best healthy muffins so far

Over coffee-after-the-gym the other morning Corry brought out a new mag to show us- BBC Australian Good Food. I hadn't seen it in the supermarket but a quick look through made me interested enough to buy it. As if I needed any more food mags. It looks quite similar to delicious, and features some well-known chefs like Gordon Ramsay and Kylie Kwong. But unlike delicious, whose recipes are featured on taste.com.au , I couldn't find any of the recipes online.

There was a nice-looking and fairly healthy-sounding carrot and walnut cake recipe featured, so I tried it out (tho' I made muffins). They were terrific - really soft with a great flavour - and probably the nicest of the healthy muffins I've made lately. I modified the recipe a bit, substituting buttermilk for the full-fat milk soured with lemon juice, and CSR Smart for the sugar. I didn't make the cream cheese frosting either but they really didn't need it and neither do my hips. Here's my version :

Carrot & Walnut Cakes (makes 15)

1/2 cup (80g) sultanas

juice of an orange

2/3 cup (160ml) buttermilk (or milk soured with 2 t lemon juice)

2 cups (320g) wholemeal SR flour

1 t bicarb

1 t mixed spice

160g CSR Smart or 1 1/2 cups (330g) raw sugar

1/2 cup (50g) walnuts, chopped

3 medium carrots, grated

1 granny smith apple, peeled, grated

grated rind of 1 lemon

1/2 cup (125ml) rice bran oil

3 eggs, lightly beaten

Preheat oven to 180C. Line 15 holes of 2 x muffin tins with paper cases and spray lightly with non-stick spray.

Combine sultanas and orange juice in a small bowl and let stand for 10 mins.

Combine buttermilk, oil and lightly beaten eggs in a separate bowl.

Sift flour, bicarb, spice and 1/4 t salt in a large bowl and return husks from sifter to bowl. Stir in CSR Smart, carrots, apple, lemon rind and sultana mixture. Pour in the buttermilk mixture and stir until well combined. Fold in chopped walnuts.

Spoon into paper cases and bake for 20 mins. or until a toothpick comes out clean. Cool on a rack.

If making one big cake, use a greased and lined 25cm springform tin and bake for 50-55 mins.

nigella's chocolate marsala cake

I made this for dessert last night. It was a delicious change from all the low/no fat, no sugar cake I've been baking lately, and was a cinch to make. It's from How to be a domestic goddess and this is how it appears in the book , with my note at the end.

Chocolate Marsala Cake

100g unsalted butter

100g dark chocolate, broken up

4 large eggs

175g caster sugar

50g self-raising flour, sifted 3 times

3 tablespoons Marsala

for the Icing:

100g dark chocolate

1 tablespoon Marsala

100ml double cream*

22cm Springform tin, greased and lined.

Preheat the oven to 180C / Gas Mark 4.
Melt the butter and chocolate together in the microwave or a double boiler, and then set aside to cool slightly. Beat the eggs and sugar together until thick, pale and moussy, and greatly increased in volume; it should double, triple even. Gently fold the sifted flour into the egg mixture, trying not to lose all of the air. Now fold the butter and chocolate very carefully into the cake mixture. Pour into the tin and cook for 35 minutes, by which time the top should be firm and the cake underneath dense and desirably damp.
Cool in a rack for 5 minutes, and then pour over the Marsala. I find it easier to do this by the teaspoonful so that the liquid is evenly distributed. Leave the cake to cool completely before releasing it from it’s tin.
So, the icing: melt the chocolate, Marsala and cream in a heavy-bottomed saucepan over a gentle heat. Take it off the heat, and whisk until it reaches a good icing consistency; smooth, thick, but not solid. I like to spread this just on the very top of the cake, which anyway sinks on cooling so that you have a roughly circular sunken pond to fill, leaving an outline of cooked-cake rim. When set, you're left, beautifully, with a Sacher-shiny disc of ganache suspened on top of this dusty-brown, matt cake.

