For the chocaholics

As promised, maybe a little bitter sooner than later, this one is for the chocaholics!
As I got into bed last night and turned on masterchef, as soon as I saw this recipe I knew it would be my next 'challenge'

Word of advice... NEVER try and make this dessert let alone anything that smells like this while your trying to eat breakfast, was not an easy feat!

There are two parts to the dessert: the chocolate fondant and the amaretto milkshake. Unfortunately we don't have amaretto liqueur lying around my house, so I just substituted it for butterscotch liqueur, and might I say it smelt damn good!

Step 1: Make the butterscotch milkshake - milk and vanilla in a pot on medium heat, whilst whisking egg yolks with sugar, and then mix it all together and cool for 1 hour.

Once its cooled, you then add in some extra milk and the butterscotch liqueur, warm it all up and then froth it. My family aren't really coffee drinkers so we don't have a coffee machine with a frother thing (no idea what it's called), but a hand mix will do just fine. Or at least I thought it would be a good idea, until I turned it on and everything spilt all over me!


The interesting part is that you must coat the moulds with cocoa powder instead of sugar, because the sugar sometimes melts and sticks to the mould making it harder to get out, whilst the cocoa powder also adds some extra flavour to the outside! Another tip: place a small square of buttered baking paper on the bottom of the mould - it's like a double reassurance that the fondant will come out easily, and I wasn't going to take any chances :)

Step 2: Chocolate fondant - this part also has a few parts too it. First you melt the chocolate and butter in a bowl over simmering water, and then you fold it into a mixture of eggs, egg yolks and sugar which was whisked until light and creamy and nearly doubled in size. Lastly, you fold through the flour and then spoon it into the buttered moulds.
Being me, I stupidly forgot to take pictures of the choc fondant mixture before it was baked, and it looked soooo yummy, but I managed to remember in time, and took the rest of these pics. Hope you enjoy!



Look at it ooozee... mmmm
There are 4 left sitting in the fridge for now.. u have 1 hour to come and claim them if you want some, because my brother has already finished two within 30 mins, so eat up!

I'm backkkk :D

Hey guys,
Alright, so I know I have been a bit slack lately, there has been a bit of a drought, but I have to blame that on Uni exams and also slightly on my laziness :)
However, with much excitement I am back for another round!

I have a slight issue, my family has lately become very angry with me, because with all these decadent and rich desserts I have been making, it hasn't exactly helped them with trying to lose weight or at least not gain any. So I figured this dessert would have to be somewhat respectful to their wishes, and by that I mean it involves fruit rather than chocolate, sorry for you chocaholics, but I promise soon I will bring you some chocolate desserts.

Tonights recipe was taken from the masterclass episodes of Masterchef, and my choice was the rhubarb and blackberry souflee with crumble. I changed it a bit because I could only find frozen blueberries when I was at the supermarket, and couldnt be bothered going to other shops to look for it but it still tasted nice!

This was a relatively quick and easy recipe, which involved firstly making the crumble and cooking it in the oven: (yes, I will acknowledge that this does not look soo appetising, but in my defence, this was before it was placed back in the oven and it became nicely golden and crispy!)

Then making the fruit puree, which requires cooking the sliced rhubarb with sugar and water, allowing it to soften and then stiring in the lemon rind and blueberries, and cornflour to thicken the mixture. This part was really easy, and only took 15 minutes to cook, and then just cooled it in the pot until the souflees were ready to make.

After it was all cooled, I whipped the egg whites with some sugar until soft peaks formed (I love the pic of the egg whites, it looks like a cloud I just want to jump in it... a bit weird?? haha)
and then folded it through the fruit puree.

NB: You must butter the moulds otherwise the mixture will be very difficult to get out when you eat it, this is something I know from previous experience :S Coating it twice in butter, and then rolling sugar around to stick to the butter, is the best way to do this!


I then placed it in the mould, which proved to be quite difficult as I had my cousin standing next to me eating the mixture as I was trying to put it in the mould (nothign a slap on the hand with the spoon couldnt fix :) )

After all the moulds were filled, I popped it in the oven for 6-7 minutes, then removed them and placed a spoonful of crumble on top, returned it back to the oven for 3-4 minutes and viola!!

