Archive | Cooking RSS feed for this section

Pumpkin Walnut and Raisin Loaf

16 Jun

Dear Pumpkin,

You’re not the prettiest looking vegetable in the patch

But for those that do the hard yards your inner beauty is well worth a blister or two.

Note : The most difficult thing about this recipe is cutting up the pumpkin!

Pumpkin Walnut and Raisin Loaf – inspired by Food.com’s Pumpkin Loaf Recipe

I lessened the naughty factor a little by…

- using apple sauce instead of oil

- honey roasting the pumpkin before pureeing so I could halve the amount of added sugar

- using wholemeal flour

Ingredients

2 cups pumpkin puree

honey

1 cup white sugar

1 cup applesauce

4 eggs

2 cups wholemeal self-raising flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

2 teaspoons baking soda

2 teaspoons cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon ginger

Method

- Pre-heat the oven to 170 degrees celsius and grease two loaf pans

- Cut up the pumpkin and drizzle in honey – best to cut up too much than too little. If you end up with more than 2 cups of puree the excess can be frozen

- roast the pumpkin in the oven until soft but not burnt

- puree the pumpkin in a food processor

- Mix the pumpkin puree, apple sauce, eggs and sugar in a bowl

- Add the flour, baking soda, baking powder, cinnamon, ginger, raisins and walnuts

- Mix well

- Spoon the mixture into two loaf pans and bake in the oven for 65 mins

- Once cooked leave to rest in the pans for 10 minutes before turning out on to a rack to cool

Enjoy on its own or spread with butter if you’re feeling decadent!

Tags: , , , ,

Quinoa Peanut Butter and Choc Chip Cookies

12 Feb Cookies ready for baking

Sometimes you just want to eat cookies.

And these little beauties are cookies you can feel good about.

Note : although it seems a little un-australian I prefer the word cookie over calling them biscuits. Calling them cookies reminds me of the cookie monster.

And what’s not to love about him? He’s adorable!

I adapted this recipe from the Shape – 10 healthy cookie recipes list.

These treats are  super healthy, yummy and really easy to make.

Organic versions of the ingredients were available  at my local health food store which was nice too; given my recent venture into healthier eating.

I increased the yum factor ever so slightly by adding in some dark chocolate to compliment the cacoa nibbs.

Ingredients:

1 cup of quinoa cooked and cooled (which will then equal 2 cups)

1/2 cup of natural salted peanut butter

1/3 cup of raw honey

1 cup of rolled oats

1/2 a cup of dried, unsweetened, shredded coconut

1/2 a cup of raw cacao nibs

8 squares of dark cooking chocolate – finely chopped

Directions: Preheat oven to 170 degrees. Mix all the ingredients together in a bowl.

 Line a tray with baking paper. Flatten tablespoons of the mixture onto the baking paper and bake for approximately one hour.

Makes 24 cookies

Tags: , , , ,

My First Smoothie

9 Feb

In 2012 I’ve turned over a new leaf, nutritionally speaking.

It’s funny how you think you’re eating well and doing the right thing – until you realise that you could be doing it all a whole lot better.

To be honest, I’ve always felt the whole organic thing was a bit of a crock. But I now understand that this was just due to my complete and utter ignorance on the subject!

I’ve been listening to the Jillian Michaels Podcast. She mightn’t be everyone’s cup of tea but she definitely knows her stuff. (Note: I think she’s amazing!)

Based on Jillian’s advice I’ve switched a lot of what I take in (and put on) to healthier and safer alternatives.

One new Sunday ritual-in-the-making I’m particularly enjoying is buying all my produce locally - from the Mulgrave Farmers Market .

*** A totally unexpected bonus is what I’ve saved by not participating in time-wasting-money-sucking trips to the ’stupermarkets’ every other day.***

This weekend just gone I noticed a new stall with the most incredible looking blueberries I’ve ever seen. The blueberry stall just happened to be right next door to a strawberry stall. Clever product placement if I ever saw it - I bought a punnet of both and headed on my merry way.

I’d already bought some flaxseed meal and whey protein powder at the health food store the other week. With my new found source of fresh berries I decided it was time to dabble – ignoring the fact that smoothie drinking was something everyone else got excited about roughly 10 years ago (when boost juice entered the market).

