Blueberry and Macadamia Blondies

The mention of blueberries out of season will not please the xenophobic cooks among us but it is one of the fruits of the world from which I can never be parted. They make a delightful addition to this blondie recipe, and there is something about their ability to hold their own against the strength of chocolate and nuts that continues to strengthen my love for the humble bit of fruit.

This brownie/blondie concoction does best when cooked low and slow – the white chocolate turns into a honey/butterscotch shade of blonde, makes your kitchen smell like toasted shortbread and it creates a unique, creamy, sugary and slightly salty taste. If your brownie is starting to colour too quickly on top, make sure to cover it with foil then remove the foil for the last stages of cooking. This blondie, like a good more traditional brownie is meant to be flaky and crunchy on top with that dense middle caving in submission to the fruit, chocolate chips and nuts.

Ingredients

250g unsalted butter, softened

500g caster sugar

5 eggs

30g brown sugar

320g plain flour

185g couveture white chocolate, half melted, half chips

1 punnet (250g) blueberries

½ cup macadamia nuts, chopped (or more to taste)

Method

Grease and line a 30 x 23 x 4cm baking tin with baking paper.

Preheat oven to 150C.

Cream the butter and caster sugar together until light and pale. Beat in the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Mix in the brown sugar and melted white chocolate. Sift in the flour, stirring gently to combine. Gently stir through the chocolate chips, macadamia nuts and blueberries and pour into the prepared baking tin. Bake for 50 - 60 minutes or until just cooked through and brown on top. Allow to cool in tin. Remove and slice into portions.

Passionfruit Caramels...aka Crack Caramel

Crack caramel

Passionfruit and dark chocolate dipped caramels with dried flowers

Whether it’s an indecent sauce, sliding all over your dessert plate or a chewy after dinner treat, caramel has this undeserved reputation as being something that’s difficult. And yes it can burn to the pot, turn darker than you’d like it to and if left unattended stick your wooden spoon permanently to the base of your pan. BUT if you follow a few simple rules, keep an eye on it and use a sugar thermometer, it’s really as easy as pie. And sometimes its fun to embrace the panicked thrill that comes with cooking something threatening.

These passionfruit caramels are oh so pretty on the eye and take the humble caramel beyond what you might find at a church fete. The slight tartness of the passionfruit makes a perfect bedfellow for the chocolate and toffee flavours. And the dried flowers make them giftworthy.

Did I mention you need a sugar thermometer? Buy one. Yes that’s right, repeat after me, su-gar ther-mom-eter. Important stuff.

I have two other warnings - remember not to stick your fingers in the mixture, as delightful and tasty as it may look. That stuff burns.  And excessive caramel consumption does lead to sore teeth.

Makes approximately 24 pieces

Ingredients

250g caster sugar

60 ml passionfruit juice (strained, no pulp)

250ml (1 cup) cream

75g liquid glucose

30g butter

dried edible flowers

75g dark chocolate

Method

Line a 20 x 20cm high-sided baking tray with baking paper.

Combine the sugar, passion fruit juice, cream, glucose and butter in a heavy-based saucepan and stir to combine, being careful not to let the mixture rum up the sides as this has a tendency to burn. Place over medium heat and cook, stirring frequently until the sugar dissolves. Increase the heat to high and cook until the mixture reaches 120C on a sugar thermometer. This should take between seven and ten minutes and the caramel should be bright and golden in colour. Working quickly, pour the caramel into the prepared tray and sprinkle over some dried edible flowers. Let stand until firm.

Using a hot, wet knife, cut the caramel into desired shapes. Melt the chocolate and dip the ends of the caramel pieces into the chocolate. Sprinkle over additional dried flowers if using. You can store caramels in the fridge but they are best eaten at room temperature to prevent breaking your teeth!

Kitchen Kit Road Test & Giveaway

If you are anything like me you find yourself with a thousand and one baking pans or none. There is no happy medium. Ever. Its sort of like underwear. You have all these matching sets and then one day wonder if you can leave the house because there is nothing. Zip. Zero. Zilch. Not even a pair of bonds and a singlet to make yourself respectable.

So I was pretty happy when I was sent a 20 x 26cm Profiline Push Pan as part of the launch of the pans with the tv show The Great Australian Bake Off. I have been using my grandmothers loose-bottom tin - I love it but I also get concerned about the over use - its one of her possessions that I hold most dearly to my heart so a new loose bottom tin was in order. And it meant I could organise a giveaway set for you lovely peeps so of course I obliged!

These tins are a little different - which is why I thought them worthy of the Kitchen Kit Roadtest. There is a silicone seal on the lose base which is very handy if you are a bit slap dash with your batter like me. None of the mixture can make its way out into the world of your oven and you can also use them to cook in a water bath without the angst of a watered down cheesecake/pudding etc etc.

What's there to say, a round cake pan is a round cake pan but this shot from Profiline does show the silicone seal so you can see how it works.
They are slate/chrome in colour - quite similar to the Chicago metal colour and have the weighty feel of a quality baking pan.

Made of heavy gauge steel with some uber fancy Swiss non-stick coating. I can't speak to it because I've never trusted a non-stick. Ever. I've worked too hard on my cake to throw caution to the wind and have half of it stuck to the sides so I'm passing the info on here rather than claiming its non-sticking wonder. Someone let me know?

