Wedding Cake

Smitten Kitchen’s wedding cake project was an invaluable aid when I was planning and executing my brother’s wedding cake earlier this year. I had never made a tiered cake before, and Smitten Kitchen was a great source of information for recipes and construction tips.

I used two of the recipes from Smitten Kitchen – the vanilla buttermilk cake for the top tier, and the chocolate butter cake for the bottom tier.

The vanilla buttermilk cake was filled with mango curd, made from canned mango, and the chocolate cake with a chocolate ganache, with Frangelico added to the ganache rather than brandy. Then, after the tiers were stacked together, supported with thick wooden skewers and a cake board, the whole concoction was iced with swiss buttercream icing.

These cake recipes are seriously fantastic – they’re dense, moist and taste amazing. The method of freezing the cake layers, individually wrapped in plastic, for a week prior to decorating the cake works so wonderfully that I don’t think I’ll ever make a celebration cake any other way.

I used the chocolate butter cake recipe to make a cake for my father-in-law’s birthday a few weeks later, using the chocolate ganache to ice the cake (much less forgiving of a clumsy hand than buttercream), and a caramel filling in between each of the layers.

Carrot & Fennel Salad with Ranch Dressing

This was my first time cooking with fennel, and I had a couple of bad moments while slicing the fennel bulb and experiencing the subsequent strong smell of aniseed. I’m the sort of person who picks the black jelly beans out of the bag (Husband loves black jelly beans, that’s why we’re married). However, I quite enjoyed the flavour of the baked fennel, as the aniseed flavour wasn’t nearly as prominent – I thought it mixed very well with the other flavours in this robust roast vegetable salad. This recipe is adapted from the February 2009 delicious magazine.

ingredients:
2 bunches of baby carrots, or small carrots sliced into fours
2 baby fennel bulbs, or 1 large fennel bulb
1 red onion
2 tbsp olive oil
3 cups rocket leaves
1 bunch mint

for the dressing:
250g light sour cream
1 tbs lemon juice
1 tbs red wine vinegar
1 garlic clove, crushed
2 tsp each of chopped chives, parsley, fennel fronds, dill & basil

Preheat the oven to 200C. Peel the carrots, and if you’re using bigger carrots, slice them into three or four lengths. Slice the fennel bulb thinly, and reserve the leafy fronds for the dressing. Chop the onion into quarters, and leave the peel on. Arrange the vegetables on a tray, sprinkle with salt and olive oil, and bake for 25-30 minutes until everything is tender.

Meanwhile, prepare the dressing by mixing all the ingredients together in the serving bowl. You may need to add a couple of tablespoons of water to have the dressing at a nice runny consistency.

When the vegetables are cooked, leave them to cool a little. Remove the skin from the onion quarters, and slice them up. Place the vegetables in a bowl with the rocket and mint, season with a little salt, lemon juice and olive oil. Serve the salad on a large platter, with a bowl of the ranch dressing to the side.

Cauliflower Soup

This is a lovely creamy soup with a beautifully smooth rich texture and sweet flavour, and very quick to make. It’s a recipe from the August 2007 issue of delicious magazine, which I altered slightly to make it a little lower in fat. It didn’t detract from the creaminess of the soup – in fact, the Husband declared it was a little too creamy for his taste. Served with crunchy garlic croutons for contrast, this is a delicious soup to start a meal with, or for a light meal on its own with some salad.

ingredients:
50g unsalted butter
1 onion, diced
1 caulifower, broken into florets
2 cups of chicken or vegetable stock (go for the reduced salt version if you’re buying stock)
300ml skim milk
additional 150ml skim milk
2 tbsp low fat sour cream
1/2 small cobb or vienna loaf
1 clove garlic, chopped
1 tbsp chopped parsley

Melt the butter in a large saucepan, then add the onion and cook gently for a couple of minutes.

