It’s beginning to look a lot like Easter

I had grand dreams of making you some kind of crazy seasonal delight, but at life and time will do, they got away from me.

The good news is, there are plenty of other remarkable people that have created all kinds of ridiculous treats that you can make over this long weekend. So, I’ve assembled some of my favourites for you!

Are you ready for a toothache?

Creme Egg Hot Chocolate by Delicious

Easter Ice Cream Sandwiches by Tristan Lutze via News.com.au

Epic Easter Cake by Miss Trixi Drinks Tea via Urbanlist

Creme Egg Shots by Delish

 

There are also recipes to use up any lingering treats that you just can’t seem to eat fast enough, or just couldn’t help but pick up when they go on sale next week – I won’t judge you, this is a safe place.

Coconut Pretzel and Marshmallow Chocolate Fudge by Spoon Fork Bacon

Easter Egg Hunt Brownies by Love Swah

 

If you’re planning on getting out and about in Perth this weekend, We Love Perth and Broadsheet have you covered with what’s open, while Urbanlist has tracked down all of Perth’s tastiest Easter themed treats!

Let me know what exciting things you’ve got in the works this weekend!

Ready for greatness | Baller Brownies

Everybody loves brownies. They’re in every cafe, every bake sale, every morning tea. A good, fudgy, chewy brownie is everything that is right in this world.

So how do you make a great thing better? Fill it with all the best, tastiest tidbits you can get your hands on. Today, that’s two kinds of chocolate chips and crunchy nuts. Are you ready for greatness? Because these brownies are.

Many years ago, I was commissioned to make 100 white chocolate mud cake cupcakes with white chocolate buttercream. Several trials and more than 200 cupcakes later… The smell of white chocolate makes me instantly queasy. Can’t do it. This recipe takes boring old white chocolate and turns it into golden, caramel-ey goodness. Roasting the chocolate low and slow imparts a deep caramel flavour that can be used anywhere you’d use the white stuff. And the smell? Heaven. I can’t get enough.

This recipe is made better by the quality of chocolate you use. Lindt is the best supermarket-available chocolate, and I like to use the Smooth 70% and Touch of Salt, because it’s not overly sweet, it’s not overly bitter, and the salt just lifts everything and makes it better. Buy it when it’s on sale, and you’re onto a winner.

 

Baller Brownies

Adapted from Delicious

150g unsalted butter, chopped
250g dark chocolate (I used 200g Lindt 70% Smooth dark, 50g Lindt Salted Dark), chopped
3 eggs, lightly beaten
250g caster sugar
50g plain flour
100g white chocolate, chopped
50g Lindt Salted Dark
100g pistachios, chopped

Heat the oven to 120*c. Place the white chocolate in a Pyrex roasting dish, then place in the oven. Stir the chocolate every 10 minutes or so until it’s a deep gold in colour and caramelised in flavour. It’s okay if it looks lumpy, it will smooth back out. Set aside to cool and solidify.

Increase the temperature 10 180*c. Line a brownie pan with baking paper and set aside.

Place the chopped dark chocolate and butter into a heatproof bowl, then place the bowl over a small saucepan of simmering water, making sure the water doesn’t touch the bottom of the bowl.Stir occasionally until melted together, and set aside to cool to room temperature.

Whisk the eggs and sugar together with an electric mixture until light and fluffy, a couple of minutes. Add the chocolate mixture to the egg mixture and combine, then stir in the flour. Crumble in the caramelised white chocolate, pistachios and additional dark chocolate, folding to evenly combine.

Pour the mixture into the brownie pan and bake for 20-25 minutes until a crust forms. Remove the pan from the oven and leave to cool to room temperature, then place in the fridge to chill and firm.

I dream of Chicho | Blueberry Ricotta Dream Cake

I don’t like to toot my own horn, but guys, this may be the best thing I’ve ever made. At least, it is according to my guinea pigs work friends who test most of my baking experiments.

Flour and Stone may very well be my favourite cafe/bakery in the country. There’s no sprinkles, no #trendspo, no unicorn coloured anything in their kitchen. Nadine Ingram and her team keep it simple, a little nostalgic. But what it all is, most importantly, is very, very good.

