Vanilla macarons, maple syrup buttercream centre, blueberry buttercream. Yes, these are my way of putting a whole delicious breakfast into one little cookie. 

My travelling friends have just left Japan, after what seems like a flying visit to me. I hear the food is terrific, which makes me a bit nervous about attempting to reproduce something of it here.

Sushi is what everyone thinks of when they think of Japanese food, and it would probably be remiss of me not to go down that road. However, in the past year I have had a few hints at what else might be on offer from the great stagnant economy of the Pacific. One of those was Yakitori. Yakitori basically means chicken, and refers to chicken skewers with deliciously Japanese teriyaki-type glaze known as tare (pronounced ta-ray)

So, for my Japanese feast I am going to make a sushi and yakitori feast. In violation of the rules of authenticity, but with a nod to Japanese flavours, I am also making a delicious jasmine green tea creme brulee. To make this, follow the recipe for espresso creme brulee on the post ‘Family Desserted’, leave out the liqueur sub in some strongly infused jasmine green tea in place of the coffee. 

Making sushi is easier than anticipated, despite the particular way prescribed for the cooking of the rice.

You need:
4 cups short-grain rice
125ml rice wine vinegar
50g caster sugar
5g salt
1 packet nori sheets (8-10)

For the seasoning:
1. Mix the vinegar, sugar and salt in a small saucepan, and stir over medium heat until the sugar has dissolved.
2. Cool to room temperature.

For the rice:
1. Wash
2. Drain for one hour
3. Bring to the boil and simmer until tunnels form in the rice
4. Reduce to low heat and cover, letting it steam for ten minutes
5. Turn off heat and rest, covered for five minutes.

After you have your seasoning and cooked rice, it is time to cool the rice and make it absorb those flavours. So, add a bit of the seasoning, enough to coat the surface, to a bowl big enough to hold the rice. Add the rice, and start fanning it, and gradually mixing in the seasoning, turning the rice in a cutting motion.

Keep it covered with a damp towel in the fridge until ready to use. (I made the rice the night before, but it probably has less of a chance to dry out if you start rolling straight away once the rice is cool.

For fillings I chose smoked salmon, cucumber, avocado and radishes, all sliced thinly.

Rolling sushi is the tricky bit. My only prior experience with this was using one of those contraptions which mould the rice into the shape so that you can just wrap the nori around it. So, I don’t think I did half bad. Here’s how it went down:

1. Lay a nori sheet on a bamboo mat (I bought one for about $3), shiny side down
2. Spread rice evenly on the nori, leaving a few centimetres gap at the top and bottom but making sure to go all the way to the left and right edges.
3. Place fillings in a line in the centre, and add a squeeze of mayonnaise
4. Lift the bottom corner of the nori sheet and begin to fold over the fillings, bringing the edge of the mat with you
5. Dampen the top edge of the nori with a little water, and complete the roll, pressing down on the edge.
6. Leave in mat, or aside to rest and allow the nori to soften
7. Slice into eight pieces with a sharp or serrated knife

And it worked! Ok, it wasn’t perfect, but it is supposed to take years of training to master sushi, and it would be disrespectful to the Japanese to suggest that it was an effortless enterprise.



Yakitori Moriawase (combination platter)


For this, I really went all out. I carved up a whole raw chicken - like a butcher! The purpose of this was to get a range of different cuts of meat, and actually use the whole bird to make three different types of yakitori skewers. It was an enlightening experience, taking to the thing with my carving knife and fork, removing the skin, dividing up the different cuts and attempting to strip the carcass. The virtue in doing it this way instead of buying the different cuts of meat is that you have the carcass leftover, which is necessary for making the yakitori tare.

Kashiwa - breast and thigh meat
Tebasaki - wings
Tsukune - chicken meatballs, made with whatever is left over plus: 1 egg yolk, 1 tbsp cornflour, 1tsp grated ginger and 1/2 tsp sea salt flakes. Mince it up in the food processor, then roll into balls and boil for a couple of minutes so that they will go on the skewers nicely.

