Baking (Week 7) Puff Pastry

We're now heading into Puff Pastry in class and will be practising for a few weeks.

I don't quite seem to have mastered the skill of forming corners in my pastry and I was a little doubtful of how the puff would turn out, it's such a time consuming process! But to my surprise, although I was not quite friends with the pastry, the pastry decided to be friends with me :) The teacher was quite happy with how mine turned out, with good puff and goldenness. Hoorah.
So just for starters we made Victorias using the English method and pastry shortening.

Pretty. These can be filled with sweet or savoury fillings.
The shortening was quite gross. It was solid at room temperature which made it easy to handle and we had to roll it out like a dough. Mmm solid sheet of pure FAT. The grease really stuck to your fingers too. Another reminder of what people are eating kilos of.... Imagine their fat coated hearts. I tried some of the pastry, I suppose the mouth is happy aye...

Vincy & Jose Wedding cake

Congrats to Vincy and Jose on their wedding.

Vincy really likes cats and requested 2 affectionate cats as cake topppers. You can't see it but the cats tails also sweetly touch together.
I've enjoyed learn (and guessing) new techniques as I progress with cakes. The vines were new for me and overall I'm quite happy with how the cherry blossoms turned out. Also new for me was the progressive toning of the tiers, which I had only thought up as I was colouring the icing much to my delight.
The top two tiers are actually foam and golly that makes things so much faster, with not having to bake, level, ganache and line boards! Unfortunately my brain was being slow so I took a lot longer to do the icing than was necessary - don't ask how long -_-'
The bottom was a chocolate butter cake so that the cake cutting would look more natural. Happy days!

Fruit based cakes

I was feeling creative and liked it when the idea of a fruit platter cake came to mind.
You get to enjoy the fruit and then you get to eat the plate too! Hehe force fed fruit :P
Presentation-wise the idea was better than how it looked because I used ganache rather than fondant but it was fun anyway. I was going to do the same by making a petite four platter and made mini lemon meringue tarts and cupcakes but these didnt end up being needed.

Dinner with school friends and I brought along a peach and berry tart for dessert. This recipe was from a Donna Hay cook book which I had been meaning to try for a while. It was ok but I'm not sure whether I'd make it again. It took quite a while to bake and appeared quite oily and chewy.

Baking (Week 4,5,6) More shortcrust pastry

In the past weeks we've learnt to make:
- Apple Pies: we got to be a bit creative with the decoration of this and I was quite happy with how my leaves turned out :)

- Apricot Crumble
- Coconut Tarts
- Bakewell Tarts
- Lemon Meringue Pie: There is more sugar than egg white in the meringue. And there was a mighty lot of sugar. It was pretty looking though
- Fruit Flans

It all been jolly good and tasty good now that we have been working with butter. Next lesson: puff pastry.
I saw on Better Homes and Gardens, Ed showed how to make a quick and easy pastry. Gosh if it's that easy what are we doing spending so much time learning how to make it! I guess we learn the technique and theory behind it all though. It just amused me.

Baking (Week 3) - Custard Tarts

TAFE has commenced and the learning begins.
As I progress through I realise how technical it all is, and quite a science.

Let me explain, last week was our first week of baking in the kitchen and we made fruit scones and savoury scones. Scones... I think that most people would have made scones at some stage in their life, a common place being high school. There's not that many ingredients and not that many steps to follow.
However as our teacher runs through the demonstration and we follow, we then see how much sadder looking our flatter scones with over-worked gluten are compared the hers! And so that's the difference between a cheap scone and pricier ones you get at high teas. Don't worry our second batch got better :)

This week we made custard tarts, and I bought some of my handiwork to show the family.

We made 2 types, one with a real custard filling and one with pre-mix (real custard pictured). Most of what you buy in the shops will be pre-mix, the kind that looks so firmly set like (firm) jelly. Again there's quite a technique in mixing, rolling and lining the pastry to make sure that it doesn't shrink, is not lope sided and is thin/thick enough. Lots to learn!
We made the pastry with commercial fats. Functionally they work well and makes the dough easy to work with, but I'm a bit of a naturalist and there's just something funky (in a negative way) about eating margarine that is stored at room temperature. Go the fresh butter I say, but as our teacher says they do have place in cooking. I tell you this so you know what you're eating people! I could have also been put off it by seeing the sink full of dirty water in the kitchen with the fat chunks bobbing about on the surface. None of my family minded the taste but I thought that the taste did come through the pastry and ended up just eating the custard. mm sweet custard.