Does anyone else think that the inside of a blueberry oddly resembles eggplant?! Lucky it’s just a visual thing.

Ingredients (makes enough for two)

1 cup blueberries

1 cup strawberries

200g organic yoghurt

500ml organic coconut milk

2 tablespoons whey powder

2 tablespoons flaxseed meal

Chuck it all in a blender and whizz away until it’s a consistency you’re happy with.

Garnish with shredded coconut – adds a nice little crunch!

Tags: , ,

Herb Bouquet (and a lovely surprise)

3 Jan

I finally got around to spending some quality time with my herb garden.

I’ve really enjoyed having an abundance of Basil, Coriander, Thyme, Parsley  and Vietnamese mint at my disposal. But with the weather we’ve been having lately, hot days followed by episodes of torrential rain – the garden has totally boomed. (you’d be forgiven for thinking Melbourne had vacated somewhere tropical to drink cocktails and get a tan)

As a result my beautiful herb garden has become a little overgrown. I was too embarrassed to take a before shot – this shot was taken after some real serious pruning. It still looks like some kind of herby wilderness!

I’ve made enough Pesto to feed a small army and eaten copious amounts of Fresh Tomato and Basil salad but I can’t keep up. So I got to thinking…. what’s a quick and easy way to share this harvest with my nearest and dearest.

A herb bouquet – something that’s perhaps been done a million times before but it was a first for me. I was quite happy with how it turned out. It smelled incredible and if you cross your eyes and squint a little bit it almost looks like an actual bouquet of flowers!!

While I’ve got you I  must say a big shout out thank you to Hollie @ Too Beautiful for Earth for nominating me for the Versatile Blogger Award. So unexpected and such a lovely surprise!

Going by the rules of this thing – here’s 7 things you may or may not know about me….

1.  I’ve worked for the same company for 9 years - which seems to be a bit unusual these days. Long service leave is just around the corner! *exciting times*

2. I’ve watched the entire series of The West Wing twice and plan on giving it a third run through in the near future – pure television brilliance.

3. I grew up in Adelaide and moved to Melbourne as a teenager. Although Adelaide will always be very dear to me Melbourne is now my home.

4. I have what I feel to be an irrational fear of ghosts. Especially considering I’ve never actually seen one. I get unexplainedly teary just listening to someone telling a ghost story. I can’t explain why, I’ve felt this way for as long as I can remember. I’d love to know for sure that ghosts aren’t real (at least in the scary-haunting-people-and-freaking them out sense) but I’ve got a sneaking suspicion they are.

5. My partner Scott and I dream of one day living on a big property and becoming reasonably self-sufficient - not 100% self-sufficient but as much as we can manage while still having a life!

6. I have been keeping a sourdough starter alive for 9 months now. I make my own bread each week and have only bought bread once or twice (in dire emergencies) since learning how to bake it myself – something I’m a more than little bit proud of!

7.  My partner and I bought our first home together 2 and a half years ago – easily the biggest, best, most incredibly fun adventure I’ve ever been a part of. So many good times.

And now for the 15 blogs I most admire, am inspired by and that give me a giggle -

In totally random order … (just like my craft-slash-junk-slash-clean washing-slash-anything else without a home spare room)

I’ll sleep when they’re grown

Walking on Travels

No Names No Pack Drill

Never done it that way before

Sew Make Believe

Too beautiful for Earth

I’ve become my parents

Joy the Baker

Shutterbean

Handmade Life

Sugar and Stripes

Meet me at Mikes

Parenting illustrated with crappy pictures

Imake

Musings by an ND Domers Mum

The Rules of the Versatile Blogger Award

Thank the award-giver who nominated you and link back to them in your post.

Share 7 things about yourself.

Nominate 15  blogs you enjoy reading

Inform the bloggers of their nomination.

Add the Versatile Blog Award picture on your blog post

Tags: , , , , ,

Easy Passionfruit Tart

19 Dec

I went to a tropical themed birthday party on the weekend. It was 30 degrees and super humid – definitely wasn’t hard to get in the mood for cocktails, pineapple and lei wearing antics

The birthday girl and I were both on the same holiday to Fiji earlier this year. As a souvenir I bought  ‘Unforgettable : a coconut cookbook’. It really came in handy for the event.

