Cheese Tart

Adapted from Nigella Lawson-Kitchen

250g cream cheese

2/3cup lemon curd

12-Store bought baked mini tart cases

1. In the food processor,wizz cream cheese and lemon curd together until smooth and combined.
2. Transfer cheese mixture into a jar and chill overnight.
3. Fill tart cases with cheese and place half a slice of strawberry on top.
4. Dust vanilla sugar on top of tart.
   

Brioche Loaf

Not having my recipe books with me,I looked for a good brioche recipe and I found Pierre Hermé's brioche recipe from Paris Pastry. From my previous post I said I just purchased an ice cream maker, well I purchased a food processor too- Breville BFP 800. I previously had a food processor but mum never made used of it and somehow when I wanted to use it, it wasn't working, then again the equipment is almost 15 years. I had to test this equipment out too before shipping it back to Malaysia in November.Not sure what to expect from this recipe as I halved the recipe.Not giving the recipe because it turned out to be a disaster. Not too sure what went wrong. I halved the recipe when it stated it will not work when if halved. I could understand why not because when the measurement is divided into 2, all the measurements was difficult to measure exactly, for example 585g plain flour and so on.

Mixed Berry Sorbet

I finally got an ice cream maker!!After shopping around for one for almost a year, I decided to go with the cheaper model of Cuisinart since Cuisinart was recommended by David Lebovitz in his blog and it was around 70 dollars at Victoria Basement, I had to get it.

the beginning of the churning

The end result.The manual said about 20minutes. My sorbet was done in 15minutes, I reckon

What do I think of the ice cream? Amaziiiiing. Very affordable equipment but yet does the job efficiently.

Adapted from my ice cream maker's manual.

Ingredients:

1cup(250ml) water

1/2cup(110g) caster sugar

600g frozen mixed berries,thawed

1 1/2 tbsp lemon juice

1. Place the water and sugar in a small saucepan.
2. Stir over a low heat until the sugar dissolves. Add frozen mixed berries and bring to boil and cook for 2 minutes. Remove from heat and allow to cool at room temperature.
3. Place the mixed berries mixture in a food processor and puree until smooth, mix the lemon juice and chill overnight.
4. Churn sorbet as directed in your ice cream maker manual booklet.
5. Transfer mixture to an airtight container and freeze until firm.

Pear Frangipane Pudding with fresh passionfruit pulp

Poached Pears

1 large brown pear,peeled,cored and cut into 5 medium chunks

1 cup water

1/3 cup caster sugar

1/4tsp vanilla extract

1 tbsp lemon juice

Frangipane

100g butter,softened

100g caster sugar

2 large eggs

100g almond meal (ground almonds)

50g self raising flour

1/4 tsp vanilla extract

2 tbsp poached pear syrup

pulp of 3-4 passion fruits,to serve (If you buy canned passion pulp,make sure it's not sweetened.

Prepare poached pears :

• Place sugar,water,vanilla extract and lemon juice in saucepan over medium heat.Let sugar dissolve. Add pear chunks,making sure the syrup covers the pears. Let it simmer for 15mins or until pears are just tender.

Prepare Frangipane :

• Preheat oven at 150C.Place an oven proof container at the bottom of the oven.
• Line 5 ramekins with butter.
• Cream butter, sugar and vanilla extract until creamy.
• Add one egg at a time. Mix batter until well combined.
  
• Add almond meal and flour and mix till combined.
• Lastly add the poached pear syrup.
• Scoop frangipane mixture in ramekins to about 3/4 of the ramekin capacity.
• Place one poached on top of the frangipane.
  


• Steam bake the pudding for about 20-30 minutes. Check pudding at the 20th minute making sure you don't over bake your pudding.
• Cut the middle of the pudding and place passion pulp in the middle. Dust with vanilla bean sugar. Serve warm.

Salmon and Sabo noodles with mirin dressing

I made a similar recipe earlier but that one was a soup base noodle recipe.

Adapted from Donna Hay's Oct/Nov 2011 Magazine

Fish

90g dried sabo noodles

2 x 100g salmon fillet,skin off and halved lengthways

vegetable oil, for brushing

sea salt and cracked black pepper

handful of coriander leaves

Mirin Dressing

1tsp toasted sesame seeds

2tbsp soy sauce

2tbsp lemon juice

~40ml mirin

2tbsp rice wine vinegar

To make mirin dressing- place the sesame seeds,soy,lemon juice, mirin, rice wine vinegar in a bowl and stir to combine.Set aside.