*Note: I had a bottle of thickened cream in the fridge and foolishly used it instead of double (pure) cream. Eeew - the result was an oily, curdled mess, which I had to throw away and remake with the correct cream. A waste of 100g of good Callebaut chocolate.

yet more healthy muffins...

I wish I'd kept my copy of Julie Stafford's mid '90's muffin book. I donated it to the choir garage sale a few years ago which I now regret. I'm going to try and get another one, although I'm not sure it's still in print. In the meantime I found a recipe from the book on the net for Rhubarb and Ginger muffins. It sounded similar to Rhubarb Daisy Cake (recipe here) created by Jamie Oliver's mum. It's an upside down cake topped with a pinwheel of rhubarb sticks and glazed with a mixture of golden syrup and ginger syrup which I've made and which looks and tastes divine. The muffins were never going to taste as good as the cake seeing as there's no butter or syrup, but they're pretty good. Here's my version :

Rhubarb and Ginger Muffins (makes 15)

All ingredients should be at room temperature.

1 1/2 cups SR flour
1/2 cup wholemeal flour
1 teaspoon ground ginger
300 g rhubarb (1 bunch), finely chopped (choose nice red thin stalks)
1/4 cup finely chopped glace ginger
1/2 cup canola oil
1/3 cup CSR Smart
1/2 cup apple juice
3/4 cup buttermilk
2 eggs

Preheat oven to 180C. Line 15 holes of 2 muffin tins with paper liners and spray liners lightly with non-stick spray.

Sift dry ingredients together in a large bowl. Add the rhubarb and ginger.

In another bowl, lightly beat the eggs, then beat in the oil, followed by the apple juice and the buttermilk.

Add the liquid mix to the dry mix and stir well.

Spoon into muffin tray and bake for 20 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.

Remove muffins from tray and cool on wire rack.

As there's no sugar in them they look a little anaemic but a dusting of icing sugar makes them look more appetising.

more healthy muffins

Here's another great low GI muffin recipe from the same cookbook as yesterday's. The original recipe uses blueberries which I don't like much, so I use frozen raspberries instead.

Low GI Lemon Raspberry Muffins (Makes 10)

All ingredients should be at room temperature except the raspberries.

180g wholemeal plain flour

30g wheat bran

80g sugar substitute (eg Splenda)

1 T baking powder

1/2 t salt

240ml buttermilk

1 egg

50g soft margarine, melted, or rapeseed oil (I use Nuttelex)

1 T grated lemon rind

140g frozen raspberries - don't thaw first

Preheat oven to 190C. Line 10 holes of a muffin tin with papers and lightly spray them with non-stick cooking spray.

In a large bowl stir together all the dry ingredients.

In a small bowl whisk together the egg, buttermilk, margarine and lemon rind. Pour over the dry mixture, add the raspberries and stir until just combined.

Spoon into muffin papers and bake for about 20 mins or until a toothpick comes out clean. Cool on a rack. These will freeze well for a few weeks.

low gi muffins

I'm on a health kick at the moment. I've joined a gym again after a 10 year gap - and have amazed myself by going every weekday for the last 2 weeks - and am trying to cut out empty calories. I've found the hardest part of the day to get through is late-afternoon to dinnertime, even with a mid-afternoon snack. I've tried a few of the high-protein bars that they sell at the gym and they were all dreadful. This is my version of a muffin recipe I copied a couple of years ago from a Low GI cookbook. They taste pretty good, and if I eat one in the afternoon it keeps me going 'till dinnertime and cuts out the craving for dangerous pre-dinner nibbles. They also freeze well.

Low GI Cinnamon Bran Muffins (Makes 12)

All ingredients should be at room temperature.

50g wheat bran

30g All-Bran

pinch salt

120ml boiling water

240ml buttermilk

150g sultanas (you can use dried cranberries instead)

4 Tabs artificial sweetener eg Splenda

1 egg

60ml canola/rapeseed oil

150g wholemeal plain flour

1 1/4 t bicarb soda

1 t cinnamon

Preheat oven to 190C. Line a 12-hole muffin tin with muffin papers and spray them lightly with non-stick spray.