I cooked the Easy Passionfruit Tart and true to its name it was very simple.

  • Pre-heat your oven to 160 degrees

*** I’ll take this opportunity to give a big shout to my dad who decided to clean my oven last week – thanks Dad! Who knew oven trays could be so silver and shiny!! ***

  • Measure out the ingredients – careful of that coconut.. it goes everywhere
  • Add all ingredients together in a bowl and you guessed it – mix well
  • What you’ll then have is a heavenly smelling mixture that to be honest…. looks pretty average. Don’t worry though, it tastes much better than it looks.
  • Grease a 24cm pie dish and pour in the mixture
  • Pop the dish in the oven and get started on that sink of dishes you’d much rather put off till later.
  • After 45 mins or there abouts remove the pie from the oven to cool. It should be that nice golden brown colour around the edges.

In the meantime I also made a passionfruit syrup in an equally easy fashion

  • Put water and white sugar into a saucepan and boil for 5 minutes
  • Add passionfruit pulp, lemon juice and tartaric acid and boil for another 3 minutes (it can and probably will boil over at this point – so don’t turn your back for too long!)
  • Set the mixture aside to cool

You can serve this dish hot or cold.

To make it a bit spesh bought some full-strength vanilla ice-cream to serve with it -  Afterall, life is too short to always go low-fat.

I then sprinkled the tart with icing sugar to make it look pretty and wrapped the birthday gift and jar of syrup in matching  paper – Happy Birthday to my lovely friend Linda!

Note: My brand new nephew Hayden had absolutely nothing to do with the making or eating of this dish – but I’ll take any opportunity to show him off!

Ingredients

Easy Passionfruit Tart

1 cup desiccated coconut

3/4 cup castor sugar

1/2 cup plain flour

4 eggs

1 1/3 cups milk

125g butter

1/2 cup fresh passionfruit (about 5 whole passionfruit are required for this – I got away with 4 but only just)

1 tablespoon Lemon Juice

Icing Sugar for dusting

Easy Passionfruit Syrup

1 cup water

2 cups white sugar

1 tin (340g) passionfruit pulp

Juice from two lemons

1 teaspoon tartaric acid

Tags: , , ,

Crack Pie

5 Dec

I hadn’t made a cake in a while, so I spent a bit of time trawling the internet for inspiration.

I performed the usual Google searches, ‘best cake recipe’…. ‘top cake recipe’ …. but didn’t come across anything really special.

I just wanted something sweet and different; it didn’t really have to be cake. So I widened the net a little, ‘best dessert recipe’, ‘favourite dessert recipe’……

It was when I searched for ‘amazing dessert recipe’ that I came across Crack Pie.

Intrigued by the name I did a bit more research. It turns out the name is in reference to the pie’s addictive properties. The inventors of the dish likening it’s affects to something of a slightly more illicit nature. It also has some pretty favourable reviews so I decided I’d stumbled upon my latest culinary experiment.

I found the recipe itself to be very true to form. It took roughly as long to make as it said it would – which was a refreshing change. I normally find that recipes are quite optimistic in time estimates – that or perhaps my speed at following directions isn’t up to scratch!

None of the techniques were overly difficult – I think the hardest part was getting the cookie dough to spread evenly on the baking sheet!

Ta da!

The recipe says you can use either a 10 inch or a 9 inch pie tin – but to just cook 5 minutes longer if using the smaller of the two. I opted for two 9 inch glass baking dishes and with the suggested 5 minutes extra cooking time it seemed to work out fine.

I can’t comment on whether this cake is as addictive as crack cocaine - but it was definitely delicious in an indulgent ‘I’m pretty much just eating butter, sugar and eggs and it tastes incredible - oh my!!’- kind of way. (Here’s a tip – don’t Google the calorie count of this pie, before or after consumption. It’s just one of those things in life that you’re better off not knowing)

The centre was gooey  and very more-ish as promised. The crust did have some unexpectedly awesome hits of saltiness too. It was kind of like eating the best cheesecake base you could possibly imagine but without the cheesey part.

Which I hate to say…kind of made it feel like it was missing something.