This was definently an easy recipe, and went down VERY well. Suprisingly, it was actually quite sour from the rhubarb, but was nicely balanced by the crumble and abundance of sugar :) The best part is opening the oven to see that the souflee's are nicely risen, golden and that smell!!!!!
Check it out (some nice rise-age on this one):


Now... Check this one out, must have done somethign wrong along the way, because this is the most abnormal souflee I have ever seen, it nearly overflowed and then when i took it out, it completely deflated after 2 mins. Definently not my best, but at least the rest turned out well ;)

Sorry, no more left-overs for those who want, but if your desperate you can go steal it from my grandparents fridge, or just whip it up yourself, will take max 50 mins, unless you eat it all before you cook it :)

On a rainy day..

It was a rainy day... and what better day then to spend the afternoon in the kitchen!
It was pouring and i mean POURING. Think about it... sitting inside on a cold rainy day rugged up in front of the fireplace eating a warm pear tart, caramel and ice-cream!
Does that excite you at all? Well that's what my day was looking like..

After my mum kindly took a trip to the supermarket (in the pouring rain), to get the ingredients (she also went to get some things for herself, I'm not that horrible to make her get it just for me!), I then began the challenge.

On the show they gave the contestant 1 hr 15 mins to complete this task, but I thought I could give myself 1 hr 30 mins, simply because I would not have 2 ovens to cook my things in and because I'm just generous.

Step 1: Make the caramel - problem: I may have let it cool a bit too much before I added the butter and cream which made it harden reallllyyy quickly. Luckily I managed to save it by putting it back on the heat for a few seconds to re-melt all the sugars

Step 2: make the apple puree - It's as simple as chucking the apples, vanilla seeds, water and sugar into a pot and letting it simmer for 10 minutes. Then I pureed it and pressed it through a sieve (this makes it really smooth)

Step 3: Make the base. I will admit, I cheated a bit. I bought the already-made rolled out puff pastry. So I saved myself about 3 mins from not having to roll it out, but I've decided that I'm allowed 1 cheat, and 1 cheat only :) (I really was very generous today!)

Step 4: Make the marzipan mixture to put on the puff-pastry, and top with sliced pears, and bake in oven.
Step 5: Poach the pears in a syrup until tender. Lucky me, I burnt my fingers stupidly trying to take the pears out of the pot because I thought I was some sort of superhuman who wouldn't feel the heat and I clearly wasn't smart enough to just go and get a spoon or ladle.

Step 6: Make crumble - Note: If you ever make crumble, WATCH IT in the oven! I was so close to forgetting I had put it in the oven, and nearly burnt it. Luckily, I got there in time, and it actually turned out great

Step 7: ASSEMBLE! As I always say, this is the most fun! You can make things look 100 times more professional and appealing just by plating it up nicely. Now I didn't have as big of a plate that they had on the show, so unfortuantely it was all packed quite tigthly but I reckon it still looks great.
The nice thing about this dessert is that it wasn't too rich, and the fact that there is some fruit in it makes you feel a little bit better about eating it :)


Not only did I manage to complete it under the time-limit, but it was relatively easy to make, although there were a few processes it was still quite simple. I would definitely give it a go if I was you, or just.... Eat up!

Birthday Celebrations

This week was my brother's birthday and farewell celebrations and I was given the honour of preparing some desserts and making little pizza's for a group of about 25 guys. Having grown up around mainly boys and knowing their ability to consume large amounts of food, I realised that a fair amount of food was needed, so I started a day early.

When there are a few people coming I prefer to make lots of small desserts (finger foods), rather than a big cake or tart, I just find it easier to serve and eat that way. As long as some of the desserts were made of chocolate, then I knew it would be fine. This made the decisions pretty easy: choc brownies, choc caramel slice, mini pavlovas and Greek almonds biscuits.

The choc caramel slice consists of 3 layers, so I started that the day before. It's not hard to make, it just needs time to set. The base is like a biscuit and is pressed down into the pan and baked. While that is baking I made the caramel, which requires continual stirring for 20 mins (definitely a good work-out for the arms). This is then poured over the biscuit base, cooked again, cooled and topped with a chocolate mixture.


