Look away if you’re squeamish and if you’re not, peer into my dark mind. As you may know, Halloween is my kind of holiday. Sure, I live in the wrong country for this as we don’t really celebrate it but give me Friday the 13th as an interim measure between the long year that stretches between Halloweens. I love anything dark and ghoulish so I was excited to be able to have a little bit of Halloween in February. Nothing bad has ever happened to me on Friday the 13th (that is one date where I truly do notice if bad things happen).
The brain decoration idea came from the very copied and popular cupcakes book Hey There Cupcake! by Claire Crespo. I thought that I’d make it a touch more grotesque with a blood clot hidden inside the cupcake. I needed a fairly stiff batter, one that would hold a clot so to speak so I turned to the Jam Donut cupcakes I made a while back. The cake itself is quite dense and whilst 4 cups of icing sugar sounds like a freakish amount… ok yes it is and there’s no other way to pitch it.
As with all things Halloween related, I took out my box of tricks and decided to ghoulify an already ghoulish cupcake idea. I would have loved to have some surgeon’s implements for the task but unfortunately my doctor friend Soph lives in another state and I’m sure the local hospital wouldn’t understand my need to borrow brain surgery tools overnight. Of course I could have paid them in one of these cupcakes. I hope that my broken mirror and bloodied knife suffices.
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February 12th, 2009
by Not Quite Nigella
My friend M is a neverfail cook. By that I mean that everything that she cooks is fantastic. Without exception. But in the time I’ve known her, I’ve never seen her make a cake. When she mentioned that she would be making an Austrian cake for Australia Day I knew it would be good (duh!) but I was excited to learn that this was her family’s recipe and a genuine Austrian cake as well. I think I actually rubbed my hands together in sheer happiness and bounced up and down on my Swiss Ball.
It’s an Austrian cake rich with a whipped cream buttercream and sponge fingers, much like a Tiramisu without the coffee flavour. She is proud of the fact that it is a standalone cake too so that the skill of the cakemaker is evident in ensuring that the structure has integrity and evenness. These Austrians are a precise bunch 
She even took photos of the assembly process from the day before so I would have step by step instructions. What a great friend!
Made over two days so that the sponge fingers soften, it is flavoured with rum and topped with a stiff sweetened whipped cream and strawberries and it quite a sight to behold. It’s a cake designed to impress, in fact it was a special occasion cake made just for birthdays in the Baer household. Thanks to M for sharing her cake recipe with me and all of my readers and for giving me a slice of heaven on a plate.
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February 4th, 2009
by Not Quite Nigella
I was really excited about this month’s Daring Bakers challenge…Tuiles, those delicate buttery thin crispy biscuits (ones that caused me so much drama when I was making the Gordon Ramsay RHR dessert). I was excited as I had a clear idea as to what I wanted to make and how I wanted to style it so when it came to the Australia Day weekend coming up in which we would eat it, my excitement grew. For those of you that read this blog, first of all thankyou for doing so and secondly, you would also know that I have a leaning towards desserts and sweets. This is mainly because I can use a colour palette that I like more with pinks and all sorts of pastels so it’s probably a surprise that when give a choice of sweet or savoury, I’ve chosen savoury.
The reason why I wanted to do a savoury tuile was that I wanted to pair this with Taramasalata, that deliciously creamy Greek caviar dip in a delicate pink hue. I liked the idea that people may have thought that this was a sweet item but once they tried it, they’d know it was savoury. I was also taken with how it would look, almost like a Paul & Joe Powder container I had many moons ago and how I’d love to sit that on my makeup table as it looked so gloriously art deco and pretty. Hence the jewelry and other dressing table acoutrements that feature in the images.
I don’t like buying new equipment for just one use as my cupboards are already bursting to full but when I saw some Tuile Silpats on sale I eagerly snatched them up. It occurred as serendipity often does, I saw them a few days after I read the recipe so I was grateful for the help as I was needing all the reinforcements after having a hard time with the December Ispahan Yule Log challenge. I needn’t have worried, the tuiles themselves are incredibly easy and the recipe is very straightforward which I was very relieved to see. The only thing that may pose a challenge is shaping them. Also, it was 31C the day that I made them. There I was, standing in front of the very hot 200C oven in a bikini and apron and I felt like I was melting but madness spurred me on. I don’t think I’m the only person that bakes in a bikini-or am I?
This month’s challenge is brought to us by Karen of Bake My Day and Zorra of 1x umruehren bitte aka Kochtopf. They chose Tuiles from The Chocolate Book by Angélique Schmeink and Nougatine and Chocolate Tuiles from Michel Roux and Savoury Tuiles from Thomas Keller “The French Laundry Cookbook”.
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January 29th, 2009
by Not Quite Nigella
I won’t lie. When I saw this recipe, all 18 pages of it I wasn’t happy. I may have even sworn. December is a busy enough time as it is without making a dish that has 6 elements to it. There was absolutely no way I could make this before Christmas with my packed schedule so I shelved this for a New Year’s Eve celebration. A few days before NYE I made it with some help from Angela from A Spoonful of Sugar who coaxed me off the window ledge so to speak. She also gave me the inspiration for the Ispahan themed buche.
I should have taken the opt out option for this one in hindsight but the idea of an Ispahan buche was too tempting. What I didn’t count on was the mousse part, usually a fairly easy item to make causing a lot of trouble. I used the 1/3 cup specified and it turned into something like scrambled eggs. I then asked on the website and someone else said that 1/3 of a cup worked fine but I just can’t see how what I had would have worked in any way. I made another version of the ganache but I don’t think this was ideal so I can’t comment on the ganache insert recipe below as I didn’t try it.
Another element that I had trouble with was the icing. I didn’t have any gelatine leaves left (and I certainly wasn’t in the mood to track down some more) so I wasn’t sure how to follow the recipe to use powder even though the recipe specified that powder could be used. I dissolved the gelatine into the almost boiling milk and glucose syrup (I didn’t want to dissolve it in water in case it introduced too much water into the icing) but by the time the gelatine powder had dissolved, the milky mixture was too cold to melt the chocolate and butter so it had to go back on the stove. I also waited until it coated the back of a spoon but it was still too runny then too.
Then there was the drama about the acetate, I wanted a dome shaped buche so I read that you simply line the loaf tin with the acetate and that’s all you need to do. Apparently not, as mine turned out as a loaf shape and whilst I tried lining the sides, some mousse seeped out (as well as some raspberry puree). This was exacerbated by the mousse being runnier than normal as I’d tried to save it from the recipe error before.
Would I recommend making it? Sadly, probably not. Well I think most of the elements are delicious by themselves, especially the feuillete which I could happily eat by itself in bucketloads but the overall production was it was far too stressful for me to wholeheartedly recommend, especially if you don’t have the help of a dishwasher (I did 6 sinkfuls of dishes for this). However it is spectacular looking I will admit (well other people’s buches are anyway) so I’d save this for when you a) have 2 days in which to prepare it and b) when you have someone helping you out. And when you have a lot of patience. A few days after I tried this and I found that when thawed, the log was divine, ambrosial, perfection. So does this mean there’s another version coming up next year? Who knows…time has a way of dulling memories 
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December 29th, 2008
by Not Quite Nigella
Every year, my husband’s family and mine rent a house at Echo Point in the Blue Mountains. We always get the same house as it’s huge, lovely and just right for the 10 of us. This year it seemed that some were out to ruin Christmas with last minute cancellations but despite this, and the many, many changes of plans we still had a fantastic Christmas, made even better because of the absence of Grinches!
Breakfast spread (not shown, muesli)
Mmm bacon….food of the gods!
We had a range of foods for breakfast including of course French Toast with bacon and blueberry jam. During the day copious amounts of Watermelon (from a sweet and juicy 11kg behemoth melon) were consumed, one night was a Pot Luck plate dinner with Hawaiian bean salad, noodles, cheeses and dips.
Crimson Rosellas in the backyard (amongst many other native birds)
Eumundi Organic Sausages
The highlight was the Christmas Day BBQ which featured a Coke Butt Chicken (a Coke version of the Beer Butt Chicken, click here for the recipe), Eumundi Sausages in 3 flavours (Pork & Ginger; Chicken & Leek and Beef, Tomato & Spinach); vegetarian sausages, tofu patties, coleslaw, freshly buttered corn, caramelised onions, asparagus, rolls, and of course for dessert, gleaming Maple Cheesecake (recipe to come) and sweet, juicy watermelon.
BBQ’d onions
Tofu and vegetarian sausage platter
Grilled corn on the cob
Cooked Eumundi’s – yum!
Coke Butt Chicken
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December 28th, 2008
by Not Quite Nigella
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