In a bowl combine the bran, All-Bran and boiling water. Stir in the buttermilk and sultanas.

In another bowl, whisk together the sweetener, egg and oil. Stir into the bran mixture.

In a large bowl stir together the flour, salt, soda and cinnamon. Pour the bran mixture over the flour mixture and stir until just combined.

Divide the mixture between the lined muffin cups and bake for about 20 mins or until a toothpick comes out clean. Cool on a rack.

nanaimo bars

I noticed I still had an old recipe for Nanaimo Bars when I was looking for the one for Lattice slice the other week. Like the Lattice slice, I used to make these bars back in the 80's for afternoon teas at various playgroup/kinder/Mothers' Club meetings. Then yesterday I came across this post on the wonderful Cakespy blog, and that gorgeous photo made my mouth water. So of course I had to make a batch right away. My recipe is almost exactly the same :

Nanaimo Bars

Base:

2 cups crushed digestive biscuits ( I used McVitie's)

125 unsalted butter, melted

1/3 cup insweetened cocoa

1/2 cup chopped pecans (or walnuts)

1 cup coconut

1 egg, lightly beaten.

1/4 cup sugar (I intentionally left this out as the other layers are very sweet)

Preheat oven to 170C. Mix all ingredients together and press into a non-stick paper-lined tin measuring approx. 27cms x 17cms. Bake 15 mins. Cool slightly. While base is baking, make the filling:

Filling:

125 g unsalted butter

2 cups icing sugar

2 T custard powder

2 T milk

1/2 t vanilla extract

Cream all ingredients together until light and fluffy. Spread over cooled base. Refrigerate while making the topping:

Topping:

180g dark chocolate

60g unsalted butter.

Melt together in a heat-proof bowl over boiling water. Stir until smooth and spread over top. Chill until set and cut into bars to serve.

anzac day

I've never liked baking biscuits much. Probably because I don't like eating them nearly as much as I like to eat cake. But Georgie has been asking me to make Anzac biscuits for ages, and even emailed me this recipe link. I loved the sound of toasted macadamias in Anzacs - so Australian - and this being Anzac day I relented.

Disaster! I thought the mixture didn't feel right when I was rolling it into balls. When I tasted one (it disintegrated into crumbs when I lifted it off the baking sheet) I realised I'd left out the sugar. Oh dear, sorry Georgie. I couldn't be bothered starting again. My (feeble) excuse for leaving out a vital ingredient was because I was making this for lunch at the same time...

Yet another recipe from my delicious stash - Thai pumpkin soup with coriander pesto - the best soup ever! It was quite a lot of trouble, probably best saved for a special occasion, but definitely another keeper. The recipe is here. So one hit and one miss today!

It's a coincidence

I swear it's a coincidence that I made yet another yellow food thing yesterday! I saw this divine looking tart here the other day and bookmarked it. It's Dorie Greenspan's Most extraordinary French lemon cream tart. I had already noticed the recipe for it a few weeks ago in my new Baking: from my home to yours cookbook - which I hadn't got around to making a single thing from up until then. Last night we went to Nick's for dinner so was the perfect opportunity to try it. The filling is made in a very different way to a normal lemon curd. Usually you cook the butter, eggs, sugar and lemon juice together until they thicken. Here, the butter is added in a food processor after the other ingredients are cooked and slightly cooled. This way, instead of the butter melting it emulsifies, so that the resulting texture is velvety smooth and light. Dorie's recipe is here.

I must admit I had to whisk the mixture over the heat for much longer than the suggested 10 minutes - it was more like 45. And even then I found the temperature wouldn't go above about 165, but I'd already read in the comments on Dorie's blog that that was ok.