Add the cauliflower florets, and cook for a minute or so. Pour the stock and milk over the cauliflower, and bring to the boil. Reduce the heat, and cook for about 5 to 8 minutes, until the cauliflower is soft.

While the soup is cooking, break up the bread loaf with your hands on a baking tray, and sprinkle with garlic. Bake at a high heat, say 200C, for about 5 minutes until golden and crunchy. Sprinkle the parsley over the mixture.

Leave the soup to cool slightly, then blend (either with a handheld blender, or pouring the soup by halves into a blender).

Return the blended soup to the saucepan, and stir in the additional milk and sour cream. Taste, and season with salt and white pepper.

Serve hot, sprinkled with the bread, garlic and parsley mixture. I found that larger bread pieces gave a nicer crunch than the smaller crumbs, and contrasted nicely with the smooth creamy soup.

Herb pilaf

I wanted to do something a little different to accompany some chicken breasts, and settled on the idea of a herb pilaf from the ever useful Cook’s Companion by Stephanie Alexander. I didn’t follow the recipe exactly as, frustratingly, I didn’t have quite enough of all the herbs – I suspect the proper amounts of ingredients would result in a more prettily green-flecked dish.

ingredients:

1 tblsp olive oil
40g (about 8 tsp) of butter
1/2 cup finely chopped parsley
2 tblsp finely chopped coriander
2 tblsp finely chopped watercress
1 cup finely chopped spring onion (including greens)
2 handfuls finely chopped baby spinach leaves
1 cup long grained rice
1 1/2 cups of water or chicken stock
salt, pepper, fresh parmesan

Heat the oil and half of the butter into a medium sized saucepan. Add the herbs, watercress, spring onion and spinach, and cook for a few minutes, stirring. Add the rice, and stir until the grains look shiny and are well covered with the greens. Add the water and salt, and bring the mixture to a boil. Turn the heat down low, cover, and simmer undisturbed for 20 minutes.

Stir the remaining butter through the rice, season with pepper and serve as a side dish with the fresh parmesan to sprinkle over.

Banana bread with dates

When I cut into this banana bread, still warm and steaming from the oven, and had my first exploratory taste, I decided that this could possibly be the best banana bread I’ve ever made. Some banana breads are too dry, some are too oily, but this banana bread was just, absolutely right.

It’s essentially Nigella’s recipe from How to Eat, with a few substitutions. If you have some overripe bananas, give it a go – you may fall in love just as I did.

ingredients

100g chopped dates
75mls rum (a leftover bottle I use for cooking as it was declared by the Husband, whom I bought it for, to be the wrong brand)
1 1/2 cups plain flour
2 tsps baking powder
1/2 tsp bicarb soda
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup butter, melted
2/3 cup sugar
2 eggs
4 small ripe bananas (about 300g without skin), mashed
1/2 cup dried cranberries
1 tsp vanilla extract

Put the chopped dates and rum into a small saucepan and bring to the boil. Take off the heat and let sit for an hour until the fruit has absorbed the liquid. I left it on the heat for too long and the dates soaked up the rum immediately, which worked fine as well.

Preheat the oven to 170C. Mix the flour, baking powder, bicarb soda and salt into a medium bowl. In a large bowl, mix the melted butter and sugar and beat until well blended. Beat in the eggs and then the bananas. Then stir in the soaked dates, cranberries and vanilla extract.

Add the flour to the butter mixture, one third at a time, stirring well after each addition. Scrape the mixture into a greased and lined loaf tin, and bake at 170C for 1 to 1 and a quarter hours. When it’s ready, a skewer should come out mostly clean. Leave to cool in the tin until you can bear it no longer and cut yourself the first slice.

Pumpkin & Choc Chip Biscuits

I found this recipe at the always inventive Baking Bites – I’ve never had a failure with her cookie and cupcake recipes, and as she described, these cookies were moist and slightly chewy without being cakey or overly dense.

