Friday, June 3, 2011

A fancy looking dessert!

This one was all about fun and games, and was a result of having a little muck around!
I realised it had been a few weeks since I had made my apple crumble, which my family all love so much, so I figured why not mix it up a bit this time?!
My mum and I had recently gone to Peter's of Kensington (one of my favourite places on Earth!) and we bought a few edible decorations and cooking utensils, so I figured what better time to use them than now?! AND i also bought some new serving dishes so wanted to show them off...

So... What goes well with apple crumble... poached rhubarb?... creme anglaise?... sugared oranges?.. butterscotch sauce?? How about all of them? :)
With nothing else to do during the day except study (which of course, I didn't actually do), I had more than enough time to put together a few different accompaniments!

The rhubarb and oranges were made in similar sugared syrups, poaching in sugared liquid for 10-15 minutes until softened and the liquid is reduced. These are usually best made the day before, so that the syrup can become infused into the fruit.

Next was the creme anglaise, which I also made the day before because... it was just easier that way :P You basically just heat the milk and vanilla in a saucepan until hot, then whisk in eggs and sugar and stir until slightly thickened, and then whisk in a bowl over an ice bucket to cool...


Last but not least... the butterscotch sauce, only one word for it.. orgasmic!
Never mind the calorie content, although the sauce is made from butter, double cream & brown sugar, our hips, thighs, stomach and ass will forgive us!
It's as easy as melting the sugar and butter in a saucepan until the sugar is dissolved and then whisking in the cream until the sauce is thickened and butterscotch-like!


Woops, nearly forgot about the centre piece - the apple crumble. The base is made from my normal shortcrust party, which I generally use for all my tarts, and then filled with a mixture of thinly sliced apples, jam and cinnamon, and topped with the delicious crumble (flour, butter, sugar, oats) They were a little small... which in the end worked out such a bad thing seeing as it allowed me to show off the other elements in the dish!

Now all that's left to do was to add the finishing touch's, some edible rose petals scattered around the plate, and to make use of those lovely new serving platters to plate up the sauces and sugared orange!
Check it out below..


I must admit, I was pretty impressed with myself, my own creation, looks fancy hey? Shows what a little bit of decoration and effort can do! ;)

Wednesday, May 25, 2011

Bougasta with Poached figs

Sounds nice doesn't it?? Bougasta (must be Italian or Greek). It's usually a breakfast dish made from layers of filo pastry filled with custard! Yummo!

A very easy dish, but some might be surprised to know that despite all my baking, I have never actually made my own filo pastry before! I've done Shortcrust, Choux, and Puff but never Fresh Filo or Phyllo as some may say (to avoid any correction ;)


I always love making dishes that are very hands on and fiddly, so making pastry is right up my alley! For the Filo pastry, you chuck all the ingredients, flour, olive oil, water and salt into the food processor, knead for 3-4 mins until smooth and springs back (sort of like when you pock those squishy stress balls and they spring out!) 2 hours later, after leaving it to sit and rise in an oiled bowl, it is ready to be rolled out!

Now don't get me wrong here, I love my family and friends dearly, HOWEVER, it is when I receive gifts for the kitchen, like the one below, (pasta machine) that I get the most excited and joyful! Sad, I know, but come on look at it.... people who love to cook would understand! Haha


The pastry is so light, it feels like air, and almost as smooth as silk! Once rested, it is then separated into 8 pieces and each rolled and flattened in the pasta machine, to make the pastry nice and thin.



Filo is meant to be very delicate and very thin so that you can see through it, so it was quite hard to handle, but it just meant that I had to take a bit more time and caution so that it all went down well!
While the dough was resting, I got onto making the custard.

Once again, everything is chucked into one pot, the cream, milk, egg, sugar, vanilla.. Did someone say diabetes, high cholesterol, hyperglycemia?? (As I always say... everything in moderation, although I guess that's much easier said than done!)
To cool down, the custard is spread thickly on a lined tray and allowed to set so that it can easily be filled into the pastry 'bags'. '
Luckily, the figs are perfectly ripe and in season now, but that doesn't stop the supermarkets from charging people $2.00 for each fig! Yes... i said $2.00 per fig! Insane hey?! There's to the global financial crisis!

