Recipe: Flourless chocolate, hazelnut ricotta cake

If you have a food intolerance, life can get a bit boring food wise. It isn't just that you are limited in what you can have, it is that people get good at making one thing that meets your needs and you get to have it over and over and over.

I'm lucky enough not to have any real food issues but I seem to be surrounded by people with them. At a recent dinner 11 of the 14 people there had special dietary requirements. So while I can eat everything, I do spend quite a bit of time thinking about new and delicious things I can make for my friends who have limitations.

When it comes to gluten free baking I started, like everyone it seems, with a flourless orange and poppyseed cake. Now there is nothing wrong with orange and poppyseed cake, mine is actually pretty damn delicious, but I realised that more often that not it is the only gluten free option in cafes and so my friends had it a lot. Since then I've been experimenting with a range of flavours and particularly with different nuts to replace the seemingly ubiquitous almonds.

This cake is great. Rich, moist, packed with flavour. You certainly don't feel like you are missing out on anything with it and I'm yet to meet anyone who doesn't love it. It is best the day after it has been made after it has spent a night in the refrigerator really developing that dessert like texture.

I've got two options for toppings with this recipe because S and I can't decide which is best. Topping one involves sprinkling grated chocolate over the top of the cake as soon as it comes out of the oven. It melts and forms a super chocolate layer. However it isn't that aesthetically pleasing.

Topping two is a simple dusting of icing sugar before serving which looks great but doesn't add a lot to the flavour.

Tips: Place a bowl of hot water in the bottom of the oven to add some moisture. This helps prevent cracks, although mine does often crack a little. If you don't like orange you can leave the zest out but it does add a lovely complexity to the flavour. When you take it out of the oven it will slowly drop in size, but that is what creates the great texture so don't worry when it happens.

Enjoy!

Flourless chocolate, hazelnut ricotta cake
120g butter
250g caster sugar (divided into 150g and 100g)
1 tsp vanilla paste
zest 1/2 an orange
4 eggs separated
45g cocoa
1/3 warm milk
240g hazelnut meal
300g ricotta
flaked almonds
either 20g grated dark chocolate or icing sugar to decorate

Preheat a fan forced oven to 160oC. Grease and line a 20cm baking tin.

Cream the butter, 150g of the sugar, vanilla and zest till light and fluffy. Add the egg yolks one at a time, scraping down the sides of the bowl between additions.

In a small bowl, mix together the cocoa and milk to form a thick paste. Add to the butter mixture (note make sure your milk is only warm as it will help dissolve the cocoa but not too hot so that it melts the butter).

Add the hazelnut meal and mix well, then fold through the ricotta until all combined.

In a separate bowl beat the egg whites until soft peaks form, then beat in the remaining 100g of caster sugar until thick, glossy and hard peaks.

Fold the egg whites through the cake batter a third at a time. I do this by hand with a spatula carefully lifting and folding the mix so that you don't knock too much air out of the egg white.

Pour into the prepared tin, sprinkle the flaked almonds over the top and bake for 40-45 minutes until springy to touch. It may still look slightly wobbly in the tin but if the centre bounces back at the touch it is ready.

If you are using the chocolate, sprinkle over straight away so that it melts on the hot cake.

Allow to cool completely in its tin before transferring to a plate. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate over night.

Serve cold from the fridge, dusted with icing sugar of using that option and with a good dollop of whipped cream.

Recipe: Gluten Free Lemonies

Do you have a favourite flavour? Something that just the thought of gets your mouth watering and the mention of on a menu means you must choose it? I have several: vanilla, raspberry, hazelnut, cinnamon, dark chocolate. But if I had to pick a single one, it would be lemon. I love all citrus but lemon reigns supreme. I am that person who eats the lemon slices in my drink, or sucks on a lemon wedge making my mother laugh with my yellow lemon grin.

In recent weeks I've been on a lemon binge. Several of my colleagues have very productive trees so I've been bringing home bags of lemons from the office. S was a little worried how we would use them up but after I made lemon cordial, lemon bars and lemon and poppyseed drizzle cake in a single day he realised he had nothing to be concerned about.

Lemon Bars from http://www.eatliverun.com/big-sur-lemon-bars/

If all of that wasn't enough, whilst browsing the internet I discovered Averie Cook's Lemon Lemonies, a fantastic take on a blondie packed with lemon flavour and I couldn't wait to find an opportunity to make them. Luckily one popped up quite quickly but due to the participants required a gluten free version. The following recipe is largely true to the original but is gluten free and Aussie friendly.

I have found that simply substituting gluten free flour for plain does not give a good texture and is often a bit dry. Instead I use a mix of gluten free flour, rice flour and ground almonds that tastes great and gives a fantastic texture. These are definitely LEMONY, there is no mistaking the flavour but if you love lemon like I do, I'm sure you will love them.

Gluten Free Lemonies - adapted from Averie Cooks

Base
3/4 cup white chocolate chips
115g butter
2 extra large eggs (roughly 60g each)
3/4 cup sugar
1/4 cup lemon juice
3/4 cup gluten free flour
1/2 cup rice flour
1/2 cup ground almonds

Glaze
2 cups icing sugar
about 1/3 cup lemon juice
about 1 tablespoon lemon zest

Preheat oven to 180oC (170oC fan forced). Line a 20x20 cm baking pan with baking paper and grease any corners where the baking paper doesn’t quite meet.

Melt together the white chocolate and butter. I generally do this over a double boiler as it is very easy to overheat the white chocolate and cause it to seize but you can do it in very short bursts in the microwave, stirring thoroughly in between.

Allow to cool for a minute then whisk in the eggs one at a time, followed by the sugar and lemon juice, whisking till all is combined and light and fluffy.

Fold the gluten free flour, rice flour and ground almonds into the mixture until just combined, don't overmix.

Pour mix into the prepared pan, smoothing the top lightly.

Bake for 25 minutes, or until lightly golden and a toothpick inserted in the center comes out mostly clean, or with a few moist crumbs. Leave to rest for 10-15 minutes

Meanwhile whisk icing sugar and lemon juice until smooth. The glaze should be thick but pourable which might require slightly more juice.

Pour glaze over the lemonies while still warm and in their tin. It should self level but you may need to smooth it over to the edges. Sprinkle with lemon zest (I grated it directly over).

Leave in the pan for several hours, or even overnight if you can fit your pan in an airtight container, so that the glaze sets before cutting into bars.

According to the original recipe the bars will keep airtight at room temperature for up to 1 week, or in the freezer for up to 6 months but I doubt they will ever last that long, they are too delicious!

Random Musings: Sourdough

 

For the last few years I've been fascinated by sourdough bread - don't worry I'm completely aware how weird I am. I love the idea that because the starter is built on the natural yeasts in your environment, every one is slightly different and unique to you. I also greatly prefer the slightly sour taste.

However, as is often the case with things you only know a little about, I had decided that it was not for me as I would be unlikely to make a bread a week, let along every second day which is what it seemed like it was designed for. Not only that but I doubted that I would be able to apply the diligence to keep the starter alive when I had read things about the requirement for 12 hour feeds etc. So making my own sourdough went in the "sometime in the mythical future" basket.

But as often happens, fate intervened in the form of the amazing women from the CWA. Just before Easter Mum saw an ad for a bread making course which was initially full but a cancellation let her attend. It was all about sourdough and she came back completely enthused. We visited for the long weekend and over the course of a few days, that enthusiasm spread. We played with bread producing delicious loaves all weekend and as we left to come home, she presented me with a jar of starter. So there I was, I had starter, I had some basic knowledge, the time to play with it had come.

Since then I've found that you can successfully keep your starter in the fridge. I feed mine once a week and make bread roughly every fortnight as we aren't huge bread eaters and sourdough bread has the benefit that it doesn't go stale like regular bread.

I feel irrationally proud when I feed my starter and it bubbles up indicating it is really active. And don't get me started on how exciting I find it when my initial mix (known as sponge) triples in size over night and becomes the base for a great loaf.

I tend to use Laucke bread mixes as the base as they are excellent quality flours, have a great balance of salt and come in a range of interesting mixes. We have been enjoying both the Crusty White and German Grain in recent times.

I've also had a go at making sourdough crackers and pancakes are next on my list.

The whole experience has reminded me of that lesson that I should really have learned by now which is that very few activities are beyond our ability to learn or at least have a go. Pre-conceived notions are filled with lack of knowledge and prejudice so if you are fascinated by something, why not give it a try. After all the result could be Saturday mornings with fresh bread for breakfast like it is in my house now!

Recipe: Kingston Cheesecake

If you spent your childhood in Australia, you will recall the excitement of the opening of a packet of Arnotts Assorted Creams. Everyone had their favourite, I was (and still am) very fond of a shortbread cream but my first pick was always a kingston.

A few years ago someone introduced me to the idea of a super kingston - formed by sandwiching two Anzac biscuits together with Nutella. It is pretty darn delicious and as I made a batch of Anzac biscuits this week I remembered it and it inspired me to create this cheesecake.

This isn't so much an invention as a combination of existing recipes. The base is a standard Anzac biscuit which I got from a Woman's Weekly cookbook and the Nutella cheesecake is a Valli Little recipe from the April Delicious Magazine. However I will take credit for combining them into one decedent dessert.

A couple of tips. To make getting your cheesecake out of the pan and off the baking paper easier, I put the base of the tin in upside down and rather than cutting the paper to size, do a square of paper (so the the edges stick out of the tin). You will need someone to give you a hand as you have to lift the base up a bit to get it to lock into place but it forms a flat base rather than the little dip.

When you take it out of the tin, you can then use the corners of the baking paper to lift the cake onto your serving plate, then you just roll the paper up underneath the cake and it comes out smoothly as shown in the picture. Hopefully that makes sense, let me know in the comments if it doesn't.

Finally, I got a great tip from the cream cheese packet that I've included in the recipe below which is to have a bowl of hot water in the base of the oven as you cook. It stops the crust from burning by keeping the oven a bit more moist.

Kingston Cheesecake

Base
1 cup rolled oats
1 cup plain flour
1 cup firmly packed brown sugar
1/2 cup desiccated coconut
125g butter
2 tablespoons golden syrup
1 tablespoon water
1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda

Filling
1/2 cup caster sugar
2 tbs plain flour
500g cream cheese (at room temperature)
1 tsp vanilla extract
4 eggs
300ml thickened cream
200g Nutella


Preheat oven to 140oC. Grease a 23cm springform tin and line with baking paper.

Combine oats, flour, sugar and coconut in a large bowl.

Combine butter, golden syrup and water in a small saucepan, stir over a low heat until smooth, stir in bicarb soda.  Mix into the dry ingredients.

Press the mix evenly into the base of the tin and up the sides leaving about a 1cm gap to the top of the tin (it will puff up to the top of the tin as it bakes). Refrigerate for 30 minutes.

Using an electric mixer, beat sugar, flour and cream cheese for 3-4 minutes until smooth. Add the vanilla, eggs and cream and beat for 1-2 minutes or until combined. Add the Nutella and beat for 2-3 minutes until smooth.

Pour the mix into the tin, it should fill to near the top of the biscuit mix.

Place into the center of the oven and put a bowl of hot water on the bottom of the oven. Bake for 1 hour or until almost set in the centre. Turn off the oven and leave with the door slightly ajar for 2 hours or until cooled completely.

Refrigerate for at least 1 hour or preferably overnight.

Recipe: Quince and Hazelnut Rolls

One of the many things I love about living in Canberra is our four seasons. Each one has its own feel, its own scent, its own tastes. To me, there is nothing quite like the distinct scent of a pot of poaching quince to make it feel like Autumn has arrived.

Quince are available for just a few weeks, so this year I've been super busy poaching up multiple pots and freezing them. I think they are rather magical in the way they go from hard, white unappitising lumps to tender, ruby red deliciousness after a few hours in the oven. Quince on porridge is one of my favourite breakfasts and this plan will have me enjoying them for months to come. But having such a bounty has also inspired me to make use of my quince in some baking.

These quince and hazelnut rolls are my take on the traditional American cinnamon roll with a bread base instead of puff pastry like a french scroll. In this case I've used a brioche type bread, sweet, dense and best of all you make it the night before, let it rest in the fridge overnight and just bung it in the oven in the morning. It means you can arrive at the office with a tray of fresh rolls looking like a champion or have a morning tea without stress or fuss.

A couple of notes, if you don't love cinnamon, you might want to halve the amount, these are definitely VERY cinnamony. The dough is very soft, so be gentle with it and use plenty of extra flour on the bench, your hands and roller when rolling it out. If your quince like mine live in the fridge in their poaching liquid, drain them well and dry them off as best you can with paper towel. Finally I've used vanilla paste in the glaze. It is awesome stuff but if you don't have it a teaspoon vanilla extract will give you the flavour.

Quince and Hazelnut Rolls

Dough
¼ cup warm water
3 teaspoons yeast
3 tablespoon sugar
½ cup warm milk
3 eggs lightly beaten
170g butter, melted
3 ½  + ½ cup plain flour

Filling
80g butter, softened almost to melting
1/3 cup brown sugar
¼ cup hazelnut meal
2 tablespoons ground cinnamon
About half a poached quince, drained and finely diced

Glaze
1 ½ cups icing sugar
3-4 tablespoons milk
½ teaspoon vanilla paste
50g hazelnuts, roasted, skins removed and roughly chopped

Combine warm water, yeast and sugar in a large mixer bowl and let sit for a few minutes or until frothy.

Add the warm milk, eggs and melted butter and mix until combined. Gradually mix in 3 ½ cups of flour until the dough comes together.  Sprinkle the remaining half cup of flour on the bench, add the dough and kneed into a smooth ball. Grease a large bowl and and place the dough in it. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and let sit in a warm location for 1-2 hours or until the dough has doubled in size.

Mix the brown sugar, hazelnut meal and cinnamon together.

Lightly dust a surface with flour. Once the dough has doubled in size, punch it down and roll into a large rectangle (about 20x60cm). Spread the very soft butter evenly over the dough. Spread the brown sugar mix evenly over the butter leaving a 2cm boarder on one long edge and dot all over with the diced quince. Starting with the other long edge carefully roll the dough into a log, keeping it fairly tight as you go. When you reach the edge, pinch along the edge to seal.

Place the log seam side down, cut off the ends so that the roll is even and cut the log into 12 even slices. Place in a buttered 25x32cm (or similar) baking dish – they should fill the dish and be touching. Cover with plastic wrap and place in the fridge overnight.

The next morning, brush the tops with melted butter and bake at 180oC 25-30 minutes or until golden brown.

Meanwhile mix together the icing sugar, vanilla paste and milk a tablespoon at a time until it forms a thick but spoonable paste. Drizzle half the mix over the hot rolls, then sprinkle over the hazelnuts and drizzle the remaining mix over to glue them on.

Allow to cool in the dish and serve just warm or at room temperature.

Best on the day they are baked.

Recipe: Armenian Cake

One of the great things about being an adult is earning money that you get to spend as you please. One of the downsides of being an adult is that you realise you need to spend said money on totally useful, unexciting things like bills. And you get excited about spending money on things that your child self would consider the most boring thing in the world.

A few months ago we spent the equivalent of a flight to Europe and back putting insulation in our ceiling. I was so excited I took pictures of the guys on the roof.

Before and After

This week I paid for my oven to be professionally cleaned. Again I took photos and told everyone around it. Even more mortifyingly adult, I keep finding myself wandering into the kitchen to gaze adoringly at it.

It is funny how your priorities change over time. As teenagers my friends and I used to always meet at Sportsgirl. These were the days before everyone had mobile phones so picking a popular shop meant we had plenty to look at while we waited for the one person who was inevitably late. Over time we moved our meeting place to Portmans and then to Cue. Then one day someone suggested we meet in the home-wares section of David Jones. I mark that as the tipping point. The day we all realised that as adults we would prefer to spend money kitting out our kitchens than our wardrobes.

These days I have a pretty fantastically equipped kitchen, although it is only lack of storage that stops me buying more. In fact to reach the square cake tin I use to make this recipe requires taking about 10 other things out of the cupboard first.

But onto the cake. After admiring my clean oven for awhile the urge to bake in it took over. This cake has been a favourite for many years. I love the crumbly base and the toasted almonds on top. And I really like that it cuts neatly into little squares that I don't feel too guilty at eating. I have no idea what makes it Armenian, this recipe has been a handwritten entry in my mother's cookbook for as long as I can remember so if anyone knows where it comes from let me know!

Armenian Cake

2 cups self-raising flour
1 cup desiccated coconut
2 cups brown sugar
125g butter
1 cup milk
½ teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
1 egg beaten
200g natural (unpolished) almonds

Pre-heat your oven to 170 degrees. Grease and line a 8" square cake tin.

Mix the dry ingredients together and rub in butter. Halve mixture and press ½ into the base of the cake tin.

Dissolve the bicarbonate of soda in the milk. Add it and the beaten egg to the remaining half of the dry ingredient mix and beat until well combined.

Gently pour on top of the dry ingredients already in the tin. Top with nuts - I tend to put them in neat rows but you can arrange as you like, just place them gently so that they don't sink too much.

Bake for 1 hour. The top will end up a dark golden brown colour.

Cool, cut into squares and enjoy!

Recipe: Fresh Fruit Tart

If you don't know that much about Vietnam and its history, it might surprise you to find that it is full of bakeries selling delicious bread, cakes and pastries. However Vietnam was a French colony for around 100 years and it left them with an amazing legacy of baking. It is really no surprise that just about every shopping strip in Australia has a "Saigon Hot Bake" as a legacy of Vietnam war refugees.

During our recent trip to Vietnam we enjoyed plenty of this French influenced baking. From the amazing banh mi sandwiches, to all sorts of cakes and pastries. The Cargo Club where I discovered the delicious crispy pork belly salad also has a fantastic patisserie attached and we found ourselves there nearly every morning.

Everything we had was delicious, but S fell particularly in love with their mango tart. So much so that when it came time for him to request a birthday cake he asked me to recreate it. The Cargo Club version is small individual tarts which were a bit fussy for me, so I make it as one large tart. Mango is excellent on the tart, but you can use any fresh fruit. Most recently I've made it with plums and nectarines and the gorgeous raspberries that are in season right now would be particularly nice.

This is a reasonably complicated recipe and it takes time. You need to allow the pastry to rest, the creme patissiere to cool and assembling it prettily isn't quick. You could shortcut by making the pastry in a food processor, but personally I love hand-making pastry. I find the process of rubbing the butter into the flour and kneading the dough almost like meditating. So basically you will need to allow a couple of hours to make this, although a good chunk of that time is just letting things cool.

However the end result of that work is pretty spectacular looking and even better tasting!

Fresh Fruit Tart
Pastry
250g plain flour
150g unsalted butter, room temperature cut into cubes
2tbsp cater sugar
1 egg yolk
water

Creme Patissiere
600ml milk
1 vanilla bean, split lengthwise
6 egg yolks
125g caster sugar
60g corn flour

Topping
Fresh fruit of your choice

For the pastry case
Combine the flour, butter and caster sugar in a bowl and rub between your fingers till the butter is evenly distributed and the mixture resembles coarse breadcrumbs. Mix the egg yolk through and add the water, a tablespoon at a time till the mixture comes together. Kneed the pastry lightly on the bench till it is a smooth ball with no cracks. Shape into a disc, wrap in cling film and chill in the fridge for around 30 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 180^oC, and grease fluted tart tin* with a loose base. Roll the pastry out between two sheets of baking paper till 2-3mm thick, then carefully line the tin and trim any excess. The pastry is quite soft so if it tears (or you put it in a bit lopsided like I often do) you can use the excess to patch any holes.

Line the pastry case with baking paper and fill with pastry weights. Bake for 15 minutes, then remove the baking paper and weights and bake for a further 10 minutes until golden brown. Remove from the oven and cool in the tin completely.

For the Creme Patissiere
Place 500ml milk and the vanilla pod (I like to scrape a few seeds out and put them in the milk too) in a saucepan and bring to the boil. Meanwhile whisk egg yolks and sugar together. Add the cornflour and remaining 100ml milk to the eggs and continue to whisk until combined.

Pour the hot milk into the egg mixture (remove the vanilla bean, you can use it to make vanilla sugar) and whisk to combine, then return this to a clean saucepan (just give it a quick wipe out with paper towel). Place back on a medium/high heat, whisking continuously. When pastry cream begins to bubble and thicken remove from heat and transfer back to the mixing bowl.  You need to watch it carefully, it will seem very runny for ages then all of a sudden will boil and thicken.

Cover with cling wrap with the wrap touching the creme patissiere to form a seal. Place in fridge and allow to cool (approx 1 hour).

To Assemble
Remove the pastry case from the tart tin and place on your serving dish. Fill with the creme patissiere (if it is completely cold give it a quick stir to loosen it up) and decorate with fresh fruit.

It is best on the day it is made but will keep in the fridge for a couple of days.

*Note: My tart tin is 25cm in diameter and 4cm deep. If you use a smaller tin, you may have excess creme patissiere. My recommendation is to not quite fill your pastry case to the top, leave a little gap to help hold the fruit in place.