As the recipe makes two pies we got to eat/demolish one as a test run. For the serving of the second pie (the next day – we weren’t complete piggies) we added strawberries, kiwi fruit and some whipped cream.

In my humble opinion this only added to the experience. The pie is so very very sweet that the strawberries and kiwi fruit were tart by comparison. This balanced out the sugar hit really well. And the cream, well almost everything tastes better with a bit of cream doesn’t it!?

Would I make this pie again?

Definitely – the fruit and cream were on the spot added extras… but I’m sure there are many other toppings that would finish off this pie perfectly. It would only be right for me to attempt a few more surely… anything for one more bite… just one more bite..

Yummo!

Taken from the Momofuku Recipe in the LA Times

Cookie for crust

2/3 cup plus 1 tablespoon (3 ounces) flour

Scant 1/8 teaspoon baking powder

Scant 1/8 teaspoon baking soda

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup (1 stick) softened butter

1/3 cup (2 1/2 ounces) light brown sugar

3 tablespoons (1 1/4 ounces) sugar

1 egg

Scant 1 cup (3 1/2 ounces) rolled oats

1. Heat the oven to 375 degrees.

2. In a medium bowl, sift together the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt.

3. In the bowl of a stand mixer using the paddle attachment, or in a large bowl using an electric mixer, beat the butter, brown sugar and sugar until light and fluffy.

4. Whisk the egg into the butter mixture until fully incorporated.

5. With the mixer running, beat in the flour mixture, a little at a time, until fully combined. Stir in the oats until incorporated.

6. Spread the mixture onto a 9-inch-by-13-inch baking sheet and bake until golden brown and set, about 20 minutes. Remove from heat and cool to the touch on a rack. Crumble the cooled cookie to use in the crust.

Crust

Crumbled cookie for crust

1/4 cup (1/2 stick) butter

1 1/2 tablespoons (3/4 ounce) brown sugar

1/8 teaspoon salt

Combine the crumbled cookie, butter, brown sugar and salt in a food processor and pulse until evenly combined and blended (a little of the mixture clumped between your fingers should hold together). Divide the crust between 2 (10-inch) pie tins. Press the crust into each shell to form a thin, even layer along the bottom and sides of the tins. Set the prepared crusts aside while you prepare the filling.

Filling

1 1/2 cups (10 1/2 ounces) sugar

3/4 cup plus a scant 3 tablespoons (7 ounces) light brown sugar

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/3 cup plus 1 teaspoon (3/4 ounce) milk powder

1 cup (2 sticks) butter, melted

3/4 cup plus a scant 2 tablespoons heavy cream

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

8 egg yolks

2 prepared crusts

Powdered sugar, garnish

1. Heat the oven to 350 degrees.

2. In a large bowl, whisk together the sugar, brown sugar, salt and milk powder. Whisk in the melted butter, then whisk in the heavy cream and vanilla.

3. Gently whisk in the egg yolks, being careful not to add too much air.

4. Divide the filling evenly between the 2 prepared pie shells.

5. Bake the pies, one at a time, for 15 minutes, then reduce the heat to 325 degrees and bake until the filling is slightly jiggly and golden brown (similar to a pecan pie), about 10 minutes. Remove the pies and cool on a rack.

6. Refrigerate the cooled pies until well chilled. The pies are meant to be served cold, and the filling will be gooey. Dust with powdered sugar before serving.

Tags: ,

The Women’s Weekly Children’s Birthday Cake Book – an old favourite is back – again!!

10 Sep

I can’t say I remember many of the cook books around the place when I was growing up. I’m sure there were some. I vaguely recall a Margaret Fulton Microwave Cookbook. Perhaps because when we first got a microwave sometime in the mid 80′s it was a super big deal! I recall all the grown-ups being very  impressed (if a little apprehensive) in the presence of this Jetsons- like advance in cooking technology.

But ask anyone of that era about the ‘book with a train cake on the front’ and they’ll know exactly which book you’re talking about.

This book rocked the 80′s birthday party. The publishing details show this book has been reprinted 15 times since its first edition back in 1980 – twice just this year! I love that something so classic is still so popular.

I remember pouring over this book, having lengthy discussions with my cousins.