It was quite interesting because the recipe called for each fig firstly being pierced with a sharp piece of the cinnamon stick (I was never aware that cooking could be so aggressive or violent, but low and behold here we are, stabbing figs with sharp items... interesting technique!) It did however add to the presentation! Here are the cinnamon pierced figs..



Poaching the figs, was just like any normal fruit poaching recipe. Place the sugar, water, vanilla and for an extra touch, a little bit of verjuice, into a saucepan, and simmer with the figs for 5-10 mins, cool and allow the sauce to thicken!

Once all the components were made and ready to assemble, all that was left to do was layer the filo pastry, brush with butter, fill with custard, form it into small money bag parcel, and cook in the oven for 20-25 mins.



Once golden brown, the bougasta is lightly dusted with cinnamon sugar and served beside the poached figs and poaching liquid (which has now turned into a gorgeous floral pink colour, and smells so sweet and fruity!)



This time I promised myself I would have just one, but after the first bougasta I couldn't help myself, the pastry was sooo beautiful that I ended up eating half the pastry off all the tops of the parcels :) I figured no-one would know any better, but I guess I just gave myself in ;)

Thanks to some great photography from my friends... Here is the finished product!
It's a really nice easy dessert to make for family and friends so if you want to give it a go, in my opinion I would say just buy pre-made filo pastry (tastes just the same and saves you lots of time), and fill with your own made custard and poached fruit.. its a cinch, and tastes delicious!!

Friday, May 20, 2011

BOMB ALASKA!!!





So... I'm back! After a few week/months of Masterchef withdrawal I'm back with a vengeance (that might sound a bit harsh, but seems like the saying is quite fitting) Unfortunately I have been lagging a bit with blogging a few of my other recipes, there was the golf course cake, basketball jersey cakes, the occasional cake or tart and not to mention the ever so famous chocolate brownies, but now I'm ready for some more exciting challenges, and with uni exams fast approaching, what better what than to distract myself by spending the day in the kitchen!

To kick it all off again I'm starting with the Bomb Alaska, most recently seen on the masterchef pressure test episode! In short, it is a sponge cake filled with ice-cream surrounded by meringue! (However this particular one was filled with coconut ice-cream and cherry sorbet...mmmmhmm)
Seeing as I don't actually have an Ice-cream machine, this meant I had to make the coconut icecream and sorbet the day before and whisk it every hour for 5 hours!
It took me a while to realise that the reason the sorbet wasn't setting properly or as fast I expected was because I had actually forgotten to add th
e egg white, but luckily I got it whisked in in time. Considering that I didn't have the recipe, I decided to make each seperate component as it's basic recipe to make things easier.

The ice-cream is a simple mixture of cream, milk, sugar, vanilla eggs, and I added the toasted coconut for a little extra flavour, whilst the sorbet is a basic sugar, cream and fruit puree (not to forget to egg white).
Did I mention that the fruit puree required me to single-handedly pit each cherry (whilst wearing a white top.. not the smartest idea!), puree it in
a blender and sieve it to give it a smooth consistency!

Once those were set in the fridge overnight all that was le
ft to do was make the sponge cake, meringue topping and assemble the whole thing! Sounds easy, no?

The sponge cake, a basic eggs, sugar, flour and butter mixture - whisked for 10 minutes to keep it light and fluffy, was so delicious that my mum and I nearly ate half the cake when it came out the oven! It's important to leave it to cool before u shape it and put the ice-cream in, otherwise it will melt the ice-cream. With all the components finished, and the bowl lined with glad wrap, I was ready to assemble!

The sponge cake is cut into thick strips and line the inside
of the bowl, and then fill the inside with the icecream, leaving a small dip in the top to finish off with the sorbet! All topped with a round piece of the sponge cake, weighted down and popped into the freezer to set in shape! After 3 hours setting in the fridge, it was down to the final touch's to complete the dish!

The set cake and ice-cream mould was very carefully removed from the bowl, if it splits or cracks then disaster strikes and it's quite impossible to surround with the meringue to blowtorch it.
Luckily, it came out perfectly with a little push, and working fast to ensure the ice-cream inside didn't melt, I attempted to neatly cover it in the Italian meringue mixture, forming some nice swells so that it looks nice after being blow-torched!

