Roll with it

I plan to post three times a week and had hoped to keep this space an app-adjusted-free zone. However... what to do when The Child bakes a Swiss Roll and it's not ready until after the sun sets. Ask her not to cut it until tomorrow? Smacks of child abuse, so to counteract the kitchen lights I've fiddled with my new favourite photo app Snapseed.

The Child is now 14 and a hell of a baker. If you'd like to recreate her Swiss Roll, you'll find the recipe here (don't use fat-free ricotta though. I mean really. If I'm going to eat cake, I want to eat cake. Not fake cake). I'd also double the jam and ricotta quotas.

Baking inspiriation tends to hit The Child late in the day, so it's not unusual in this house to eat afternoon tea treats post dinner. Purists may wish to have this afternoon tea treat in the afternoon...

Homemade gozleme

Last night's dinner snapped moments before it was devoured.

Homemade gozleme is so easy to make. All ingredients are in bold.

• Put 200g full-fat plain yoghurt in a bowl and sift 250g plain flour, 3 tsps baking powder and a pinch of salt on top.
• Mix with a wooden spoon and then finish off with your hand.
• Knead dough for a couple of minutes (I don't even bother taking the ingredients out of the big bowl I use) until dough is no longer sticky.
• Put dough in a clean bowl lightly oiled with olive oil and cover with cling film. Leave for about an hour.
• Divide dough into four balls.
• Roll each ball into a dinner-plate-sized circle.
• Place washed-and-dried spinach leaves on one half of each circle.
• Crumble feta over spinach.
• Fold the other side of dough over mixture and pinch edges together before sealing with a fork.
• Fry each one in a pan with olive oil for a few minutes each side until golden brown.
• Remove from pan, cut and serve with lemon, salt and pepper.

I cook two at a time in a large frying pan. As the base becomes firm when it's cooked, these are super-easy to turn.

Red mist

My tomato growing days are over. The Grosse Lisse was floury. Ditto for Mama's Delight. Still waiting on the Tommy Toe and Black Russian to ripen, but don't have high hopes. Even worse than the texture, though, is the battle of the fruit fly. Too disheartening to go through all that planting and watering to discover motley little holes throughout the crop and the creator of the holes having a little rest of the biggest tomato after all its hard work. I shake my first at its awful twitchy little wings but it just sits there. Not worth getting angry over. I give up.

Next year, I will just buy tomatoes from the farmers' markets at the height of summer when they're juicy, perfect and cheap. Which is what I've been making my daily Greek salad lunches from. To me, a Greek salad is like summer in a bowl, and as there are only a few days of summer left, I raise my glass to it. At least the cucumbers were ours.

The only variety to have worked so far is the Tomato Berry, but I'm not sure all that water and garden space can be justified on two handfuls of cherry tomatoes - so goodbye to those too. If I adapted the cost-per-wear fashion equation for these I may be looking at the Louis Vuitton of tomatoes.

For anyone who'd like some tomato-growing tips from someone who knows what they're doing - clearly not me - The Mother-in-Law's pal Mildred who's a champion grower says tomatoes like a bit of milk. Who knew? Mildred fills an almost empty 2-litre milk container with water and uses that on the soil. Also likes to grind up egg shells and toss ground coffee about.

Suspect my troubles had more to do with lack of sun than the tomatoes' desire for an omelette with a latte on the side, but heartfelf thanks to Mildred. I think it's fair to say I need all the help I can get.

Buttered up

We have special butter only allowed to be used on weekend toast. Butter that tastes like butter should - not like the stuff sold in supermarkets.

I noticed this Meander Valley Saint Omer butter a couple of months ago and being the curious soul/glutton I am decided to give it a go. It's the best Australian butter I've ever tasted, no question. The reason it's saved for weekends is because of the price - I've seen it for sale between $7.99 and $9.99 for 250g. A price I'm happy to pay because it's a quality handcrafted product. Should I win Lotto, it would be the only butter allowed in the house but in the meantime bog-standard Allowrie will have to do.

Their creme fraiche is also worth the price, but I found the double cream too thick.

Now, usually toast and marmalade is only made on weekend mornings but for the sake of this blog I made some this afternoon and then, of course, ate it.

All in the name of duty.

Have a lovely weekend. x

Looking up

The Child and I decided to take a morning to check out the Laneway Art exhibition. The blow-up PVC sculpture, Donut, above, is supposedly referencing "European and Indigenous depictions of time travel and healing" as well as the the "circular branches of Aboriginal healing trees" and "contemporary pop culture: a 'pie in the sky', something unattainable yet delicious". Luckily I'd read up beforehad as I was able to pass on this information rather than tell The Child it was something that floated over from the New Year's Eve fireworks and got stuck between the buildings.