Which was the best cake?

If it was my birthday right now which cake would I want?

Lucky for us we had an adventurous lady in our lives who actually made these dreams come true!

(Thanks Auntie Beverley Joy-Bells! – so many good memories)

This caterpillar cake was so loved it got its own poster!

It’s interesting to note, my taste in birthday cakes haven’t changed – I still think the swimming pool is the best!

I wondered who these guys were at first – I sure don’t remember them. But then I noticed in the fine print that a few newbies have been included. I don’t mind the echidna – he might even be a new favourite. He sure looks yummy.

I’m going to be an aunt myself at the end of this year – which is something I am massively excited about!

My Auntie Bev certainly set the  bar high – I may have to get practising and make a few of these cakes on a trial run basis. Any takers for taste testing?!

Tags: , ,

Lemon Cordial – Made by Mavis

31 Aug

I set out to write a post about Leonard – our Lemon Tree. I’ve been feeling a bit neglectful lately. We get a so much fruit from our beautiful Meyer Lemon tree each year. Sadly the majority seems to go to waste.

Cooking,Cleaning, Cleansing – Lemon does it all.  I wanted to demonstrate all the ways I could get the most out of this fruit of many talents.

But instead I found myself just making batches of Lemon cordial and thinking a lot about someone very dear to me.

Mavis and Jeff

My Grandparents - Mavis and Jeff

Mavis is my paternal grandmother but she’s always been much more than just that.

My Gran was in her 50’s when she found herself looking after my little sister and I nearly full-time.  It’s only now that I can appreciate how much work that must have been for her.  (Spending time with my friend’s children has shown me how amazing and yet totally exhausting it is to look after the youngsters!)

She taught me how to make a bed properly (including hospital corners), and how to recite my name, address and phone number to someone if ever I found myself lost. She taught me the importance of good manners. She made jelly cakes, helped me with my homework and passed on to me her love of Shetland Sheepdogs.

She made lemon cordial – sour but sweet, yummy lemon cordial.

It wasn’t all cupcakes and lemon drops – (though bless her she did always have lemon sherbies in the pantry) My Gran took great pride in telling people that she didn’t spoil her grandkids! A strict but loving Gran – I will be forever grateful to her for taking such good care of us.

My Gran turned 83 this week.  In recent years she has learnt to email, text and use a digital camera. Perhaps looking after her grandkids helped in some way to keep her young!  I hope so, after all she did for us it would be the least we could do!

 

Happy Birthday Gran –Thanks so much for everything xo

Lemon Cordial (Made by Mavis)

Ingredients

  • Juice of 7 Lemons
  • Zested rind of 3 Lemons
  • 4 pounds Sugar
  • 2 ounces Citric Acid
  • 1 ounce Titaric Acid
  • 1 ounce Epsom Salts
  • 3 pints boiling water
  • M&M’s not actually required – but jeez they were nice!

Makes approimately 3 litres of cordial concentrate.

Method

  • Juice the 7 lemons

  • Zest the rind of 3 lemons

  • Combine the lemon juice, zested lemon rind, citric acid, tartaric acid and epsom salts in a large saucepan
  • Add the sugar

  • Add the boiling water and stir until disolved
  • Have a little rest while the mixture cools

  • Once cooled, the mixture can be funneled into bottles and stored in the pantry

Tip -  there’s two types of people in this world – those that like the bits and those that don’t.  If you’re one of those people that doesn’t I suggest sieving the liquid at this point to remove any pulp. For the record – I think the lemony bits make the drink!

  • Add 1 part cordial to 4 parts water when mixing the lemon cordial to drink. For a fizzy change mix with mineral water – so refreshing!

Tags: , ,

Old School Soup

20 Aug

A couple of months back we held a 1950’s themed birthday party. Everyone dressed the part and brought a 1950’s inspired dish to share.

There were devilled eggs, tangy cheese balls, cheeseburgers, apple pies – it was delicious.  As a party theme I can totally recommend it – we all had a blast!

Looking for recipe inspiration before the big night, I purchased some 1950’s cookbooks on eBay.  Apart from interesting food ideas, the books were fascinating to look through. It’s amazing how much of a feel for the era you get just from reading the recipes.

