Honey malt slice

This wickedly rich slice is based on a recipe from the Women's Weekly "biscuits and slices" recipe book.

340 grams of butter

2/3 cup honey

1 1/2 cups malted milk powder

4 cups corn flakes

4 cups rice bubbles

1 cup ground almonds

1 cup desiccated coconut

1. Lightly grease and line 2 20x30cm baking trays. Take a sheet of baking paper and lay it along the pans, allowing the paper to extend beyond the edge of the pan.

2. Combine the malted milk powder, butter and honey in a saucepan. Stir on a low heat until the butter is melted. Pour over the dry ingredients, stir, then pour the mixture into the pan. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate till set.

Pear and butterscotch clafouti

Clafouti was originally made with cherries, but has developed far further and now includes all sorts of fruit. I love it, as a simple, quick to make and incredibly elegant dessert.

Traditional cherry clafouti includes a splash of kirsch. I decided to make a pear clafouti this time around - decided by having a surfeit of eggs in the house, and a large tin of pears at hand. To add a little extra twist, I had a think about flavours and concluded that butterscotch schnapps might just work. And indeed it does - the butterscotch schnapps being quite a warm creamy flavour it worked well with the custard and contrasted with the slightly crisper sharper edge of the pear.

Now I am sure a purist would use freshly sliced pears for this recipe, but then again, a purist wouldn't be allowing butterscotch schnapps anywhere either, so they can go be purist and we can enjoy the fruits of our experimental labours. Tinned pears mean that you can create this delicious dessert at any time of the year or day of the week. If you do use fresh pears, peel and core them, and slice them thinly.

Ingredients

Butter
5 eggs plus 2 egg yolks
1/2 cup vanilla sugar (I make my own by keeping my vanilla bean pods in the sugar jar)
1/2 cup sifted flour
1 and a half tablespoons butterscotch schnapps
1 cup (250ml) cream (normal 35% fat cream is fine; occasionally I even use sour cream)
3 extra tablespoons of caster sugar
1 large tin of pears, drained

Method

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees.

Take a large ceramic or glass pie dish (a gratin dish will do at a pinch). Grease the bottom with the butter and sprinkle it with the caster sugar; shake the dish to get an even spread of sugar.

Place the eggs and vanilla sugar in a bowl and beat until pale and creamy Sprinkle on the flour, add the cream and the butterscotch schnapps and mix with the whisk to combine well.

Arrange the pears around the dish in an attractive pattern. Pour the batter over the top.

Bake for about 45 minutes, until set. Allow to cool, and serve sprinkled lightly with sugar, with or without icecream.

White Christmas

The white christmas of my childhood had copha and milk powder in it, if I recall correctly. A lack of ability to find copha in the shops here prompted the development of this very rich and tasty version. I hope you enjoy it as much as my friends have!

• 600g white chocolate
• 2 cups rice bubbles
• 100g red glace cherries
• 100g green glace cherries
• 100g silvered almonds
• 100g dried cranberries
• 80g sultanas
• 1 cup desiccated coconut

Method

1. Line a 30cm x 20cm (base) baking pan with baking paper. Melt the chocolate in a heatproof bowl over a saucepan of simmering water (don’t let bowl touch water). Fold in the remaining ingredients. Pour mixture into the prepared pan, pressing down with a large metal spoon. Refrigerate for 4 hours or until set.
2. Turn slice onto a chopping board. Using a knife that has been dipped in hot water, cut into squares. Serve.

Dark chocolate tartlets

Photo by Ed.

I served these tiny tarts at the wedding I catered for my friends Patrizia and Ed. (Full menu here). They were a real hit - rich and creamy and just the right size for a not-quite-guilt-free mouthful. 

Ingredients

320g dark chocolate, (at least 60% cocoa but I actually don't recommend more than 80%) 

500ml cream 

4 egg yolks 

2 whole eggs 

1/4 cup sugar 

gold leaf to decorate 

Method

 Combine chopped bittersweet chocolate and cream in a heavy saucepan. Whisk over low heat until chocolate is melted and smooth. Remove saucepan from heat and allow to cool a little.

