I poked the remaining pastry and hummed to myself. I had half a batch of sweet shortcrust pastry left after making a lemon tart, and was wondering what on earth I’d use it for. I knew that at the very least I needed to bake it up so that I’d be forced to use it for something - I have a terrible habit of storing unbaked pastry in the freezer and then forgetting all about it till I clean out the freezer and discover in my dismay that it needs to be tossed out!
So, I rolled it out and popped it into the oven to bake, then went over to the fridge, opened it and contemplated its contents while I waited for inspiration to grab me. My eyes happened to glance upon a case of strawberries that were in dire need of being used and I remembered something that my sister had said to me a few months ago - “Oh my god, I LOOOOOOOOOOOOVE fruit flans! I’ll do ANYTHING for one, I love them sooooooooooo much!”
Well, as it turns out that despite her pleas, I’d never actually made her one at the time, so I thought that I’d make one now - and judging by her facial expression and eagerness to help me go grocery shopping, I’d say that I made a good decision 
(Sorry for the overly short entry but I’ve been cooking and cleaning so much over the past three weeks that my right shoulder has slowly become more and more inflamed so that now even lifting a glass of water to my lips is painful. Am hoping that taking a break and resting it completely will help bring it right again!)
Fresh Fruit Flan
Pastry Ingredients (from Shannon Bennett in ‘My Vue‘)
200g unsalted butter, at room temperature
200g pure icing sugar
1 egg
2 tbsp pure vanilla extract
2 1/2 tbsp milk
250g plain (all-purpose) flour
*If you have a favourite sweet shortcrust recipe, then you can certainly use that instead. I’ve tried a few and though this pastry is a B*TCH to work with, it really has no comparison in terms of withstanding moist fillings.
Crème Pâtissière ingredients (from Pierre Hermé in ‘The Cook’s Book’)
250mL full-fat milk
22.5g corn starch
65g caster sugar
1 tsp vanilla paste
3 egg yolks
25g butter, at room temperature and cut into walnut-sized cubes
Fresh fruit, for topping
Apricot jam, for glazing
1. Cream butter and sugar till light and fluffy, then beat in vanilla, egg and milk. Once this is all combined, slowly add the flour till the mixture just comes together. Wrap in cling wrap and refrigerate for at least 1 hr.
2. Preheat oven to 180 degrees C. Remove lemon filling from fridge to become room temperature. On a well-floured surface, roll out the pastry to 6mm thickness and place in the tart tin. Prick all over with a fork then place back in fridge for 15 minutes.
3. Line tart case with foil, making sure that it is completely covered then fill with pastry weights (I use uncooked rice) and bake for 15 minutes. Remove weights and foil and bake for a further 10 minutes or till base is firm and dry. Remove from oven and cool completely.
4. Once pastry has completely cooled, begin work on the crème pâtissière - whisk together the milk, corn starch, vanilla paste and 30g of sugar in a heavy-based pan. Slowly bring the mixture to a boil over low heat, whisking continuously till the mixture thickens and begins to bubble.
5. When the milk mixture has thickened and started to bubble whilst whisking, immediately remove from heat. Whisk together the egg yolks and remaining 35g of sugar, then slowly pour in the milk in a thin stream, whisking continously. Transfer the mixture back to the saucepan and continue whisking till mixture is thick and has just begun to boil, then immediately remove from the heat.
6. Stand the pan in a shallow bowl filled with ice and leave to cool to about 60 degrees C. Once cooled, add the pieces of butter and whisk briskly till they have melted and the sauce is smooth and shiny. Immediately pour into the cooled tart case and smooth over as the pastry cream will set and become more solid as it cools down.
7. Decorate the top of the tart with fresh prepared fruit, then heat and strain the apricot jam and carefully brush over the top of the tart to glaze it - this helps hold the fruit into place and prevents them from drying out too quickly.
8. Place into the fridge to cool and set for at least an hour, and bring back to room temperature just before serving!
This is what happens when you cut into your flan before the pastry cream has properly set and the thing hasn’t been glazed yet - whoops!
Technorati Tags: tart, fruit flan, sweet, recipe, dessert, Shannon Bennett, Pierre Hermé
As most of you readers are well, my ethnic background is South Korean, and I’ve spent most of my life growing up here in Australia. What that means is that my cooking and eating habits are a strange mish-mash of cultures - for example, I eat kimchi with almost anything, and I find it difficult to eat rich foods without its clean, sharp, spicy acidity to cut through the richness. While I love a good barbeque, alongside the sausages, lamb chops and coleslaw are galbi (sweet soy marinated short ribs), bulgogi and a variety of Korean sides and sauces. However, despite being open to trying new foods and cuisines, one thing that I’m very unfamiliar with is the American palate, particularly the Southern and Tex-Mex stuff which I’ve had absolutely no exposure to.