Yakitori tare
I made a quarter batch, which was plenty for one chickens worth of meat:

1 chicken carcass, roasted at 220C for 30 minutes
175ml soy sauce
90ml sake (or white wine)
50ml mirin
50g sugar (yellow rock sugar for authenticity)
1 strip lemon zest

1. Place all ingredients in a saucepan and simmer, stirring until sugar dissolves.
2. Simmer on low heat until mixture reduces by a quarter
3. Strain through a sieve
4. Use to marinade the skewers, and to baste while you grill them.

This was all rather tasty, but made even tastier with a couple of sneaky not-quite-Japanese condiments from the recipe page of Adam’s Hainanese Chicken Rice.

Spring Onion and Ginger Oil


4 spring onions, thinly sliced
2 Tbsp grated ginger
1/2 tsp sea salt flakes
3 tsp oil

1. Bash the spring onions, ginger and salt in a mortar
2. Heat the oil to smoking point, then pour over the ingredients in the mortar, then lightly combine and leave to infuse a few minutes

Chilli Sauce


3 Tbsp crushed red chilli
2 Tbsp grated ginger
2 garlic cloves
1 tsp caster sugar
1/4 tsp sea salt flakes
1 tsp lemon juice

1. Combine in a mortar and pound to a paste



Although this was quite a time consuming process (it took me an entire Saturday to prepare this whole bonanza), all of the individual processes are not too complicated, and the end result tastes fantastic. I have great respect for the Japanese culinary arts - if I ever actually visit I can only hope that I can find some Japanese restaurants that can cater for gluten free.

My two best girls have deserted me this year to travel the world. While I am heartily jealous, and miss them like crazy, I thought I might try to tag along in some small way.

I hereby commit myself to make a dish from every country they visit from here on in, starting with India, where the two intrepid travellers are spending a couple of months teaching English in an orphanage in Kolkata, West Bengal. 

The stories of their journey can be found on Rachael’s beautifully written travel blog, while I pine away knowing that this, and their emails, is all I will see of them for the entire time it takes for the earth to journey around the sun.

So, to Kolkata I go, on my google search…

Alrighty then, I have made Tomato Kasundi. It’s a Bengali chutney that is good on or with just about every savoury dish. I say just about, because Rachael has recently declared her undying enmity for a certain legume known as the chickpea. Her disgust has been transformed from former banal disfavour, as she has had to eat them on a regular basis and found the experience most irredeemably distasteful on all occasions. However, I daresay I would enjoy a chickpea smothered in this stuff.

I have been amassing a stockpile of tomatoes from my garden (and my generous neighbours) for a while now, and it really is time to put them to good use.

My problem was, I decided that I was going to get this done today, on the spot, now, but I didn’t have quite the right ingredients. I made a couple of diversions from the recipe below. First off, I had no black mustard seeds. These are a hallmark of this condiment, and not using them may have been some kind of sacrilege for which I am truly sorry. What I did have was about 30g of yellow mustard seeds, which I used instead. 

For the chillies, I had one precious little red chilli from my own pot plant. I used that, plus a sploosh of crushed red chilli from a jar. 

And, of course, I needed this to be gluten free. The malt vinegar had to go. I replaced it with cheap and cheerful apple cider vinegar. 

Tomato Kasundi

My parents house is one of my favourite places in the world. They live on the top of a hill with three hundred and sixty degree views of mountains, on the border of a national park. It is so secluded and peaceful. They keep goats and battle with the wallabies and possums for control over their gardens and fruit trees.

Mum, my brother’s lovely girlfriend and I made these macarons there a couple of days after Christmas, even though there was still so much food left. This was not what I’d call a masterclass (particularly because I am clearly no where near a master and these were not the most perfect batch I’ve ever made), but we did want to figure out what might have gone wrong in my brother’s latest ‘volcano’ batch. 

We realised several things:

1. Italian meringue really does need to be whipped for a full ten minutes after the sugar syrup is added, so that it is cool enough to work properly

2. Digital thermometers have an annoying habit of turning themselves off after making a reading, which makes it hard to watch it getting close to the all-important 115 degrees celsius.

3. Talking too much while mixing the macaron batter can result in macarons that run together. This might also be caused by too coarse almond meal, so process and sift it well.

4. Always bake macarons one tray at a time, in the centre of the oven. They are very sensitive to hot spots, and there always seem to be adjustments to be done to time or temperature. The first tray should be considered a bit of a test run.

Did I mention the batter was runny? Well, that resulted in this, the invention of the macaron bar. I am actually quite inspired by this for future macaron shape creations. I’m thinking macaron men, letters and numbers for cake decoration, flower shaped macarons. Basically anything rounded that can be piped. 

In case you were wondering, this was the batter. It doesn’t look too runny, but you have to stop know when to stop stirring and wait for it to smooth out. You can always give it a few more turns, but never less.

They didn’t turn out so bad, though…

We decided to make a coffee buttercream for the filling, which was one of the most delicious and easy fillings I’ve done. 

Just like my raspberry buttercream, it’s 240g softened butter + 240g caster sugar, creamed. Add 8 tablespoons of freshly brewed coffee and beat until you get a uniformly creamy, smooth mixture and the sugar has dissolved.

Sublime. It is surprising how different coffee tastes in a dessert. My Dad is not a coffee drinker, yet even he enjoyed these. Macarons are a great enticer to new flavours…although my husband still won’t drink tea.

Photos courtesy of Zoe’s phone and instagram.

P.S I got Adriano Zumbo’s recipe book for Christmas, so expect some Zumbo inspired posts in future!

One of my beautiful friends is getting married soon, and I have been enlisted to make some of the macarons for her favours. She bought favour boxes online, but as it happened they were not the size she had envisaged - too long and narrow for normal sized macarons. No problem, I told her. We can pipe out macarons any size. So, this weekend I set out to make some macarons for Christmas, and try out the timing and temperature for these little babies. 

So, we printed out a piping template of 3cm circles, and set out to make two flavours; caramel and fresh raspberry buttercream.

The caramel batch went all to plan, business as usual…

My new silicon baking mats were quite good for macarons - their ability to stay in place while piping was very much appreciated.

For the filling, I went serious with my salted caramel. Unlike my previous buttercream, this was going to be sticky, thick and that killer balance of sweet and salty. 

250g caster sugar

75ml water

120ml cream

200g salted butter

salt flakes to taste (I used approximately 2 tablespoons)

Caramelise the sugar with the water in a saucepan over medium heat. It should be a light caramel colour, not too dark. 

Stir the cream in gradually, preventing the sugar from cooking further. Try not to panic as it gets all excited and frothy. 

Take its temperature, and take it off the heat when it gets to 108C

Add the butter in small pieces and stir until smooth.

Refrigerate for an hour or so, so that it thickens enough to fill the macarons.

These are fabulously delicious. Crunch, smooth, sweet, salt…mmm nom. 

Now, the raspberry ones were quite another story. These little beasts started off well. We bought a kilo of homegrown fresh raspberries out of the back of a car. Sigh, I love summer. 

However, my shells were a bit doomed from the beginning. Firstly, I tried to make purple out of blue and red colouring. It became quite weird and grey, was rescued by the addition of a fair bit more red, and was then darkened again by the baking. The second tray worked better, as I reduced the temperature and increased the time by a bit. 12 or 13 minutes on 140C for these, and 11 to 12 minutes on 150 for the caramel.

That wasn’t the worst of it, though. I had some strange delusion that I could make two batches of meringue in a row, using the same unwashed bowl. Ha! No. Always use clean, try utensils if you expect your egg whites to form peaks.

Next, I ended up whipping the egg whites too much - until they started to break off and dry out. That freaked me out enough to slightly overheat the sugar. The meringue worked out alright this time, but there were sugar crystals in the mix that made the piping extremely difficult (they got stuck in the nozzle continually). 

As much as it damaged my peace of mind, they still worked out fine. 

For my filling, I used my Mum’s buttercream recipe.

Very simple:

240g butter

240g caster sugar

6 Tbsp warmed fresh raspberries

Cream butter and sugar, then gradually add the raspberry until incorporated. 

This is very easy to work with compared with some of the buttercream recipes I’ve used for macarons, ready to fill immediately!

It is also smooth and fresh, deliciously raspberry. The flavour isn’t quite intensely fruity enough for me (compared to a fistful of the pure, unadulterated berries themselves), but I’ll work on that.

Merry Christmas!

This shortbread is a Christmas tradition. It’s my Nanna’s recipe, so no matter what else is going on, it has to be made. 

Very easy, just don’t overwork the dough or it might get sticky.

Combine 

500g Plain flour

120g caster sugar

375g butter, softened

Roll out and cut with Christmas themed cookie cutters. If you run a spatula or an icing knife under the dough, and press the cutter onto this, it makes transferring the dough to the tray much easier, and doesn’t push it out of shape. 

To decorate, put some caster sugar in a freezer bag with a few drops of food colouring, and dust over the shapes using a tea strainer. 

Bake at 160C for 10 minutes (15 to 20 if you use gluten free flour, for some reason). 

I have also used this recipe to make melting moments, sandwiching two round biscuits with lemon buttercream. 

While I’m here, have a look at the origami ornaments I’ve made to decorate my Christmas tree! 

Phoenix

Doves

Crane

Dragon

Owl

Dragonfly

Lotus

Lillies

Every year, in the Summer holidays, I would spend a month or so at Grandma’s house. We moved to a different state when I was four, and with the fury of tourist season at the guest house, it was a convenient time for us to be reunited with our Grandma, aunties, uncles and cousins. I have many cherished memories of time spent with Grandma. She is the master of balancing a generous, loving and affectionate personality, with wit, tenacity and independence. I love her. 

This weekend, for the first time in my adult life, Grandma and my aunty actually came to stay with me, and my brother and I took turns hosting two big family dinners. I planned to make a risotto for mains and this espresso creme brulee for dessert, but then received a request for macarons. What was I to do but make those as well!

Macarons and creme brulee are the perfect partners, because they use separated eggs - the whites for the meringue, the yolks for the custard.

In keeping with my previous tea-flavoured macaron adventure, I wanted to try out the infusion of jasmine green tea with the white chocolate ganache. The pear filling was another ganache, with fresh pear pureed and incorporated with white chocolate, but no cream. 

The sensation from the jasmine is warmth and sweetness. It’s fragrant, smooth and inviting. The pear, which I placed in the centre of some of my shells, contrasts with a still-subtle, but juicy, fresh flavour. I dyed the macaron shells a lovely pear green, matching both of the flavours quite nicely.

While amazing, macarons are very afternoon tea. Dessert is another business entirely.

Usually custard doesn’t appeal to me very much, but make it silky smooth and coat it in a thin layer of crisp, dark toffee and I’m there. Every time. This time, adding coffee (which is always more exciting in desserts than as a beverage, in my humble opinion)…lets just say I am glad that I made a double batch. Here is the single, just to get you started.

Preheat to 140C, and grease 6 ramekins.

350ml cream

125ml milk (I used powdered milk and water, which worked perfectly)

50ml espresso coffee (you could use instant, or plunger if you don’t have access to a machine)

1 Tbsp Baileys, Kahlua or Tia Maria

6 free range egg yolks

75g caster sugar

Raw sugar, or demarara, to caramelise.

Heat the cream and milk slowly in a saucepan, until scalding. This is pre-boiling point, when you can just see the surface wrinkle when disturbed.

Stir in the coffee and liqueur. 

Beat the egg yolks until pale and creamy, then whisk in the egg yolks, adding them gradually. Whisk in caster sugar.

You may choose to strain the liquid through a sieve, but mine was pretty smooth, so I didn’t bother. 

Divide the mixture between the ramekins and place into high sided trays. Carefully pour water into the trays, around the ramekins. 

Bake for 45 minutes, or until the custard comes away from the edges slightly, but the centres are still wobbly. 

Refrigerate for several hours, overnight if convenient.

When ready to serve, sprinkle with sugar and go at it with a blowtorch until caramelised to a rich coffee colour. It’s fun. Just don’t, whatever you do, touch the surface straight after. This may sound like obvious advice, but some of us just don’t think. I managed to give myself an impressive little blister and had to have my finger in a glass of water for many hours. 

As I said, absolutely delicious. Well worth sharing with those closest to you.

2nd attempt at gluten free bread: Brioche rolls. Utter failure. Rocks that crumble when you pick them up, and taste like chalk. 

I am now the coolest house on the street. Halloween isn’t a big deal here, so I was taken by surprise when a fairy and a piratey-thing came to my door. All I had to give them was macarons. They were very pleased.

First try gluten free bread was never going to be perfect. Or was it? Gluten is the thing that makes bread so fluffy, puffy and stretchy. Hence, my bread was relatively flat and dense.

However, in those heady days before my diagnosis, when I had horrible, gut wrenching pains in my stomach, but got to eat exciting things like croissants and bread rolls, I ate a perfectly tasty sourdough loaf much like this. While I expected failure, I am gradually being convinced that it was rather successful.

I filled it with all the seeds I could find (sesame and sunflower) and when I ran out of those, I threw in some chopped almonds, quinoa and some cumin for a spicy note. This proved to be a good move, at least in my book. 

Most interestingly of all, I ground my own brown rice flour. Yes, I have the best food processor in the world.

Mixture of seeds

100g brown rice flour

200g buckwheat flour

200g gluten free all purpose flour

2 Tbsp psyllium

2 tsp yeast

1 tsp salt

30g olive oil

500ml warm water

30g honey

Combine all ingredients and knead. The dough should still be quite sticky.

Place dough into two greased loaf tins, cover with plastic wrap and place in a warm place to leaven. This warm place could very well be an oven set to 50C. When dough reaches the top of the tin (mine didn’t quite get there, but this is the ideal), heat oven to 200C and bake for 30-40 minutes.

I am actually very pleased with this stuff. The slices may be shaped like a strange, small rectangle, incapable of making a sandwich, but as toast, as a dipper for soup, it is rather superb. 

Sweet and subtle, the mango fruit ganache makes these macarons sing. 

I have read that you shouldn’t make macarons when its raining, but what else is there to do on a rainy Saturday than bake? This week I bought my first mangoes of the season. After eating the first with a spoon, I wanted to do something special with the other one. Either that, or it was lying around when I was trying to decide on a flavour. Yes, that was it. Mango and white chocolate ganache is incredibly easy.

Take one mango, scoop the flesh out, process to a puree and heat. Pour hot fruit over 150g white chocolate and combine until smooth and melted. Refrigerate until firm enough to pipe onto the macaron shells.

I can’t show you these. We still don’t have our camera back, and they also look a bit boring, because I made pink ones again. I tried out my new gel food colourings and somehow had the delusional idea that ‘Christmas Red’ would actually turn out red, and not pathetically pale pink. The lessons you learn in high school art really do hold out in the real world. 

Then there is the berry jam. Whenever I make ganache fillings there is never enough to go around. I also had to explain the pink. I used Mum’s homemade jam to dob in the centre of each, and piped the ganache around the edges. Nom. Actually, they probably would have been better without the jam. The mango flavour is subtle, and gets just a tad overpowered. 

All in all, though, tastifying. 

This cookie dough is amazing. I love the sly way that the recipe (found here) has been toyed with to change a brand’s classic packet recipe into something with real character. The browned butter flavour is so good, the chocolate almost gets in the way. Almost. These cookies take a little longer to make than usual. The browning of the butter, cooling it, chilling the dough, rolling the balls and chilling again, before baking…but as you don’t actually have to do any work during these little interludes, it is less of a marathon and more of a gradual process that you can do when you don’t know if you’ll have time to finish the biscuits, but you still want to make them anyway. As it gets later in the evening, and I only have my dough in the fridge, I figure that I may just leave the baking until tomorrow afternoon.

The good thing is, it is really quite easy. The great thing is, I discovered that cake flour, which the original recipe uses, is the one kind of wheat flour with the least amount of gluten. Thus, I am reassured that this will work well as a totally gluten free recipe.

250g butter

1 cup dark brown sugar, firmly packed

1/2 cup white sugar

3 tsp vanilla essence

2 eggs

2 1/4 cups gluten free plain flour mix

1 tsp baking soda

1 tsp baking powder

1 tsp sea salt flakes

250g chocolate chips (I used a block and chopped it up, because it’s better quality chocolate, and I threw in a bit of white chocolate, too, just for fun)

Add up to 1 cup of nuts, if so desired.

Melt the butter very slowly over low heat. As you keep heating, it will go through stages, first bubbling, then foaming. Finally, under the foam the butter will start browning, and a lovely, nutty aroma will come with that. I had a fair bit of brown sludge in the bottom of mine (I think it was the salt from the butter), but threw it in, it’s all part of the flavour). Allow the butter to cool. 

Place the sugars and vanilla in a mixer. Combine the flour, baking powder, soda and salt in a separate bowl.

Add the butter to the mixer, and mix on a medium speed for 2 minutes.

Add the eggs, one at a time.

Mix in flour, gradually. 

Add chocolate and stir to combine.

Chill mixture for 30 minutes or so in the fridge.

Roll into small balls and chill again, for a couple of hours. I wouldn’t be too afraid of even freezing these to bake at a later date. 

When ready, space out the balls of dough to allow for spreading, sprinkle with sea salt flakes and bake for 11-12 minutes. Cool on the trays for a couple of minutes before transferring to a wire rack.

Mung in. 

But do the finished biscuits taste as good as the dough? I just ate a hot one out of the oven. By which I mean, I ate it straight off the tray before it had even a moment to cool. Not the best idea. Breathe. Wait. Oh, shoot. I forgot to sprinkle them with salt.

Ok, better. Mmm. Chocolatey, crisp crunch, the salt…Mm, that browned butter nuttiness deepens the flavour and oh, they are still a bit chewy, but that crackling crunch practically sizzles. I overcooked my first tray just a little, and the flavour is richer when they’re more undercooked, so be sure not to go past 12 minutes, when they come out they should still be very soft. Delicious. Husband approval.

They look lovely, too. That rich, golden brown colour hints at the secret ingredient, and the sprinkle of salt looks pretty, too.

Photos are pending, hopefully, but our camera was borrowed for our friends’ wedding (they just got friends to take their photos, and as we were in the bridal party, we couldn’t take them ourselves). Hopefully we get it back before we eat all of the biscuits.

I am a deprived little baker. Working pretty much full time (7 1/2 hours a day, 5 days a week in a ‘casual’ job) I have little time and less energy for baking lately. I did make an effort a couple of weeks ago, but my apple and cranberry muffins were very much a gluten free fail. They did not rise, so were quite doughy, tiny and sad looking. 

This weekend I had some bridesmaid baking duties, assisting with gingerbread people favours (which are adorable), but the need to bake still wasn’t satiated. This may be because I now have a weird compulsion to photograph everything I bake…and blog it. Very sad. 

I stumbled across this recipe after looking through a friend’s Donna Hay cookbook. I love cookbooks, but websites come free. 

A filled cookie is something so decadent, and with so little flour in these, I could hardly go wrong with making them gluten free. They are also very heavy on the chocolate, which seems to be a theme here. 

My filling didn’t turn out entirely smooth, I may have blended it too fast. 

 350g dark chocolate, chopped

40g butter

2 eggs

⅔ cup (150g) caster (superfine) sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

¼ cup (35g) plain (all-purpose) flour, sifted

¼ teaspoon baking powder, sifted

Filling

1 cup (160g) icing (confectioner’s) sugar mixture

1 cup (280g) smooth peanut butter

80g butter

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

  ⅓ cup (80ml) single (pouring) cream

Preheat oven to 180C.

Melt down 200g of the chocolate and the butter over a low heat, and set aside.

Whisk the eggs, sugar and vanilla in an electric miser for 15 minutes, or until pale.

Combine all elements and allow to stand for 10 minutes.

Spoon spoonfuls onto lined baking trays and bake for 8-10 minutes or until cracked. Allow to cool completely on the tray. 

To make the filling, combine peanut butter, sugar, peanut butter, butter and vanilla in a mixer and beat for 6 minutes or until light and fluffy. Add the cream and beat for a further 2 minutes

(Oh, I missed this step, which may explain my curdling problem)

Fill the cookies and indulge.