I used an adapted version of Dorie's Sweet tart dough recipe for the crust:

1 1/2 cups plain flour

1/2 cup confectioner's sugar

1/4 tspn salt

1 stick plus 1 Tab butter*, very cold (or frozen) and cut into small pieces

1 large egg yolk

Heat oven to 180C. Pulse flour, icing sugar and salt in a food processor a couple of times to combine. Scatter over the pieces of butter and pulse until mixture resembles coarse breadcrumbs. Add the egg yolk and process in long pulses until the mixture forms a ball around the blade. Turn out and knead sparingly. Press into a fluted loose-bottomed 23 cm. tart tin. Freeze for at least 30 minutes. Bake blind for 25 minutes, remove paper and weights and bake for a further 8 minutes or until golden brown.

* I used 125g of butter. I find it so frustrating that some U.S. recipes use spoon measures for butter. Is it just me? Could someone please explain how you actually measure a tablespoon of icy cold butter?!

The tart was delicious but we didn't finish it. As you're not supposed to fill the tart case until just before serving I imagine the pastry is probably a little soggy today. The filling will keep for about 4 days in the fridge so I think next time I'll make individual tartlets instead.

tv cake 2

Just watched Patrice Newell on morning tv talking about her olive oil book.

What a great close-up of my cake...

and they seemed to like it ok!

tv cake

Penguin Group has just published Tree to Table : cooking with Australian olive oil by Patrice Newell, which features a collection of olive oil recipes by twenty Australian chefs and cooks. Patrice is going to be on morning tv tomorrow to publicise her book, and her brave publicist (who is a friend of Georgie's) asked me to make this cake to take with them. The recipe is by Philip Johnson - owner and chef of e'cco bistro in Brisbane.

There were a couple of worrying moments during the preparation but it all came together in the end. Here's the recipe :

Philip Johnson's Lemon & Olive Oil Cake

3 egg yolks
550g caster sugar
3/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
2 cups milk
grated rind 2 lemons
juice 3 lemons
300g SR flour
1/2 t bicarb soda
pinch salt
5 egg whites
icing sugar for dusting

Preheat oven to 170 C. Grease a 26cm springform tin and line with baking paper.

In the bowl of an electric mixer, beat egg yolks and sugar until thick and pale. (I was a bit worried here. No amount of beating was ever going to turn this much sugar and 3 yolks into anything that could be described as thick and pale. It was just dry and crumbly. I pushed on regardless.)

Whisk in oil, milk, lemon juice and rind, mixing well to combine.

Sift together the dry ingredients. In a clean bowl, whisk egg whites until soft peaks form. Fold flour mixture into egg yolks and sugar mixture, then fold in beaten egg whites. (Now the mixture looked like scrambled egg. I mixed it for a few seconds with the electric mixture and thank heavens it smoothed out.)

Pour mixture into prepared tin. Bake for 1 1/4 hours or until a toothpick comes out clean.

Dust cake with icing sugar if using, and serve with creme fraiche or whipped cream. It's also great served with fruit - for example, oranges poached in caramel.

Serves 10 - 12

I realised I was not going to be able to taste the result so cunningly made 2 small cupcakes to test.

The cake tastes great, very moist - almost like a steamed pudding in texture, and with a lovely flavour. Now I just have to decide whether to dust the top (top photo - nicely browned but a bit cracked) or the bottom (photo below - not as evenly coloured and a bit damp-ish) with the icing sugar.

I wish I was taking salad...

I've spent the morning baking and frosting two dozen chocolate cupcakes for the choir dinner tonight and now the kitchen (which was already pretty hot before I started) is 34C according to the temperature gauge thingy on the wall. And I'm thinking HOW COME I HAVE TO BAKE CAKES AND OTHERS GET TO MAKE A SALAD??

Ok, I've had my whinge. The good news is I now have a great chocolate cupcake recipe. Someone has recommended it on Rose Levy Beranbaum's website which I checked out to find an answer to yesterday's "flat/peaked cupcake" mystery. It seems that leaving the batter to sit for a while results in a "domier" cake. Anyway, the recipe is one from Rose's The Cake Bible. I've had my copy for years - it's practically falling to bits - and the thing Iove about it is that the recipes list the ingredients by cup measure and by weight. I've found most American recipes use only cup measures which are not nearly so accurate. The cakes turned out perfectly light and moist and not too sweet.