Ricotta Pancakes

I had a hankering for pancakes yesterday and remembered that I had leftover ricotta from the previous cheesecake baking. I had heard of ricotta pancakes before and after a brief browse through my cook books didn't find a recipe, and so progressed to make it up (as I do) based on a standard basic pancake recipe.
Whilst making it I was unsure how it would turn out as the batter had a gooey consistency similar to raw egg white. But I was pleasantly surprised, it turned out great! The pancake was so soft and light! They amused me greatly when I flipped them over, they instantly rose up like pumped up air mattresses. I felt compelled to do the dance from the anime 'My Neighbour Totoro" when they stretch their arms up and down to make the plants instantly grow.
Whilst observing how the batter held its shape, I realised this would work well if you wanted to do heart shaped pancakes (which is good timing if you're compelled to follow the heavily commercialised promotion of Valentines Day - which is next week). Otherwise you can give them to a loved one - just because you want to :o)

If you're interested, here's the recipe:
2 1/2 cup self raising flour
1/4 cup white sugar
1 tsp cinnamon (optional)
100g butter / table spread
250g ricotta (I used reduced fat but you don't have to)
4 eggs
1 cup milk (I used reduced fat but you don't have to)
1 tsp vanilla extract

1. Mix together flour, sugar and cinnamon in a bowl
2. In a seperate bowl, melt butter in microwave. Mix in ricotta and eggs. Then mix in milk and vanilla
3. Add wet ingredients to the dry mixture. Stir.
4. Place spoonfuls of batter into a heated greased frypan, lightly spread to form a thick even surface
5. Depending on how hot your frypan is, after approximately 30 seconds flip the pancakes over. Note: there's no need to wait for air bubbles to surface on the other side; also the pancakes are quite soft so flip firmly.
6. Serve with sliced fresh fruit and honey. Enjoy

Pear & Ginger Cheesecake

I always have trouble trying to decide what to make, luckily other people know what they like and gladly assist in this area. With two requests for cheesecake, cheesecake it was!
Thought I'd try something different and went with a Pear and Ginger Cheesecake.

The pear slices are hiding underneath the filling. I forgot to bring extra pears to decorate the cheesecake with and so after a rummage Irene found some bananas,  not that ideal but I had to pretty it up somehow.
The ginger was quite strong with a lingering aftertaste as I used Gingernut biscuits as well as ground ginger for the base. Mm punchy.
As usual I didn't follow the recipe and made a few adjustments of my own. As good and tasty as I had seen Suze's cheesecake to be, I just couldn't stomach the thought of ladening everyone's guts with too much fat. Hehe, so I replaced half the cream cheese with ricotta and used light rather than full fat sour cream. Not bad, the creamy texture was still there. The family seemed happy with the eating, I was happy with the knowledge :)

The challenge is set

I have set myself a challenge! At every opportunity that I can, I am aiming to make some form of food (usually dessert) and so far this has progressed ok.
It began with a bit of a sponge theme, with Peach Swiss Roll for dessert with Lou, Daniel and Alicia

Followed by Trifle for Australia Day lunch
It was my first time making trifle and people seemed to enjoy it. I think personally I'm not a fan of the moosh. Funny, people generally don;t like soggy Weetbix but they don't mind soggy cake... To practise sponge making I even made the cake from scratch and kinda cheated by using a swiss roll recipe. Worked ok.

We were going to head to Australia Day dinner as well so I made a simple sponge cake, I even brought round my icing sugar and sieve so I could decorate it at the last minute! But we didn't end up going so I didn't bother icing, hence no pic.

Btw, I'm now officially enrolled into TAFE, so hoorah I'm really heading into things now. Excitement plus.

Jess & Chris' wedding cake

November saw the wedding of my sister's friends: Jess & Chris.
It's very handy when people like the style of cakes that I've already made before. And also it gave me an excuse to organise a day off work just to go buy square cake tins. Hoorah.

Chocolate cake with ivory icing.

I heard about the ivory coloured icing from a friend but I personally don't think it adds too much more the overall appearance. The ivory was quite subtle, but the icing quality itself was good. I love my new 50cm  rolling pin and non-stick mat that I bought in America, this combined with the icing helped reduce the stress level when covering the cake.

Baby shower cake

What eventually follows a wedding? A baby!
For Belinda's afternoon tea at work to wish her well for the upcoming arrival of her little one, I contributed a chocolate cake.

Another cake experimentation gone right. Hoorah.

Coming to America

June saw the adventures in heading to America with mum to catch up with an auntie and meet 2 cousins for the first time.
Oh my, they have so many shopping centres (malls) and copious choices of food stores. It was amusing getting familiar with the food chains I had never heard of, and those that had the same name but served different types of foods eg. Wendy's served burgers there, but they serve ice-cream here.

