The real sausage rolls

I baked these sausage bread rolls for lunch last week.
I was planning to bake bread rolls, cook sausages and salad originally.
Then I thought, why not bake them together?
I would do anything to reduce the amount of washing up : )

The sausages were Germanic smoked type, so they just needed to be reheated while the bread dough around them were being baked.
I don't think you can do this with raw sausages.

My German mother in law liked them very much.

The trick is to roll out the dough in a long triangle shape, then place the sausage on the wide end of the triangle and roll up towards the pointy end.

These were baked in the 180 degrees celsius oven for approximately 20 minutes.

Strawberry and Ganache Tart

My husband was watching Jamie Oliver on TV one night and said to me the next day.

"When are you making that thing with the orange?"

He is not exactly articulate, my hubby.  However, he has trained me to guess what he wants to say and after a quick scan of my brains, I worked out he was talking about the ganache dessert Jamie made with mandarins and biscuits.

If all he wants is just the gooey ganache, I decided that I could make something even better by baking a tart case and pouring the ganache in it to set.

Over the years, I have tried numerous chocolate tart recipes.
I have come to a conclusion that the ganache tart is by far the best and also quicker to make.

Yum. Got to love the srawberry season.

Bithdaycakes

It was my daughter's birthday the other day and I have baked cakes for three separate celebrations.

The one above was the one we took to school.  Of all the chocolate cake recipes I have baked in my life, I would have to say the stout chocolate cake one is the best.  Recently I have revised the recipe which uses treacle dissolved in hot water instead of stout which works just as well if not better.

This is a beautiful moist cake and all it needs is some whipped cream with a little bit of acidity from berries.

The second one I made was for the home celebration.
I made a disc of raspberry mousse which was sandwitched by sponge layers.  
Please don't ask why I'm not showing a close up photo of it.....

This is the joint birthday cake I made on the weekend for my daughter and her friend who has her birthday in two weeks.

I wish I had just a few more strawberries to complete the line of chocolate dipped berries.
Because the chocolate was stuck on the plate, I could not even rearrange them : (


In a couple of days, I will be baking another birthday cake.
This time it will be for my father in law.

Potato, Rosemary and Cheese Bread

On the weekend, I had some families over for an afternoon tea.
Usually, I would bake a couple of cakes as well as biscuits for an occasion like that, but I knew that all the kids were going to attend a birthday party in the late afternoon and that they were most certain to overdose on sugar in those two hours.
That is why I baked only one cake and a couple of snacking bread.

For this one, I cubed and boiled some potatoes till just tender.  Once the potatoes were drained, I drizzled some extra virgin olive oil, garlic, rosemary, and a little salt over the potatoes, mixed them well and set aside.

I rolled out the bread dough, placed the cubed potato in a line at one end, sprinkled grated cheese all over, then rolled the dough from the potato end.  I then placed this roll on a baking tray lined with silicon baking sheet, shaped it into a horseshoe, snipped along it with a pair of kitchen scissors to create vents, and let it proof for 45 minutes or so before baking it in the 180 degrees celsius oven till golden brown. Approximately 30 minutes, but it depends on your oven.  Make sure the cheese is molten and bubbling.

Upside down pizza

There are upside down apple pies, upside down pineapple cakes, etc etc.

So, why not an upside down pizza?

I was actually stuck for dinner ideas on the weekend.  I didn't have much in the fridge and somehow I had to make a Sunday evening dinner.  It would have been sad to just present pumpkin soup on the table.  I was going to just bake some butter rolls to go with the soup, then I had an idea.

I fried some onions, paprica, and olives with olive oil.  I sprinkled some shredded cheese and covered the pan with the bread dough.  I baked it in the oven till the top of the  bread was golden and tipped the whole thing over a plate.  Voila!

Seviile Orange Marmalade

Up until now, I have managed to only post "baked" creations in this blog in accordance with the name I gave this thing.  But how could I resist this beautiful sunshine in a jar?

It was when we first moved to the Blue Mountains 5 years ago, I went to the local market and met the "Jam Lady" who appeared at many of the markets around the mountains selling her jars of jams and marmalades.  She had several marmalades and I asked her which one I should try.  She said of all the marmalades she makes, her favourite was the Seville Orange one.

Who am I to argue with the Jam Lady?  I bought a jar off her and I never looked back.

What I did was to look up Stephanie Alexander's recipe for Seville Orange Marmalade and cooked dozens of Seville oranges for the next few years.

Seville Oranges in Australia are available in the month of August.  Not all green grocers have them, so you may need to ask your local one to procure some for you.

Last year, however, a fellow jam maker (otherwise known as a friendly witch) in the mountains told me to cooke the whole fruit in water for a couple of hours before chopping them into small strips.

This makes chopping much easier and I will never make marmalade any other way.

I like the jelly in my marmalade, so I always put plenty of liquid in my marmalade.  Sometimes this requires more time, sugar and pectin, but the results are worth the trouble.

This year, I cooked 10 Seville Oranges and made about 24 jars of a standard Bonne Maman size.  I have already given some away.  Some of my friends and family are waiting for their supply for the year.  I should have just enough left for our consumption until August next year.

trying to be croquembouche

For my birthday a few days ago, to cheer myself up, I attempted to make a croquembouche for the first time.  I have made profiteroles dozens of times, so I knew I could do that part easily enough.  If it was just the matter of constructing a tower with the profiteroles, how hard could it be?

It was just going to be just for me, my hubby and our little girl, so I knew that it would be unwise to make a huge one.  Not because we wouldn't be able to eat  the whole thing, but because we probably would eat the whole thing.  

I baked 28 smallish choux buns.  Actually I baked more, but some disappeared.

I used a frozen puff pastry for the base.  

I filled profiteroles with custard and used caramel as glue to build a tower.

A circle of seven at the base, then six, then five, etc etc.

The final touch was to spin caramel around it.

I had a lot of fun pulling and stretching caramel.  That really was the best bit, except for eating the individual profiteroles.   

I had this notion that I dislike profiteroles with too much caramel around them.
I seem to recall hurting my mouth with shards of caramel and that is why I only used caramel as glue to hold the tower together.  And of course as decorative spun sugar around the tower.

Now I think that as long as I'm making croquembouche for enough people to be eaten in one sitting, ie.,  may be 3 profiteroles each, more caramel might be desirable.

I certainly had fun making it and enjoyed eating it even more.  Thank goodness I didn't make a huge one.  My jeans would have 'shrunk'.