Rhubarb! Rhubarb!

I love rhubarb season!!  I'm utterly addicted to the stuff.  I have it on porridge for breakfast, or with yoghurt for a snack, or custard for dessert.  I'd like to have a go at rhubarb ice-cream sometime too.  But today I decided to take a week off from The Great Pastry Experiment and treat myself to a simple cake: Rhubarb and Hazelnut.  Mmmmmm!!!!!!!
 

 

Today was a beautiful sunny day in Melbourne, and as I pulled on my apron at 8am (I know, I know - impressive right?  Or just plain nuts...) I had the delighted grin of expectation on my otherwise weary face.  But this recipe wasn't going to make life easy for me.  For starters, there simply wasn't enough batter to cover the tin in two layers.  So I made another half batch.  And then the rhubarb started dripping through the springform tin, where it promptly burnt on the bottom of the oven.*

The result, though, was a deliciously rustic-looking cake that in fact behaved more like a dense, cakey slice.  No matter!  The caramelised rhubarb along the edge was well worth it.  Wednesday Baking Day wins again! 

                                                   

So it's back to pastry next week - this time with Mama's lard recipe.  Yumbo!

xx Leah

*On a side note, the bottom of my oven seems to be the happening place to hang out for renegade ingredients of my baking endeavours.  Croissant butter, stewed apple and melted chocolate have all been sighted there at various times.  And frankly, once they make an appearance, its very difficult to get them to leave without heavy negotiations and sometimes, even physical force (only when strictly necessary, of course).                                                                          

Loud face

One of my favourite people in the world has a phrase called "loud face":  It's when your face speaks the truth before your brain or mouth have time to censor it.  For example, I wandered into her room one day and casually asked if my outfit looked ok.  Before a polite and diplomatic, "Umm...yes" could even form on her lips, her face was screaming, "Nooooooooooo. I think I'd go back to the wardrobe and spend a bit more time on it this morning, friend."  Welcome to loud face.  It cannot lie.

But not all loud faces are negative.  One rainy day in Geneva in 2008, I ate a slice of chocolate tart.  The crust was salty, the filling was rich and sweet.  It must have activated a loud face potent enough to strip the mind of concious thought, because I literally stopped my conversation mid-sentence and couldn't remember what I had been talking about.  Again, loud face never lies.

Which brings me to week three of pastry/tart crust trials, and today's bake-off: Chocolate tart. 

I combined a Swedish pastry recipe (a sweet dough that uses melted buter) with a chocolate filling from my Tartine book, and the result was a SUPER-rich tart with a crumbly crust that tasted almost like shortbread.  Although somewhat different to my Geneva experience, it was pretty darn tasty! 










Now in true Wednesday Baking Day style, things still went wrong.  The filling was slightly undercooked and consequently had some wobble-tendencies. To photograph it, a quick shutter speed was of-the-essence, so as to snatch the shot before the tip of the wedge slumped over to leave a rather unattractive brown smudge on the plate...
  





And in an act of anti-buttering arrogance, I had proclaimed myself 'above' need to grease the pie tin.  Which of course meant that large chunks of the pastry stuck fast to the bottom of the dish, and gentle encouragement to remove it only resulted in instantaneous crumbling.

Which brings me to my final thought: I am thinking of renaming this blog "The First Pancake".  You know how the first pancake is always a bit of a flop, in spite of all that joyous expectation?  But you still eat it, and they all get better from then on, of course.  But it seems to kind of fit with my Wednesday baking experiences.  Thoughts?

Have a great week friends!

xx Leah

Temptations...

It's a question I've been struggling with for a long time.  Some days I'm convinced it needs to happen.  It's for my own good, right?  While other days I'm happily humble and content with what I already own.

The question is...should I, or should I not BUY A KITCHENAID.

Sure, some of you might now be rolling yours eyes.  What a first-world problem!  Send in the violins!  Yes yes I agree, but nonetheless, every year I can't help but ponder the advantages versus the very expensive cost.  But this year, in a stroke of pure genius, I decided to borrow a Kitchenaid from my sister-in-law to see if it really makes a difference.

