Rocky Road

I meant to post this before we for Far North Queensland, things got rather hectic..
So, finally I am home in time for your to make it for Christmas.

Ingredients
200g  Dark Chocolate
100g Butter (I used cultured butter and added half a teaspoon of salt)
1 cup  Rice bubbles
Half to three quarter of a packet of Marshmallow
1 pannet Raspberries or a cup of pitted cherries or both
Nuts of your choice (almonds work well)

Melt chocolate and butter together.  You can put them in a bowl over a pan of simmering water or stick it in the microwave like I do.

Then put the rest of ingredients and give it a quick mix.
Pour over a prepared tray lined with baking paper or cling wrap.

Chill in the fridge until set.

Enjoy!

Moist Fruitcake

Today I was very proud to be asked for no less than 3 recipes at my Choir's Christmas lunch.

After abandoning this blog for a long time, I decided to resurrect it as a method of sharing my recipes  with my English speaking (reading) friends.

1. Moist fruitcake (this post)
2. Decadent rocky road (next post)
3. Chocolate cake (I realised that I have already posted this one.  It's the one before this post)


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I discovered this recipe over 10 years ago in my American Cake book.
As I do with most recipes, I make all kinds of alterations and by the time I am satisfied with it, it hardly resembles the original.

A
Mixed dried fruit 500g
Dried apricots  100g
Marmalade  100g
Water 300ml
Cultured butter 180g
Salt 1tsp
Raw sugar 300g

B
90ml brandy or rum
3 eggs

C
Plain flour 375g
Baking powder 1tsp

Nuts for decoration

Put all ingredients A in a medium sized saucepan and put on medium heat.
Once everything dissolves and it begins to boil, turn down to heat to low and simmer for 20 minutes. Put it aside and let it cool down a little.

In a large bowl, put B and half of A together and whisk.
Add C into the bowl and mix till smooth.  Add the rest of A and mix again.

Pour into a prepared cake tin and decorate with pecan nuts or walnuts.
I usually divide it into two or three smaller tins.

Bake at 170C until for approximately 40 minutes.
Depending on the size of your tins or your oven, the baking time differs.
Always check with a skewer to see if the cake is cooked through.


I wish you Blue Mountains ladies a nice cool baking day between now and Christmas.

My Best Chocolate Cake

I have tried a great number of different chocolate cake recipes over the years.
Since I started baking when I was about 10 years old, that's a lot of chocolate cakes.
Of all the cakes I experimented with, this is the best one.

It was originally a stout beer chocolate cake recipe.
The original recipe was perfectly good, but it went through several metamorphosis and has settled into what it is today a few years back.

It no longer uses stout beer at all, but molasses, which to my mind has similar dark and somewhat bitter quality.   It also uses less sugar.


1 tbs molasses
110ml hot water
125g butter
35g good quality cocoa (unsweetened)
150g brown sugar
70ml sourcream
1 egg
140g self raising flour


Combine molasses, hot water, butter, cocoa and brown sugar in a saucepan and stir over low to medium heat till butter has melted and cocoa dissolved.

Add sour cream and stir.  When it has cooled down a little, add an egg and stir.

Mix 1/3 of the liquid with the flour, then mix the rest in.  You need to do it this way as the batter is very runny.

Bake in a 20cm cake tin in a moderate oven.  How long it takes to bake depends on the oven.  Anything between 20~50 minutes really.  Shake the cake tin and if it does not wobble on top, insert a bamboo stick and see if it comes out clean.

Strawberry and Green tea cake

This year, I baked three cakes for my daughter's birthday.
One for her class at school, one for the family, and this one for the party on the weekend.

Every year, I agonise over what sort of cake to make.  I spend far more time procrastinating on the design and structure than the actual time making it.

From the bottom, green tea sponge, strawberry mousse, plain sponge, whipped cream and sliced strawberries, green tea sponge, ganache, plain sponge, cream, strawberries and a chocolate decoration.

I used a dozen eggs, about 600ml cream, 200g chocolate, and about a kilo of strawberries.

