Peanut butter cookies

I went to the movies yesterday and it got me thinking about something: I usually consider myself a very impatient person and maybe I no longer should – after all, I saw a movie I’d been meaning to watch for almost a year. :)

I continue exercising my patient side: while the latest issue of my favorite food magazine doesn’t arrive – and for what I’ve seen on the website I’m gonna love it – I make recipes from the old issues.

Peanut butter cookies
from Donna Hay magazine

100g unsalted butter, softened
½ cup (140g) crunchy peanut butter
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 ¼ cups (218g) light brown sugar, packed
1 egg
1 ¼ cups + 1 tablespoon (185g) all purpose flour
¼ teaspoon baking soda
½ cup (100g) demerara sugar, for rolling

Preheat the oven to 180°C; line two large baking sheets with baking paper.
Place the butter, peanut butter, vanilla and brown sugar in the bowl of an electric mixer and beat for 8-10 minutes or until well combined. Add the egg and beat for 2-3 minutes or until light and fluffy. Sift the flour and baking soda over the mixture and beat in low speed until a smooth dough forms*. Roll one leveled tablespoon of dough into a ball at a time and roll in demerara sugar. Place on prepared sheets, 5cm (2in) apart. Bake for 10-12 minutes or until the edges are golden. Allow to cool on wire racks.

* the dough was too soft, so I added ¼ cup (35g) all purpose flour and it worked perfectly

Makes 24 – I got 37

Lime macarons

I know I’ll sound like a broken record, but once again the feeling of time flying has hit me hard – I knew I’d promise you another batch of macarons, but I almost fell off my chair when I saw that it was a year and a half ago...

I used the same recipe and tweaked the filling a little bit, but the macarons did not turn out as cute as I’d expected. But that’s fine – next time, I’ll used one of Julia’s wonderful recipes and hope my macarons turn as gorgeous as hers.

Lime macarons

50g ground almonds
1 cup (140g) icing sugar
2 large egg whites
1 tablespoon caster sugar
green food coloring paste

Lime white chocolate ganache:
¾ cup (116g) chopped white chocolate
¼ cup (60ml) cream
finely grated zest of 1 lime
1 teaspoon lime juice

Start by making the macarons: grab two large pieces of baking paper and, using a cookie cutter, trace 4cm-circles, 3cm apart from each other, all over the paper. Turn the paper sheets around and line 2 large baking trays with them.
Sieve the ground almonds and icing sugar together into a large bowl. Put the egg whites into a separate bowl, and using an electric hand whisk, beat to soft peaks. Add the caster sugar, and whisk until glossy. Fold into the almond and icing sugar mixture, along with a very small amount of the food coloring – it’s easier to use a toothpick to remove coloring from the bottle. Mix until just combined and evenly green – the mixture will reduce as the air bubbles in the meringue burst.
Put the mixture into a disposable piping bag, snip off 1cm from the end. Pipe blobs onto the circles on the baking paper so you have about 28-30 in total. Set aside for 30 minutes to dry – this is important as it gives the macaroons the correct texture.
Preheat the oven to 190°C/375°F. Bake for 5 minutes, then turn the baking sheet and bake for another 4 minutes. Remove from the oven and cool.

Make the filling: pour the cream in a small saucepan and heat over medium-high heat until hot. Remove from heat, add chocolate and mix vigorously until chocolate is melted and ganache is smooth. Add lime zest and juice and mix well to combine. Set aside to cool until firm enough to be piped or spooned between macarons shells.

Carefully peel off the baking paper from the macaroons, then sandwich 2 together with a blob of lime ganache in the center. Repeat to give you 14-15 in total.

Store the macaroons in an airtight container for up to 3 days – I kept mine in the fridge.

Makes about 15

Pecan and maple friands

Unlike walnuts, which were an acquired taste, pecans were love at first bite – I instantly became a fan of their sweet and delicate flavor.