I’d never actually used pumpkin in a sweet baking recipe before – it’s more of an American cooking quirk than an Australian one, although we do have pumpkin scones here in the Antipodes.  I usually eat pumpkin in salads, and when I read this recipe I had just roasted some small pieces of pumpkin, skin on, to have for lunch during the week.  I simply scraped a cup full of the soft pumpkin from the skin, and used that pumpkin in this recipe – I think the roasting gave it the biscuits a bit of extra warmth.

I didn’t use the optional nuts mentioned by Baking Bites as I didn’t have any in the cupboard, but I think they’d give a nice crunch to these soft biscuits.

ingredients:

2 1/2 cups plain flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
3/4 tsp salt
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp ground cloves
pinch nutmeg
1/2 cup butter, room temperature
1 cup white sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 egg
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1 cup pureed pumpkin
1 cup dark chocolate chips

Preheat the oven to 180C. Line your baking trays with baking paper, to prevent the biscuits sticking.

Sift or stir together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt and spices in a bowl.

In a large bowl, cream together (either with an electric beater or by hand) the butter and sugar. Beat in the egg, vanilla, and lastly the pumpkin. Add the flour mixture and stir in by hand until just incorporated. Stir in the chocolate chips.

Drop tablespoonfulls of the biscuit mixture onto your baking trays, and baking for 12-14 minutes at 180C until slightly browned at the edges. Don’t worry if they’re a little soft – they will continue to cook and firm up as they cool on the tray.

Roast Tomato Soup

This soup is so gorgeous – tangy, chunky tomatoey goodness.  And it barely warrants being called a recipe.

Take about 1.5 kilos of very ripe tomatoes.  Cut them in half or quarters, depending on the size, and spread out on a baking tray.  Drizzle with olive oil, and sprinkle over salt.  Roughly chop two onions into wedges, and place in among the pieces of tomatoes.  Peel about half a head of garlic and drop the cloves in with the onion and tomatoes.  Bake at about 200C for 45 minutes to an hour (depending on whether you forget about them or not as I did.)

Leave the baked vegies to cool a little.  Pour everything on the tray into the food processor, and proceed to whiz until you’re getting a reasonably smooth consistency.  You’ll probably want to add a little hot water to dilute the soup a little.  Serve with parsley and perhaps some fresh parmesan or croutons.

Smoked Salmon and Camembert Quiche

This recipe from Taste fit the bill when I was looking for a quick quiche to make for lunch. “Oh wow,” said my guest, “you made your own pastry.” Actually, I didn’t, but apparently I’m skilled at manhandling frozen pastry until it looks homemade. Good to know.

This was wonderful, but I think that’s easy to do when smoked salmon and camembert are involved. More importantly, it was simple, and I still had plenty of time to put it together despite running a litte behind time before my lunch guests arrived.

ingredients:

1 large sheet of ready-rolled shortcrust pastry, thawed (I found a special large size that said it was for quiche)
1 tbs olive oil
1 leek, finely chopped
1 garlic clove, crushed
1 bunch asparagus, cut into 4cm pieces
100g smoked salmon
100g camembert, thinly sliced
2 eggs
1/2 cup cream
1/3 cup milk
1 tbs chopped fresh dill
salt & freshly ground pepper

First, let’s deal with the pastry. Preheat the oven to 190°C. Line a 23cm quiche tin (if it doesn’t have a removeable bottom, grease it well beforehand) with the pastry. Either pierce the pastry with a fork a few times, or line the pastry with baking paper and fill with rice to weight it down. Bake for 15 minutes. Remove the paper and rice. Reduce the oven to 180°C and cook for 10 minutes or until golden and crisp.

While that’s cooking away, you can put together the leek mixture. Heat the oil in a frying pan, add leek and garlic and cook for 5 minutes or until soft. Add the asparagus pieces and cook for a further 2-3 minutes until tender. Set aside to cool slightly.

In a separate bowl, whisk together the cream, milk, eggs and dill, and add some salt and pepper if you like.