Nachos, fajitas, burritos, tacos, chili, refried beans, biscuits and gravy, the list of things that are new or unknown to me could go on for quite awhile. Accepted, this stuff is not for everyday eating as much of it counts as hearty but hardly healthy fare, but it’s still stuff that I’m eager to find out about, along with other cuisines that I don’t know very well. So, when I was approached with an offer to have a cornbread cookbook ‘The Cornbread Gospels‘ sent out to me to review, I was both confused and pleased. Confused, because as a Korean-Australian lass, I knew pretty much nothing about cornbread as it was, but pleased because I thought this would be a good opportunity to learn about a foodstuff that seems to be very much an American obsession.
I was, I have to admit, just a little bit hesitant when I tore open the package that had flown halfway across the world to me. Being a bit of a cookbook junkie, my bookshelf boasts an impressive collection of big, bold books with glossy pages and mouthwatering pictures, so this small little paperback number with the odd clipart image seemed different to me. And then, of course, there was the name of the author to contend with - Crescent Dragonwagon. With a little apprehension and an equal amount of curiosity, I sat down with the book and a pen and paper to take notes and prepared to read my way from front to back of this little curiosity I had received.
Well, it took me two days to work through, but by the time I’d reached the end, I was eager as all heck to roll up my sleeves and get my cornbread mojo on! Crescent is a wonderful writer, and all the recipes come with little anecdotes or notes, and the whole book is peppered with quotes and facts about cornbread, its history and just why it’s such a well-loved part of mealtimes in the U.S. Wonderfully organized and easy to read, it spells out the differences between Southern and Northern styles of cornbread, as well as providing possible menu ideas to serve particular cornbread recipes as a part of, and even a chapter dedicated to ‘tried, tested and true’ cornbread accompaniments, which I found extremely helpful!
During the course of my reading, I had earmarked 10 recipes that I definitely wanted to try (as well as another 5 that were probables), and proceeded to slowly work my way through them, at one stage madly emailing all my friends in the area to come and take some free cornbread as I had just tried three recipes in one day and there was only so much cornbread that one could eat at a time! As I tried the recipes in the book, I began to develop a fondness for the stuff - the dense, crumbly texture, the almost unbelievable moistness, the heft and texture that was unlike anything I’d ever had before. Sweet, savoury, breads, muffins, pancakes - who would’ve thought that something as innocent as cornbread could encompass ever so much?This book, while humble in appearance, hides an absolute wealth of information and gave me quite an education into the world of cornbread! So, if you’re a cornbread fan or just curious about it and would like to get your hands on all the cornbread information and recipes you could possibly need, I highly recommend that you give Crescent Dragonwagon’s ‘The Cornbread Gospels‘ a try!
FOR MY AUSTRALIAN READERSHIP:
As part of my trying out recipes for this review, I had to order some white cornmeal from the US, an ingredient that I could not track down here by any means! So, I ordered a spare bag and so now I’m offering up a free 5lb (2.27kg) bag of white cornmeal which I am going to randomly give away - I’ll pay for postage to anywhere in Australia! All you have to do is leave a comment and say you’d like to be in the draw and let me know of your experiences with cornbread (a memory, an experiment, a favourite recipe, anything at all!), and I’ll be putting all the names of people entering the draw into a hat and drawing it next Sunday, the 22nd of March. The winner will be contacted by email so that I can grab their details to mail out their giant bag of white cornmeal!
Recipes:
Forgive me - I *know* I said that japchae would be my next post but I’ve got a backlog of about 6 recipes that I need to blog otherwise they are going to sit FOREVER in draft form, never being presented to the world! Which, quite frankly, would be a damn shame, especially since they (like this dish) are so damn delightful in their own ways!
I am a SUCKER for panna cotta - if I go out for dinner and it’s on the menu, I can tell you that it is easily my dessert of choice. So when I spotted a new recipe for me to try in Alice Medrich’s Bittersweet, I decided, what the heck - let’s give it a try!