Next dessert were the choc brownies which always go down well, and are easy as pie to cook! I think everyone prefers moist and rich brownies as opposed to dry ones, and these are the BEST brownies to make. Small, rich, gooey............ mmmmm! Never had a complaint haha

I also thought I would try make meringue baskets, however after that attempt failed (they cracked because I took them out of the oven too early), I opted for pre-made meringue baskets bought from the supermarket (I know that's cheating but they taste great and no-one would know any better).


On the actual day of celebrations, I decided we didn't have enough desserts, so in the morning I quickly whipped up some Greek Almond Biscuits. Threw all the ingredients into the mixer, and placed in the freezer to rest.
Problem # 1 - I forgot I had the dough in the freezer, so when I took it out to roll and put in the oven, the dough was frozen. After allowing the dough to defrost after about 2 hours (woops!), I rolled the biscuits and shaped into half-moons, and placed it in the oven.
Problem #2 - I made the biscuits too big so they flattened out quite a bit and overlapped a little. Ah well, I guess not everything can go as planned, at least they tasted nice!

Next I thought I would prepare some little pizza's as an entree to make sure there stomach's were satisfied. Unfortunately, I was neither in the mood nor had the ingredients to make my own pizza dough, but I usually prefer to use a nice Lebanese bread or already-made Italian pizza base anyhow. With all the ingredients cut up and ready, it was onto the assembly. The two types of pizza on offer were:
1) chicken, pesto and feta
2) margarita (tomato (five brothers) pasta sauce, tomato, onion, capsicum, four cheese pizza mix)

I find it is much nicer when the ingredients aren't all piled up onto the base, so I cut the Italian pizza base into small squares, spread a little bit of either pesto or pasta sauce, and then topped with a small amount of the remaining ingredients. Then popped it in the oven at 180'C for about 8-10mins until the cheese was melted or the feta was softened and slightly brown, and the crust was crispy and brown. I served them straight away, and in all honesty, it took about 10 minutes for all the pizza's to be finished. No suprises there, they were all asking for more. Sadly, i forgot to take a photo, and they looked sooo nice :(

Next course was a bbq, which the men were in charge of (I keep my distance from the bbq when the guys are around). After all, the boys like nothing more than some good bourewors and sausages on bread rolls with pickles and tomatoes. Sometimes the simple meals are the best!

After a few requests and questions as to when dessert would be served, I realised that was my calling. I had already wiped the cream, so all I had to do for the pavlovas was put it all together. Placed some wiped cream in the meringue baskets, topped with berries and passionfruit pulp and served alongside some left-over almond praline that I made the other day (for the sticky date pudding). Once everything was put onto their platters, and placed on the table, it took about 30 secs for all the guys to surround the table and dig in. Luckily, there was more than enough and we have some left-overs.

Here is the spread, before it was demolished (I made them wait till I took photos until they could dig in, they were not happy haha):


Top left = choc caramel slice
Top right = choc brownies & Greek almond biscuits
Front = mini pavlovas

Doesn't look to bad ey ;)

What's for dinner..

About time i finally cooked something healthy!
This one wasn't exactly a masterchef recipe, but I was inspired by two dishes from a celebrity chef challenge, so I thought I would mix them together.
The first recipe is Hue Pancakes (i posted the link on a previous blog but for all you lazy people here it is again: http://www.masterchef.com.au/hue-pancakes.htm), and the second was eggnets with pork, prawn, beansprouts and cucumber relish (http://www.masterchef.com.au/eggnets-with-pork--prawn--beansprouts-and-cucumber-relish.htm).

So basically what I did was I used the recipe of the filling in Hue Pancakes, and the idea of the egg nets to hold it together. For obvious reasons I used chicken instead of pork, but it turned out to be delicious anyhow.
The hardest part was trying to get the egg-nets perfect, and making sure they didn't burn or were too thick otherwise they wouldn't be as crunchy. It took a few practice ones to get it right, but eventually I got there. See what some hard work and determination can do :)

I also used the sauce from the Hue Pancake recipe, which was a mixture of fish sauce, rice wine, sugar, water and garlic (didn't have any chilli, so I just ditched that!)
Next was onto the filling, which involved stir-frying the prawns with some onion and garlic, then removing it from the pan and stir-frying some chicken strips. Although, because I used lean chicken instead of pork, it became a bit dry, so I decided to add some sweet chilli sauce to give it a bit more flavour and make it more moist. Then it was as simple as adding the prawn mixture and chicken together in the pan, and chucking in a handful of bean sprouts, and all was done!!