I was happy with the flavour, but if I make it again, another layer of ganache would be good and the strawberry mousse could be a touch sweeter and with less cream and gelatin.

To be honest, I thought the finished product looked a little rough around the edges, but the kids didn't care and my friends, who are the parents of the children (all 12 of them) liked it and that is all that matters.

Opera Cake

It has been a while, quite a long while since my last post.
Maintaining three blogs turned out to be a little too ambitious for me.
However, if I bake something noteworthy, I decided to keep Baking Mad on the Mountain going from time to time.

Every year, towards the end of August, we either buy or I bake an Opera Cake to celebrate our wedding anniversary.
I must say that choosing the opera cake as our wedding cake was an inspired choice.

This is my third attempt at making the cake myself.
It doesn't look as pretty as the store bought ones, but I can honestly say that it tastes better than the ones from the D# or the L#.

The cake consists of Biscuit Joconde, coffee butter cream, coffee syrup, ganache, and tempered chocolate.

It is incredibly rich and just beautiful.

We have a real incentive to keep our marriage in good order so that we can indulge every year till death do us part.

Stöllen

I love Stöllen.  I think it is extra special because we only eat it at Christmas time.  I guess if we had it all the time, the magic could be lost.  It was towards the end of November, a month before Christmas I decided that the time to bake Stöllen has arrived.  I baked it twice for home and once for my daughter's school so far.

I was chuffed to be asked for the recipe by a couple of mothers who got to taste it.

I used to bake Stöllen with marzipan in the middle, but I realised last year that I didn't really enjoy eating the intensely sweet bit in the middle.  So this year, I mixed plenty of almond flakes in the dough instead of marzipan.  I much prefer it, but if you like your marzipan, there is nothing stopping you from putting some in there before the second proofing.

180ml Milk

7g Dry Yeast

410g Plain Flour170g Softened Butter

80g Brown Sugar

1 1/2 Eggs

3g Salt (if using unsalted butter, add 8g of salt)

1 tbs Mixed Spice

1 tsp Ginger Powder

1 tsp Cinnamon

125g Mixed Dry Fruit 

125g Flaked Almonds

Mix all the ingredients together until well combined.

You don't have to knead it much.

Don't be alarmed, it is meant to be a sticky and messy dough.  

Leave it to proof for 90 minutes.

You can either make one big Stollen or two small ones.

The bigger one takes longer to bake.

If making two small ones, divide the dough into two equal portions.

Use plenty of flour on the bench and roll each one out into a thick disk.

Fold over and let the dough proof for 60 minutes.

Bake in the preheated oven (180 degrees celsius) for approximately 30 minutes (35 minutes if baking one big stollen).

Every oven is different, so you need to see if the stollen looks nice and golden all over before you take it out of the oven.

When they are still hot, brush with a generous amount of melted butter (not included in the recipe above) all over and dust icing sugar on top.

Paris-Brest with raspberries

We had friends over for dinner last night and this picture above is actually the dud version of the Paris-Brest I baked yesterday.  I have a tried and tested (dozens of times) recipe for choux pastry.  For some reason, I decided to try this other recipe I found in a book given to me by a friend yesterday.  The ratio of flour to  egg seemed a little odd to me, but I persisted.  The result was that the choux pastry puffed up briefly, but then collapsed once the oven temperature was lowered and never recovered.

I baked a second one using my usual recipe and fortunately that one worked much better.

I really need to learn that I need to stick with the trustworthy recipe when I'm entertaining!


Anyway, the inspiration for this dessert comes from this amazing dish I ate at Bistro Moncur almost 10 years ago.  It was actually an eclair which was crispy, with beautiful custard, buttery almond slices with the best raspberries I ever tasted in my life.

With a scary amount of egg yolks that went into the custard and the two batches of choux pastry I made, I lost count of the eggs I used yesterday.  Best not to think too much about it really.

The one I served last night looked better and had golden almond slices scattered in between and on top, but the flashlight really didn't do it justice.

Even though I used the raspberries, it still tasted pretty good.
My only regret is that it took me almost 10 years to recreate it.
It won't take that long for my next one : )