Rose Levy Beranbaum's Chocolate Fudge Cake(s) (makes 24)

All ingredients should be at room temperature.

85g Dutch process cocoa powder
354g boiling water
3 large eggs
1 1/2t pure vanilla extract
300g sifted cake flour (I used plain)
434g light brown sugar
2 1/4 t baking powder
1 1/4 t bicarb soda
3/4 t salt
227 unsalted butter (must be softened)

Preheat oven to 175C. In a medium bowl whisk together the cocoa and boiling water until smooth. Leave to cool to room temperature.

In another bowl lightly combine the eggs, 1/4 of the cocoa mixture and vanilla.

In a large mixing bowl combine the remaining dry ingredients and mix on low speed for 30 seconds. Add the butter and remaining cocoa mixture and mix on low speed until the dry ingredients are moistened. Increase to medium speed (high if using a hand mixer) and beat for 11/2 minutes to aerate and develop the cake's structure. Scrape down the sides of bowl. Gradually add the egg mixture in 3 batches, beating for 20 seconds after each addition.

Measure into 2 paper-lined muffin tins and bake for 20 - 25 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean. Cool in tins for a minute before turning out. Leave until completely cool before frosting. **


Chocolate Ganache :
Heat 120 ml/g of thickened cream until boiling. Add 160g grated dark chocolate and leave to stand a minute or so until melted. Stir until smooth, add 1 Tab butter and stir until smooth again.


**I had enough mixture for a few small patty cakes as well and most of these separated from the paper liners while they were cooling. Will have to check that website again. This isn't baking - this is SCIENCE!

choir cupcakes

The choir's having its annual startofanewyear dinner tomorrow night and I've been asked to take cupcakes. There are still a whole lot of leftovers from last week in the freezer all wrapped up in separate foil packages but I was too lazy to unwrap them to see if there's enough. So I decided to start afresh and make 2 kinds - carrot and chocolate - rather than make 2 batches of the same flavour (boring). I've never made carrot cupcakes before - only carrot big cakes. I used a Martha Stewart recipe I copied from somewhere or other. I didn't bother to convert all the U.S. cup measurements to ours and they turned out fine:

Carrot Cupcakes (makes 24)

All ingredients should be at room temperature.

1 cup pecans

3 cups plain flour

2 t baking powder

1 t bicarb soda

2 t cinnamon

1 t nutmeg

1 t salt

500g carrots

3 large eggs

1/3 cup buttermilk

1t pure vanilla extract

2 cups sugar

1 1/2 cups vegetable oil

Preheat oven to 175C. Spread pecans in a single layer on a baking sheet and toast for 10 mins, turning them once halfway through cooking time. Cool and chop finely.

In a medium bowl, whisk together all the dry ingredients except the sugar. Peel and grate the carrots finely (the food processor is perfect for this.) Place grated carrots, eggs, buttermilk, vanilla, sugar and oil in a large bowl and whisk until combined. Using a rubber spatula, fold the flour mixture into the carrot mixture with the chopped pecans.

Spoon mixture into 2 paper lined muffin tins and bake for 20 - 25 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean. Remove from tins and cool completely before frosting.

There was a bit of leftover batter (I'll make the 24 a bit bigger next time) which was enough for another 3 when the first lot came out of the oven. The one on the right (below) is the one of the 2nd batch left to stand for 25 minutes. See how it's peaky and the other one flat? No doubt RLB knows why that happened - will check out her site/book later to try and find the answer.

I topped them with the same cream cheese frosting I used for the Red Velvet cupcakes - recipe here.

I'll do a bit of searching tonight to find a nice chocolate cupcake recipe using cocoa. The kitchen is now pretty hot so I'll make them first thing tomorrow.