In a separate bowl, whisk the egg yolks, egg & sugar. Very gradually whisk chocolate mixture into the egg mixture until smooth and blended.

Pour chocolate filling into crust, sprinkle with gold leaf, and bake at 180 degrees until set (about 15-20 minutes for a single large shell, or 5-10 for small shells).

Simple indulgence - Vanilla Bean Icecream

This gloriously simple icecream can't be beaten. All the complicated fancy icecreams out there, the cookie cream confections and english toffees are just blown out of the water. Creamy, rich, pure... sublime.

4 egg yolks
100g caster sugar
1 cup milk
1 cup cream (double cream)
The seeds from 1 vanilla bean

Heat the milk just to the boiling point, remove from the heat. Beat the eggs and sugar together and while beating the milk continuously, add the egg mixture to the milk. Return to the stove and heat gently while stirring constantly until the mixture thickens and coats the back of a wooden spoon. Cool completely and stir in the cream and vanilla. Pour into your icecream machine and churn/freeze for 20-30 minutes.

Serve au naturale or with fresh fruit or a hot fruit tart - I made this icecream when a friend came over to dinner and served it with a nectarine tart that I invented on the spot.

Red Fruit Crumble

On the way home from work I popped into the shops to buy some mince for dinner. And there in the supermarket were glorious red stalks of rhubarb. mmmmm... yummm. Time for apple and rhubarb crumble methinks! But whats there? Strawberries... fresh ripe and rosy red. So red apples instead of green and all the makings are there for a gloriously fresh and delicious fruit crumble. And in perfect timing, this month's Monthly Mingle is on the theme of Spring Fruit Sensation, and Mike's Table is focusing on Strawberry Seduction... mmmm...

Red Fruit Crumble (original recipe by Kiriel)

500g Strawberries, hulled
330g rhubarb (2 long stalks or 3 medium)
3 gala apples
2 dessert spoons caster sugar
2 tsp lemon juice

Crumble
100g butter
1 cup plain flour
1 cup rolled oates
3/4 cup brown sugar

Clean the rhubarb and cut into pieces about 2cm in size. Core and chop the apple into chunks a similar size to the strawberries and sprinkle with the lemon juice to keep the apple white. Put rhubarb, strawberries and apples into a wide casserole dish. Just before topping with crumble, sprinkle with the caster sugar.

To make the crumble: Rub butter into flour to create something the consistency of breadcrumbs. Mix in brown sugar and oats.

Spread generously over the fruit and bake at 190 degrees for 20 minutes. Allow to cool just a little so the sauce will thicken up before serving.

Cooking star

Today I feel like a cooking god!

A nice quiet day at home inspires a cooking challenge. What could I make that I had never tackled before? Something that intimidates me a little and whose ingredients I had in my house, after three days of no shops being open.

Choux pastry! I am not quite sure why I've been frightened by it, but it just always has seemed a bit grown up and complicated. I had visions of flat unpuffed blobs of cooked dough coming out of the oven. It was time to face that fear. I did a bit of a search for recipes, and found plenty of them. I had a feeling though that the US recipes would be a disaster for me, being as they are, determinedly non-metric. So the following recipe comes to you thanks to www.taste.com.au (and specifically from Good Taste magazine) and I am pleased to report a complete success.

Choux Pastry

Makes

25-30 profiteroles

Ingredients

• 80ml (1/3 cup) water
• 40g butter, at room temperature, cubed
• 50g (1/3 cup) plain flour, sifted
• 2 eggs, at room temperature
• Vegetable oil, to grease

Method

1. Place water and butter in a saucepan over medium heat. Cook, stirring, for 3-4 minutes or until butter melts and mixture just comes to the boil.
2. Add all the flour to the butter mixture at once and use a wooden spoon to beat until well combined. Place over low heat and cook, stirring, for 1-2 minutes or until the mixture forms a ball and begins to come away from the side of the saucepan. Set aside for 5 minutes to cool slightly. Whisk 1 egg in a small bowl and set aside. Whisk the remaining egg in a small bowl, then add it to the flour mixture, beating well with a wooden spoon. Gradually add a little of the reserved egg and beat until the mixture just falls from the spoon but still holds its shape. (Now this is where I was kinda stumped, I couldn't figure out what "just falls from the spoon meant"). Too much egg will make the choux rise unevenly and spread. Not enough egg and the choux will be stodgy.
   
3. Preheat oven to 200°C. Brush a baking tray with oil to lightly grease. Spoon 25-30 teaspoonsful of the mixture onto tray, about 3cm apart. Alternatively, use a pastry bag fitted with a 1.5cm-diameter plain piping nozzle to pipe the profiteroles onto the baking tray. Brush the tops with a little of the remaining egg. Bake in preheated oven for 25 minutes or until the profiteroles are puffed and golden.
4. Remove from oven and turn the oven off. Using a skewer or a small knife, pierce the base (or top) of each profiterole to release the steam. Return the profiteroles to the oven and leave them for 15 minutes to dry out. Remove the profiteroles from the oven and transfer to a wire rack to cool.

Source

Australian Good Taste - April 2003 , Page 88

My workmates were very happy to be taste testers for this particular recipe, in the form of profiteroles and mini chocolate eclairs.

Lemon mousse tartlets

Another invention, these wee tartlets were something I whipped up (quite literally) to take as nibblies at the concert I sang in last weekend. They were a great success, and I caught one of my fellow singers polishing off 6 in a row!

So this one is definitely worth sharing as a super simple dessert dish. Its so much fun playing with food! Best of all, this recipe is pretty much a "from the cupboard" recipe, where the only fresh ingredient that is needed is cream so it can be made up at very little notice.

Lemon Mousse Tartlets (Original recipe by Kiriel)

400ml cream

200g lemon curd (also known as lemon butter)

3 tablespoons icing sugar

2 tablespoons lemon juice

yellow food colouring

Sweet tartlet shells (this quantity made 50 tiny tartlets)

Whip cream until it has firm peaks. In a bowl combine the lemon curd, lemon juice and icing sugar, then fold gently into the cream. Add yellow food colouring if you want, to give a stronger colour. Pipe into tartlet shells and serve - this can be done up to about an hour and a half before serving - much longer and the shells start to soften. This simple lemon mousse would also work well served in glasses as a dessert at a dinner party - the quantity above will do dessert for 8. I had some left over which I folded fresh strawberries into, which was divine!

Miniature pavlovas

Mini Pavlovas

4 egg whites
250g caster sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract

Whisk the egg whites until they reach soft peak. Gradually add the sugar and continue beating until the mixture becomes stiff and glossy. Fold in the vanilla. Place teaspoonsfull on to baking sheets, making an indent in the centre of each meringue - dont worry if they are imperfect - they will smooth out in the baking. Bake for 5 minutes at 180 degrees, then turn the oven down to 120. Continue to bake for 20 minutes. Cool on the tray.

Top with stiffly whipped cream and fresh fruit just before serving.

(the meringues can be kept for a few days in an airtight container)

Laduree - a very elegant gift!

I have a friend visiting for a few days. He is being the perfect houseguest: cleaning up after himself, preparing food for dinner, and this morning even staggering out of bed at an ungodly hour to make me breakfast because he knew that I had to start the day super early.

Today when I got home from work, he had all the ingredients for dinner prepared and ready to cook, and a small but exquisite gift for me.

I don't know if you are familiar with Laduree - it is very famous company based in Paris that makes macaroons. In Geneva we are fortunate enough to have a Laduree shop, and my friend had bought me the elegant and colourful gift of a box of macaroons.

Opening the box was a ritual, slowly appreciating the beauty of the packaging, the elegant ribbons and then revealing the gem bright colours of the macaroons tucked within.


