2016 end of year home bake - stars and stripes!

2016 has been an interesting year. Wouldn't be my favourite, but it certainly was quite a character of a year. One good thing about a year like this? Makes one appreciate the uneventful, but peaceful and smooth sailing times.

Everybody loves drama and this year's US election was full of it. As much as it was drawn out and painful to watch at times, it made for some memorable entertainment. It was the mad Americans that  inspired this end of year theme.

Cookies and cream is very American. So is peanut butter and chocolate combo. I'd have wanted to throw a banana to the peanut butter sandwich combo (the King lives as long as his peanut butter and banana sandwich exists), except that I used up my bananas in my banoffee tart - also very America, I think.

Cookies and creme cupcake

Chocolate and peanut butter slice

Cookies and cream cream cheese balls

Banofee tarts

And to cleanse the palate? Not typically "American" but we were grateful for this refreshing strawberry and mango sorbet. The basil leaves are a garnish, though it will probably add an interesting flavour to the sorbet ... Next time, maybe!

With that, farewell 2016, and may 2017 be better for everyone!

CS

A home non-bake full of wine

The other day I was organising my preserved grape juice collection into a container (to minimise humidity and god forbid - laundry damp - out of my precious goodies) and, shock horror, could not fit them all in the 80L heavy duty storage tub!! So to rectify this situation, I've decided to share the love! What is the entry price then? Bring me something that matches wine, of course!

Disclaimer: We are not wine connoisseurs, but simply gluttons who aim to taste and try new flavours where we can!  :p

Starting with a foreign unknown - Pouilly Fume, a bottle I bought from a supermarket in France, a quick google search told me that this was a Loire Valley savignon blanc; it was followed by Hunter Valley Semillon (2013 Margan), then a 2014 rose called "Big Men In Tights" from Bloodwood (Orange NSW).

The Pouilly-Fume was nothing like a sauvignon blanc we've ever had: a gorgeous floral and fruity bouquet with a more earthy full bodied flavour than the usual sav-blanc. I'm planning to get a case of this thing when I can. Margan Semillon: fresh, fruity, sharp, very exciting and easy to drink, probably more suited to a summer afternoon, but then again, good wine is enjoyable regardless of season. "Big men in tights" - funny name, but as a normally big bold malbec now restrained into a rose, Bloodwood had created aa gorgeous concoction with more depth and flavour than a normally fruity, light and flighty rose. This was liquid strawberry and cream - delicious and interesting stuff.

What have we got to fill our stomach and satisfy our taste buds?

Lets start with meats. Lots of cured meats. Lovely truffle salami, wagyu bresaola, jamon serano, and "boring" prosciutto... We giggled at the thought that we now consider prosciutto "boring" ... oh how much the food scene has evolved! And it didn't stop there: Orange and duck liver pate was one of those things we must have on a charcuterie spread such as this.


And then there are the cheeses - "boring" brie, "boring" blue cheese, and now a couple of more interesting ones: raclette (Aussie version), traditionally a melting cheese, and one of my favourites - comte (French) which is a slightly crumbly milder version of a parmasen, full of umami and deliciousness.


One beautiful addition to the cheese - goes especially well on blue cheese - truffle honey drizzled all over a crumbly blue - heavenly.

We also had some hot stuff - Arancini on a bed of coleslaw with mustard dressing to cut through the richness, and some incredible mini tartlets of 12 hrs braised beef cheek, caramelised onions and crumbled up blue cheese. THANK YOU to the first time dessertee Anthony - you are SO invited to our future events! 

Moving on to reds - a 2000 vintage shiraz (Limestone Coast South Australia), Argentinian Malbec (Norton Reserva 2006), and finish with St Hugo cabernet sauvignon (Barossa Valley, South Australia, 2006). 

That Wonambi Limestone Coast Shiraz was a blast! Full on vanilla (we know for sure, because of the vanilla pods in my pantry), smooth and silky. The Argentinian malbec was also a well-received drop, not as silky but it was a lot of fun. The highly anticipated 2004 St Hugo Cab Sav was somewhat disappointing though - it felt flat, none of that cellared smooth sophistication either. Either it wasn't cellared enough, or that it had gone past it's use-by date.

