Well, winter’s over, so this is the last dish of the season! I tried baking a mocha friand. It was originally a coffee one but I replaced instant coffee with cocoa powder. After baking it’s dosed with an espresso/sweetened condensed milk concoction, which makes the finished product nice and moist. It could actually do with a touch more sugar, but other than that I was pleased with the result.
Another pudding I’ve been raring to try is sticky date pudding. I’ve tried restaurant versions of this, but I think this is better, despite it not being very photogenic. This one has a quantity of walnut meal in it along with the sticky date mixture. Served with butterscotch sauce and cream, it was very moist and yummy indeed.
Lemon delicious pudding has been in my radar for a very long time. I found a recipe in my scrapbook dating back perhaps 8 years ago. I eventually got around to it last weekend by using this recipe.
It’s very yummy, although a tad too sweet for me. Next time I’ll cut down the sugar to 1 cup or even 3/4 cup.
This is becoming quite a series… Which isn’t over just yet despite the warmer temperatures in Sydney this past week.
I baked this Orange and almond slice for a weekend lunch with some friends. I actually stuffed it up (hadn’t figured out how to cream butter and sugar correctly when it’s freezing in the kitchen), but thankfully the recipe is very forgiving since it tasted gorgeous when drenched in orange syrup and served with a huge dollop of cream.
Now this was rather decadent cake to bake – a flourless chocolate cake with port! Completely luscious and pathetically easy to make as long as you know how to separate eggs, melt chocolate and use a beater. Don’t forget the cream. Some berries would be lovely, too.
This is my second attempt at making madeleines using a different recipe. This one’s much better – the cakes are much lighter. Also interesting to see the effect different pans have: the darker cakes were baked in a metal pan and the lighter ones were baked in a silicone pan. Somehow I prefer the ones from the metal pan…
Time for another soup creation: a twist on good old pumpkin soup with a little green apple for added tang, a splash of cream for richness, and a sprinkle of Chinese Five Spice for flavour.
Had an urge to bake one night, and the easiest thing to make was a simple tart of apples…
And of pears…
The Granny Smith apples were really too tart (pardon the pun) for such a simple tart since the only additive was a sprinkle of brown sugar. The pears though, were superb.
This is the result of the best blueberry muffin recipe ever. I scrounged it off SMH years and years ago, which isn’t on-line anywhere. They’re reliable, have the muffin texture that you’d expect, but tastes better. The secret? Natural Yoghurt and melted butter. And no buttermilk!
Very chilly in Sydney last weekend, so what better time to make minestrone soup. Bought a soup mix from my local greengrocer. This one had potato, parsnip, turnip, carrot, celery and a couple of sprigs of parsley. Add it a few cloves of chopped garlic, a bit of canned crushed tomatoes, a beef stock cube (yes, I still use those), and lots of black pepper. Oh yes, and this curly rigatoni pasta, which were very cool.
I didn’t put any salt in during cooking. In the end, I put in a slug of light soy sauce, which worked really well. Well, that’s my bit of fusion cooking for the day.
Static and Silence 