In short, it really makes a difference.

This week I baked Frangipani tarts.  (For some reason 'Frangipani' refers to an almond flavoured cream in french patisserie).  They turned out reasonably well.  Here are some photos:

But the real interest in this week's baking day was found in the simple act of creaming butter.  I think I actually swooned.  So easy!  So effortless!  My hands danced from ingredient to ingredient as I tossed them into the bowl.  My heart sang a little tune as the pastry, and later the cream, combined in the bowl to become beautifully smooth.  So it looks like now I have two questions...how quickly can I save up the money, and how long will it take my sister to notice I still haven't returned her machine yet...


Lastly, these tarts were made with a sweet pastry, quite different to last week.  My homies really liked it.  I think I prefer flaky pastry, and a little less sweet.  Maybe there's a happy medium somewhere...

See you next Wednesday!

xx Leah

Fresh Start...

After being MIA for 2 weeks, Wednesday Baking Day is officially BACK!  I was lucky enough to be in Kuala Lumpur for the past two Wednesdays, and wasn't able to coordinate myself to post anything.  However! I did eat a piece of possibly my all time favourite cake (well, I have a few of those...): the Tirimasu cake from Alexis cafe/bar.

This photo doesn't really do it justice, but the nuts on the outside are coated ever-so-lightly in toffee, giving the perfect crunchy contrast to the smooth layers of cream and cake below.

Oh Goodness Gracious. 





Anyway, on to today's task.  It started with these cheery guys I received from some awesome friends.

Now don't be fooled - they're limes, not lemons.  What woulda thunk it?  But they're ripe and smell great, so I decided to go for mini lime cream tarts.

Some quick background info here:  I. LOVE. PASTRY.  How much?  This much! (And she stretches out her arms until they wrap around the world twice.) Unfortunately I'm not great at making it.  I have a number of recipes I've been wanting to compare, some savoury and some sweet; some with butter or melted butter, some with lard (the latter of which my Mum uses to make fabulous pastry).  So today I tried a shortcrust (unsweetened, using chilled butter) recipe with the lime tarts - I didn't want the whole thing to be sickly sweet.


Soooooo it turns out I didn't weigh the mini-tarts down enough when blind-baking the pastry.  Poof!  They kind of looked like the puffiness you get around your eyes after a late night and not much sleep.

(Ok ok, I didn't actually weigh them down at all.  How the heck do you fit pie weights in them?  Or rice?  Well that stuff just seems to get everywhere...)  

To make matters worse, I left the filling in too long, and well, the photos here kind of explain it all. 


 Happily, the larger size worked out better:

 Now nothing hides imperfections better than a healthy dose of meringue, so out came the egg whites!

Clearly the tart-to-meringue-ratio is bit extreme in favour of meringue here, but overall I'd call today a sort-of-success.  The pastry was deliciously flaky, so texture gets a 10/10.  I wasn't convinced on taste though - may a little sweetness in the dough could have helped.  Not to worry though - that's what next Wednesday is for!


See you then,

Leah xx

Wed, 16th May, 2012

Welcome back to Wednesday Baking Day!  My week off certainly delivered the goods as I sampled some of regional Victoria's best baked delights.  Unfortunately I was so engrossed in sampling as much as possible (once again, for "research") that I forgot to take any pictures.  You'll just have to take my word for it that they do a mean apple slice at the Horsham Bakery. 

Anyway, onto this week's Comfort Food project.  The name of this dish makes my laugh nearly as much as the Clafoutis I baked in the first entry of this blog.

Introducing....Berry Grunt.

Seriously?  Grunt?  Yes friends, it's basically a comical alternative name for dessert dumplings. Yummy doughy dumplings swimming in a warm lake of berries.  Perhaps it's name derives from the affirmative sounds made by the lucky few that get to sample such goodness on a cold wintery night. 

Here are the little tikes bubbling away happily on the stove...

Now, I'll admit the final result isn't that attractive...although with the generally manic state of life happening at the moment, I'm not really taking my photography far beyond the, "Well, let's click 'er as she lies!" philosophy, which isn't doing anyone any favours.