Of course I checked out numerous supermarkets, with Wegmans being a favourite (one branch had particularly impressive toilets (restrooms)). Reading the product labels were amusing too, in a concerning way; like the breakfast cereal promoted as containing 35% Daily Value for fibre but yet was totally coated in sugar. Hmmm. And don't get me started on pack and portion sizes.

Snapshots:

 Bufflo wings, from Buffalo of course

 Long crab legs

 Cream Pie

 Huge lobster

 Times Square

 Rockafella Centre

 M&M world

 Statue of Liberty

 St Paul's Cathedral

1/2 pound burger

Niagara Falls (from Canadian side)

Beer lovers cake

Another cake for month of April was John's birthday cake. Inspired by his love of beer, this idea instantly came to mind. Quite appropriate I thought, considering I was taking him a pub.

He does like his beer, but I could not bring myself to actually add beer into the cake. Something about savoury and sweet just didnt quite appeal to me, instead it contained banana and walnuts. Hmm maybe I could have added beer nuts!
This design was modelled loosely on a Tooheys bottle. It was amazing how long it actually took to make the little letters, but was well worth the detail.

Pre-wedding cupcakes

In the usual tradition at work, we celebrated Belinda's upcoming wedding with food. For the lunch in April, I decided to make vanilla cupcakes.

Lilies drying

The mini flowers were quite cute and fun to make. I'm happy with how these turned out which I had just guessed how to make. Had I had more time I would have piped on their names on the cupcakes, hence the flowers being on the side, but they did the job well.

Handbag cake

In March, a challenge was set before me by Ronald, and I welcomingly took it up! He had wanted a girly cake for a young family friend and had a great idea of a handbag. I had never made a handbag cake design before, and after a bit of research and squinting at other pictures, this cake was created.

Again the cake was the trusty standard chocolate flavour. I can see the areas of improvement that could be made (crinkles at the back, piping work) but overall I was pretty stoked with my first attempt. The feature that I was most pleased with was the zipper piece. I was told that the recipient squealled with delight and refused to cut it up, which was funny because I was wondering how they would manage that.

I'm back! What adventures lie ahead?

So...it's been like 9 months since I've last blogged and during this time I had considered closing the account since I wasn't doing anything with it. This year has been rather full on with work and the usual weekly activities sapping the enthusiasm from me for doing non-essential tasks.

But 2011 is upon us, and an exciting new year of fooding adventures is set to commence! And why would next year be any different to the sparse postings of the previous years you might ask? Well, I have made the decision to make the jump and immerse myself into the hands on career of food creation... and become a pastrychef!

Ok, so I'm not there yet. I still need to enrol, and I still need to get a job...but I am pumped! I feel like a kid again and I seriously can't wait to learn! Ah, mature-aged students, how I see the dedication they have. Now this is nothing to do with the popularity of Masterchef and the like, but a deep desire that I have had since I finished Year 12. I've given the office environment a go, and am gratefully of the time spent and experienced gained, but now onto new adventures. I have no idea how this story will go but I've got my brave face on and passionate heart ready!

Let the baking begin!

As it's been a while and Blogger updates itself, I may refresh the template and browse through the designs and may post in a more (cake) search friendly way. We'll see... depends how technological my brain ends up finding :P

In the meantime, a snapshot of 2010 will follow...

Suze & Noods wedding, and North Coast relaxing

Latter February was so busy and non-stop !

I was given the honour of making Suze and Noods wedding cake which I was totally stoked about. (Congrats Suze & Noods). Knowing Suze, it's gotta be quirky, which was exciting for me as I hadnt ventured into that style before. She had a great idea for the design, and I was very curious about the 4inch gummi bears she told me about .
Here's the outcome.

So sad, the one of the bows got crushed in transit somewhere during the course of the afternoon where I had several people assisting. But I'm glad it at least stayed intact. And it was the first time that I had tried out the choc mud recipe too, which was a bit risky, but I was very happy with it and will definitely use it again. (more cake photos further down post)

The wedding itself was fantastic too. So well organised and flowed well. And the food! Held at an Asian restaurant, there were 13 dishes which came out through the night and of course you have to try each and everyone of them. But the end of the night I was sooo stuffed. Snapshots:

Hands on lobster. What an effort!

Fishy. What a pity Lauren missed the chance to suck out the eyeball :P

What a superly fantastic idea for a bomboniere, self serve lollies!

Such a fantastic night. The following day I meet up with another friend for lunch at Liana's in Parra. Still feeling full from the night and knowing that I didnt really need to eat for the rest of the week I thought I would get something small....