So I did…and I don’t know if it’s just me not having quite the palate for overly rich foods, but while the texture was utterly dreamy, my family found the dessert to be far far too rich for consumption and after having one very satisfying teaspoon each, I ended up rather unceremoniously dumping the rest in the bin. However, I did want to try it again, perhaps in a form that we’d find more palatable, so just had a little bit of a fiddle to come up with these coffee bean infused panna cottas which were divine! Of course, the cream still made it a bit rich, but a nice, sharp rasberry puree to accompany helped to cut out the richness so we could each manage just a few more teaspoons 
This is not a dessert for everyday consumption, but if you’re looking for a rather special sweet treat to serve up at the end of a spectacular dinner party, they would probably fit the bill quite well!
Coffee Infused Panna Cotta with Sweet Raspberry Puree
(Adapted from ‘Bittersweet‘ by Alice Medrich)
Coffee Infused Panna Cotta Ingredients (makes 6 serves)
1/4 cup roasted coffee beans, broken into smaller pieces
3 1/4 cups thickened cream (use double cream if you don’t mind the heart-attack richness)
2 1/2 tbsp unflavoured gelatin
1 cup whole milk
1/4 cup caster sugar
pinch of salt
1. Pour the roughly chopped coffee beans and the cream into a heavy-bottomed saucepan and bring to a boil while constantly stirring. Once it reaches a boil, turn the heat off and leave to infuse for 20 minutes, giving it the occasional stir.
2. While the cream is infusing, sprinkle the gelatin over the cold milk in a small bowl and set aside for it to soften.
3. Once the cream has steeped, strain out the nibs, pressing lightly to extract all the liquid. Discard the nibs and return the cream to the saucepan and stir in the sugar. Bring the cream to a simmer.
4. Pour simmered cream into a large heatproof bowl, then slowly add the milk while constantly stirring, then add the salt. Set the bowl of cream over a bowl of ice and stir continuously till the mixture is lukewarm and has thickened.
5. Divide evenly between six 1/2-cup ramekins, cover with plastic wrap and leave in the fridge to chill for at least 3 hours.
Raspberry Puree Ingredients
2/3 cup raspberries
3-4 tbsp caster sugar
1/4 cup cold water
To make the raspberry puree:
Pour all the ingredients into a small pot and heat over a low flame till it begins to simmer. Crush the berries lightly and simmer for another 1-2 minutes or till the sugar has completely dissolved, then remove from the heat and give a good blitz in a blender (or, if you have one, with a trusty immersion/stick blender!). Run it through a strainer then leave to cool in a clean bottle till required.
Just before serving, pour a few tablespoons of this ruby red puree over the panna cotta just before serving.
Technorati Tags: panna cotta, raspberry, desserts, sweets, Alice Medrich, Bittersweet, coffee beans, recipes
There’s something about seed cakes that seem infinitely old-fashioned and comforting to me, especially one cake combination that has stood the test of time and continues to appear in it’s cool kitschy cute way in many a cookbook - that being the orange and poppy seed cake.
This recipe comes from a tiny little recipe book that has been in the family possibly almost as long as I’ve been in Australia, my mother having purchased it in the grocery store when I was just a wee tyke. Never having had an oven before, she was entirely new to the world of baking, and the only recipe she ever tried was for the classic cream sponge, in an attempt to replicate the fresh fruit & cream sponge cakes that are popular in Korea as birthday cakes. This was also the very first book that I baked from, I still remember being all of about 9 or 10 years old and having made my very first cake all by myself from this book, so it has a great deal of sentimental value to me.
The cake itself…well, it’s certainly not the most amazing cake in the world, but I think therein lies its charm - it’s simple and homely and has a bit of an old-fashioned appeal to its appearance. Not particularly moist (though not dry), it’s quite dense in texture but manages a light and fluffy crumb and its delicate orange flavour makes it smell and taste terrific, especially when paired with a mug of earl gray tea.
Sorry for the lack of words and postage but I’m still struggling on the creativity front, and apologies to those of you hanging out for more Asian/Korean recipes - I’ve got a few in the works, and I promise that the japchae recipe will be the next I do! Be warned, it’ll be a wordy one 
Orange Poppy Seed Cake
(adapted from Family Circle Classic Essentials - Cakes)
Ingredients
1/2 cup poppy seeds
2/3 orange juice
185g unsalted butter
1/2 cup caster sugar
2 eggs, lightly beaten
3 tsp finely grated orange zest (or 2 tsp pure orange extract)
1 cup self-raising flour
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
Buttercream
2/3 cup caster sugar
1/2 cup orange juice
Zest of 1 orange
150g unsalted butter
1. Preheat oven to 180 degrees C. Line a 20cm round cake tin with baking paper and set aside.
2. Pour orange juice over poppy seeds in a small bowl. Using electric beaters, cream the butter and sugar till light and fluffy, then gradually incorporate eggs till well combined. Beat in the rind.