One recipe I particularly liked was for potato soup.

I found something about the humble ingredients really appealing. The techniques used were equally simple yet really gave the soup a ‘just like your gran used to make’ flavour.

Although I followed the recipe to the letter for the party dish I’ve since re-used the basics of it to make other soups, with whatever produce I have available to me at the time.

Recently we found ourselves with an abundance of broccoli and cauliflower. My partner – being an avid gardener – gets understandably frustrated when our home grown produce gets wasted.

What better way to make the most of our winter veggies than by making a big batch of yummy soup!

Suggested Shopping List – like I said, with this technique you could pretty much substitute anything to suit your veggie glut or taste.

  • 6 cups stock (I prefer chicken but other stock would work just as well)
  • 2 cups water
  • 2 brown onions finely chopped
  • 3 teaspoons crushed garlic
  • 3 large potatoes chopped
  • 1 large head cauliflower chopped
  • 2 cups broccoli florets chopped
  • 2 teaspoons nutmeg
  • 8 thin slices of salami finely chopped or 8
    bacon rashers (optional)
  • 50g butter
  • 2 bay leaves
  • Salt and pepper to taste

Optional Garnishes

  • Worcestershire sauce
  • Flat Leaf Parsley
  • Cream
  • Cayenne Pepper

Get your biggest saucepan and put it on the stove at medium heat.

Add the butter, garlic, onion and nutmeg and stir till the butter is melted and evenly coats the other ingredients

Add the chopped potatoes, cauliflower and broccoli florets to the saucepan. Use a bit of elbow grease and a big spoon here to distribute the butter, garlic and onion evenly through the veggies.

Add the 6 cups of stock and 2 cups of water. This should just cover the veggies. If not – add a bit more or a bit less water to suit.

 

Add the bay leaves and the salami/bacon

Leave to simmer for approximately 30 mins.

Do your best to find the bay leaves – I may have forgotten this step so if you do the same or just can’t find them don’t worry – seems they are no match for the blender.

No-one will be the wiser.

(a side note though – many people are under the impression that bay leaves are poisonous and shouldn’t be eaten. This is untrue. Whole bay leaves can be sharp and and a choking hazard, but powdered or blended bay leaves are fine.)

Using a stick blender, puree the now well-cooked veggies. At this point I put my oversized oven mitts on and use the pot lid as a shield. The soup is still pretty hot and tends to spatter a bit. Those of you with more patience than me may wish to wait until the soup has cooled somewhat before attempting this.

How long you blend it for depends on how smooth you prefer the texture to be. If you find the soup is a little thick just add a bit more water, simmer for a bit longer and blend some more. It’s very flexible.

What you end up with is a really easy, incredibly tasty soup. Cooking the veggies in butter to begin with makes them taste
wonderful.  This soup has just enough butter to enhance the flavours but not so much that you get the guilts. Plus there’s a stack of veggies in this soup which more than compensates.  Stuff that’s good for you that’s also full of flavour – the perfect balance.

And if  happen to have some cream in the fridge just going to waste maybe a drizzle of that wouldn’t hurt either – there are a lot of veggies in this soup after all!

Tags:

White Chocolate and Pistachio Baked Cheesecake

14 Aug

This recipe started off as an experiment. I have two  favourite cheesecake recipes – and only needed to make one cheesecake.

What to do!?

  1. Donna Hay’s classic baked cheesecake recipe as seen on Masterchef
  2. The Taste websites White Chocolate and Pistachio Cheesecake recipe

To be fair to both recipes there was only ever one option – combining the two and making the best cheesecake ever! Oh yeah.

Shopping List -

1/2 cup shelled salted pistachios finely chopped

¼ cup lemon juice

1 tablespoon grated lemon rind

1/3 cup ground almonds (almond meal)

¾ cup plain flour

1½ tablespoons cornflour

Approximately 1 1/2 cups caster sugar

100g chilled butter, chopped

½ cup thickened cream

330g cream cheese, softened

500g fresh ricotta

400g white chocolate

4 eggs

½ teaspoon vanilla extract

1½ tablespoons water

Tip – To get 400g of white chocolate means you’ll need to buy two 220g blocks – giving you 40 grams extra. This leaves 8 squares for you to enjoy. Go on, you know you want to.