My favourite part to finish it off was using the blow-torch to create the golden colour and slightly cook the meringue so it had that nice coating with a gooey inside!

Finally it was all complete, but the true test came when it was cut open, whether the ice-cream or sorbet had melted, and if the layers had all remained separate!
A sigh of relief, as I cut through the cake and it infact looked damn good! Can't say it lasted very long though, with all those hungry faces staring at it as I cut each slice, it was all gone within 10 minutes! Check it out, I've also posted some of the other recipes that I was a bit to lazy to blog enough! My grandpa's 93rd birthday cake: My brother's welcome home cake;
Friends 21st birthday cakes:
Creme brulee:

Orange and lemon yoghurt cake:

Sunday, October 10, 2010

THE long awaited snow-egg

So it might have taken me a while to get onto making this dish, but nonetheless it was better late than never! The all hyped up snow egg was a challenge I looked so forward to doing, and had expected to actually be very difficult, mainly because the recipe was 3 pages long!
Nonetheless, it was a task that I was determined to take on..

Surprisingly enough, it wasn't nearly half as difficult as I thought it would be, despite taking me two days to prepare, it was more time-consuming because it involved waiting for different elements to set before I could continue with the next step.

In advance I will tell you that this blog, has a very detailed step-by-step picture album... just to make sure you guys realise how many different elements really went into this dish!


Guava puree:


The easiest component, this puree invovled chucking all the ingredients in a saucepan, cooking then blending it together and passing through a sieve to give a smooth consistency.

Vanilla custard base;Having made custard several times before, this was a simple basic custard recipe, and cooking them in separate ramekins, made them cook more evenly and much more quickly!

Vanilla cream:
Once the custard is made, it is whisked with the cream to produce this delicious silky vanilla cream!

Sugar maltose tuille:


This sugar maltose was quite fun and interesting to make, but relatively simple. It starts as a toffee praline mixture, cooking the maltose and water together until it caramelizes, and pouring it over the almonds allowing it to cool and harden. Once cool, this is then processed into a fine powder and sifted into rounds onto baking paper and baked in the oven for several minutes to make the tuille.

Poached merinuges:



I have never made meringues using a process like this before.. poached meringues? Does anyone actually know they exist?
The meringues are piped into the moulds, and baked in a dish with boiling water poured half way up the mould (the normal poaching technique), until cooked! The poaching technique gives a delicious gooey and dense merinuge, not like the dry ones you might be used to!



The inside is scooped out to make a little crest to fill with the ice-cream. Once filled, two meringues are then stuck together with a little water and are ready to be covered in the tuille.

As you can see, this is how the tuille looks (once processed into fine powder and then baked! Carefully using a rotating hand motion, it is slowly blowtorched to melt over the poached meringue ball, and as it cools it hardens into a very hard toffee like coating!



Then lightly dusted with icing sugar to finish it off:

I've sneaked in a little preview of what it looks like as you crack through the hard toffee coating, slicing the spoon through the gooey meringue as the ice-cream melts out (mmm orgasmic!)


Incase I haven't been descriptive enough, here is a photo of all the components before it was assembled.
From bottom left: mango ice-cream, bottom centre; strawberry & guava granita, top left; poached merinuges; top centre; maltose tuille; right; guava fool

Now for those who don't know, I very rarely actually taste the desserts that I make, but this one looked way to appealing to deny myself the satisfaction! My g-d did it taste good, not trying to float my own boat here, but all the elements added together just made the perfect desserts. The granita was super sweet, the meringue was gooey & light, the puree was soft and slightly sour, and the ice-cream was flavourful and creamy. The best part was cracking through the toffee coating on the top, and feeling the spoon slice through the meringue which was as light as air.
Overall, I would say this was my favourite Masterchef dessert, and definently well worth waiting. I do not plan on making this dish anytime soon, or maybe ever again, but if you are willing to cash out a cool $70, you can go try it at the actual restaurant! ;)


Tuesday, July 27, 2010

The 'attempted' croquembouche

It was the one recipe that I was looking the most forward to making, but like with many good things in life, it didn't quite turn out how I expected!
It was the one and only Croquembouche, the all important tower that many attempt and fail... ant say I was really an exception haha. As I am sure you can tell I wasn't too pleased with my attempt, but I tried nonetheless!

My biggest downfall was probably not ensuring I had all the utensils needed, most importantly the correct piping nozzles for the profiteroles and filling.
For those who don't know what a croquembouche is... simply put.. its a tower of cream filled profiteroles, each topped with caramel and spun with the sugar caramel once completed.
Might sound simple.. but it took up to 2.5 hrs to complete, and several burnt fingers later, it was done!

The first step was to make the pastry cream filling which requires two steps;
1) heating the milk and vanilla bean
2) whisking the egg yolks, sugar and cornflour

Then combine the two, whisk and place it back on the heat and stir until thickened
Problem #1: the filling didn't seem to be coming together quite as I had expected, it was quite runny, so I decided to whisk the mixture rather than stir with a spoon (like the recipe had suggested), and thankfully within seconds it began to thicken nicely.

Then you must spread the mixture on a tray to cool it down quickly and cover with cling film until its about 55'C, and then stir in the butter and refrigerate until cold.
Problem #2: My thermometer broke, so I kind of just had to guess and feel it to see if I thought it was approx. 55'C (nooo idea what 55'C really feels like, but my thought was its slightly hotter than body temp so I went with that ha)

After making the cream filling, it was onto the choux pastry (profiteroles). Thankfully I had made this before in hospitality prac in Year 12, so I knew exactly how to do it. You need to cook the butter, milk, sugar, salt and water in a pot and boil it, then add the flour and stir until it forms some sort of ball that comes off the side of the pot.
Once its cooled a little, you beat it to let out some more heat and then beat in the eggs one at a time until a nice pastry forms.
Now onto the piping. Some people might find this relatively difficult, but I love doing it, so I'm used to it! The only problem is I didn't actually have the right size piping tip for the balls, so they ended up looking like meringue shaped and where WAYYYY to big in size. No turning back now! haha This was one of those times that I just had to deal with what I had, cause I sure as hell wasn't making another batch of profiteroles :)

Once the profiteroles were baked and cooled (thankfully, they were nicely puffed up!) I then had to fill them with the cream filling. Once again I didn't have the correct piping nozzle, so this was very very difficult. Infact, after my first piping bag broke open, I ended up making the piping bag out of the zip lock bags which I usually do, but it made it very hard to pipe! After succesfully piping most of the profiteroles and finishing all the filling, I had just enough filled profiteroles to build the tower.

Then it was onto the caramel, probably the easiest part as far as making it goes; place sugar, water and glucose in a pan, bring to the boil and once it has turned a nice caramel colour, place the pot over a bowl of cold water to cool down, and then dip the profiterole base into the caramel and set upside down on a lined tray.
You also need to make the base of the tower by pouring the caramel in a cake tin so it's filled approx. 0.5mm high.
Once all this was done and set it was time for the assembly.

This basically involves using the croquembouche cone and placing the filled profiteroles around the inside with the caramel. Had I been warned, I would have worn gloves or some kind of hard core hand protection because my fingers were soooo badly burnt from that caramel. You practically have to stick your hand in it, because you need to coat the outside of the profiteroles in caramel so it sticks to each other and the cone. Once its all completed and the base is in place, I carefully turned the cone over, and held my breath hoping that the croquembouche comes out in one piece, the last thing I could have dealt with is turning it out and the entire thing falling apart. Luckily.. that was the one successful part of the dish :)

Now the finishing touches! Once the tower is up, it's time to decorate.. dip two forks back to back in it. Spin toffee around the Croquembouche and DONE!!! (I might have gotten a bit carried away with the spun sugar, but it was soo fun to do, despite the mess it made in the kitchen!)

Finished.. finito... fini...afinado, but not without scars to tell the tale!
Unfortunately, the tower didn't turn out how I had hoped, but when it comes to my desserts I am a perfectionist, and I guess I'm just happy this one was finished and standing up straight!
Check it out, here's the final product:


If anyone watched the finale of Masterchef, I'm thinking my next dessert is the guava and apple custard snow egg! Looks AMAZING!!! Until next time, Eat Up!

