortbread.  This ain't diet food, with lots and lots of butter involved, but it is practically lean compared with our next recipe, Pecan Sticky Buns.  Hungarian Shortbread is a buttery shortbread encasing a layer of jam (in my case, apricot).  The shortbread is dredged with icing sugar immediately after baking, which forms a crackly, custard-like top on the shortbread.

I read someone else who made this thought that grating the frozen pastry was an unnecessary faff so they did it all in the food processor.  I tended to agree with them and did the same, skipping the resting time in the fridge.  My shortbread seemed just fine, despite the short shrift it got from me in the resting department.

The verdict on this recipe - tastes delicious (as well it might with all that butter and sugar), but is terribly unkind in the calories department.  However, I guess this group is not about conserving calories, so no more peeps out of me on that count - until the next recipe (yikes).

To check out how the other BWJ bakers went, visit the BWJ LYL section for this recipe.



Wednesdays with Donna Hay - Hummingbird Slice

It is Anzac Day today, and Australians have a national holiday to remember the contribution of service men and women from all wars fought by this country.  A big cheer to all those service men and women marching in today's parades around the country.

From my blog's perspective, today is the last Wednesday with Donna Hay for a while as the group goes into hiatus.  Today's recipe is Hummingbird Slice, chosen by yours truly.  Donna's version of hummingbird cake/slice is light and spongy and fruity all at once.  Donna suggests serving it with honey, but it really doesn't need it - the slice is sweet  enough from the carrots, banana, pineapple and sugar without needing frosting or honey, unless of course you want it.

To see what Kayte, Chaya and Margaret think of this slice, visit their blogs in around 15 or so hours time.

It is cold and wet miserable in Melbourne at present, so excuse me while I wrap myself in a blanket and curl up with a good book and engage in some California Dreamin'.

TWD - Ginger Jazzed Brownies

Ginger is one of my favourite things.  I love ground ginger, stem ginger, crystallised ginger and chocolate coated ginger.  Ginger ale and ginger beer are the beverages of the Gods.  The only form of ginger that I cannot stand is the pink pickled ginger that is served with sushi rolls.

Accordingly, I was pretty chuffed with Clivia of Bubie's Little Baker's choice of Ginger Jazzed Brownies for Tuesdays with Dorie this week.  These brownies contain ground ginger and fresh minced ginger - or more ground ginger if you like.  Unfortunately, I have hurt my back, so I was not in a position to spend quality time mincing ginger with a knife, and I used 100% ground ginger (which Dorie suggests that you can).

My brownies were not fudgy in the middle - they were definitely like a rich chocolate cake in texture. This was not a bad thing, but I am not sure if this was the intended outcome of the recipe.  A quick Internet search showed results all over the place, so I am still not enlightened on this point - perhaps the  other TWD bakers' results will answer the question.

Thanks to Clivia for this week's chocolate brownies with a ginger zing   she will have the recipe.  And if you, too, are curious about what the texture of these brownies ought to have been, visit the LYL section of the TWD website.

TWD - Classic Brownies

Our assignment for this week's Tuesday with Dorie was to make Classic Brownies, chosen by Anne Strawberry.  There is a lot of divided opinion as to what is a "classic brownie", but these are made with chocolate, no cocoa, contain walnuts, and are cakey rather than fudgy.

Being an Australian, I don't have fixed views on what a brownie should be like, so I enjoyed these.  My only disappointment is that there weren't enough of them!

Thanks to our host, Anne, for choosing this recipe - it will be on her website.  To see what everyone else thought of these brownies, visit the LYL section of the TWD website.