Here’s how I went about it…

I made the base from scratch. It’s easy to make and tastes divine. Seems a bit nicer than just crushing up shop bought biscuits too.

Ingredients for the base

1/3 cup shelled salted pistachios
very finely chopped

1/3 cup ground almonds (almond
meal)

¾ cup plain flour

¼ cup caster sugar

100g chilled butter, chopped

Tip – you can use pre-shelled unsalted pistachios if you’re hurried for time but I find that using salted pistachios you shell yourself adds something nice to the overall flavour. Salted Pistachios in their shells are cheaper too and if you have any leftovers they make a great beer snack.

  • Pre-heat oven to 150 degrees Celsius
  •  Place the ingredients for the base in a chilled bowl and rub the mixture between your fingertips – until you have a coarse crumb.

Tip – chilling the bowl helps with keeping the ingredients cool. Especially for those of you like me with warm hands that melt the butter.

  • Line the base of a 20cm spring form tin with non-stick baking paper.

Tip - Donna Hay has a brilliant idea here – flip the base of the spring form tin over so it’s upside down. Place a piece of baking paper over it before snapping the outer rim in place. Makes a great flat non-stick surface.

  • Place the base mixture in the tin and press into place until you have a reasonably even finish. Use the back of a spoon to
    make the base extra smooth.

Tip - If the mixture seems a bit warm from pfaffing about to get it smooth – pop it in the fridge for 10 minutes before baking.

  • Bake for 15 minutes or until light golden, set aside.

Tip – I found 15 minutes wasn’t enough but that could be my dodgy oven. (Hence the finger prints you can see in the shot below – made by me at the 15 minute mark). Take the base out of the oven once you can see the edges are a decent brown. The base hardens up as it cools.

Ingredients for the Cheesecake filling

330g cream cheese, softened

500g fresh ricotta

4 eggs

1 1/3 cups caster sugar

1 tablespoon grated lemon rind

¼ cup lemon juice

½ teaspoon vanilla extract

1½ tablespoons cornflour

1½ tablespoons water

200g white chocolate

Making the filling –

  •  Melt the white chocolate

Tip – Melting chocolate can be tricky. The most reliable method I’ve found is to

-         Put the chocolate in a saucepan

-         Put that saucepan inside a bigger saucepan 1/3 full of water

-         Place the lot over a gentle heat, stirring regularly.

The Taste recipe recommends microwaving the chocolate but I feel the totally heavenly taste of white chocolate deserves taking the time to melt it properly on the stove.

Really, it’s is the least I can do.

  • Place the cream cheese, ricotta, eggs, sugar, lemon rind, lemon juice, vanilla and melted white chocolate in a food
    processor.
  •  Combine the cornflour and water until smooth and add to the cheese mixture. Process the mixture until smooth

  • Grease the sides of the cake tin with butter or margarine and pour the filling over the base.

Tip – Gently jiggle the tin to make any air bubbles rise to the surface. Wait a few minutes then pop the bubbles with a skewer. This little step goes a long way to achieving that beautiful smooth look a good baked cheesecake has.

  • Bake for 1 hour. Turn the oven off and stand the cake in the oven for 1 hour, leaving the door closed.
  • Leave the cheesecake in the tin. Cover with cling wrap and pop into the fridge until cold. Overnight is best.

Ok, so there’s a dirty big crack in it but the top is still oh so smooth. Lucky this recipe has topping!

Ingredients for the White Chocolate Ganache Topping

200g white chocolate

½ cup thickened cream

2 tablespoons chopped pistachios

  • Combine the white chocolate and cream in a saucepan inside a saucepan of water again
  • Place over a gentle heat – stirring until combined, melted and smooth.
  • Refrigerate for 4 hours or until thick enough to spread.

Tip – Use electric beaters to beat the topping for a minute or two before putting it on the cake. It gives it a nice texture and makes it much easier to spread.

  • Spread topping over chilled cheesecake.
  •  Chop up some pistachios

  • Sprinkle the pistachios over the white chocolate ganache.

And voila!

Sorry Pearl – Cheesecake isn’t good for dogs!

Tags: , ,

Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 28 other followers

%d bloggers like this: