It's fun to make a sweet bread sometimes, especially when we have extra dough left from making children's Pain Viennois.
Lemon Raisins Apricot Walnut Knot Bread
2/3 quantity of the Pain Viennois dough using bread flour only.
Fillings:
75g butter, softened
zest of 1 lemon
1 tsp cinnamon powder
1/2 tsp all spice powder
1/2 cup raisins
1/2 cup diced dry apricot
2/3 cup toasted and crushed walnut
1 tbsp cream sherry
Beat butter with sugar until smooth, mix in rest of the filling ingrediants and set aside while the dough was proofing.
Roll out the dough into a square and spread on the filling mixture.
Tie up into a knot and leave on the baking tray to proof.
Brush on egg wash
and bake....
I have been cooking a lot of Italian food, or Italian influenced food.
Our family love Italian food, especially children, and we have a lot of Italian families around us. When we get to another birthday party - the friends of our children, we get more Italian food and get more Italian recipes.
And some of them have been accepted by the Italians, when hubby brought them to work. Including the Italian Potato Donuts, Cannolis, so I said to hubby, time to re-visit some of the old time favourites and bring them to work, see if the Italians at work will OK them as well...
So, time to do Sfogliatelles. The little pastry wrapped sweets filled with ricotta ...
However, I made an almost fatal mistake, about the timing. Anyway, this is this batch of Sfogliatelles:
I didn't change the pastry dough quantity:
Ingredients
Dough
500g plain flour
50g sugar
1 tsp salt
80g water
80g milk
1 large egg
The dough was mixed, and rested for more than 3 hours, and rolled out and stretched, bit like how I'd do filo pastry, make it thinner and then brush melted butter on each later, roll it up like a long log.
Normally, I'd wrap it up in cling form and rest it for an hour as per original recipe suggests.
However, because I was very tired that night and decided to leave it in the fridge over night, and make the filling the next day.
The Filling:
75g thickened cream
75g milk
60g sugar
50g semolina
150g Ricotta
1 egg yolk
1 whole egg
Zest of 2 lemons
1/3 cup of crushed and roasted walnuts
1/3 cup of raisins
1 vanilla pod, sliced open and seed scrapped out.
Bring the cream, sugar, vanilla and milk to a slow boil and set aside and discard the vanilla pod.
Whisk the egg and the yolk, stir in the warm mixture, return to the small saucepan and add in semolina. Once thickened and smooth, fold in ricotta. Fold in the rest of the ingredients.
And, I found the pastry is too sticky to be moved like how I used to! So instead of the traditional method of cutting into 1cm rings and push out the middle, I roll it out and wrapped the filling like hmm... riviolis.
But they are still quite nice and well accepted by the Italians at hubby's work....
We didn't get to see my mother in law for her birthday, she's been travelling - in Europe, we've been travelling, in Asia. And then, she was in hospital. First time for us to visit her at her home after her back operation, I decided to make a classic cake, that she likes and of course, hubby.
The recipe I used today, was adapted from one of my favourite young Aussie Chef, George Calombaris, his carrot cake with cream cheese frosting was one of the taste test in Master Chef, and the recipe was published in the Masterchef Magazine.
I didn't use so many kinds of nuts, as I just had walnuts on hand, and I decided to use fresh thickened cream instead of cream cheese, also, unlike most carrot cakes, I used butter instead of vegetable oil.
It's a big cake, but very moist.
Ingredients:
250g butter, room temperature, cut in cubes
1 tsp vanilla extract
4 eggs
330g firmly packed dark brown sugar
3 carrots, peeled and grated.
1.5 tbsp cream sherry
100g mixed fruit (or just use sultanas)
150g finely chopped walnuts
300g self raising flour
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
2 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp all spice powder
Coconut Cream Frosting
400ml thickened cream
150g desicated coconut
100g icing sugar
Walnut Praline
150g white sugar
2 tbsp water
80g walnuts
Method:
1. preheat oven to 180C. Grease and line a deep 23cm round cake tin.
2. Soak the mixed fruits in sherry and vanilla extract.
3. Using the bench top mixer, cream butter and sugar, until it's light (you won't need to cream the butter and sugar if you use vegetable oil or extra virgin olive oil like what George did).
4. Add in eggs, one by one, after finish the 4 eggs, whisk on high for 5 minutes until it's light and fluffy.
5. Sift in the flour, bi-carb soda and spices, and fold in the fruit mixture as well as the carrots.
6. Spoon the batter in the cake tin and bake on the lowest rack of the oven for 40 minutes.
7. Coverred with foil and bake for a further 30-40 minutes or until a skewer come out clean in the middle.
8. Cool the cake on wrack.
(I made the frosting the next morning, as we are going over to MIL's for lunch, however, I'd say wait till the cake is fully cooled down).
9. Whisk the cream and icing sugar until it's firm and fold in the desicated coconut. I applied it to the cake with a spatular for the rustic look.
10. In a non stick pan, with low heat, lightly toast the walnuts for the praline and crush them roughly acatter on the prepared lined cookie sheet.
11. Make caramel using the sugar and water, it's a lot easier to make wet caramel. When the liquid is turning blonde, watch it closely and move the pan to a prepared basin with cold water (icy water if possible) once it's light brown - or darker if you prefer a darker caramel.
12. Pour caramel over the crushed toasted walnuts and crush the praline roughly and scatter around on the cake.
The bit of crunchy praline and creamy frosting gives the cake a bit more layers of flavour.
Well, maybe another day, I'd do things different because I will make a proper short crust pastry base. I guess rushing is not good for cakes...
I used biscuit base this time, and not so impressed - for a quick Torta, it's not bad, but I think I have just reminded myself why I haven't been buying biscuits and cookies?
Torta Di Ricotta – Simple Version
150g sweet biscuit, scotch fingers, short bread etc
50g butter
500g ricotta cheese
Juice of 1 lemons
Zest of 1 lemon
200g sugar
3 eggs
250g mascarpone cheese
1 tbsp Marsala
1 tsp vanilla essence
Method
Crush biscuit and butter, cover the lined 20cm spring form tin.
Put it back in fridge, chill to set.
Separate eggs and leave them in room temperature.
Whisk egg whites, till light and fluffy and add sugar, gradually, form a firm meringue.
Whisk all the cheeses in a separate bowl, with egg yolks.
Add lemon zest and juice, and marsala and vanilla essence.
Fold in egg mixture with the cheese, fill up the spring form.
Bake in 190c for 50 minutes and then cool, and leave in fridge over night to set.
Last day of the Kinder, Monique had a picnic with her teddy bear.... and she was suppose to bring a special treat to share with teddy, the the night before, I made these, used SR flour so it's not as hard for the little teeth...
Ingredients:
190g SR Flour
1 tsp Vanilla Essence
Zest of half a lemon
60g dark chocolate chips (more if desired, or just use chopped dark chocolate)
1 egg – lightly whisked
2 tbsp milk
80g butter
5 tbsp castor sugar
Method:
1. Pre-heat oven to 190C, line a cookie tray.
2. Sift flour into a big bowl add sugar and mix well.
3. Melt butter and add to flour mixture, and mix well
4. Add Lemon Zest, egg, dark chocolate chips and milk and form a soft dough
5. Shape into 1.5cms in diameter small round pieces, and place evenly on cookie tray, leave enough space as they will become bigger.
6. Bake for 15-18 minutes until golden. Cool on rack.
