Dragonfruit cupcakes

The fruit of a cactus plant. It has and impressive colour and usually sweet tasting though not with strong flavours. The seed add a bit of crunch to the fruit almost like poppy seeds .. I was wondering what would happen if it was put in a cake ?






the fruit adds interesting colour to the batter.


Topped with cream cheese of course



Inside the cake, most of the cake is not that pink/red that i expected


The taste was pretty ordinary otherwise, just a bit of crunch with the seeds and some colour but not a lot of extra flavour .

Ingredients:

1 egg
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup melted butter
1/2 cup flour
1/4 tsp sodium bicarbonate
3/4 cup mashed dragonfruit
1 tsp orange juice

Method

1. beat the butter and sugar until light
2. add in egg and continue beating
3. Gently fold in flour but do not overmix
4. mix orange juice and sodium bicarbonate to dragon fruit.
5. fold in fruit to the flour mixture

Cream puffs ...

At least that is what i grew up calling them :) Although when I was growing up vanilla beans weren't quite as easy to come by. I couldn't resist using vanilla beans instead of the usual vanilla essence.

Macarons Revisited

Macarons in humid weather are not a good combination.I have not attempted the italian meringue method yet primarily because I have not been successful with Macarons that use more than 1 egg white :D It is time i stepped up my "game" ... FINALLY




For this batch here is what i did

Ingredients for Macaron shells:

3 egg whites (~ 100g )
125g almond meal
100g powdered sugar

Method : ( more like what i did )
1. Aged egg whites for about 7 days ( they just happened to be there for that long)
2. dry egg whites and almond meal in oven for about 1 hour with 40C heat
3. sifted the almond meal once
4. placed the "unsiftable" almond meal into a spice blender with about the same amount of powdered sugar to grind. (After sifting the almond meal I had about 4 tablespoons or so left of coarse almond meal so i put in about 4 T of powdered sugar).
5. after grinding the almond meal i sifted all the almond meal and more of the powdered sugar again.
6. beat the eggwhites until softpeaks form then added in slowly the powdered sugar and continue beating (added a bit of clour at this stage to the meringue as well) At this stage you probably wont get stiff peaks but easier to work with meringue.
7. slowly fold in the almond meal and powdered sugar mixture . I got it to a state where it would spread a bit but not too runny .
8. leave to dry for about 1 hour (tricky in humid weather could have put it in the oven at 40C but didn't bother)
9. bake for 20mins at 140C.
10. Some of my shells didnt come off immediately so i put them back int he oven at 70C for a while 20 -30 minutes and tried to remove them again . It worked.
11. I filled the shells with cream cheese... :)

This is the first time I have tried making them this way. I will have to verify the method again to see if it was really just LUCK

Disaster in the kitchen

I am not delusional in thinking that I bake without disaster. I have had my fair share of uncooked cakes, wrecked decoration, botched up icing and much more. The first time i attempted carving a cake and covering it with fondant was pretty much a disaster . I warned everyone not to take a picture in case it ended up on cakewrecks.blogspot.com ( I do enjoy that site tho :D) I guess you have to fail to learn and PERSEVERE ...

My latest disaster. While I was attempting Macarons with a larger amount of eggwhites ( three eggwhites usually i work with one) i did not account for the spread after i piped them as my previous batches hardly spread as much . On top of that it wasn't in the oven for long enough so it stuck to the parchment paper(not to mention the humidity that day was 100%) . I put it back into the oven again at a lower heat and i was then able to remove the shells from the parchment paper.

The Queen of Hearts....

The Queen of Hearts
She made some tarts,
All on a summer's day;
The Knave of Hearts
He stole the tarts,
And took them clean away.
The King of Hearts
Called for the tarts,
And beat the Knave full sore;
The Knave of Hearts
Brought back the tarts,
And vowed he'd steal no more.


Mini fruit tarts with a custard filling

Blueberry ice cream

Fresh blueberries in ice cream. The blueberries I used were a bit tart but with the sweetness of the ice-cream it sort of kind of balanced out :D (If you have a really sweet tooth then this probably wont be your cup of tea)

The soul of a Black forrest

Kirschwasser of course...
While i was in Australia a while ago I attempted to find Kirschwasser, strangely I was unable to find it. A friend of a friend's had to bring in a bottle all the way from Germany. Doesn't get more authentic than that.
Which comes back to my problem .... NEED to find Kirschwasser....:)

Tiramisu

We really need taste-o-net to get the full flavour of this dessert ...

Pavlova

LIght and tasty