3. Sift the flours together, then use a metal spoon to fold in the flour into the creamed butter alternately with the orange juice & poppy seed mixture till just combined, then spoon into the prepared cake tin and smooth the surface.
4. Bake for 30-40 minutes, or till a wooden skewer comes out clean when inserted into the middle of the cake. Leave to cool in the tin for 10 minutes before turning onto a wire rack to cool completely.
5. To make the buttercream - combine the orange juice and sugar in a small pan and stir over medium heat (without boiling) till the sugar has dissolved. Add the rind and bring to a simmer and leave for 5 minutes. Remove from the heat and use tongs to remove the zest and place it on a wire rack to dry. Cream the butter, then slowly add the cooled syrup while beating till the mixture is light and fluffy. Spread over the top of the cooled cake and decorate with the boiled zest.
This isn’t the moistest cake in the world, but despite it’s denseness it is quite light and very soft, and perfect with a mug of earl gray tea
Technorati Tags: baking, recipes, cake, orange, poppyseed, dessert
Apparently, it’s called writer’s block.
And I appear to be suffering it.
I’m still cooking…I just seem to have lost the power to compose semi-eloquent sentences that will entice you readers to become excited about what I’ve been baking - but I guess that’s what the pictures are for, right?
This is another recipe from Belinda Jeffery’s “Mix & Bake“, and yes, this is STILL my favourite new baking book, with this being my absolute favourite of all the recipes tried so far. It makes for an extremely moist, delicately flavoured cake that has a delightfully crunchy streusel topping and makes an absolutely wonderful accompaniment to a cup of tea! However, this cake must be baked in a ring mold, if it isn’t, it will rise to extraordinary heights, creating your own domed yet edible Mt Everest in your oven. After I created my very own apple & pecan everest, I spent a few days scouring all the stores near my home to find an adorable little ring cake tin, but Belinda writes in her book that a bundt tin will more than suffice, and I’m inclined to believe this more than knowledgeable baking goddess!
If you have a bundt or ring cake tin and you’re looking for a delightfully homely yet moreish cake that isn’t worried about appearances but puts the proof in the tasting, then bookmark this as your next recipe to try as I guarantee that it will not disappoint!
Apple & Pecan Crumble Cake
(from ‘Mix & Bake‘ by Belinda Jeffery)
Ingredients
300g all-purpose flour
250g caster sugar (original amount was 330g but I found this to be far too sweet, especially with the crumble topping)
1 tsp baking soda/bicarb soda
1 tsp salt
1 tsp ground cinnamon
4 medium-sized firm apples, peeled, cored and cut into thumbnail-sized chunks (I’ve used Gala and Fuji, and while I preferred the latter, both were tasty)
110g roasted pecans, roughly chopped
250mL light olive oil
3 medium-sized eggs
2 tsp vanilla extract
Crumble topping
75g all-purpose flour
1 tsp ground cinnamon
55g firmly packed brown sugar
60g cold, unsalted butter cut into small chunks
45g coarsely chopped roasted pecans
Icing sugar, for dusting
All the pecans in this recipe can be replaced with walnut for a cake just as tasty, just slightly less crunchy
1. Preheat the oven to 180 degrees C and butter and flour your ring/bundt tin and set aside for now.
2. Make the crumble by mixing together the flour, cinnamon and sugar in a bowl or food processor, then add the butter and rub in with your fingertips or process till the mixture resembles coarse breadcrumbs. Add the pecans and mix in, then set aside.
3. Whisk together the flour, sugar, baking soda, salt and cinnamon to mix together, then put the chopped apples and pecans into a small bowl and add a few tablespoons of the flour mixture and toss to coat and set aside.
4. In another bowl, whisk together the oil, eggs and vanilla till evenly combined, then tip the flour mixture into the egg mixture and stir till just combined. Add the apple & pecan mix and stir through, then carefully and evenly spoon into your cake tin to 3/4 full. Lightly scatter over the crumble topping and give it a bit of a shake to even it out.
5. Bake for 45min - 1hr, or till a wooden skewer inserted into the cake comes out clean. Cook the cake in the tin for 10 minutes, then invert onto a flat plate and invert again onto a rack so that the crumble layer is on top. Leave to cool completely.
6. Serve with a generous dusting of icing sugar, and with a nice big mug of well-brewed tea
Technorati Tags: cake, coffee cake, streusel, baking, Belinda Jeffery, recipes, dessert
Others who have tried this recipe:
- Thanh from I Eat Therefore I Am