These lovely sweets inspired my friend and I to have a frenzy of photography, arranging and rearranging them. 100 photographs later, we were now faced with the challenge of trying to decide which photos to share with you!

Spiced pavlovas with leatherwood honey clementines

My original idea was to do pavlovas with figs on top because I had seen lots of figs in the shops and markets, but when it came to time to cook I went to shop after shop and found not a fig!

But clementines were everywhere, so pavlovas with clementines it became and oooh they were goooooood.

Spiced pavlovas with leatherwood honey and clementines (original recipe by Kiriel)

6 clementines
1tbsp leatherwood honey
2 tbsp sugar

400mls of cream

4 eggwhites
250 g fine sugar
1 tsp vinegar
1 tsp vanilla essence
2 tsp cornflour
1 tsp cinnamon

Beat eggwhites until it is at soft peak. Little by little, add the sugar, beating well, until mixture is firm and shiny. Gently fold in the rest of the ingredients. Spoon onto silicone paper covered trays in rounds and then pipe a wall of meringue to make sort of nests. Bake for 50 minutes at 120 degrees C and then turn off the oven and allow to cool for 1 hour with the door slightly ajar.

Meringues just about to go in the oven.

To top the pavlova: peel 4 clementines and clean up the pieces so there is no pith. In a small saucepan, heat up 1 tablespoon of leatherwood honey, 2 tablespoons of sugar and 1/2 cup of mandarin juice (squeezing the 2 clementines left) and simmer until thick and syrupy. Put in the pieces of clemetine and simmer for 20 minutes until the fruit has absorbed plenty of the flavour of the sauce and softened.

Whip 400mls of cream with a little vanilla until it has soft peaks.

Give each guest their own pavlova, topped with the whipped cream, mandarin pieces and drizzled with syrup. Scatter with crushed honey-roasted macadamias and serve.

Chai tea creams with sesame praline

These delicate tea scented creams looked lovely and tasted even better. I was going to call them English tea custards, but upon eating decided that they should be renamed chai creams because of the spicy flavour from the anise.

Chai Tea Creams (original recipe by Kiriel)

1 cup cream
1 cup milk
1 star anise
1/2 tsp vanilla essence
2 english breakfast tea bags
1 & 1/2 tablespoon brown sugar
3 egg yolks

Put all the ingredients except for the egg yolks in a pot and heat gently, allowing the spices to steep and brown sugar to dissolve.

Whisk the egg yolks until smooth, and then whisk into the cream. Pour into ramekins. Place the ramekins in a deepish baking tray, and fill the dish with water till it reaches 3/4 of the height of the ramekins. Bake at a medium temperature for 45 minutes until creams are just set. Decorate with sesame praline and serve at room temperature. (how to make the sesame praline is in my post of 23 September)

Sesame praline

I have always wanted to make praline but never had the temerity to try.

You see it all sounded too deceptively simple to work. Put sugar on a silicone sheet on an oven tray with sesame seeds and bake in the oven till the sugar melts and changes colour. Allow to cool then break up by hand and use. Well, I discovered that it works, and that you really do have to keep an eye on it! While Rosa and I were busy photographing our dishes I forgot to watch the oven, and burnt one lot. But the other lot worked just fine, as you can see from the photos below:

Brown sugar baked pineapple with home made vanilla icecream

Brown sugar baked pineapple

1 pineapple
125g brown sugar
100g butter
30mls water

Preheat oven to 190 degrees C

Peel the pineapple and slice into 1cm slices and remove the core. Heat 1/2 the butter in a frypan until foaming. Add the pineapple slices and fry, adding more butter when needed, until the pineapple is lightly coloured. Remove the pineapple from the pan and put in a roasting dish.

In the meantime, put the brown sugar in a saucepan and cook for 4 minutes.

Turn down the temperature on the frypan, but before the pan has cooled, add the water and brownsugar mix - be careful as the syrup will bubble. Simmer briefly, and pour over the pineapple.