To make noodles - Place noodles in a medium saucepan of boiling water and cook for 3 -5 mins. Drain and set aside.

To make salmon - Brush salmon with oil and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Heat a non stick frying pan over high heat. Cook the salmon for 1-2 mins each side or to your liking.

Place the noodles and half the mirin dressing in a bowl and toss to coat.Divide the noodles between bowls,top with a salmon and coriander and drizzle with remaining mirin dressing to serve.

Melt-and-mix brownies

Adapted from White wings Plain flour package

300g chocolate ( 100g 70% cocoa Lindt Excellence dark chocolate + 200g Lindt Excellence Extra creamy milk chocolate)

250g unsalted butter,chopped

3tbsp cocoa

1 2/3 cups dark brown sugar

1 1/3 plain flour,sifted

1/4tsp baking powder

1/4tsp vanilla extract

4 large eggs

1. Preheat oven to 160C(fan forced).
2. Place 100g dark chocolate, 100g milk chocolate,vanilla extract,butter and cocoa in a double boiler over medium heat and stir until melted and smooth.



Place the sugar,flour and baking powder in a bowl.
Make a well in the centre and pour in the chocolate mixture.
Add the eggs and mix to combine.
Break the remaining milk chocolate into chunk size pieces and mix well.
Pour the mixture into a lightly greased square cake tin lined with non stick baking paper and bake for 45-50minutes or until brownie is just set in the centre.(Make sure not to over bake the brownie,a wooden toothpick inserted in the center of the pan should come out with moist by crumbly-looking crumbs on it.

10. Allow to stand in the tin for 10minutes if serving warm or cool in tin.

Chocolate Chip Bread Pudding

Looking through my old camera pictures, I realised I had quite a few good recipes I tried and it was successful and there were also experiment went bad recipes-my boyfriend's cake. I am sorry.Well I was playing around with recipes and tried to make a chocolate recipe I made the year before that which his mum said was very nice, and wanted the recipe.I take that as a compliment. Not knowing the actual recipe to be honest, I tried to remake the cake so that I could give her the recipe but that was an Epic fail!=( I am not sure if I over baked the cake or what but the top became rather hard.The surface was hard to cut and I wanted to layer the cake with some pure cream,big ambitious hopes on my boyfriend's birthday cake.=P We will try and keep the ambitious experiments for testing recipes and not on occasions.

Chocolate Chip Bread Pudding -Nigella Lawson-Kitchen

Buying Nigella's Kitchen came unplanned for a cookbook collection addict like me,I'd be honest. I could just read rave reviews on a book and look for it all over and once bought,I'd try a few recipes from the book and it would be forgotten. And Nigella having her own shows I thought I could just get the recipes off youtube or something,and I completely forgot about it. But while shopping at Kinokuniya, KLCC with my boyfriend, I stumbled upon this amazing book. I went over to Kinokuniya to get my much loved Parisian dessert book by Dorie Greenspan-Paris Sweets. It's like a story book of the great patisserie in Paris making you drool over the descriptions of desserts and atmosphere.

When making my desserts,I never compromise on the good things like double cream, FULL Cream milk & vanilla extract used in recipes,I am sorry if I am rude but if you are going to use low fat milk you might as well use water but it makes no difference. Something my dad taught me! haha.If you are in Malaysia, it's sad to say that the full cream milk we get from supermarkets are like low fat milks in Australia unless you get milk from small companies supplying milk that's a different story. I get my milk from a local milk man and the milk is really good and you can see the cream float on the top of the milk which my dad says it's similar to the ones in the UK. And as for the vanilla extract, the ones we usual get like Star Brand etc are actually chemically manufactured vanilla 'stuff' and not the real thing so unless you want to get the best of flavours try not using vanilla essence.

250g baguette loaf, torn into big chunk size pieces

100g chocolate chips, I used Lindt Milk Chocolate

3 large eggs

40g brown sugar

50ml dark rum, you can omit this with vanilla extract if you want.

150 double cream

500ml full cream milk

4tsp demerara sugar, I used brown sugar

1. Preheat the oven to 170C/gas mark 3. Grease a round ovenproof dish lightly with butter, Tip in baguette pieces.
2. Toss in the chocolate pieces to spread evenly among the baguette pieces.
3. Whisk together the eggs,brown sugar,rum,double cream and milk. Pour this mixture over the loaf pieces and press the pieces down to coat them in the liquid.
4. Leave all this to soak for 20 minutes, then sprinkle with 4tsp brown sugar and put straight into the over for 40-50 minutes. If your oven browns unevenly, turn the dish around halfway through cooking time.
5. Let the dish stand for a while before serving-if you can. The smell as it bakes is almost overwhelming and it can be hard to wait once it is out of the oven.
6. Serve with ice cream or whipped cream.