Nadine’s Lemon Dream cake is insanely popular – a simple sponge-like cake, topped with crunchy meringue and smothered with whipped cream and lemon curd. It’s an OG crowd pleaser, and rightly so.

A little closer to home is the crew from Chicho Gelato. I love them for the same reasons – Chez and Carly buck trends while pushing the boundaries of traditional gelato flavours. Their frequent collaborations with other local chefs produce outstanding results, and I firmly believe them to make the best gelato in Perth.

On a steamy February night, my friends and I joined the crowd lining up to get into Chicho’s William Street gelateria. I’m not a strong decision maker at the best of times, and picking a single flavour from the menu was proving to be an antagonising Sophie’s choice situation. My innie-meenie-minie-mo method of making a decision in a hurry settled on the blueberry and ricotta, and, well, you know what they say about history.

It was creamy but not so smooth to be textureless. Not too sweet. A hint of lemon? Regardless, it was love at first taste. A standard so high, I may very well be ruined for all gelato forever (yes, that is Careless Whisper you can hear playing in the background).

So, I’ve combined my two great loves into one, and I present to you the Blueberry Ricotta Dream Cake. It’s messy and rustic, crumbly and moreish. I promise you, you’ll want to eat this every single day.

Blueberry Ricotta Dream Cake

Adapted from Gourmet Traveller

250 gm butter, softened
250 gm caster sugar
2 tbsp vanilla bean paste
4 eggs, lightly beaten
225 gm self-raising flour
25 gm cornflour
1 tsp baking powder
50 ml milk

Meringue
180 gm eggwhites (from about 4 eggs)
300 gm caster sugar

Blueberry curd – I used this recipe

Ricotta cream – I used this recipe, with a little added lemon zest.

 

Preheat your oven to 160C. Line two equal-sized cake tins with baking paper, and grease well. Set aside.

With an electric mixer, beat together with sugar, butter, and vanilla for 5 minutes or until pale and fluffy. Add the eggs, one at a time, scraping the bowl down between additions until completely combined.

Sift the dry ingredients into the bowl in two batches, folding gently. Add the milk, and fold to incorporate. Divide the batter between the two cake tins and set aside.

To make the meringue, whisk the egg whites with an electric mixer until foamy. Add the sugar, spoonful by spoonful, and continue whisking until a firm peak is held, and the mixture is glossy. Spread half the meringue over each of the cakes, swirling for decoration.

Place the cakes in the oven and bake for around 30 minutes and the meringue is golden. Due to the meringue layer, you can’t test the cake for doneness, so if in doubt leave in the oven for an extra couple of minutes. Leave the cakes to cool in the tin. Once cool and ready to assemble, spread the ricotta cream then blueberry curd over the bottom cake, then sandwich the ‘prettier’ of the two cakes on top. Dust with icing sugar, then serve.

Note: The blueberry curd can be made a week in advance, the ricotta cream about three days in advance, if you want to make things easy on yourself.

Pour Some Sugar | Caramel Bundt Cake

February is a weird time of year. It’s the pointy end of summer – you know the season is coming to an end, so you want to enjoy it, but it’s also brutally hot. It’s not the holidays anymore, but there’s Valentine’s Day in the mix there, so it’s kind of seasonally appropriate to celebrate things?

Either way, this cake is exactly what you need. Take it to a picnic, serve it up to your significant other, make it for someone’s birthday, or simply because it’s a goddamn caramel cake and you deserve it. Plus, the pouring of caramel (or any sauce, really) really seems to impress people, so make it and bask in all that glorious praise.

What I like best about this cake is that it’s very very simple to make, but can easily be jazzed up to look much more impressive. Williams-Sonoma stock some beautiful bundt tins that add detail and interest, and I love this tip from Cakes by Cliff to decorate your cake simply by adding edible shimmer powder to glazes. So easy!

Caramel Bundt Cake

From Delicious

250g unsalted butter, at room temp
250g brown sugar
330g dulce de leche (I use caramel Top n Fill)
1 tsp vanilla bean paste
4 large eggs, at room temp
450g plain flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp bicarb soda
1 cup buttermilk (see note)

165g caster sugar
2/3 cup thin cream

Heat your oven to 170*c. Grease the bundt tin well, making sure you get into any lines or cracks to prevent sticking.