And just between us ... I nipped down to the corner to buy a takeaway coffee while the cakes were cooling. I left the house in (floury) cut-off tracky pants and thongs and with my bra straps showing. I realised, sadly, that after just 12 days of being retired I'd completely let myself go.

needed - a decent cupcakery in melbourne

Today I was going to tell you about a new cupcake shop in Melbourne that I'd read about. Not sure when they opened but I think not that long ago. Anyway I tried out their cupcakes yesterday...they looked really great and the nice girl who served me assured me they were all freshly baked. I bought 4 different flavours and we all had a bit of each. Disappointingly all but one of them (the carrot) was crumbly and stale. Looks like we still need a good cupcake bakery in Melbourne.

billy's bakery vanilla vanilla cupcakes

It's weird that there are no dedicated cupcake shops in Melbourne. I think Sydney has half a dozen. If you Google cupcakes/Melbourne there are quite a few entries for shops that sell them, but they don't specialise. They are several mentions of Crabapple Bakery cupcakes, but on the two occasions I've bought theirs - once from Prahran Market and once from the Bayswater factory shop - though they looked great they were stale and dry.

Yesterday I made cupcakes using a recipe from Billy's Bakery in New York. I found the recipe here a while back, and my friend Robyn's birthday was a great excuse to try it out.

I made the effort to source and purchase American cake flour from here, and the cakes did seem very light and airy as a result. I'm not sure if substituting the same amount of plain flour would be ok. I've seen Australian cake flour in the supermarket recently - I'll definitely be buying some and trying it out next time. Because U.S. cup and spoon measurements are slightly different to ours, here are the amounts I used after conversion :

Billy's Vanilla Vanilla Cupcakes (Makes 24)

All ingredients should be at room temperature:

200g cake flour

150g plain flour

300g caster sugar

15g baking powder

1/2 tspn salt

250g softened unsalted butter, cut into 1-cm cubes

4 large eggs

237 ml milk

1 tspn pure vanilla extract

The method used, i.e. the dry ingredients are combined with the butter and a minimum amount of liquid, rather than the traditional creaming method, is one I've used before, as recommended by Rose Levy Beranbaum in her book The cake bible. She says "the method is faster, easier, and virtually eliminates any possibility of toughening the cake by overbeating."

I got to use my fancy new icecream scoop rather than my old plastic one which had lost its emptying thingy. Sheer bliss!

I halved the amount of Billy's vanilla buttercream, and it was just the right amount for the 24 cupcakes :

125g unsalted butter

3-4 cups icing sugar

1/4 cup milk

1/2 tspn pure vanilla extract.

Happy birthday Robyn!

New Year's Eve

New Years Eve always means dinner for 8 at our place. Everyone brings a course so I just have to cook the main. I decided to do lamb in the outdoor electric kettle barbecue, using Karen Martini's recipe for roasted boned leg of lamb with basil, lemon, almond, oregano and garlic from her Where the heart is. I hadn't made it before but everything from the book has turned out really well so I was confident it would be ok.

I marinated the lamb legs overnight in zip-lock bags and let them come to room temperature before roasting. They took about 1 1/2 hours to cook, and the result was delicious and meltingly tender.

I've been wanting to try roast potatoes in duck fat a la Nigella for ages, but couldn't find duck fat anywhere. I finally found some at the local poultry shop and made little roast potato cubes. Maybe not so healthy but they were crispier than done in oil and had a lovely flavour. (Note: I later remembered Nigella uses goose fat. It's Nigel Slater who uses duck fat. I'll keep a lookout for goose fat to try.)

I've just reread Julian Barnes' The pedant in the kitchen. This hilarious book is perfect for anyone who loves to cook, and particularly for those who, like me, collect and read cookbooks with a passion. One of the funniest chapters "No, I won't do that" is about the River Cafe Cook Book's (extravagant - 10 eggs!) Chocolate Nemesis, and the disasters that ensued when it was made by amateur cooks. This, says Julian Barnes, lead to the "paranoid explanation ...that some key element of the recipe had deliberately been omitted, thereby driving customers back to the (River Cafe) restaurant for the authentic item."