Cauliflower Mornay & Grilled Red Snapper fillet

Cauliflower mornay

Adapted from Gourmet Traveller August 2011 Magazine

1/4 small size cauliflower, approx

30g butter

2tbsp plain flour

250ml milk

100g grated cheddar cheese

grated cheese to your liking,I used Red Lancashire cheese,looks more like the American cheese

breadcrumbs for sprinkling

• Preheat over to 180C. Blanch cauliflower until tender,about 2-3minutes. Drain well,then transfer into 3 ramekins.
• Melt butter in a saucepan over medium heat,be careful not to burn your butter,add flour and stir until golden,then gradually add milk and grated cheese,stirring well after each addition, until thick and smooth.
• Pour over blanched cauliflowers in ramekins, then sprinkle grated cheese on top and lastly bread crumbs. Being lazy i just sliced the cheese and placed it on top.


• Bake for 15minutes until golden brown and bubbly.Serve hot.

Grilled Red Snapper fillet

2 slices red snapper fillet

2tbsp mirin

3tbsp fish sauce

Marinate fish with mirin and fish sauce for 15minutes. Grill for 10minutes on medium heat or until cooked.

Apple tartlets

*Edited*

Simple apple tartlets using pantry ingredients.=) Well at least most of it is pantry ingredients.

Apple filling

4 large Granny smith apples, chopped

50g raisins

100g brown sugar

1/2tsp ground cinnamon

2tbsp water

2tbsp rum

3 tbsp corn flour

Pastry

Store bought filo pastry

To make apple filling- Place chopped apples, brown sugar,ground cinnamon and water in a pan and let it cook over low high for 5minutes or until sugar has melted, be careful not to burn your apples and sugar mixture. Add raisins and rum,let it cook for a few minutes.Dilute corn flour in a little water,add to apple-sugar mixture. Once the mixture begins to thicken, remove from stove and let it cool down.

To assemble- Preheat oven at 160 degrees. Generously line cupcake pan with butter. Cut filo pastry into squares roughing estimating the size according to your cupcake pans. Each cupcake mould should have 3 squares of filo pastry 'glued' together lightly with butter. Fill pastry cups with apple filling and bake for about 10 minutes or until pastry is golden brown (This is optional-place apple tartlets in paper cups).Serve warm.

Chocolate Fondant

Update on the 20th August 2012: I made this again using 100g Callebaut bittersweet chocolate & 100g Lindt Extra Creamy Milk chocolate and I definitely prefer this to the earlier chocolate combination. It wasn't as sickly chocolatey either. And this time instead of placing everything in a food processor, I allowed the butter to softened a little bit and mixed everything with a hand whisk until smooth before adding the chocolates. And I realised you just need the fondant to cook until the top is just set and little firm. Allowing it to stand for 5 minutes before tipping it over is a must if not the fondant with crack on the sides. If you have extras like I did, I kept the ramekins filled with fondant mixture in the refrigerator/freezer until needed. But you need to increase the temperature by 10-15 minutes/depending on your oven. When I kept mine in the fridge, I needed 20-25 minutes and freezer another 5-10 minutes extra. And served my fondant with chocolate raspberry ice cream but I found it really rich. I will try it with vanilla ice cream next time.

Adapted from Junior Masterchef 2010

200g chocolate (I used 100g 70% cocoa excellence chocolate & 100g 50% cocoa excellence chocolate)

60g butter, chopped

2 large eggs

2tbsp plain flour

1/3 cup fine sugar

double cream or whipped cream, to serve

1. Preheat oven to 180⁰C. Grease four ½ cup (125ml capacity) ceramic ramekins and arrange on a baking tray.

2. Melt chocolate in a heatproof bowl over a saucepan of simmering water. Stir until smooth. Remove and allow to cool.

3. Place butter, eggs, flour and sugar in a food processor and process until smooth. Slowly add the cooled melted chocolate and mix until combined.

4. Carefully spoon 1/3 cup of mixture into each ramekin and bake for 10 minutes or until cooked on the outside.(Do not open the oven door until 10mins and do not over bake it, it will look like a cake instead of a fondant.You want a gooey and oozing out centre when you cut open).Stand for 5 minutes in ramekins.

6. To serve, gently invert warm fondants onto serving plates. Garnish with double cream/whipped cream, Double cream will subtle the richness of the chocolate and sweetness of the fondant.