Merry X'mas!!!

Wishing everyone a Merry X'mas and Happy New Year

How neglectful I have been...

I completely missed out on writing an entry in the month of August and it is not because I haven't spent enough time in the kitchen but rather the contrary. August leading into September has been incredibly frantic with me juggling my role in an increasingly busy commercial kitchen with finding a new home and trying to develop my favourite project at the same time. This juggling act continues...

Anyway, after suffering a period of blog-neglect, I feel compelled to share this luscious little number with you -- a pair of incredibly tender, melt-in-the-mouth shortbread with strawberry flavoured icing sandwiched in between. I named it "Strawberry dream", but later dubbed it "the YanYan biscuit" because they smell so reminiscent of a favourite Japanese snack of mine as a child (and now of my gorgeous little prince whose picture I feature below).

Admittedly, many of my friends with whom I shared my "Strawberry dream" with was not as taken by it as I was, but it remains high on my list of favourite biscuits to eat. If like me, you enjoy delicate sandy-textured biscuits that almost crumble as you pick them up, and have a penchant for nostalgic flavours (like strawberry ice-cream that used to come out of a cardboard carton... gee, now I am really showing my age, aren't I?), then this is the biscuit you have to bake for a trip down memory lane.

strawberry dream

125 g butter, soft and at room temperature
30 g icing sugar, sifted
1 tsp vanilla essence
130 g plain flour
25 g cornflour
icing
30 g butter, at room temperature
1 tsp vanilla essence
1 tsp strawberry essence
60 g icing sugar, sifted

1 tbsn milk

makes approx 12 filled biscuits

preheat oven to 150C and line 2 baking trays with baking paper

beat butter, icing sugar and vanilla essence until very pale and fluffy

add cornflour to the mixture and mix well

add flour and mix until combined

portion dough using a small ice-cream scoop or a tablespoon as a measure

roll into balls with your hands

flatten balls to form 3-inch discs

bake for 20-25 minutes until the base are light golden and tops are firm to touch

allow to cool while you prepare the icing

beat butter, icing sugar and both essence until smooth and creamy

add milk and beat to achieve a softer consistency if necessary

apply a tablespoon of icing to the flat side of the biscuit and sandwich with another.

enjoy

Short, sweet and simple with Filbert

I will keep this post brief as I am still encountering processing issues with my laptop.

It is that time of the month again where Daring Bakers unite and test our baking skills and patience in the kitchen. This month's host is Chris from Mele Cotte (thank you Chris!) where you will find the entire recipe for the gateaux. Also, check out the various renditions of Filbert on my fellow DB sites.

I did not venture far from the original recipe, I simply scaled everything down by half to yield a smaller cake -- sufficiently satisfying the sweet tooth of six persons. The only problem I encountered was with my genoise, which shrank and sank upon removing from the oven. The texture, however, was moist, slightly dense and nibby with hazelnuts. As I was a little rushed for time, I used praline paste (50g to a total weight of 400g Swiss buttercream) instead of making my own for the buttercream which I know was cheeky and lazy on my behalf but hey, I go to work because somebody has to pay the bills (NB I assembled this cake in 5 minutes before leaving for work this morning - I did leave this challenge until the last minute and I do feel some sense of guilt I have to admit).

For the ganache, I used 100g of 85% cocoa Lindt dark chocolate melted in 180 mls pouring cream, 1 tablespoon glucose and 30g unsalted butter. The result is a super-glossy and thicker than normal ganache made with minimum 55% cocoa dark chocolate.

Although I enjoyed eating every bit of the slice of cake (pictured below), I thought it would be best if I shared it with my new workmates. I hope they enjoy eating it every last bit of it too.

Sunshine salad

Okay, the reason for this continuous evacuation of blog entries is because my laptop is playing up and there has been a backlog of posts I need to clear before a friend of mine looks at it (my laptop that is) and God only knows what will happen to all my image and text files when that happens! It is a race against time and I hope to get most of what I would like to share published before the unthinkable happens, which hopefully doesn't happen. Fingers crossed!

Here is a simple salad I made taking advantage of the season's citrus bounty. Did I mention I love citrus? Well, in case I haven't, I do. In fact, I can't wait til the arrival of blood oranges in my local market because I am just itching to try out a recipe I came across. And of course, Seville oranges to make some bitter-tart marmalade which I will use in a bread and butter pudding, hopefully before the days begin to warm up.

Anyway, I am rambling.

The salad is a toss of sliced radishes, navel orange segments, a variety of lettuce leaves and frisee. The star is of course the salad dressing, a departure from the standard lemon juice or vinegar base. Here, I used the juice of the oranges I segmented with a splash of white wine vinegar, a smattering of good dijon mustard, grapeseed oil and finely chopped mint. After photographing the salad, whilst in the process of tucking into it, I stumbled serendipitously upon some leftover roasted walnuts and golden raisins, too few to include in a baking project but enough to garnish my salad so I scattered them atop. The walnuts' oily-bitterness was just the perfect foil for the tart citrus dressing and the sweet raisins complimented the pepperi-ness of the radish.

If not for the delightful play of flavours on your palate, wouldn't you just make this colourful and optimistic looking salad to brighten a grey winter's day?

sunshine salad

1/2 head of frisee, white bits only

1/2 head butter lettuce

1/2 head coral lettuce

4-5 radish, finely sliced

2 medium sized navel oranges, segmented

handful of toasted walnuts (or pinenuts, pecans - your nut of choice really)

handful of golden raisins

*optional: small fennel, finely sliced and roasted baby beetroot, quartered

citrus dressing

juice squeezed from the remnants of orange after segmenting

2 tbsp white wine vinegar

1 tbsp good quality dijon mustard

grated zest of 1 orange

1/2 cup grapeseed oil

salt and pepper to taste

finelychopped mint leaves

wash lettuce and drain completely to dry

toss leaves in a large bowl and scatter the remaining ingredients over the top.

**I have made suggestions for other optional ingredients you may wish to include in your salad. Fennel and beetroot has a true affinity for oranges and will go superbly well with the citrus dressing**

make dressing by placing juice, zest, vinegar, a pinch of salt and freshly ground pepper into a little jam jar with half the amount of oil.

shake vigourously to form an emulsion

add remaining oil and shake again

finally add the chopped mint leaves

pour over salad and enjoy!

I have in the past used this citrus dressing enriched with a couple of tablespoons of good mayonnaise for an apple, carrot and cabbage slaw. It makes a refreshing change from the classic version of coleslaw.

Crepes and such

I discovered a pile of leftover buckwheat crepes that were slightly stale at the back of my fridge and eventhough they were a few days old (I made them on Bastille Day, not deliberately to celebrate the occasion though), I could not bring myself to toss them into the bin. Apart from the age-old saying, "think of all the starving children" as a constant reminder not to waste food, I do think most things can be salvaged and freshened up somehow to make a decent meal for one with the aid of some inventiveness. The only one exception is of course leftover cooked pasta for I believe no amount of salad cream or condiments can make a salad of cold pasta as appetising as its freshly-cooked counterpart but having said that, I have been known to (begrudgingly) eat day-old pasta.

Crepes are an incredibly versatile food. the type you can have anytime of the day, as a snack, meal or treat, as a sweet or savory item. The other great thing about crepes is that it is incredibly portable and can be eaten on the move, or you can dress it up to eaten in civilised fashion at a table with a pint of cider. Although buckwheat crepes are usually eaten with savoury fillings, I had some after dinner with a liberal spread of Nutella, slices of banana and toasted flaked almonds - yum. Many of my friends who love crepes hesitate at the thought of making the pancakes themselves because they find crepe-making a little difficult and often frustrating. The truth is, it does take some practice and confidence but once you have adjusted the heat of the pan and overcome the awkward twisting of your wrist to spread the batter evenly and thinly, you will be like a fish in water. (For further reading, check out Heidi Swanson's comprehensive entry on how to make sweet crepes and David Lebovitz's on how to make buckwheat crepes). Heck! you may even enjoy it.

Anyway, returning to what I did with my leftover crepes. I simply lined 2 holes of a Texas muffin tin with 2 crepes each (my crepes were very thin and delicate and I didn't want to risk seepage during baking), filled them with sauteed mushrooms and spinach, cracked a free-range egg over the top of each and baked them in a moderately hot oven for 4-5 minutes until the eggs were set but the yolks still runny.

It then struck me as I had my fork in one of my breakfast cupcrepes (I am rather pleased with this word I've coined) what a fabulous way to use up leftover crepes this is. The warm and wholesome savoury filling cradled by a pancake tender and moist with edges crisp, it was like eating a freshly cooked crepe at a creperie - well, almost!