I made a version of Chocolate Nemesis for a NYE dinner a few years ago from a recipe in a delicious magazine. From what I can remember it was pretty straight forward and turned out fine, so perhaps it was not exactly the same as the original recipe. In the book Julian Barnes goes on to say that when River Cafe Easy was published, the Chocolate Nemesis recipe was halved and the cooking time altered considerably. I wanted to try out this "easy" version, but as our dessert was being brought by someone else, Georgie and I thought we'd make it for her own NYE dinner party. Here's the recipe .

I didn't get to try it but Georgie's guests apparently loved it. No-one took a photo of it once it was cut...hopefully it looked something like this picture of the delicious version!

New Year's Eve was a double celebration as it was the Beautiful Bridesmaid's 60th birthday on Christmas day. So of course, a good excuse for cupcakes! Happy birthday Jen.

And a very, very Happy New Year to all!

christmas cake

Today was the day for my favourite Christmas baking task...the cake. And this is my favourite fruitcake recipe. I cut it out of a Better Homes and Gardens mag years ago. It was called Nut-glazed Quick Christmas Cake, and I used to make it in two loaf tins - one for us and one for my late father-in-law who loved fruitcake. It reappeared in delicious a couple of years ago on Belinda Jeffery's page and I thought it strange that it was exactly the same recipe that I used. Until I remem-bered Belinda used to be on BH&G on tv. And now it's in her gorgeous new cookbook "mix & bake".

I'm not that fond of fruitcakes made by the creaming method - they always seem a bit dry. This one is more like a boiled fruit cake and it's terrifically dense and moist. Fruitcake lovers who taste it always want the recipe :

Belinda Jeffery's Last Minute Christmas Cake

300g unsalted butter

420g raw sugar

380g raisins

180g pitted prunes

160g sultanas

90g currants

90g pitted dates

2 tspns bicarb soda

1/2 cup brandy or dark rum

1 1/2 cups cold water

2 tspns ground nutmeg

2 tspns cinnamon

4 eggs, lightly beaten

2 1/2 cups stone-ground wholemeal plain flour

To decorate:

raw pecans/whole blanched almonds

or, purchased soft icing plus a mixture of silver and coloured cachous

Melt butter over medium heat in a saucepan large enough to hold all the ingredients. Add sugar and stir to dissolve. Add all the fruit, bicarb, brandy and water. Increase heat and keep stirring until sugar has dissolved. Bring to the boil, then reduce heat and simmer for 4 mins. (Watch that it doesn't froth up and over sides of pot because of the bicarb.) Leave to cool to room temperature in pan.

Preheat oven to 150 C. Butter a 23cm springform tin and line base and sides with 2 layers of buttered baking paper. Add nutmeg, cinnamon and eggs to cold mixture. Stir in the flour, then leave to sit for a few minutes. Spoon mixture into tin, and decorate the top with the whole nuts if using. Bake for 2 1/4 - 2 1/2 hours or until a skewer comes out clean. If after an hour's cooking cake is getting too brown, cover top loosely with foil to stop it getting darker. Leave to cool completely in tin on a rack. Remove from tin when cold and remove baking paper. Wrap in plastic wrap then foil and store in the fridge, where it will keep for about 6 weeks. For a nice shiny finish, cake with nut topping can be brushed with a little warmed apricot jam before serving.

This amount of mixture will also make a 19cm square cake, lined with 2 layers of paper and baked at 150 C for approx. 2 1/4 hours, or 4 small square10cm cakes. Line the small tins with 1 layer of baking paper and bake in 150 C oven for approx. 1 1/2 hrs. Placed on a square of cardboard and wrapped in cellophane, they make lovely gifts. This year I've made two batches of the small ones (that's last year's big cake in the top pic) and will give all but one of them away.