Small I had thought, small it was not. The serving of brushetta was not only huge but tasty. Mmm mm I'm a sucker for smoked salmon and avocado. I did manage to get through the bulk of it, finishing off all the toppings of course.
Other dishes on offer, also for the hungry.

The week prior to the wedding I went away to Foster for the first time. It's such a lovely peaceful and relaxing place! We went fishing (I cast my first line!), canoeing, beaching, lots of walking, spotted a dolphin and lots of enjoyable eating. And where of the pictures of the weeks frivolities you wonder? I left my camera behind at home :( Much sadness. Being desperate to capture the moment, went old school and purchased a disposable with limited 27 shots. How different it was to actually stop, frame the shot and count to three. No food photos were taken!
The weekend prior to Foster I hung out with friends at Terrigal to begin the relax beach mode. How luxurious to have a holiday house with the beach as your backyard, and every morning waking up to this sight

Loved it. Thanks for your hospitality Mia and Elissa.

Additional photos / notes of the cake in progress:
Step 1: Bake cake

Step 2: Ganache cake. (Again the first time I have tried this method properly. Note the whole bowl of icing!)

Step 3: Covering and decorating the cake

Step 4: Assembling the cake

Step 5: Transport the cake (whilst trying not to stress too much about it staying intact)

Coincidentally it was another friends birthday during this preparation time and I managed to squeeze in a bonus mini cake with simple decorations. (giant 2 and 5 candles were to be assembled on top) Happy Birthday Saby!

Parra dining

Last minute bonus outings are fun.
Friday night dinner, off we went to the ever popular Temasek in Parra. 4 people = $65, not bad.

Entree - spring rolls and prawns

As much as i like vegies, consumption was hindered by spicyness. No tears from me at least

Noodles

Nasi Goreng

Stuffed as monkeys, we waddled over to Church St and the somewhat new Chocolateria San Churro instantly appealled. Actually it made me think of Max Brennars but it was worth a go to try a churro for the first time.

Churro = Spanish doughnut = extruded dough-stick of friedness. Mm oil...not my thing really. The chocolate fondue with strawberries, bananas, marshmallow, peanuts and brownies however was a different story. The plate for 2 ($20) was plenty for the four of us who only wanted a light dessert. It's was so tempting to lick the fondue bowl, but Saby and I managed to resist - as much as we could.

Happy Birthday to...Me!!

I love happy birthdays. I was lucky enough to spread it over into my own long weekend.

Starting with Friday night dinner at home with family and friends. Thanks mum for cooking up a feast.
Again I was excited when my brain worked and the idea of an ice-cream cake popped into my head.

Easiest cake ever, although it looked prettier in my imagination. I got a few packs of the Bulla Creamy Classics range so that it was lucky dip for which flavour you got, with there being: Vanilla, Vanilla & Choc, Choc, Cookies and Cream, Neopolitan. I got carried away being so conscious of it melting that forgot to try to take a better picture.

John's mum brought round a tasty cheesecake too for dessert.

Then rolling onto Saturday I had a great time with school buddies sleeping over at the zoo. In case you're wondering it wasnt stinky where we were, the tents were quite luxurious - to me anyway. And we were well fed with a buffet dinner of salads, chicken, roast pork, noodle stirfry and roast vegies.

Imagine waking up to this. Well I didnt have to :)

My favourite animals to visit, the meerkats

We got to feed giraffes!!!

And see the new baby elephant, Luk Chai. Whenever someone mentioned its name I thought of tea.

I certainly was a happy chappy the whole time I was at the zoo.

And then there was more! Between heading over to Crows Nest for lunch, we stopped by a cafe in Neutral Bay for mini brunch.

Ronz tasty cake

I dont think I've tried poached eggs before but the look of Karina's dish made me want to try them some time. They looks so well-formed, soft and delicate.

We eventually made it to The Counter, meeting up with uni buddies for lunch. What a funky and makes-sense idea - you have a checklist and tick off what you would like on your burger / salad. Brilliant!

My beef, egg, corn & black bean salsa, beetroot burger. Gosh it was big. I could only finish half!

Ronald bought me a birthday cake too, from Michel's Patisserie since I changed my mind about my bringing my cupcakes I had made earlier.
The apple crumble shake was an interesting concept as well. Mm apple chunks. I'm glad my sis helped me out in finishing it.

And to top my long weekend off I spent it at the beach, doing the walk from Bondi to Bronte. I even enjoyed it in the water after my initial hesitations. Learn from my lesson kiddies, remember to put suncream on! Oh the reddness.
Although I hadnt intended too, I ended up picking up another roll / burger for lunch.

Mmm, you cant go by smoked salmon

I love happy days.