Now all I had to do was place the mixture in the egg-nets, fold it over and serve alongside some lettuce and herbs (mint and coriander were the pick, and a perfect choice might I say).

As always I made sure to take some pics for you guys to check it out.
Here is just the chicken and prawn mixture:

And here is the end result:


Definitely not the most appealing dish, but it tasted really delicious and was surprisingly a nice light dish! Believe me, if I can get my brother to eat prawns then it must have been a successful meal.. so if your looking for a healthy light meal, I would suggest you give it a go!

Another dessert?

Ok, so maybe I lied! I got a bit bored today and have been doing too much procrastinating with uni work, so I decided to get off my ass and cook something. Turns out that my choice was a dessert, again! Not quite as complex as the last one, but just as tasty, and this time I decided that to make it a bit harder I would set myself a time-limit that was somewhat challenging.

After searching through the pressure test recipes on the masterchef website, I finally came to a conclusion that my next challenge would be the sticky date pudding with butterscotch sauce and almond praline. Considering that it takes 40 minutes to cook the puddings, I figured an appropriate time frame would be 1 hour. Enough time to cause some pressure but realistic enough to have some chance of completing the dish.
So off i went, to my kitchen cupboard to get the ingredients only to find there was no cream! Upon return from the supermarket, after all was set and ready to go, I began the challenge. Starting at 3;45pm, first step was to get those puddings into the oven so they could cook and be ready within 40 minutes.

After softening the dates and mixing it in with the pudding batter (butter, sugar, eggs and flour), I stuck the mixture in some moulds and placed them in a water bath in the oven. Whilst that was cooking, it was onto the almond praline and buttersctoch sauce, which by the way nearly boiled over while on the stove.
For those who have ever made caramel (for the praline), you would know how easy it is to burn, as once it turns a caramel brown colour it can take only a few seconds before it becomes too dark and burnt. Luckily, I got it just in time, and with the caramel setting fast I had to quickly pour it onto the almonds on a baking sheet. Once both the praline and sauce were finished, it was just in time to pull the puddings out of the oven, let them cool for a few minutes and plate up.
Overall, it was a pretty easy dish to make. As always the plating up is the most fun, although eating it was quite enjoyable :) I must admit, that butterscotch sauce was very rich but deeeelicious!

Here is the final product for all those wanting to see:And incase you were wondering, yes I cooked it under an hour, and so far the judging panel are very pleased with the outcome. The rest of the judging panel will be arriving after dinner for any of those wanting to join, call me when your outside! ;)

Whats next?

One challenge down... now I think it is only fair to my family that the next dish I cook is somewhat healthy, or i might be in trouble :)
I also thought that since I now have 4 followers (YAY!) that i would ask which recipe you guys and all those reading reckon would be nice to cook.

Here are you options:
1) Barramundi in lotus leaf with phu quoc sauce
http://www.masterchef.com.au/barramundi-in-lotus-leaf-with-phu-quoc-sauce.htm

2) Hue Pancakes
http://www.masterchef.com.au/hue-pancakes.htm (ill use chicken or turkey mince instead of pork)

3) Potato gnocchi with sauteed prawns in a burnt butter sauce
http://www.masterchef.com.au/potato-gnocchi-with-saut-ed-prawns-in-a-burnt-butter-sauce.htm

Thinking about it, it probably wasn't the best idea to have started with the most complicated recipe (the last dessert), because now I have to live up to those expectations haha but I will try my hardest!
And don't you worry, there will be plenty more desserts to go around, for those wondering what the next dessert challenge is, i will give you a little preview to tantalize your tastebuds and get you ready and waiting -
A warm pear tart with caramel sauce, crumble and apple puree:
http://www.masterchef.com.au/warm-pear-tart.htm
Might not sound as exhilarating as a Caramel Parfait Glace with Salted Peanut Caramel and Milk Chocolate Mousse, but it will do :)
Until then....