What I found most interesting was the exhibition took us to five laneways in the city that I didn't even know existed (six artworks, one lane I knew). Rather than rushing by, we walked in and looked around and discovered pockets of Sydney that have remained hidden from me all my life. I now know of somewhere to get takeaway sushi midweek and then sit in the sun away from the crowds as well as the bowels of Westfield.

The experience reminded me of a story I wrote years ago when I was a staff writer for the now-defunct SHE magazine. It was all about simple pleasures and solutions. One that's stuck with me is to take the time to look up sometimes instead of just ahead. Whenever I do this I always notice something new (to me).

And you don't have to live in a big city for this to apply. You may be walking under a lovely bird's nest in a tree every day but never noticed. Just make sure you look back down before you cross a road...

On another note, the experiments from Favourite Cakes, the book I blogged about last week, continue. So far, we've made Honey Syrup Cake, Vanilla Angel Food Cake with Fresh Berry Icing, Chocolate Roulade with Berry Cream and Apricot Blondies, above. All good. All easy. All chosen and approved of by The Child.

Have a lovely weekend.

Favourite Cakes

As I have a lot of cookbooks, I don't generally look at books specialising in just one aspect of cooking, such as sweets, as I figure I've already got hundreds of cake recipes I've forgotten about in the back of books I already own. But our local bookshop was having a sale and I remember being given a small book by this author, Julie Le Clerc, some years back that I rather liked.

Flicked through Favourite Cakes and knew these recipes were easy and tempting enough for The Child to want to make herself. So far, we've made (okay, she chose it and I actually baked it) the Honey Syrup Cake and have the Vanilla Angel Food Cake with Berry Icing earmarked for today.

The Honey Syrup Cake was a huge hit - tasted like a fresh, moist Honey Jumble biscuit minus the icing - and The Child, who usually values chocolate cake much highly above all others, declared it one of her all-time favourites.

What's nice about this book is that most of the ingredients are simply listed in cups, tablespoons and teaspoons, which I find nostaligically refreshing in this age of celebrity chefdom and molecular gastronomy.

Pass me an apron and call me grandma.

Christmas menu

The Husband and The Child are on their way home after another successful camping trip. I chose to make the most of their absence by cleaning the whole house in preparation for Christmas - and now the house is spotless. I've got an hour, I reckon, before they drag sand, twigs and general camping grime across the pristine floors...

In the meantime, I've been putting the Christmas menu together. So far the options are:

homemade limeade
Stone's ginger wine & Frangelico sparkling cocktail

glazed ham with carmelised onion relish
roast spatchcocks with chorizo and sage stuffing
peas with pancetta and mint
roast kipfler potato salad

pavolva with cherries, berries and passionfruit
mini fruit-mince cheesecakes

Lulu's choc truffles

We usually barbecue a turkey (true) but we're going to be radical and shake it up this year.

The only definite on the list is the ham, as I've ordered a lovely free-range one from the same deli that we buy our favourite sliced ham from during the year.

Might do some things on Christmas Eve and some on Christmas Day. Might change it all (though The Husband is sure to go for the spatchcocks with chorizo, as he'd happily eat chorizo stuffed with chorizo all year round) once I've consulted the others.

That's the fun of planning.

Happy feet

A box of juicy mangoes (for an unbelievable $10) and feet in thongs.

What's not to love about this time of year?

NBee: Friday's bees moved on themselves after a couple of hours. A Friend Who Knows About Bees told us they would have been full of honey and taking a break while scouts were searching the area for a new home.

Bean busy

First of our spring broad beans. Young and fresh so no need for double podding.

To be tossed through with pasta, olive oil and garlic tonight.

Extremely chocolately choc-chip biscuits

Any of you who've made my chocolate brownies will know that I - and more importantly The Child - like chocolate-baked things just on the cooked side of gooey.

Here's our favourite chocolate biscuit recipe. I've added a bit of coconut flour as I was reminded by Kate of how good it is for you. Just a bit adds lots of undetectable-to-the-mouth fibre and an ever-so-slight coconut taste (but not so much that you'd pick it if you didn't know). If you want to make these without it, just replace it with the same weight of plain flour.

. 80g brown sugar
. 110g raw caster sugar
. 1 tsp vanilla extract
. 100g softened butter
. 1 egg
. 100g plain flour
. 20g coconut flour
. 50g good-quality cocoa
. 100g choc chips

Pre-heat oven to 180C. Makes about 20.

. Mix sugars, vanilla and butter until light and fluffy.
. Add egg and mix until well combined.
. Mix in flours, cocoa and choc chips with your hand, as all that cocoa is quite powdery.
. Shape into walnut-sized balls and place on tray.
. Slightly flatten balls with your hand.
. Bake for 8 mins.
. Keep out of sight from my family or they'll eat them all.

When cool, biscuits should be firm on the outside but soft and crumbly on the inside.