It's not a dessert tour without something sweet: Some vanilla and rum caneles, a souvenir from Bordeaux (the molds, that is) and coffee flavoured vino cotto (Maggie Beer's delicious creation) over ice cream. 

I'm looking forward to when caneles become popular like the macarons - they're not as pretty, and definitely limited in flavours (vanilla, mostly), but the fresh canele with a crispy shell and a somewhat gooey center should absolutely trump a fancy macaron. If only I had a bottle of sticky dessert wine like a sautern.....
 
Vino cotto is a wine vinegar reduction similar to caramelised balsalmic, but on steroids. I didn't think coffee would be a flavour that goes with this, but it added much more depth and body to the otherwise (still delicious) sweet-tang. Drizzled generously on ice cream? Heaven. 

To finish off, a drop of port, a bit of gossip, and so ends a brilliant afternoon with a perfect mix of people .... 

CS

It's the end of year HomeBake - Let's go Middle East!

Personally it is unbelievable that we've gone this long with our dessert tours; 8 full years, and look at our online presence now! How does your CEO manage to do a full time job, starting her business, AND keep up with the eating ...

I guess eating is the easy part. Creating a dessert on the other hand has been getting tricky - our crazy Heston'esque themes are fun and challenging but we are running out of ideas.... so from haughty Throne to the down-to-earth Middle East with lots of inspiration - pastries, fragrant flavours, nuts, syrups and spices, in different permutation and combinations.

Let's start with a Turkish delight mastic ice cream by Booza served with Kurukahveci Mehmet Efendi coffee - the oldest Turkish coffee company - wait, does that make a Turkish affogato?! Rose water and coffee probably didn't go as well, but it certainly works with coffee & cardamom booza. This also complemented the chocolate orange spiced alfajor sandwich - the cookies yielded happily to our bites and so the ice cream doesn't splat out on the other side .... Gorgeous biscuits with a subtle but unmistakable hint of spice. Superb (and thanks for the leftovers!)

I'd never heard of ktefa before. For some reason I felt like making something Moroccan - technically African, but with a heavy Arab influence it is still essentially Middle Eastern. Ktefa is made up of layers of warqa pastry, sweet toasted coarse ground almond, and orange blossom water custard, and I'd taken the liberty of using halwa as well to give it more more of a nutty flavour. These flavours certainly married well with each other - and proudly I will add this exotic sweet to my repertoire of desserts.

Small and intimate, all we needed was a dimly lit room with rugs and cushions, a belly dancer... and maybe hookah just to get into the festive mood...

CS

Winter is coming - Game of Thrones Homebake!

The worldwide success of Game of Thrones is unbelievable. There is no denying the power of the brilliant story line and hugely loveable (or despicable) characters. When we chose this as our theme, many DDT GoT fans loved and hated it. Loved it because it's GoT. Hated it because it's just so bloody hard!!

Actually the idea of "Winter is Coming" was to be interpreted as the participants pleased - it IS nice and chilly now and we could do with a hearty, winter warmer comfort dessert (read: sticky date pudding with lots, I mean LOTS, of butterscotch sauce....). Or to challenge your creativity and be inspired by the much loved Jon Snow.

Well, douse anything with icing sugar and I shall accept and devour.

What will be the quintessential GoT dessert? Something bloody. Snow. Dragons. Battle and duels. Well maybe also a bit of nudity ... if you wanna go there.

Our darling CEO created the battlefield 'wasteland' - post fighting bloody dumping ground of spent weapons with chocolatey dirt and chocolate swords, drizzled with gooey raspberry 'blood' custard (not coulis). With a sprinkle of snow. It worked quite perfectly with the raspberry - chocolate and raspberry are always great. If only the swords were a little bigger!!

I want a pet dragon that I can ride - though I should stick with Toothless instead of Daenerys' Drogon .... Thankfully we only had the nest of three eggs on a bit of white chocolate and coconut snow, and the pile of "dragonglass" (praline) to protect the imminent hatchlings...

The first thing that crossed my mind as an inspiration was the bloody heart - maybe a sponge cake with a very saucy (of course, red) centre, and must be consumed a la Daenerys. Then I changed my mind ... and went with everybody's favourite Jon.

Quay Restaurant head chef Peter Gilmore created this lovely dessert called Snow Egg, which was quite fitting ... I modified the recipe so that it sits on a bed of white chocolate ganache, lemon granita, and filled the egg white with a thick raspberry custard and raspberry jelly that 'bleeds' when stabbed. So it was my "Jon Snow Egg" and we all played our part stabbing it ... with a heavy heart.

That was it. Small, but definitely produced the heart of GoT. Maybe we should set easier themes for the future Homebakes.... also that having everyone stab Snow was still too hurtful...

CS.

It's TEA TIME! End of year Homebake!

There's a tea temptress among us - guess who, it's our CEO! It was bewildering that over the many years of conjuring up ideas, we have never thought to use tea .... When we finally did though we had quite some time to contemplate as we started informing the potential DDDs (mostly my lovely co-workers who are willing to experiment both at work and at home) while we indulged during the October good food month.

And as we gorged ourselves during October, we met Kylie Millar, the dessert goddess at Pei Modern. We were immediately hooked on her beautiful desserts and the Hsinner spun her magic and sweet talked Kylie... 

Long story short, our idea of a dessert tour, and the half yearly homebakes appealed to her that she found time from her busy schedule to join us! Although ..... As soon as she confirmed, the news spread and the general responses from the DDDs were "oh sh!t... the pressure is on!" 

We gathered at Hsinner's lofty place (many thanks to S&P for letting us take over!) and showcased our amateur goods. There were many offerings and, I swear we did not coordinate ourselves - they were all different teas, ingredient combinations, presentations and styles! It was a dessert smorgasbord and it was divine! 

Let's start with the lighter flavours first: CEO's star tea jelly with osmanthus and goji berries - light and refreshing, and oh-so-pretty! And there was another tea and taro jelly offering, which unfortunately didn't handle the warmth so well but the flavour was there - just think MeetFresh taro and jelly! Serve chilled and it'll be fine!

Green tea and white chocolate mousse cake (welcome KP to your first DDT!) served in a glass: green tea cake, white chocolate mousse, green tea mousse, topped with meringue. I'd pay for this at a restaurant!



Petit "Kelly's Infusions" - inspired by the cranberry and pomegranate tea infusion (but much less fake) - served in espresso cups, pomegranate, chocolate mousse and tea biscuits. Tangy, chocolatey, sweet, morish, fresh.

The Hakka people of China has an interesting subculture and they serve a wholesome and filling tea (usually a green leaf tea with ground peanut, sesame and toasted rice that is ground up and drank together) that is warming and welcoming. I turned this into a macaron. Don't mean to blow my own trumpet but this flavour is a keeper! And to use up the excess yolks - Oolong crème brûlée.

MJ's jaffa and tea mousse - rich velvety chocolate with a great citrusy fragrance but only a small hint of tea in the after taste. Guess the chocolate overpowered the subtlety of tea... subtleTea... Geddit? (Oh I so funny)

English breakfast tea with honey and lemon was served in the form of a cake - great lemon icing, moist and fluffy cake, the tea was somewhat weak though. Good first home bake effort though SS and NM!

And Kylie's creation - drum rolls - compressed pear infused with tea, chewy caramel, earl gray meringue sticks and yogurt ganache, oh so pretty ... interesting texture of the pear, loved the flavours! We were sort of fighting over it but wanted to look somewhat civil, so everyone did get a taste!

And in between our multiple courses, we cleansed our palate with Moroccan mint tea granita created by our CEO .... refreshing and pretty, perfect for a warm day, but we all agreed that it could be immensely improved with a squeeze of lime and a splash of rum.....

A long but incredibly indulgent and fun day, I hope everyone had a wonderful time, I certainly did... I hope Kylie did too and really wish to have her become one of the regulars! She was so lovely and cheerful ... and she loves desserts! This world seriously needs more people like her to make it sweeter. And thank you everyone for the amazing effort you put in - so if our current career doesn't work out, I think we have a second career waiting already! 

With that, we bid you farewell for 2014, and look forward to seeing you back in the new year with new sweet adventures!

Cinned x

PS welcome KP, who chose to come to a Homebake as her first DDT and also brought us a restaurant quality dessert! And of course Kylie for sharing her beautiful perfectly summery dessert - I'm gonna steal what I can from your dish... muhahhahahhaha!!!!! 

Deceive me .... if you can!

I felt the need to emphasise how far the dessert home bake had come, and how much effort it was for the participants who could very easily have said to me "its too hard, I can't think of anything, so I won't be coming". But no, people embraced the challenge, in return had some fun (I hope) and an eventual sugar high. Thank you very much to those who made such an effort, the research, making multiple batches before presenting the final optimised versions (you geeky scientists you)!! I hope you are not so traumatised by the experience as to shy away from any future bake-offs! 

~~~~~ 

Creating something outside the realm of normalcy is expectedly tricky but what people won't realise is that it took me a LONG time to decide on the theme. With the inspirations from the great chefs like Heston and Adriano, we decided on messing with our senses … so, here's an invitation to deceive.

Over the past 4 weeks I discussed and brainstormed with the eventual brave participants, scoured the internet for "desserts that look like something else", had excited lightbulb moments, then the logistics of how to achieve what was imagined… dare I say this was definitely the most demanding theme ever for a home bake. Flowers were tricky, but as they were generally a flavouring element (as were savoury or spiced desserts) it was not too complicated to create a dessert flavoured with floral, or savoury, or spice elements.

My default deceptive dessert would have been one borrowed from Zumbo. A long time ago I had a "chocolate hamburger" composed of chocolate macaron shells as burger bun, chocolate ice cream as the meat pattie, raspberry sauce as tomato sauce. If I couldn't come up with any other ideas, that'd be it. But I had always wanted to come up with something I can call my own, and this obsession consumed me (my precious...). Then one night as I lay in bed (when my mind is most active… go figure) and had enlightenment. Kept me awake for at least an hour as I was so excited.

So what were the offerings on the day? First to arrive was pizza. Then fresh mushrooms. And a plate of sushi. And my pride and joy - Peking duck in pancake. This was followed by drink of iced coffee to wash it down.

The pizza looked so real - excellent choice of "cheese"!! It felt like all this needed was to go into the oven. It was made of a sponge cake base, raspberry jam, yellow and green snakes cut to look like capsicums, red fruit roll-ups for salame, and marzipan for cheese. Good work Kaitlin and Martyn! (NB: it even looked like left-over pizza on the next day!!)

I love mushrooms. I can have them any way. Even better when it's made of meringue and chocolate ... just take a look, how realistic are these! Just like they were picked fresh from the forest floor! And when packing up the left-overs, I somehow smelled mushrooms in the kitchen... either I've lost it, or it had successfully messed with my head!! Thanks Dave!!

Move over Kobe Jones, here are some sushi you will never beat. Beautifully moist cakes with chocolate icing, wrapped in green marzipan and topped with coconut and 'caviar' of chopped up jelly lollies. There's even a small blob of "wasabi" on the side!! Served with chopsticks and 'soy sauce' (chocolate ganache). Nice one Annika!

Here's my Peking duck. I love duck. Give me duck prepared in any way I would be happy. But this ain't duck. It was chocolate sponge topped with creme brulee ('crispy skin' and the delicious fat under that skin) with chilli chocolate ganache and julienne of green apple soaked in salt water to keep it from going brown and to give my 'duck' a sense of savouriness, wrapped in crepe. I had so much fun making it!

And the black iced coffee - 決明子 for those of you who can read Chinese (click on text for link of an image of the drink). Tastes like coffee. Smells like coffee. But it really wasn't coffee. My mum used to brew a big pot and I'd drink it cold when I was little, she used to call it Chinese coffee. After some Googling I found out its name - cassia senna obtusifolia (family, genus, species, for the geek scientist that I am). That explains the "do not over brew or over consume as it has a mild laxative effect" on the packaging. Senna tablets are available in the health-food section .... It was a natural thing that perfectly fitted my deceptive theme so I had to offer it. And hey, it was well accepted! Just don't overdo it :p 

But of course I did offer up some real coffee. As a coffee buff I can't live without the real thing myself. And that some of us really needed a mid-afteroon pick-up!! Espresso - no deception there! 

And so it was, the end of the year, another fabulous and relaxing day thanks to great company and lovely desserts. Hope this challenging theme had inspired you dessertees and the closet master chef in us all!

CS

PS so some say the world will end in a few weeks time. Oh well, I have no regrets. If we should all die at least we should all die happy (and high on sugar!)