Oh and the prices range from $18.95 - $35.95 so they are pretty wallet friendly. Sizes range from 12cm - 26cm. More deets at www.pushpan.com.au

They've got all the important stuff. You can throw them into the dishwasher. They'll bake at fisson inducing temperatures - up to 260C.

I've found after a few uses and goes through the dishwasher that the silicone seal tends to roll a little bit. Its an easy fix - you just have to make sure its back in place after you've washed the tin and I've found it is easiest to do this once it is just out of the dishwasher and the seal is still a bit warm and stretchy.

I used the 20 x 26cm tin to bake this earl grey crumble tea cake for my weekly Daily Life Column. The cooking time was standard and it achieved a consistent brown colouring in the tin despite the upper left hot spot in my oven. 

Earl Grey Tea Crumble Butter Cake

I am the first to ooh and ahh over the petite perfection of professionally produced patisserie, but there is something more gratifying about making, baking and tasting the more robust home baked tea cake. Tea cake, preferably with a cup of tea, fills the house with amazing smells and can make you feel everything is ok with the world in a way that very few other forms of cooking can. I’ll take cake over quinoa every other day of the week and often find myself daydreaming of a world where “everything stops at 3.30 for tea and just a slice”.

I’ve incorporated tea (surprise, surprise) directly into your standard butter cake here with a caramelized tea crumble topping – the result is light, lovely and fitting for many an occasion, from those requiring starched white napkins and funny little forks to those enjoyed over the kitchen sink with a mug of builders tea when no one is watching.

Ingredients

Topping

2 tbsp looseleaf  earl grey tea

1 cup brown sugar

¼ cup plain flour

75g cold butter, chopped

Cake

2 cups plain (all purpose flour)

2 tsp baking powder

¼ tsp salt

125g butter, at room temperature

1 cup caster sugar

3 eggs, lightly beaten

¾ cup Greek yoghurt

¼ cup earl grey tea, cooled

Method

Preheat oven to 180C.

To make the topping place the brown sugar and flour in a bowl, add ingredients to a bowl and rub butter in with your fingers until mixture resembles coarse breadcrumbs. To make the cake, sift the flour, baking powder and salt in a mixing bowl. Place butter and sugar in a bowl and cream together. Add the eggs and tea and mix to combine. Add the dry ingredients, alternating with the yoghurt, mixing well after each addition. Pour the cake batter into a greased 23cm (9 inch) spring-form cake tin. Sprinkle with topping mixture and bake the cake for 50 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the centre of the cake comes out clean. Leave to cool in the tin for 10 minutes, then turn out onto a wire rack, topping side up to cool. Serve with your finest brew of tea.

WIN -WIN- WIN
Just leave a comment on this post and a winner will be selected at random on 30th August. The lucky winner will receive:
4 x 12cm PushPans
2 x 20cm PushPans
1 x 26cm PushPans (this is the one I used)

OMFG....Oh My Fried Goodness. It's Parmesan Pesto Fries

Parmesan Pesto Fries

I often fall into the camp that deliberates the sides as much as the main meal. In fact a “side” done well can serve perfectly as the main event and has done so for me on many an occasion. Take the humble spud – roasted, mashed, boiled, baked, fried and steamed – a meal is not a meal without a touch of tatie on the side. It translates into patatas bravas, fritters, samosas, hashes, caldo verde, colcannon, bubble n squeak and the ever-humble hot chip. I’ve taken the typical soak up the beer, feed the seagulls special here and spun it with parmesan, sea salt and pesto so if you squint at them, you could almost imagine you were eating your greens. I’ve left the quantities for the pesto fairly large, if you are anything like me you’ll tend to cover your fry like a sock with the stuff.

The key to the perfect chip is in the soak. By soaking the fries in water, you draw out the starch, so when you cook them you make them crunchy on the outside and light and potatoey on the inside. Also make sure you serve them up hot and fast – these are definitely the sort of pomme fritte that you blow on, eat and still burn the roof of your mouth for fear of missing out.

Ingredients

900g baking potatoes, peeled, cut into ¼ inch thick sticks or cut into shoestring using a julienne peeler

vegetable oil for frying

Pesto

1 bunch basil leaves

1 bunch coriander leaves

1 large clove garlic, peeled, chopped

50g pine nuts, toasted

¼ cup finely grated parmesan

zest of 1 lemon, plus a little squeeze of juice

1/3 cup olive oil or grapeseed oil

To serve

Rock salt

Shredded Parmesan

Method

Add the potato to a large bowl. Cover with water and refrigerate for 8 hours, even better if you do it overnight.

On the day of serving make the pesto by combining the basil and coriander leaves, garlic and a pinch of sea salt in a mortar and, using a pestle, coarsely crush. Add pine nuts, parmesan and lemon zest and pound to a rough paste, stir through oil and season to taste with sea salt and freshly ground black pepper. Set aside until ready to serve. Alternatively you can blitz these in a food processor – just don’t over work it, you want a rough pesto.

In a large saucepan, heat 2 inches of oil to 160C. Line a baking tray with paper towels. Rinse the potatoes and pat thoroughly dry. Working in batches, fry the potatoes until they are almost tender and look slightly translucent (usually about 3 minutes). Transfer to paper towels to drain.

Increase the oil temperature to 190C and fry the potatoes for another 3 minutes or until golden and crisp. Transfer to the paper towels to drain and season generously with salt. Sprinkle the fries with the shredded Parmesan and dollops of pesto and serve immediately.