Blood ties

Last week I bought a few blood oranges from our local Harris Farm Markets as they were plentiful and cheap. Didn't go overboard with quantity as I didn't want to be stuck with a bag of dud citrus.

From the very first slice, though, I knew I'd hit the jackpot as they were juicy and full of flavour and colour.

Blood oranges are probably one of my favourite fruits and the first time I see them in the shops each year is always a little bit exciting.

I quickly popped back to Harris Farm this morning to see if they were still around and, to my delight, they were. I've now got enough to squeeze two onto my muesli each morning plus enough to share with the family for the rest of the week.

The blood orange season is short and sweet, and just about over now, so they'll soon be giving up their shelf space to the mangoes that are starting to trickle into the shops.

That's an exchange I can live with.

Everyday Asian

meatballs with tamarind glaze

Happily handed over $35 at the bookshop for Bill Granger's new cookbook Bill's Everyday Asian.

Spa-style poached chicken with sesame bean salad

While not a fan of his TV shows, I do love his food.

Simple egg noodle salad with peanut dressing

Holiday, one of his previous books, is a favourite, and where the Never Fail Chocolate Cake recipe comes from that I make all the time. We still make quite a few dishes from even-earlier books regularly. Never had a bad meal at bills in Surry Hills either.

Chinese custard tarts

I can see this new book being well-used throughout spring and summer as the recipes are easy weekday fare and so right for our climate.

The styling and photography is crisp and pretty.

It retails for $50 but I picked it up at Dymocks yesterday for $35.

Red Velvet cupcakes

Spurred on by descriptions of long French lunches and dinners from the book I've been reading, I had a bit of a cooking frenzy yesterday afternoon. One of the things I made was the much-heard-about-but-never-tried red velvet cupcake.

After tasting, The Child and The Husband declared me baking genius. I, however, don't really get what the fuss is about, but cupcakes don't really get me excited in general. Here's the very easy recipe, should you be interested.

I feel a burst of pastry making upon me and am thinking lemon tarts, should we ever get through the cupcakes.

NB: The photo taken from Caffe Positano in the last post was snapped by The Child, who also happened to be the only one of us who managed to take a decent photo of the Eiffel Tower.

I've now finished reading A Family in Paris and mostly very much enjoyed it. If the publisher had labelled and marketed it as a memoir, the fact that the Paris stay was quite some time ago wouldn't have been a problem as someone's experiences aren't necessarily diminished by time. The problem was the expectation that the story was a recent one and then you quickly realise the young children you're reading about would actually be adults now, which is confirmed at the end of book.

I think the publishing company has done the author a bit of a disservice in this respect.

Chocolate caramel squares

I've been working a lot lately so not had a lot of time for baking, and The Child was starting to taste the difference in her lunch box. Can't have that so needed something easy yet impressive. Choc caramel squares it was. I use stoneground wholemeal flour, because you can't taste the difference and makes me feel like there's some goodness in there. I'm pretty sure all the other stuff cancels out the good stuff, but what the hell.

The recent dearth of home-cooked cakes and biscuits means these were pounced on before the top layer of chocolate even had time to set.

Here's the recipe should you also wish to deceive yourself that these are good for you:

Base
. 1 cup stoneground wholemeal flour
. 1 cup coconut
. 1 tsp baking powder
. 1/2 cup raw caster sugar
. 120g unsalted butter

Caramel
. 100g unsalted butter
. 100g brown sugar
. 395g tin condensed milk
. 2 tbsps golden syrup
. 1 tsp vanilla extract

Chocolate
. 150g semi-sweet chocolate (I use one that's 61% cacao)


Set oven to 180 and grease and line a 30cm x 20cm baking pan.

. Melt butter for the base.
. Mix flour, coconut, baking powder, sugar and melted butter into a bowl.
. Press into pan and bake for around 10 mins, or until golden.
. Leave to cool.

. Put butter, brown sugar, condensed milk, golden syrup and vanilla into a saucepan.
. Stir and cook for around 5-10mins.
. Pour over base and bake for 10mins.
. Set aside to cool.

. Melt chocolate and pour over top.

. When chocolate is set, squares can be sliced. Don't rush the setting of the chocolate by putting the pan in the fridge as it can cause the chocolate to go cloudy.

See what others are making today here.

Mint condition

The best cup of herbal tea I've ever had was in an upmarket country restaurant in Ireland the year before last.

It was a work trip and I was travelling with three other journalists as Tourism Ireland was looking to promote Northern Ireland as a holiday spot. One of our crew, a male journalist from a Melbourne newspaper, always ordered peppermint tea when we were out, which was strange in itself as male newspaper journalists generally like a drink. Turns out he actually did fit the general mould, but was using this trip as a bit of detox.