But then again, this dish is called a Grunt, so I wouldn't be expecting Gourmet Traveller-glamour now, would you?  (Well, to be fair I'm sure Gourmet Traveller could make a Grunt look like the veritable Miss Universe of desserts.  But this is beside the point.)

Wishing you all at least one happy Grunt this winter season...

xx Leah

Wed, 2nd May, 2012

 May: Cobblers, Crumbles & other cold weather comforts...

 

Today's recipe: Apple and Rhubarb Buckle

 

Hello.  My name is Leah, and I am a Comfort Eater.

My friends and I often joke around about our comfort-eating tendencies, especially now that Melbourne weather is getting colder.  But in all seriousness, I really do think I have a little problem.  I've started noticing some of the warning signs:

• Finding myself convinced that I consider and rationalise issues easier when I have a cup tea in my hand...
• Finding myself believing that I think even more clearly and make better decisions when I have a cup of tea in my hand and a little cake or cookie on a plate...
• Finding myself assured that things will simply be better once it's mealtime.  Just gotta make it through to lunch.  Or dinner.  Or afternoon tea.  Or dessert.  Or miscellaneous snack-time.

Now these may seem minor, but lately they've stepped up a notch:

• When cold, my thoughts immediately run to "What could I eat?" rather than "What could I wear?" in order to get warm...
• Eating a peanut butter sandwich at 9:30am...when I've had a massive bowl of porridge at only 7:30am (This happened this morning...it's been an intense couple of weeks)

Ah, I could continue, but I'll only embarrass myself further.  Anyway, suffice to say, I have devoted the month of May to desserts with a distinct "Cold weather comfort" feel.  Crumbles, cobblers, and other warm fruit desserts with fun names like Buckles, Grunts and Pandowdys.  How could I resist when they sound like they come straight from an Enid Blyton book??

So tonight I tried my hand at a Buckle.  This dessert is pretty much a soft vanilla-cake base, with a fruit crumble on top.  Cake and crumble in one?  Yes please!  I chose apple and rhubarb.  Can't go wrong.

Buuuuuut it kinda went wrong.  

It cooked through really well, the cakey base was delicious, the crumble was perfectly buttery and crumbly (it didn't get it's name for nothing!)

But I didn't use enough fruit, and the whole thing was a little dry.  There was none of that delicious fruit goopiness that crumbles have - it probably soaked into the cake.  And although I'm a fan of tart rhubarb, I really could have added some sugar.

Still, my housemates and I managed to eat the whole thing (see above paragraph on comfort eating) so all in all, not a bad first attempt at the buckle.

I'm sad to say next week there will be no baking day.  I'll be touring the countryside in a tour bus hitting the hot spots of regional Victoria.  Unfortunately our contracts do not include confirmation of access to cooking facilities, so I'll devote the week to "research" (aka tasting lots of yummy things).  See you all in two weeks!

xx Leah

Wed, 25 April, 2012

For all those who are not from Australia, today was Anzac Day.  And I made Anzac biscuits.

This is going to be a very short post, as I also had three rehearsals today and it's currently 11:51pm.  But despite the fact that lately I have often been burning things in the oven, I was pleased that these beauties turned out, well, beautie-ful!

I'm hoping to get a little more creativity back into my photography soon, but on days like these it's more a "just-get-the-job-done" situation.   Still, my leaning tower of Anzacs does make me smile.  They fell over about 0.1 seconds after I took the shot.  (The tiny sound of the shutter release was all the vibration required to topple such a precarious foundation.  Don't build your house on oats and brown sugar, I say.) 

The lucky guys in the tins at the back made it to rehearsal to feed the masses.  The irregular shaped guys at the front were reserved for housemates.  I don't think they minded. (The biscuits or the housemates, that is!)

Oh! And since next week will be May, I've decided to start themeing my months.  For example, gluten free month, tart/pastry month etc.  I have some ideas for May, but would love to know yours!  Please comment and let me know!

xx Leah