Archive for September, 2009

Daring Baker’s September challenge: Vols au Vent… like tiny pastry dishes*

September 28, 2009 · Filed under Daring Bakers!, Food we made, Posted by Biff and Lexi, Recipe

The September 2009 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Steph of A Whisk and a Spoon. She chose the French treat, Vols-au-Vent based on the Puff Pastry recipe by Michel Richard from the cookbook Baking With Julia by Dorie Greenspan.

Well! We’ve never really felt the compulsion to make puff pastry, but we thought, why the fuck not? We have to. And… voila!

Emma Flod's birfo 205

We consider this to have been a sufficiently puffy effort. Unfortunately, we scoffed at the recommended amount of salt to add (one tablespoon), and only put a few twists of our twisty salt stick into the mix, thus ensuring one BLAAAAAAAND pastry. Praise be (!) that the challenge required us to shape our pastry into vols au vent – little flavour delivery systems. The flavours we chose to deliver were chocolate mousse brulees (slightly melted by the heat of our firestick), and custaaaaaaaaaaard (with strawberries).

Check out the end result:

Emma Flod's birfo 216 Emma Flod's birfo 224

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Epic Fail: Biscuits. Blame the baby.

September 26, 2009 · Filed under FAIL!, Food we made, Posted by Biff

“I’m cooking for the little one” (like that dude in the “perfect Italiano” ads).  I was cooking with my daughter who is eighteen months old.

For father’s day I was given some cookie cutters, and so I thought they should be put to use straight away.  Usually I only make Anzac biscuits, but this time I tried to branch out with a new recipe.  I shouldn’t have.

I got the recipe off a random website:

http://www.bestrecipes.com.au/recipe/Easy-Biscuits-L924.html

Here’s how they turned out.

Emma Flod's birfo 189

Basically the biscuits expanded and melded into one another.  That was the first batch.  The second batch were ruined because I got distracted playing with “the little one”.

They tasted ok (apart from the charred bits), and I will cook them again – but need to space them out a bit more.  I wasn’t ready for how much they would spread.

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What a day for us! Emma Flod’s birthday celebrations bitches!

September 14, 2009 · Filed under Food we made, Posted by Biff and Lexi, Recipe

Rather than go out and drink ourselves into the gutter last Friday night, we elected to stay in and bake.  Oh, what a night for us!  We were baking, of course, to celebrate the birth of one of Newcastle’s most artistic residents, Mz Emma Flod (of Emma draws a circle).  To mark this auspicious occasion, we made (successfully) Bailey’s cheese cake brownies, and (less successfully) Hazelnut sponge cake with chocolate raspberry cream.

We got the recipes for the Bailey’s cheese cake brownies from a blog we came across, Domestic Goddess in Training, and they were terribly decadent, and oh-so moreish. If you fancy making them, the recipe is on Domestic Goddess’ site. We found them pretty easy to make, but struggled a bit with marbling the cheese and chocolate together – it ended up looking a bit murky. Check it:

Emma Flod's birfo 195

Lexi took this photo. Doesn’t it have artistic merit? We are both VERY basic people, so we take an inordinate amount of pride in taking a picture that doesn’t make food look like shit on a plate. Verdict? Success!

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Planet Cake course: Circus tent cake.

September 7, 2009 · Filed under Courses, Posted by Biff

For a while I have been making novelty birthday cakes, mainly from the Women’s Weekly book.  I’ve had lots of fun with this, but naturally, they were a little bit rough.  My friend Angela and I decided to do a cake decorating course at Planet Cake in Balmain, to gain a few skills.  We were excited because we thought we might meet Handi, who was the guy who taught the contestants on Masterchef how to decorate the wedding cake.  Alas, Handi wasn’t there – but we had a good teacher in Jessica, who was obviously very knowledgeable and has represented Australia in international competitions.  The star of the day for me though was Marianne, the facilitator, who spent a large chunk of the day by my side, salvaging my train wreck of a cake.  Here is how it turned out in the end (with lots of help from Jessica and Marianne):

Ella 009

It was a really fun day, but incredibly challenging for someone with my meagre skills.  We each started out the day with a square cake, which is about 3 or 4 inches high.  Jessica then showed us how to sculpt, cut, ganache, glue, squeeze, force and harass this into a 26cm high round circus tent.  This is were I ran into trouble…i’m obviously a terrible sculptor, but found I could rely on my “desperate failure face” to bring help, in the form of Marianne.  She stepped me though the shaping of the cake, and though there were twelve students, she spent probably about a third of the day with me.

After we had sculpted the cake into the right shape, we had to ganache it until smooth.  Then came the tricky bit, rolling out the fondant icing to cover the cake.

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Do these pickle your fancy?

September 3, 2009 · Filed under Food we made, Past successes!, Posted by Biff

Once again I am resting on my laurels, and posting something I made about a year ago.  These pickles used a recipe from ‘Nan’ – not actually my Nan – but my cousin’s Nan (obviously these technicalities are very important to everyone, you are so interested i’m sure).  It’s a tasty, basic pickle recipe, which was good given that this was my first foray into the world of pickles.  I haven’t been back into that world yet – but have been fanatically stockpiling glass jars in the hope i’ll be inspired to ‘create’ more pickles.  The inspiration is yet to come, but it is fun to watch Lexi, who for some reason seems annoyed at my jar collection.

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I gayed up the presentation of these big time with gingham.  Another way I embrace my inner Nanna (and much more successfully than my abortive attempts at knitting).

They are Choko pickles with capsicum, seasoned with curry powder, tumeric and cayenne pepper (and there’s lots of vinegar in there).

I thought they were pretty good, and they made for some easy presents too.

Next is to find a use for the jars – maybe more pickles, or we are tossing up if we could do gauva jam (nice!).

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