During the London Olympics, due to the time difference between Sydney and London, most of the interesting events occurred in the middle of the night. There's been precious little entertainment on t.v the past 2 weeks so instead of watching television, I listened to the olympics coverage on the radio and read a book.
One show that has been on the t.v, is MasterChef All Stars. I've only caught a few episodes but I did manage to see last week's Country Women's Association cake challenge. As I love all things passionfruit I decided to track down the CWA Passionfruit Cake recipe which featured on the show. I'd bought a bag of passionfruit the previous weekend and had been looking for a way to use them.
The gas supply to my building is still being fixed. When I had no gas Saturday morning, I wasn't sure I'd have anything to put up on the blog, especially when the plumber was otherwise engaged for the day. By 4.00 p.m. the gas was back on, so I pre-measured all the cake ingredients Saturday night as I knew I'd have to be up early to get these in the oven and baked before my 9.15 Sunday morning cycle class. Gosh that was a long sentence, wasn't it?
As is my way, I changed the recipe a little. Instead of making a single cake I made 9 mini cakes from the recipe which took about 20 minutes to bake. I also used strained passionfruit juice instead of passionfruit pulp. Sometimes crunching through passionfruit seeds you're not expecting to find, isn't such a pleasant experience.
I iced the cakes once I returned home from the gym. The CWA recipe didn't come with instructions for passionfruit icing so I used this one from the Cook's Companion by Stephanie Alexander.
Passionfruit Cake
250g butter, softened
1 cup (220g) caster sugar
3 eggs separated
2 cups (300g) SR Flour
¾ cup (180ml) buttermilk
¼ cup (60ml) passion fruit pulp
Pre-heat oven to 350°F/180°C. Grease and lightly flour a 20cm/8 in round tin, tap out any excess flour. Beat butter and sugar in a small bowl with electric mixer until light and fluffy, beat in egg yolks, one at a time, beat until well combined.
Transfer mixture to large bowl, stir in half the sifted flour and half the buttermilk, then stir in the remaining flour and buttermilk and passionfruit pulp.
Beat egg whites in clean small bowl with electric mixer until soft peaks form. Fold into cake mixture in two batches. Spread mixture into prepared tin. Bake in moderate oven, for about 50 minutes or until cooked.
Stand for 5 minutes before turning onto covered rack to cool. Ice only on top with passionfruit icing.
Passionfruit Icing
1 cup pure icing sugar, sifted
50 grams unsalted butter, melted
the pulp of 2 passionfruit.
In a small bowl combine the icing sugar, the melted butter and the passionfruit pulp. For a runny icing, place the bowl over a pan of simmering water and stir the mixture for 1-2 minutes or until shiny.
As you can see the mini passionfruit cakes are perfect served with a nice cup of tea. I snaffled one for myself and took the rest into work. They were an absolute hit and devoured by every-one, even by my colleague Michael who declared he doesn't like passionfruit.
Just 2 more busy work days to get through before the weekend. Yippee!
I'll see you all again next week,
Jillian
Well we've just had a particularly cold and windy weekend in Sydney, just perfect for a warming bowl of soup served with a chunk of bread. I found this recipe for lamb shank broth in Stephanie Alexander's The Cook's Companion. I've made this soup a few times this winter and have adapted the recipe a little.
The first time I made the soup, I forgot to pick up a leek at the fruit market. It tasted a bit blah, so I refrigerated the soup overnight so I could remove the fat from the top, then I went down the street to the fruit shop and bought a leek. I added the sliced leek to the soup and cooked it for a further 30 minutes. I can't tell you how much extra flavour that 1 leek added to the finished soup.
I do like swede so I used that instead of turnip.
After the 3 hour cooking time, the soup was still a bit watery so I simmered the soup for an additional hour and ended with a chunky, tasty soup. The second time I made the soup I reduced the volume of water to 2 litres. Next time I might try adding a second lamb shank just so there's a bit more meat to go round.
Here's the original recipe for you.
Lamb Shank Broth from the Cooks Companion by Stephanie Alexander - serves 6
printable recipe
Ingredients
1 lamb shank
1 onion, diced
1 bay leaf
1 sprig thyme
2.5 litres water
20 g pearl barley, rinsed
2 carrots, peeled and diced
1 leek, sliced
1 turnip, peeled and diced
1 stick celery, strings removed and finely sliced
salt and freshly ground pepper
freshly chopped parsley
Place shank, onion, bay leaf and thyme in a stockpot and add water. Bring to simmering point. Skim and simmer for 1 hour, then add barley. Simmer for 1 hour. Add remaining vegetables and simmer for 30 minutes until vegetables are tender.