Thursday, July 22, 2010

Finally something healthy!

It might have taken me a while, but yes I have finally conquered the 'healthy' recipe! I will admit, it was quite time-consuming but well worth it, because between 3 of us we polished off enough to feed approx. 6 people!

The challenge: tuna sashimi tasting plate - consisting of tuna avocado sushi maki, tuna tataki (with daikon salad) & tuna sashimi tacos!

The show allowed the contestant about 2 hours to complete the challenge, so I set myself a time limit of 2 hours 15 mins. Overall, all the process were quite simple, the only problem was that there were alot of elements to each dish. Luckily, they were able to be prepared before, which meant that the assembly was the busiest part.

The dish I started on was the tuna & avocado sushi - the first step was to thoroughly rinse the rice, leave it to sit a bit and cook it, and while that was cooking I was able to prepare the rest of the dishes and elements. Once the rice was cooked, cooled and seasoned (and all the tuna and avo pieces were cut up) it was ready to roll. The sushi roll was an inside out roll, so it was a little bit difficult to handle because it was quite sticky on the outside, but it was still manageable and turned out very nicely! Without realising it I had actually eaten half the ingredients while I was cooking and cutting everything up, so when I came to rolling it I luckily had JUST enough to fill it! Very close call.. (not to self for next time... stop eating! well at least until it's finished!)

Tuna & cucumber sushi:

The tuna tataki is not completely raw tuna, it must be lightly seared after being coated in salt and pepper and allowing it to set for approx. 20 mins. So this meant I had to get this coated first and allow to sit, and then seal in a very hot grill pan. After it was sealed for about 30 secs on each side, I quickly popped it in the freezer so that it would stop cooking and could firm up a little (this helps to slice the tuna much more easily)

Tuna sashimi (coated before searing):


Daikon & beansprout salad:
The other element of the tuna tataki is the daikon salad. This was probably the most intriqette part because you have to really thinly slice the daikon, and after nearly cutting of my finger twice, I finally managed to get a few nice slices to serve.
Once this is done, it gets rolled with the bean sprouts some mesculun and topped with the thinly sliced seared tuna and dressing (which I made from scratch from onions, mustard, vinegar, water, oil)


The easiest dish to prepare was probably the tuna sashimi tacos, becuase all the elements were cut up and prepared at the beginning and then quickly assembled at the end. It basically invovles deep frying some wontons into taco's, and filling with the cut up tuna sashimi (comgbined with onion & garlic) and then topping with the salsa
Tuna sashimi with garlic and onion:Wonton tacos:


My first attempt at salsa didn't go quite as planned. I had bought red birdseye chilli's instead of jalapeno's.. and these red ones are MUCH hotter! I also used salad onions instead of spanish onions, and didn't realise how much stronger they were. After combining all the salsa ingredients I had a little taste and within 2 seconds my mouth was burning and eyes were watering.. so I figured it was only smart to chuck that batch out and start again from scratch. Luckily that doesn't take to long, and the next mixture was much much milder and easier to eat.. woops!

After nearly 2 hours of preparation I was now preparing myself for assembly, because I knew this would be difficult part. I started off with the rolling of the sushi, and placing the avo on the outside to be rolled again which overall took about 5 mins (because I am a perfectionist). Next was the tuna tataki, which required rolling the daikon slices with the sprouts & mesculun, and placing ontop of cucumber slices and topping with tuna and garlic chips. Finally, there was the tuna tacos which as I said was easy as pie... Just stuff the tacos with the tuna sashimi mixture and salsa and a squeeze of lemon.

As I finished I took a step back and realised there was actually a hell of alot more food than I expected and after considering inviting more people over to dinner to finish it off, my dad looked at me as if I was insane and assured me there would be nothing left for anyone to eat, and after I tasted one tuna tacos I nearly polished off the entire place, it was delish!!!
I wouldn't quite recommend this dish to everyone because it takes a while, but if ur willing then go ahead! You may be pleasantly surprised at what a healthy nice dish you can put up!

Just incase you were wondering.. i managed to complete all three dishes in the 2 hours and 15 minutes, with a few minutes to spare so I could quickly eat some before everyone else got to it ;)
Check out the finished tasting plate below: