Genius, daringly simple Febbaking

This is what I was waiting for, the reason - without knowing it - that I joined the Daring Bakers. Not for the endless rolling and resting of pastry, not for fiddling, getting out and putting back in the fridge, not for beating curdly buttercream icing and making toffee to pralinate in the food processor, or in fact for icing of any kind. Especially not for piping bags.

Genius.

Three ingredients. Chocolate, butter, eggs.

The February 2009 challenge is hosted by Wendy of WMPE's blog and Dharm of Dad ~ Baker & Chef.
We have chosen a Chocolate Valentino cake by Chef Wan; a Vanilla Ice Cream recipe from Dharm and a Vanilla Ice Cream recipe from Wendy as the challenge.
(Never mind the ice cream. I made pistachio and served it another time. But it turned out such an ugly colour that I haven't got a good photo yet! so you won't see it in this post.)

Cared I that it was Valentine's Day? I wouldn't have noticed except for a certain teenager I know feeling the aloneness of couples all over the world doing coupley things (as far as she knew.. or defying the contrivedness of such a Hallmark holiday.. or not even caring enough to defy).

Chocolate is the answer!

It was a good distraction for my teenage friend, anyway. And an excellent one for me.
And an even better dessert the next day.

Who needs flour, honestly. The TEXTURE.

Chocolate Valentino (Australian adaptation)
Preparation Time: 20 minutes
454 g chocolate, roughly chopped (I just used 450. Aka 16 ounces)
146 g unsalted butter (Imperialists! Just measure it. Or use 125 g like me, quarter of a block.)
5 large eggs, separated

1. Put chocolate and butter in a heatproof bowl and set over a pan of simmering water (the bottom of the bowl should not touch the water) and melt, stirring often.
2. While the choc-butter mixture is cooling, butter the pan and line with baking paper.
2a. Put on Ray LaMontagne, Bob Dylan, or whatever music you feel like. Dance around.
3. Separate the egg yolks from the egg whites and put into two medium/large bowls.
4. Whip the egg whites in a medium/large grease free bowl until stiff peaks are formed (do not over-whip or the cake will be dry).
5. With the same beater beat the egg yolks together. (Hooray! same beater. Clever 'un who wrote this owns the key to my own chocolate heart. Hear me Daring Bakers, our usual recipes use far too many dishes. Don't you have something better to do than wash up?)
6. Add the egg yolks to the cooled chocolate.
7. Fold in 1/3 of the egg whites into the chocolate mixture and follow with remaining 2/3rds. Fold until no white remains without deflating the batter.
8. Pour batter into prepared pan, the batter should fill the pan 3/4 of the way full, and bake at 375F/190C
9. Bake for 25 minutes until an instant read thermometer reads 140F/60C. If you do not have an instant read thermometer, the top of the cake will look similar to a brownie and a cake tester will appear wet.
10. Cool cake on a rack for 10 minutes then unmould..

It needs a good chocolate, because with no added sugar, nuts, flour or that, this cake tastes exactly like the chocolate you use. But even better, because it's cake.

breakfast around town

Though you wouldn't know it from the number of posts around here, I've been busy, using my abundant holiday time wisely.
Maybe it's a holiday thing too, that I've discovered the joy of making breakfast an event in the day. I used to hate the fact that a big breakfast out would take away the point of lunch, because lunch is one of my favourite meals, along with breaky. and tea.

The breakfast that changed my mind was nowhere less worthy than Dench Bakers, North Fitzroy. Right at the start of my holidays, i.e. November.. it was a cool morning. We sat inside, feeling a little bit cold, tired and under the weather, and between two of us ordered hot chai, bircher muesli with berries and French toast with cooked pear. We couldn't finish the muesli, and don't I wish I'd had a picture... that French toast changed my life. I didn't care about lunch. I wanted it to be breakfast time again.
Breakfast for lunch also made me pretty happy when I tried the award-winning corn fritters at Mart 130, Middle Park. I'd read about them on Claire's blog a while before and was blown away. Sweet corn, smooth sour cream, coriander, salty snappy bacon and tomato relish. It's not very me, and oh how that just didn't matter.

Another cool morning in the city found me loving a nice warm coffee from next door and a savoury mushroom crepe at Concorde Crepes, GPO, as reviewed at possibly my favourite blog WTB. I don't think they do buckwheat crepes, it's all the same batter, so my mind told me it was probably unauthentic but my mouth made me unable to care. (Bonus if you care about lunch - this left enough room for another meal later.. or an immediate sweet crepe. I thought about it, because my friend's banana, ricotta and almond looked so good. Next time.)

Oh! pictures! Please forgive my tangents. In accordance with my enjoyment of corn fritters, I was told I'd love the breakfast stack at the Green Refectory, Brunswick. That's it you see far, far above, complete with potato thingie (a lot of), bacon, grilled tomato, haloumi, spinach, a poached egg, and encircled by some good tomato relish. It's a good concept but this time, it seemed to matter that it wasn't my thing.
Here on the right is their French toast with poached pear. It was quite nice.. a bit meh. Maybe I'd been spoilt by Dench.

The BEST EVER breakfast out I have had, a couple of Tuesdays ago when I headed to the Jam Factory to see the dwindling Twilight. Chapel St is a long way for me, so I don't get there very often, and I made sure to visit my favourite bakery Amici after the movie. But for breakfast beforehand, we went to Babble (can't find a review I like), Izett St, Prahran. It was 11:30 by the time we got there and we had to be out by 12:10. Could we do it?
Happily, yes. Yes, yes, yes. Split two ways, we got to have both:
1. Polenta vegetarian breakfast - words, used by me, cannot describe how good this was. Why oh why did I not have my camera? Triangles of the best, crunchy, creamy but still light, polenta with some hint of chopped green herb, grilled field mushroom with rosemary, tomatoes, just-enough-seasoned spinach and a little pot of plain yoghurt on the side.
My friend K, this is waiting for you. I am almost scared to go there again in case it isn't as good.
2. the French fruit toast! with mascarpone, banana and strawberries, and some subtle syrupy strawberryish sauce. The Best. Delicious. There was some coconut in there too somewhere. Ohhhh, the French fruit toast.

While I research and wait for the perfect French toast technique to show itself through my hands, it must be pancake time. Breakfast at home is also very good.


And not least of all when it's Bill's blueberry buckwheat pancakes.

PS Shrove Tuesday! Crepes tonight, perhaps.

Orange, we glad we went

... to Gigibaba. I'd heard of it a few times over a few months and was quite keen to try. Then Larissa Dubecki's article in the Age Epicure, Orange, You Sad You Left? came up a week or two ago and reminded me. So on the spur of the moment, a couple of friends and I went to line up at 6pm and got a spot at the bar.
All the staff were wearing orange, and the title of the article was stuck to one of the bar shelves, at which I couldn't help but smile.
I didn't have my camera on me, but I thought I'd blog about it simply because of how ridiculously exciting it was to be somewhere so hyped up.
The food was really good. I didn't drink because there hadn't been time to get to the ATM for any extra money, but liked the sound of the national Turkish drink. This was a pity as the style of the place is Turkish tapas, plus I had an hour to order, eat and leave, so it was a little bit frantic.

They were out of BBQ Hellim cheese! weep! but sold us instead some delicious zucchini fritters, egg-shaped and gooey inside, but not too much, and with flavour. I adored the smoky eggplant salad with walnuts, tomato, lemon, parsley, and tahini yoghurt, which my companions quite liked but for me, smoky eggplant is the KING.
We also had lamb in vine leaves (the others liked them a lot, maybe not my thing), lamb kofte (this is what all kofte should now aspire to be) and some enjoyable but very tapas-sized BBQ chicken with black-eyed-bean salad.

You order things in sizes for 2 or for 4, and it's all small. Worth going when you have a while to first wait, then eat and drink, and about $50 up your sleeve to make the most of it and order the whole menu. So price-wise, it's not somewhere I'll be going for my next dinner.

But if anyone wants to teach me how to use flavours like theirs, I'm listening.

it's really hot

REALLY hot.
On the verandah at the moment it's 46.5 degrees Celsius.

And the oven is not going on again today!

Also, this is late. But aren't they pretty?
This month's challenge is brought to us by Karen of Bake My Day and Zorra of 1x umruehren bitte aka Kochtopf. They have chosen Tuiles from The Chocolate Book by Angélique Schmeink and Nougatine and Chocolate Tuiles from Michel Roux.

I made plain sweet tuiles with raspberry filling, raspberries and mint leaves. The raspberry filling has lemon. My brain isn't working enough to tell you any more because the heat is making me act irrationally and yell at my siblings.

Happy January!

january, just summer

I was in Brisbane for a festival/conference about sacred music, which was interesting. Ab Fab caterers were true to their name, incidentally. But I didn't photograph the food, because I got distracted by the food.
Moreton Bay figs..
...and the bougainvillea, and forgive me for not looking up that bird. Is it an ibis?
I love a sunburnt country, but it's a bit dry, the trip back south confirmed.
...Beach.
Check out that pastry. Finest I've yet to meet in a vanilla slice, and shall certainly be informing the Vanilla Slice Blog of Louttit Bay Bakery, so good I don't even care if you don't go there when you're in Lorne (but you'd be missing out).
The pastry, though. Flaky, slightly sweet, not buttery, just the right amount of dry between all that oohhhhggg custard. And the icing on the top sweet, just enough to balance.. Perfect!
There is fine eating to be had in Lorne. But I am too lazy to blog about it, and too embarrassed to take photos in public. So you can observe my home adventures.


Must be the first meal I made this month, approx two days ago. My fingers smelled like garlic until, oh, about now. It was worth it... say ricotta, I'm yours. and parmesan. Plus all the other usual suspects, yes, and How I love them.
And summer.

december away... the away part

December away...

I am trying to track down this Donna Hay cake I saw the recipe for in that No Time to Cook book in a bookshop recently. It was like a giant raspberry friand (siiiiiiiigh) and I need to use up the egg whites in the fridge. It is not to be found! I'll have to wing it.

So on the topic of December away, it has been quite a month for fruit picking, just wait for my photos, but they shall be in the next post, because this one goes to those crazy 'bakers'. More like daring freezers, ha. Yes, darling readers. I complain, but do I stop following?

This month's challenge is brought to us by the adventurous Hilda from Saffron and Blueberry and Marion from Il en Faut Peu Pour Etre Heureux.
They have chosen a French Yule Log by Flore from Florilege Gourmand.. search it if you like. It's an ice cream cake, AKA a litre of cream and a few blocks of chocolate, with layers amillion. Well, eight-ish.
The half piece is because it was really hard to cut without breaking, even left out of the freezer. Some components softened more quickly than others. So we just cut huge fat pieces and served them in halves.

Starting from the top, we have:
chocolate icing (does that need stating?)
milk chocolate semifreddo in which everything else is set, i.e. frozen mousse
baked creme brulee
more chocolate mousse
praline feuilleté (hazelnut praline crushed with crisp-baked crepe biscuits, chocolate and butter)
mousse again
dark chocolate ganache (hands up if this is your favourite part. me, pick me!)
and hazelnut dacquoise, of which I could have happily eaten a bit more.

Yum. I won't be making THAT again anytime soon!