Remove shank and cut meat into small pieces. Return meat to pot and simmer for 30 minutes. Taste for seasoning. Serve garnished with parsley.
I hope you all enjoyed your weekends and weren't blown away by the wind. Congratulations to all those who completed the City to Surf, including Farmer Andrew.
Jillian
Something about winter makes me want to curl up with a nice plate of something warm. It can be porridge or a bowl of soup, but at other times it’s pudding that I want. During winter, I either stew fruit to serve with yoghurt or I make fruit crumbles, rice puddings or lemon delicious pudding for my dessert. I decided it was time to try out something new so here’s one of my rare forays into steamed pudding territory.
In an effort to keep the mess in my place under control, I’ve been going through all my old food magazines tearing out recipes I want to keep and putting the old magazines into the recycling bin. So many recipes are now available online and I'm fast running out of space in my little flat. I’ve had this recipe for golden fig pudding bookmarked for years but only got round to making it last weekend.
I needed to make a special trip to the shops for the figs and cloves, but everything else was already in my cupboards.
I halved the recipe and made 4 mini steamed puddings. As the puddings were quite little, they only needed 30 minutes steaming before they were ready to be eaten with some cinnamon spiced custard.
It's been quite cold in Sydney this past week so the perfect weather to enjoy these little puddings, doused with custard. I have one of the puddings left in the fridge, so I know what I'll be having for my dessert tonight - a figgy pudding.
I can't believe another weekend has been and gone, I hope you enjoyed yours,
Jillian
My readers often email me asking for recipes. One of the most requested recipes, has been for the Lemon Tart I made using a recipe from the Australian Gourmet Traveller Perfect Match cookbook. Passion fruit are in season at the moment so I decided to reinterpret the recipe using passion fruit juice. I made the tart with farm fresh eggs laid by 'the girls'.
I pureed the passion fruit in my food processor at home in Sydney before driving to Dungog. I was running a bit late so I didn't have quite enough time to make the 90 mls of passion fruit juice needed, so I topped it up with some lemon juice.
I also made the pastry at home and took it up with me in a little cooler bag. It's a 3 hour drive to Dungog and I didn't think the pastry shell would arrive in one piece so I rolled it out and lined my favourite rectangular tin once I arrived.
It's always challenging baking in an unfamiliar oven. My old gas oven is quite low with no known hot spots. Farmer Andrew has a fan forced oven and even though I lowered the temperature, I discovered the oven has 2 hot spots.
Even though I cooked the tart at 150°C, if you look really closely you can see a few bubbles in the tart filling, a sure sign of a too hot oven. I was assured it still tasted fine, despite the bubbles.
Here's the original Andy Harris Lemon Tart recipe for you from Gourmet Traveller. To make a passionfruit tart, instead of 90 mls of lemon juice I used 70 mls of passion fruit juice and 20 mls of lemon juice.
Gourmet Traveller Lemon Tart
printable recipe
Pastry
250 grams plain flour
125 grams cold unsalted butter
75 grams icing sugar, plus extra for dusting
3 egg yolks
3 tbl water
To make pastry, process flour, butter and icing sugar in a food processor until mixture resembles coarse breadcrumbs. Add egg yolks one at a time then gradually add 1-3 tablespoons water until pastry comes together. Turn onto a lightly floured surface then knead for 30 seconds. Wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate for 30 minutes. Roll out pastry onto a lightly floured surface and line a 24 cm round flan tin with a removable base trimming excess pastry with a sharp knife. Prick base with a fork and refrigerate for 30 minutes.
Preheat oven to at 160°C. Line pastry with baking paper and filled with dried beans or rice. Place tin on an oven tray and bake at 160°C for 10 minutes then remove paper and beans and bake for another 15 minutes until pastry is dry and golden brown.
Filling
5 eggs
150 grams caster sugar
90 ml lemon juice
2 tbs finely grated lemon zest
150 mls double cream
Place eggs, sugar, lemon juice and rind in a bowl and whisk to combine, then whisk in cream. Heat lemon mixture in a saucepan over a medium heat for 5 minutes or until warm, then pour into prepared pastry case and bake at 160°C for 25 minutes or until just firm. Cool tart for 1 hour, then serve dusted with icing sugar.
Time for me to get some dinner. I'll see you all again next week.
Jillian