OK, you’ve got your golden pastry base, the cooled leek mixture (it doesn’t matter if it’s still fairly hot) and the cream mixture.  Spread the leek mixture over the pastry. Top with the sliced camembert, and then the smoked salmon.  Pour the cream and egg mixture over everything else. The liquid will probably sit below the smoked salmon – don’t worry, it will puff up.

Pop the quiche into the oven for 30 minutes, or until set and golden. Set it aside and let it cool for 10 minutes, before slicing and serving.

Bean & Baby Spinach Salad

I adapted this recipe from a Valli Little recipe in the September 2007 edition of delicious magazine. It’s a lovely tangy salad, with a gorgeous dressing. The original has lots of mint in it as the main leafy substance, while I used very little – I think it could have used a bit more, but I would still shy away from the original two cups full.

ingredients:

2-3 handfuls of sugar snap peas
2-3 handfuls of snow peas
A few sprigs or a handful of mint, depending on taste
Baby spinach leaves
Soft feta cheese (usually described here as Danish or Tasmanian style)

and for the dressing:

1 garlic clove, crushed
2 tbs lemon juice
1 tsp honey
100 ml olive oil
1 tbs dried mint

To make the dressing, mix together the garic, lemon juice and honey in a bowl, and then whisk in the olive oil and the mint.

Rinse and top & tail the beans, breaking them in half or into thirds, before putting them in your serving bowl. Add the baby spinach, using enough eaves to fill out the bowl, and toss the beans through with your hands. Crush some feta over the top of the salad, and toss again to combine. I didn’t measure the feta I used – you’ll have to judge according to taste.

Pour the dressing over the salad, toss gently, and serve.

(The original recipe used peas as well, and cooked all the beans gently before making the salad. I love the sweet crisp taste of fresh sugar snap peas, so I left them raw.)

Mini Raspberry Cheesecakes

I left it way too late in the day to photograph these little cheesecakes (I was too busy eating them), and as a result neither of these photos are really in focus – hence the small size.

I had my zoom lens on the camera, and took the cake out to the back steps so that I could stand above it and get a good shot of the raspberry swirl.  You see that small wedge out of the cake on the left?  That’s because while I was taking the photos, a kookaburra swooped down and took a sampling of the cake.

It didn’t come back for more, so I’m not really sure if I can claim they have a kookaburra seal of approval.  However, they certainly have mine – an incredibly easy recipe, and a meltingly delicious sweet and tangy cheesecake. It’s a delicious magazine recipe from Taste.

ingredients:

10 Oreo biscuits (including filling)
40g unsalted butter, melted
1/2 cup frozen raspberries, thawed
2 tbs icing sugar, sifted
375g cream cheese
1 cup (220g) caster sugar
3 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 170°C, and if you’re a prepared sort of person, line a muffin tray with paper cases.

Put the Oreos into a food processor and whiz until they’re all broken up into crumbs. Add the melted butter and whiz until all combined. Spoon the mixture into the lined muffin tray, pressing down well to make a good base. Bake for 5 minutes, then remove and let cool.

Mash the raspberries to a pulp with a fork. The original recipe then suggested straining them through a sieve to remove the seeds – I quite like raspberry seeds, so I didn’t bother, and it certainly didn’t detract from the cake. Stir the icing sugar into the raspberry mixture.

Place the cream cheese into a food processor and mix until light and fluffy. Add the caster sugar in a steady stream, continuing to mix until its all combined. Add the eggs, one at a time, mixing away all the while, and then add the vanilla. You’ll probably need to stop the food processor a couple of times to scrape down the sides, and at the end you’ll have a fairly liquid mixture. Pour the cheese mixture over the biscuit bases in the muffin tray.

Put a teaspoonful (or less if you’ve sieved the raspberries) of the raspberry mixture on top of each cake and use a skewer to swirl it through the cheese mixture. Bake for 10-15 minutes until just set, and then let cool completely before pulling off the wrapper to serve.