raspberry crème brûlée

Joyeux Quatorze Juillet! Last year, I bastardized a week's worth of French sweets, and this year I've had my Bastille-Day-week all mapped out with five flavours of crème brûlée. Then both of my kitchen torches failed, time sped up, and before I knew it I was cooking my sister's 30th birthday cake over three nights after work, and not giving a damn about making anglaise and crystalising sugar.

I did manage one recipe before my sense of organisation escaped me, and I'm glad it was such a tasty one. I decided to add raspberries to both the mixture and in the bases of each serving. It's nice to get a tart surprise at the bottom of sweet custard.  I love crème brûlée served in shallow dishes to maximise the amount of crunchy toffee, and these small ceramic spoons were the perfect choice.

Ingredients (makes 4 modest servings)

For custard:

500 mls pouring cream

1 vanilla bean, with seeds scraped

4 yolks

1/4 cup caster sugar

For raspberry puree:

200 gms raspberries

2 tbsps icing sugar

sugar for toffee

raspberries to garnish

For the raspberry puree, place berries and icing sugar in a small saucepan and stir, squashing the berries, over a medium heat until you have a pour-able consistency. Press the sauce through a fine sieve, and set aside. 

Preheat the oven to 160C. Place the cream and vanilla in a small saucepan and heat gently until cream is almost at boiling point - small bubbles will start to appear around the edges of the pan. 

Meanwhile, whisk the yolks and caster sugar in a medium sized bowl. When the cream is ready, slowly begin to pour into the egg mixture, whisking continuously. Whisk for about a minute to bring the temperature down slightly, before returning to the saucepan. Heat over a low heat until mixture is thick enough to thinly coat the back of a spoon. Stir through half of the puree.

Pour the remaining puree into the bottoms of each dish or vessel of your choise. Strain the custard, and gently pour on top of the puree. Place the dishes into a baking dish and fill the dish with enough boiling water to come halfway up the sides of each. Bake for approximately 25 minutes, keeping a close eye as cooking time will vary depending on the size of your servings. The custard should look set on the surface, but still have a gentle wobble. Remove from oven and water and allow to cool completely. 

To serve, generously sprinkle with sugar and caramelise with a kitchen torch until sugar begins to bubble. Serve with raspberries. 

The raspberry through the custard was quite subtle, so feel free to add more puree if you'd prefer. You could also add whole or crushed raspberries, but I wanted my crème brûlée to be as smooth as possible. I think there's little room for failure with custard and berries. 

Bonne Bastille!

Recommended baking soundtrack: Françoise Hardy - Et Si Je M'En Vais Avant Toi

honey & buttermilk panna cotta

As much as I love cookbooks, I adore cooking magazines - my absolute favourites being delicious, Australian Gourmet Traveller (if you hadn't already noticed), and Donna Hay. Having a collection of your own personal cookbooks is obviously a necessity, but there's just something about receiving a new, shiny collection of seasonal recipes every month that gets me excited like a five year old on Christmas morning. My boyfriend usually checks the mail, and after he hand delivers me a copy of my newly arrived subscription, my reading ritual is to rip the packet open and immediately flick through the pages, just once through. I "oooh" and I "aaaah" out loud, but then put it down. It's not until I have a cup of tea, and at least half an hour to myself that I sit down and pour over the recipes. Admittedly, some issues appeal to me more thank others, but there is always one or two recipes that simply scream "COOK ME, EAT ME!". In the October/November issue of Donna Hay, the recipes in the entire magazine were all fighting for my attentions.

Out of all of the Summery recipes, Donna Hay's recipe for honey & buttermilk panna cotta has won my heart for the most immediately appealing recipe, which brings me to my third honey recipe for the week. It is so incredibly simple and quick, perfect for a weeknight dessert. Or an any-night dessert, in fact. Just remember to factor in setting time, which is really quite quick.


I dedicate this post to my dear friend Chris as, for some unexplainable reason, panna cottas always remind me of him. So Chris: Get you blog up and running already, forgoodnesssake!

Ingredients (makes 4)
Recipe from Donna Hay

1 tsp gelatine powder
2 tbsps water
1 cup buttermilk
1 cup pouring cream
1/2 cup icing sugar
1 vanilla bean, split and seeds scraped
1 tbsp honey

Sprinkle gelatine over water in a bowl, then stir to combine. Set aside for 5 minutes until the gelatine is absorbed.

Place the buttermilk, cream, sugar and vanilla bean and seeds in a small saucepan over medium heat, and stir until the sugar has dissolved. Add the gelatine and cook, stirring for 2 - 3 minutes until the gelatine has dissolved. Strain and allow to cool completely.

Place 1 tsp honey in the bases of four 1/2 cup capacity glasses. Pour over the cooled cream mixture and refrigerate for at least two hours until set.

I love the texture buttermilk gives to cakes, but this was the first instance I'd used the gorgeous ingredient for anything unbaked. In this instance, it's perfect - the sticky sweetness of the honey lingering at the bottom of the glass is broken up perfectly by the tartness of the buttermilk.

As I previously mentioned, this is really quick recipe to whip up, which makes the final product even sweeter.

Recommended baking soundtrack: Horse Feathers - House With No Home.  

mini apple pies

Confession: I'm a perfectionist. Aren't we all, at something? When it comes to cooking, baking, making, I like to be neat. Organised. I like things to look fancy and fine, if possible. For this reason, I tend to steer clear of sweet treats with "character", ones that are clumsy looking, even in an endearing way. Imperfection is not an option.

Don't get me wrong, I love beautifully homemade-looking things. There's nothing nicer than a receiving a charming and imperfect cookie, an oozy piece of slice, or slightly crooked cake. I just… don't tend to make any of them very much, to the disappointment of many around me who just prefer the simple things. So, I recently made a heart-warming apple pie. Well, miniature, adorable apple pies. That still counts, right?

Ingredients (makes 6)

Recipe courtesy of August issue of Delicious

For pastry:
1 2/3 cup plain flour

1/3 cup caster sugar

150 gms unsalted butter, chopped

1 egg yolk

For filling:

1 kg green apples, peeled, cored and cut into 1cm cubes

1/2 cup caster sugar

1 vanilla bean, split and seeds scraped

1 tbsp cornflour

1 tbsp milk

For pastry, place the flour, sugar, butter and a pinch of salt in a food processor and whiz until fine crumbs form. Add yolk and mix until mixture comes together to form a ball. Enclose pastry in plastic wrap and chill for 30 mins. 

For apple filling, place apple, sugar, vanilla pod and seeds in a saucepan with 1/4 cup water. Cover and cook and a low heat for 5 - 8 mins or until apple is tender. Discard the vanilla pod. Mix the cornflour with 1 tbsp water until smooth, then stir into the apple mixture for a minute until juices have thickened. Transfer to a bowl and allow to cool. 

Preheat oven to 190C. Grease 6 holes of a 12 capacity loose-bottom cheesecake pan (or a texas muffin pan). Roll out pastry on a lightly floured surface until 2 - 3mm thick. Using a 12cm cutter, cut six rounds to line each hole. Divide the apple mixture among the holes. 

Re-roll out the remaining pastry again to 2 - 3mm thick. Cut six 8cm rounds for form lids. Brush the edges of each tart with water before placing lids on and pressing around edges to seal. Brush with milk and sprinkle with caster sugar. 

Bake pies for 30 mins or until lightly golden. Remove from oven and allow to cool for ten minutes before removing from pan.

Although I resigned to the fact these little pies would not be perfect, I was still slightly disappointed with one or two of them, who simply refused to come out of the trays without becoming squished. What better reason than to eat them warm, straight from the oven, so I have no evidence to later remind that I'm a mere human, afterall.

Best served with cream and a dusting of cinnamon, and taste fine reheated a few days after making.  I had a small quantity of apple mixture remaining after I had used all the pastry, so cut down on a few apples to a few shy of a kilo if you wish. 

Recommended baking soundtrack: Horse Feathers - House With No Home. 

chocolate, almond & pear puddings

Isn't it amazing the impact food styling and photography can have on the desire to try a certain recipe? The Indulgence Series from Murdoch Books does both of these things faultlessly. With each new release in this series, I become overwhelmed. Flicking from cover to cover results in sensory overload. I feel guilty picking just one recipe to be the first one I try, but it's never the last. These books are just perfection.

There are few things more comforting to me that eating a hot pudding on a Winter's night. I've been doing this a lot lately, it seems, despite it presently being only the eleventh day of the season. This recipe will bring you all a pudding should on a cold, lazy night. It's quick to mix, quick to bake, and uses ingredients I usually always have handy in my pantry. Would also go wonderfully with a chocolate fudge sauce...

Ingredients (makes 6 individual puddings)
Recipe from Indulgence Chocolate

1/3 cup golden syrup
8 tinned pear halves
60 gms plain flour
30 gms unsweetened cocoa powder
2 tsps baking powder
1 tsp ground allspice
55 gms ground almonds
3 eggs, at room temperature
165 gms brown sugar
60 mls milk
1/3 cup golden syrup, extra, warmed slightly
double cream, to serve

Preheat oven to 180C/170C fan-forced. Grease eight holes of a non-stick giant muffin tin/s, and line the bases of each hole with a round of baking paper. Spoon the golden syrup among the holes to cover the bases. Place a pear half, cut side down, in each.

Sift together the flour, cocoa, baking powder and allspice into a medium sized bowl, then stir in the ground almonds.

Beat the eggs and the sugar with an electric mixer until pale and creamy. Slowly pour in the milk, then add the flour mixture, folding until just combined.

Spoon the pudding mixture over the pears. Bake for 25 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the centre of each cake come out clean. Allow to cool in the tin for 3 minutes before turning out onto a wire rack. Immediately remove the baking paper and transfer the puddings to serving plates. Drizzle with extra golden syrup and serve with a dollop of double cream.

I've kept my leftover puddings in the fridge for a couple of days, and they're still great. I imagine they would also freeze okay, but I doubt it will ever have to come to that.

Recommended baking soundtrack - Wild Nothing - Gemini.