These friands were delicious and I loved the pecans paired with maple syrup – they work really well together. Now I have got to try them together in ice cream form, too... Yum! :)

Pecan and maple friands
from here

1 cup (110g) pecan halves
6 egg whites, lightly whisked
¾ cup + 1 tablespoon (184g) unsalted butter, melted and cooled
1 2/3 cups (233g) icing sugar, sifted
½ cup + ½ tablespoon (75g) all purpose flour, sifted
2 tablespoons maple syrup
10 pecan halves, extra
1 tablespoon maple syrup, extra, to serve

Preheat oven to 180°C/350°F; brush ten ½ cup (120ml) capacity oval friand pans with melted butter to lightly grease.
Place pecans in the bowl of a food processor and process until finely chopped. Transfer to a large bowl and add the egg whites, butter, icing sugar, flour and maple syrup. Stir until well combined.
Spoon the mixture into the prepared pans. Top each with a pecan half. Bake for 25 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean. Set aside for 5 minutes before turning onto a wire rack to cool.
Serve brushed with a little extra maple syrup.

Makes 10 – I halved the recipe above, used 1/3 cup (80ml) capacity muffins pans and got 8

Mini meringues with boozy cherries and orange cream

Some people say – and several of them are from my family – that the best things in life are the simple ones. As much as I hate agreeing with my grandmother – and she knows that – this orange cream is a good example: ridiculously simple, but it has got to be one of the most delicious things I have ever tasted. In 31 years of existence. :)

The original recipe called for fresh cranberries, but I can’t get hold of them here in Brazil – the wonderful, plump dried cherries I got from a lovely friend replaced them beautifully.

Mini meringues with boozy cherries and orange cream
adapted from Delicious magazine

Meringues:
400g caster sugar
200g (about 5 large) free-range egg whites

Topping:
about ½ cup (72g) dried cherries*
3 tablespoons vodka
40g caster sugar
600ml heavy (whipping) cream
2 tablespoons icing sugar, sifted
1-2 tablespoons orange flower water, to taste
Handful unsalted shelled pistachios, chopped

Preheat the oven to 220°C/428°F. Spread the sugar evenly over a shallow baking tray, lined with baking paper, and place in the oven for about 10 minutes until really hot.

Place the egg whites in an electric mixer fitted with a whisk. Whisk on high speed until the whites begin to froth, then gradually pour in the hot sugar. Continue whisking on a high speed for 10 minutes until the meringue is beautifully silky and holds its shape.
Reduce the temperature to 110°C/230°F. Line two large baking sheets with baking paper - stick the baking paper to the baking sheets with a little meringue.
Fill a piping bag with the meringue and pipe golf ball-size rounds on to the baking sheet – I used two small spoons to shape the meringues and made them a little bigger. Have a bowl of water nearby; dip a teaspoon in the water and use the back of it to create a nest shape. Repeat, spaced apart – you should get about 60 mini meringues.
Bake the mini meringues for 1 hour, or until crisp to touch. Turn off the oven and leave inside to cool completely.
Gently heat the cherries, vodka and caster sugar in a small pan for 3-5 minutes until the sugar is dissolved and the cherries plump up a bit. Cool a little. In a bowl, whip the cream, icing sugar and orange flower water, to taste, to soft peaks.
To assemble: place the meringues on serving plates, and spoon a small dollop of orange cream onto each one. Spoon a boozy cherry and a little syrup over the top, then sprinkle with chopped pistachios.

* the amount of cherries will depend on the number of meringues you end up with, since there has to be one cherry to top each mini pavlova

Makes 60 – I made ¼ of the recipe above, used two spoons to shape the meringues (instead of a piping bag) and got 8 mini pavlovas

Watermelon salad with rose and mint syrup

I should be ashamed for calling this a recipe, but the result is so good I had to share it with you; not to mention that after almost five days of Carnival (and food, and booze) I was in desperate need of something fresh.

Watermelon salad with rose and mint syrup
from Australian Gourmet Traveller

500g watermelon flesh
2/3 cup (133g) caster sugar
¼ cup (loosely packed) mint leaves
2 teaspoons rosewater

Combine sugar and ¼ cup (60ml) water in a small saucepan and stir over medium-high heat until sugar dissolves, then bring to the boil and simmer for 2 minutes. Add mint and rosewater, remove from heat, cool completely and strain, discarding solids. Refrigerate for 30 minutes.

To serve, using a melon baller, scoop watermelon into balls and divide among serving bowls. Drizzle with rose and mint syrup and serve immediately.

Serves 6

Coconut cupcakes with white chocolate icing

I was preparing some bruschettas for lunch last Saturday when I heard Joao screaming like mad from the living room: “Hurry up! Come over here, quickly!” – it was a TV article about cupcakes in New York City and they showed some of the city bakeries, including Magnolia – so beautiful! My heart was filled with joy just by looking at those pretty places... *sigh*

While I don’t get to know the bakeries personally, I make my own cupcakes – these are from DH mag #17.

Coconut cupcakes with white chocolate icing
from Donna Hay magazine

Cupcakes:
¾ cup + 1 tablespoon (184g) unsalted butter, room temperature
¾ cup + 1 tablespoon (162g) caster sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
3 eggs
1 ½ cups + 1 ½ tablespoons (225g) all purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
3 tablespoons unsweetened desiccated coconut

Whipped white chocolate icing:
500g white chocolate, chopped
1 cup (240ml) heavy cream*
140g unsalted butter, room temperature
2 cups flaked coconut

Preheat the oven to 180°C/350°F; line twelve ½ cup capacity muffin pans with paper cases.
Place the butter, sugar and vanilla in the bowl of an electric mixer and beat until light and fluffy. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating well. Sift the flour and baking powder over the butter mixture, add the coconut and combine. Line twelve ½ cup capacity muffin pans with paper cases. Spoon in the prepared pan and bake for 35 minutes or until cooked with tested with a skewer. Cool completely on wire racks.
To make the whipped chocolate icing, place the chocolate, cream and butter in a small saucepan over low heat. Stir until melted and smooth. Remove from the heat and set aside to cool completely. Once cool, beat with a hand-held electric mixer until thick and fluffy. Ice the cool cupcakes and top them with the flaked coconut.

* as my icing wouldn’t whip, I refrigerated it for 30 minutes then beat it again with the mixer – I recommend using less cream and less butter

Makes 12 – I halved the recipe above and got 7 cupcakes (using 1/3 cup capacity pans)

Tangy lemon tartlets with a burnt sugar crust

Beyonce is here in Brazil and everyone is talking about it – I must confess I’m not a fan, powerful voice and all. Even though I don’t like her songs, I found the music in “Ego” pretty interesting, but she had to go and ruin it with silly lyrics.

She should learn from Donna Hay: you get something great, like a lemon tart, and make it even better, by adding a crackly caramel crust. :)

Tangy lemon tartlets with a burnt sugar crust
from Donna Hay magazine

2 cups + 2 tablespoons (300g) all purpose flour
2/3 cup + ½ tablespoon (157g) unsalted butter, cold and chopped
2 tablespoons caster sugar
2 teaspoons iced water

Filling:
½ cup (120ml) heavy cream
3 eggs
¼ cup (50g) caster sugar
¼ cup (60ml) lemon juice
finely grated zest of 2 large lemons
2 tablespoons caster sugar, extra

Place the flour, butter and sugar in a food processor and process until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs. Add the water a little at a time and process until a dough forms. Wrap the dough in plastic and refrigerate for 30 minutes.
Roll out the pastry on a lightly floured surface until 3mm thick. Butter a 20cm (8in) round fluted tart pan and line it with the pastry. Trim, prick the dough with a fork and refrigerate for 30 minutes – in the meantime, preheat the oven to 180°C/350°F.
Line the pastry with baking paper, fill with baking weights or dried beans and bake for 10 minutes. Remove the weights/beans and the paper and bake for a further 8-10 minutes or until golden.
Reduce the oven to 140°C/285°F. Place the cream, eggs, sugar, lemon juice and zest in a bowl and whisk to combine. Pour the mixture into the tart shell and bake for 30 minutes or until just set. Allow to cool completely. Sprinkle the extra sugar over the lemon filling and use a kitchen torch to caramelize the sugar topping.

Serves 8 – I halved the recipe above, used 6x11cm rectangular tart pans and got 5 tartlets

Sugared strawberry jubes

Before I started the blog I used to spend hours at imdb.com reading the movie trivia – I’d go from one to another, then another...

I still do that sometimes, but nowadays I usually share my browsing time between movies and recipes – one thing I love is to go to Gourmet Traveller’s website, click on a recipe and then check the end of the page, where there are four related recipes. I go from one to another, then another... This is how I found these strawberry jubes.

Sugared strawberry jubes
from Australian Gourmet Traveller

500g hulled strawberries (about 2 punnets)
280ml sparkling wine
530g caster sugar, plus extra for coating
2 teaspoons lemon juice
9 gelatin leaves (titanium strength), softened in cold water*

Combine strawberries and 1/3 cup (80ml) wine in a saucepan, cover and simmer over medium heat until strawberries are tender and juice is extracted (5-7 minutes). Strain through a fine sieve (you should have about 200ml). Add half the remaining wine and enough water to make 450ml and combine in a saucepan with sugar and lemon juice. Stir over medium-high heat until sugar dissolves. Bring to the boil and cook until mixture reaches 120°C/248°F on a sugar thermometer (15-20 minutes) – if the mixture bubbles too much and looks like it is going to spill over, swirl the pan around. Remove from heat and stand for 10 minutes.
Squeeze excess water from gelatin, add to strawberry syrup with remaining wine. Stir to combine, then pour into a lightly oiled 16cm-square cake pan. Stand in a cool place overnight – I refrigerated mine for a couple of hours, too.

Scatter sugar over cutting board. Dip base of pan quickly in hot water (that was not necessary, I just ran the knife on the sides of the pan) and invert pan onto board to remove jelly. Cut jelly into cubes with a hot knife and toss in sugar to coat. Sugared jellies will keep in an airtight container for 1 week.

* make sure your gelatin is really strong – mine wasn’t that powerful and the jubes were on the soft side (thought still delicious)

Serves 8 - I made 2/3 of the recipe above, used a 15cm (6in) square pan and got 64 small jubes

Crowd-pleasing chocolate cake

As one of my favorite people in the food world says, there are times when only chocolate will do.

If your heart is broken, if you’ve had a miserable week at work, or if you have no job at all – a slice of this cake will make you feel better. Even if just for a little while.

Crowd-pleasing chocolate cake
from Australian Gourmet Traveller

125g hazelnut meal (ground hazelnuts)
½ cup + 1 tablespoon (80g) all purpose flour
¼ cup (22g) Dutch-process cocoa, plus extra to serve
1 teaspoon baking powder
280g dark chocolate (70% cocoa solids), finely chopped
200g unsalted butter, room temperature, coarsely chopped
1 ½ tablespoons espresso or coffee liqueur – I used brandy
5 eggs, separated
1 cup + 1 ½ tablespoons (218g) caster sugar
crème fraîche, to serve

Preheat the oven to 180°C/350°F. Generously butter a 22cm (9in) springform cake pan*, line the base with baking paper and butter the paper, too.
Combine hazelnut meal, flour, cocoa and baking powder in a bowl, set aside. Melt chocolate, butter and espresso in a heatproof bowl over simmering water, stirring occasionally until smooth (2-3 minutes). Remove from heat, let cool for 5 minutes then stir in yolks.

Whisk egg whites in an electric mixer until firm peaks form (2-3 minutes), gradually add sugar, whisking until thick and glossy. Fold into chocolate mixture, then fold in hazelnut mixture. Spoon into prepared pan and bake until a skewer withdraws clean (30-35 minutes) – do not overbake. Cool completely in tin, remove, dust with extra cocoa and serve with crème fraîche.
Store at room temperature. Best eaten on day of making.

* I made 2/3 of the recipe above and used a 20cm (8in) deep round cake pan with a removable bottom

Serves 10

Babas with lime syrup

I did now know what babas were until I saw this post on Helen’s blog, a good while ago – her beautiful citrus version immediately caught my eye, but for some reason I did not try my hand at making babas until very recently.

Discovering new desserts is always a good thing, especially when they are very tender and drenched in a lovely syrup – yum! :)

The recipe comes from here – the only change I made was using limes instead of lemons – but the idea of using dariole molds came from here.

Babas with lime syrup
from Donna Hay magazine

1 ½ teaspoons active dry yeast
1 tablespoon caster sugar
¼ cup (60ml) lukewarm milk
1 cup + 1 tablespoon (150g) all purpose flour
1 egg
1/3 cup + 1 tablespoon (90g) unsalted butter, room temperature, chopped

Lime syrup*:
½ cup (100g) caster sugar
1 cup (240ml) water
1/3 cup (80ml) lime juice
shredded zest of 2 limes

To make the babas, place the yeast, sugar and milk in the bowl of an electric mixer and allow to stand until bubbles surface. Add the flour and egg to the yeast mixture. Attach a dough hook to the mixer and beat the ingredients to a sticky dough. While the motor is still running, add the butter, a few pieces at a time, and beat well for about 4 minutes – the dough hook did not work for me, it did not mix the ingredients properly, so I switched to the paddle attachment and it worked beautifully. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap, place in a draft-free place and allow the dough to double in size (1-1 ½ hours).
Divide the dough into 6 pieces and place in 6 well buttered 1-cup (240ml) capacity baba molds. Cover and allow to stand until the dough almost fills the pans (30 minutes or so).
Preheat the oven to 180°C. Bake the babas for 15 minutes or until golden brown. Let stand in the pans for 5 minutes.
While the babas are baking, make the syrup: place the sugar, water, lime juice and zest in small saucepan over medium heat. Stir until the sugar is dissolved, then simmer for a further 3 minutes.
Spoon half of the hot syrup over the hot babas still in the pans, set aside for 2 minutes then carefully unmold. Transfer the babas to a wire rack then pour over the remaining syrup.
Serve warm.

* there was plenty of syrup left, I think that half the recipe would have been enough

Makes 6 – I used ½ cup capacity dariole pans and got 8 babas

White chocolate and cinnamon crème brulée

I have a new toy and, according to my husband, it has turned me into a very dangerous woman. :)

One of my bosses gave me a kitchen torch as a Christmas gift after his wife read my eggnog brûlée post – how lovely is that?

I thought that using my favorite spice – which happens to be very Christmassy as well – would be a great way to use my gift for the first time; to be on the safe side, I chose a recipe by Donna Hay.

White chocolate and cinnamon crème brulée
from Donna Hay magazine

1 cup (240ml) heavy cream
¾ cup (180ml) milk
1 cinnamon stick
4 egg yolks
¼ cup + ½ tablespoon (56g) caster sugar
85g white chocolate, melted
4 tablespoons caster sugar, extra

Place the cream, milk and cinnamon stick in a small saucepan over low heat and cook gently until the mixture comes to a boil. Remove from the heat, cover and set aside for 20 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 160°C/320°F; reheat the cream mixture.
Whisk the egg yolks and sugar together until thick and pale. Pour the warm cream mixture over the egg mixture and whisk to combine. Return to the pan and stir over low heat until the custard is thick and coats the back of a spoon (6-8 minutes). Remove from the heat and stir the custard into the melted chocolate. Pour the mixture through a sieve into four ½-cup (120ml) capacity ovenproof ramekins and place in a deep baking dish. Pour enough boiling water to come halfway up the sides of the ramekins. Bake for 25-30 minutes or until just set. Remove from the oven, let cool, then refrigerate for 3 hours or until set.

Sprinkle each brûlée with one tablespoon of extra sugar. Use a kitchen torch to caramelize the sugar topping.

Serves 4