Put in the oven for around 20 minutes basting occasionally until a rich golden brown. Serve while warm with vanilla icecream.

Apricot, hazelnut and ginger tart

Shortcrust pastry

250g plain flour
3/4 tsp salt
3 tsp sugar
180 g chilled butter, cubed
2 egg yolks
4 tbsp chilled water

Filling

10 or 11 medium sized apricots (I used nine but think at least one more would be good)
200g ground hazelnuts
3 tblspn brown sugar
70g butter
6 chunks of glace ginger

Method - pastry

Place flour, salt, sugar and butter in a bowl. Wash hands in cold water and pat dry. Rub the butter into the flour until the mix resembles fine bread crumbs. Add the egg yolk and mix with a wooden spoon to combine ingredients. Add the water a 1/2 tablespoon at a time, until the pastry begins to come together. Don't use all the water unless needed; stop adding as soon as the pastry is combined. Again, chill your hands (unless you are fortunate enough to have cool hands) then bring the pastry together and knead briefly to make a smooth round.

Roll out and lay into a lined tin (I use silicone paper). Chill, line with paper and pour in dried beans or pie weights. Bake in a 200c oven for around 20 minutes until crisp and golden. Allow to cool.

Method - Filling

Combine brown sugar and hazelnuts and sprinkle to cover the bottom of the shell. Press apricot halves into the nuts. Scatter finely chopped ginger across the tart, then dot with pieces of butter. Bake in a slow oven until apricots are soft. Serve hot or cold.

What to do with leftovers?

On Saturday I made a batch of white chocolate mousse. I had bumped into a friend the day before and we had discussed meeting up, he, his daughter, and I. So when I made mousse, I made a reasonably big batch.

In the end I didn't get together with my friend, so had a mound of mousse... and one can only eat so much mousse!

So what to do with it? Well today I was in the shops and they had shortbread biscuits on sale, and strawberries for just 4 francs for a half kilo. And so, a white chocolate strawberry...umm... thing... was born. Strawberry short bread cake mousse...?

Baked Ricotta

500g ricotta cheese
2 small eggs
1 tsp high quality vanilla paste (or 1 vanilla bean)
120g caster (fine-crystal) sugar
1/2 cup of pistachio kernels (unsalted) *

Preheat oven to 180 degrees C. Beat ricotta and eggs in a large bowl until smooth. Add vanilla paste (or split vanilla pod and scrape seeds), sugar and nuts and combine together well.

Very lightly grease a cupcake tin. Fill with ricotta mixture (I advise trying to make sure that the first spoonful has fewer nuts; just helps later when removing from pan), cover in foil and then place in a shallow oven dish. Fill half way up the sides of the cupcake tin with water, making a sort of bain-marie. Bake for 50 minutes until firm. Cool thoroughly before attempting to remove.

Serve as individual 'cheeses' with a fruit based coulis. The first time I did this I used my mango and pineapple confiture. The second a ginger syrup, which I think would have benefited from a dash of lemon juice.

*I used half pistachios and half slivered almonds as pistachio kernals were brutally expensive

Dinner with friends

Tonight I had two friends over for dinner. I whipped up a pasta dish - slow roasted baby tomatoes, drizzled with garlic olive oil and fresh basil on fettucine with slivers of parmesan on top. It didn't work as well as I had hoped but was ok.

Dessert was a bit more elegant; a bit of a training exercise for tomorrow night's dinner party.

What is it? Baked ricotta topped with a glaze made of... can you guess pineapple and mango confiture!

Confiture Creation

Tonight I got to play in a professional kitchen. The Beau Rivage hotel invited me to a workshop. We made Pineapple, Mango and Rum confiture... how does that sound... Good eh?

It was a different method of jam making than I am used to. Rather than stewing down the fruit with sugar, this method basically makes a clear toffee in which fruit is boiled. Adding the fruit later in the process means that it doesn't break down as much, leaving a clearer syrup and attractive jewell-like fruit.