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