To decorate large and small cakes with icing and cachous:

Turn cake(s) upside down to decorate. Combine 1/4 cup sugar and 1/4 cup water in small saucepan over low heat until sugar is dissolved. Bring to boil and simmer uncovered for 1 minute. Leave syrup to cool. Roll out purchased white fondant (500g is enough for 1 large cake or 4 small ones). Brush cake(s) with sugar syrup and cover with a square of fondant. Place a Christmassy biscuit cutter on top of cake as a guide. Brush inside the cutter with syrup. Sprinkle silver and coloured cachous inside the cutter. Lift off carefully. Leave to dry completely before wrapping.

christmas baking

I love summer. Anything up to about 35 degrees feels like heaven to me. But round about now when I my annual urge to bake Christmassy stuff takes over, I can't help feeling a bit envious of all the northern hemisphere foodie bloggers. They describe the glorious feeling of retreating into a warm cosy kitchen when it's cold and dark (and even snowing) outside and just baking to their hearts content. While I have to pick my (cooler) days so that the oven blasting away doesn't make the house even hotter.

Luckily the last few days have been mildish, so the mince pies are finished and given away or frozen. I never leave any just sitting around or I'd eat the whole lot. I took a plateful to our work Xmas lunch today - all extra contributions being gratefully received as we have only $110 to spend on food for 15.

pistachio cupcakes

A friend of Georgie's went to Shannon Bennett's Cafe Vue soon after it opened in Little Collins St. and bought what she described as the best cupcake ever. Oh boy, we couldn't get in there fast enough to try them out, and she was pretty much right - they were fantastic. Shortly afterwards Nick gave us a voucher for dinner at wonderful Vue de Monde for Christmas. At the end of the evening we were chatting with our charming waiter (really he was more attentive host than waiter), and Cafe Vue came up in the conversation. I mentioned the cupcakes, which he said he too loved, and he offered to email me the recipe. He obviously forgot, because I never got it, but a similar one appeared shortly afterwards in the Financial review magazine. I didn't get around to making them because the recipe used pistachio paste, which I could only find in big expensive catering-size jars. THEN, delicious magazine had a full page article about Shannon Bennett, Cafe Vue and their pistachio cupcakes...and it included the "real" recipe. Thrilling! I made a batch straight away, tweaking the recipe a little and using ground almonds instead of marzipan. From what I could remember of the original cupcakes the results were pretty good.

We went back to Vue de Monde with friends from Adelaide in August, and I reminded our (same) charming waiter about the cupcake recipe. Apologising profusely for not sending it, he disappeared for a minute and returned with a zip-lock bag of pistachio paste to make up for his forgetfulness - how sweet! So I made them again, this time with the paste, but still with ground almonds. Then a few days ago, I finally found some good quality marzipan which the recipe specifies, so I made them a third time, this time with all the correct ingredients. They've been delicious each time, but with a slightly stronger almond flavour when I used the marzipan.

Pistachio Cupcakes

All ingredients should be at room temperature:

100 g shelled unsalted pistachio nuts plus an extra 30 g

100g unsalted butter

85g caster sugar

1 of either : 75g good quality marzipan (minm. 50% nuts)

OR 75g almond meal

OR 55g marzipan plus 20g pistachio paste

2 eggs

2 drops vanilla extract

30g semolina (I use plain flour)

1 Tab Kirsch (I use milk)

glace icing

extra pistachio nuts for decoration

Preheat oven to 170 C. Blitz 100g pistachios in food processor for a couple of minutes until finely ground. Roughly chop the other 30g. In electric mixer beat butter, sugar and vanilla (and pistachio paste and chopped marzipan if using) until light and fluffy and all lumps are removed. Add eggs singly, then stir in ground and chopped pistachio nuts, flour and milk, and almond meal if using. Dollop into paper-lined muffin tin and bake 20 - 25 mins. Cool in tin a couple of minutes before removing to a rack to cool completely. Ice with glace icing (Shannon makes his green, I prefer pale pink) and top with a pistachio nut. Makes 10 - 12.