With a stand or hand-held mixer, beat together the sugar and butter until thick and pale. Slowly add the dulce de leche, then the eggs one at a time, and vanilla. Combine the dry ingredients together in a bowl, then add one-third of the flour mix to the butter mix. Add a third of the buttermilk, and alternate until well combined and there are no lumps.

Pour the batter into the bundt tin, then bake for 45 minutes or until a skewer comes out clean. When done, leave to cool on a wire rack for 10 minutes, then remove from the tin to cool completely.

While the cake bakes, make the caramel sauce. In a small saucepan over medium heat, add the sugar and 2 tablespoons of water, stir to combine, and then cook gently until the sugar melts and takes on a deep amber colour. This takes between 8-10 minutes, so be careful, and keep an eye on it. Once done, add the cream, a pinch of flake salt (maybe some vanilla or a splash of bourbon, if you’re so inclined), then set aside to cool completely.

Pour the caramel over the cake, and serve with cream. Or ice cream. Custard? Anyway, it’s all good.

Note: Buttermilk can be bought from the milk section of your supermarket. If you can’t be bothered buying it (and that’s cool), you can make it by adding a teaspoon of white vinegar or lemon juice to a cup of milk and then leaving it to stand and curdle for 5 minutes. Easy!

Where I’m at | February 2017

And just like that, it’s February.

We’re on the other side of that crazy holiday season, and settling into the year. The new year is like new shoes, finding the places where it pinches or rubs, and you kind of stretch around to make it as comfortable as you can.

Let’s get into the things I’m thinking about this month, yeah?

The Perth Writers Festival kicks off at the end of the month, and I was lucky enough to interview Clementine Ford for Broadsheet Perth. You can read it here. I’ve got tickets to at least five events, and I can. not. wait.

I want to eat at The Hummus Club, every day, always. It’s crazy good.

I finally caved and bought a Swell bottle on one of my too-frequent visits to La Luna, and now I’m just mad that I resisted for so long. It keeps water cold all day long, and just looks really cool.

We all know New Year’s resolutions aren’t really a thing that makes it past the 15th January. Andjelka wrote a beautiful post about setting a word to live by for the year. I think that works a hell of a lot better. Mine is care.  Self-care is taking a higher priority this year. I promise to care for those I love. And given the clusterfuck that is the current political climate, I’m going to care enough to stand up and fight for what’s right in this world.

I swore never again… But I’m a little bit in love with cupcakes. I’m obsessed with The Scran line, who does things I can only dream of. I also can’t stop thinking about/craving Sugar and Nice‘s chocolate cupcakes. I’ll take a dozen, pleaseandthankyou.

Have you ever wanted to know how to make those perfectly glossy mirror glazes you see on fancy Zumbo cakes? I did. So I went to Sydney to learn from the best at the Australian Patisserie Academy. They run short courses on macarons, beginner basics, pastry… Just about everything. I took the intermediate modern tarts and eclairs class, and it was 100 percent worth it. I’d go back in a second. The APH will also have an online store up and running by the end of the month, for all your isomalt and other weird ingredient needs.

Speaking of sweets, Yotam Ottolenghi’s New York Times baking column is going to be a fast favourite, I can tell.

I love this list of 26 things every person should do for themselves at least once a year. I’m working through the stack of unread books, purging what is unnecessary in my home and plotting that new city exploration.

Speaking of new-city exploration, I’m looking forward to doing that very thing in Sri Lanka! My gorgeous friend Rachi runs The Paradise Guide, and I couldn’t resist a week of yoga, paddle boarding and, well, lying about in the sunshine.

I can’t get enough yoga.  I love vinyasa classes at COMO Shambala Urban Escape with Steph Johnson, who is an amazing teacher. Whether you’ve been practising for years, or you’ve never set foot on the mat before – she’s got you. I ‘m also crazy for Yoga with Adriene, which is my daily practice at home. Adriene’s 31 day Yoga Revolution was a beautiful way to kick off January, building strength and flexibility (until I overestimated my Crow Pose ability and fell on my face – literally).

 

Please tell me what you’re up to – what you’re reading, listening to, excited for!