Now, just the smell of peppermint tea is usually enough to involuntarily make my lip curl. But then, in a really lovely restaurant, he was presented with some fresh mint leaves and boiling water in a cup. Absolutely nothing more to it. It smelt so good I ordered one.

I'd forgotten all about this until I saw our mint had gone a bit haywire in the garden and tried a cup last night. Just as good as I'd remembered. Sweet, light and refreshing.

Not everything has to be complicated.

All puffed up

Yesterday, I made my first ever batch of flaky pastry. It was so successful and so easy that I'll never buy ready-made pastry again. Not even the good Careme stuff, which is delicious and such a step-up - make that a whole staircase up - from the supermarket offerings.

I made it to go with a pie filling that I made in Sunday's cooking frenzy, so that a homemade weekday meat pie wasn't a whole day's palaver. The pastry, the recipe is from the Winter on the Farm cookbook, is simple but, admittedly, does have to be rolled out three times, after the initial rolling, with half-hour rests in between.

Don't let that put you off, though, as the first rolling takes minutes and the subsequent ones less than a minute each. I just left the bench floury and got on with other things in between.

I can't list the recipe here for copyright reasons but it seems to be the pastry of the moment as I'm seeing it everywhere, including the last season of Masterchef. There's not much to it. It's just flour, butter, chilled water and a pinch of salt. The secret is in the folding and rolling required to create the layers.

Best of all, there's no blind baking involved.

My previous favourite pastry recipe, Maggie Beer's sour-cream pastry, has now taken a back seat.

Simple passion

I love simple solutions. I also love passionfruit.

But there's only so many fruit salads or bowls of yoghurt I can take to drizzle passionfruit over, so was delighted to discover the technique of a friend who just slices the top off, at the same point as you'd cut into a soft-boiled egg, and digs in with spoon. Genius.

I can eat three or four in a row this way, without losing half the juice to a chopping board.

Now, if the passionfruit vine I planted last year would only fruit...

Pear crumble muffins

The return of winter weather had me rushing to the oven. Wanted something wholesome but that would also be welcome in The Child's lunchbox. I held my breath as she bit into one and waited for the thumb rating. Completely straight thumb! Can't ask for more.

Muffins
1 cup plain flour
1/2 cup stoneground wholemeal flour
3 tsps baking powder
1 cup fine oatmeal
2 tsps cinnamon
3/4 cup brown sugar
2 eggs
1 cup buttermilk
1/2 cup macadamia nut oil
2 small pears (or 1 large one), peeled and diced

Crumble
1/3 cup flour
1/3 cup raw sugar
60g butter

. Preheat oven to 180C
. Mix flours, baking powder, oats, cinnamon and brown sugar.
. In a separate bowl, mix together eggs, yoghurt and oil.
. Fold wet ingredients into dry ingredients.
. Spoon into muffin/cup cake papers.
. Make crumble by mixing flour and sugar together.
. Rub butter into flour and sugar.
. Sprinkle on top of muffins.
. Bake for about 20mins. Makes around 12.

Tea for one

I love the idea of herbal tea but, to be honest, the taste of it never seemed to live up to the promise. Even so, every few months I'd pick up another brand or mix in the hope that this was the one. No luck, as each still had some sort of bitter aftertaste reminiscent of sucking on a mossy rock I just didn't like.

Recently, though, my eye was caught by the almost Florence-Broadhurst style packaging of Pukka tea, which I spotted at a local health-food shop. Thinking I'd probably wasted $7.95 on a brand of British tea, I brewed a cup of chamomile and vanilla once back home. I loved it. So much so, that I've tried two other flavours and have been equally delighted.

I'd prefer to be enamoured with an Australian brand, really I would, but with the rain absolutely beating down all of last night and still now, if someone tried to remove the cup of three-ginger (uplifting and warming) from my hands right at this moment I might have a toddler-style tanty.

I'd need a further cup of (delicately sweet and soothing) chamomile and vanilla to calm me down.

Cinnamon bun cake

It's actually called Ruby's Coffee Cake, which is a bit of a misnomer as there's no coffee in it. Rather, it's a cake you'd have with coffee - or in our case afternoon tea on a cold Sunday.

It's from the Frankie magazine book Afternoon Tea, which I bought when it first came out not because of the recipes but for the granny-chic styling that was thin on the ground back then.

I've picked up the book several times but, to be honest, none of the cakes actually appealed that much as many of them look like things I'd pass over at a church fete. But not having made anything from it in four years bothered me so, against what I thought was my better judgement, I made this cake. It was really good and tastes like a cinnamon bun. The Child is now a big fan.

If you also have this book tucked away, the recipe is on page 76.

Tip: the recipe calls for a round tin but I used a loaf tin because I was worried about it being too dry to be cut into big chunks. It's not, but still think it's better suited to a loaf tin.