Macadamia Salted Caramel Tarts

My mother in law has a crazy prolific macadamia tree. It’s so awesome. She gave it a huge haircut a few months back, and just from the branches she cut off, Lance and I salvaged a whole ice cream container of macadamia nuts. I’ve got a few macadamia recipes coming up over the next few weeks as I’ve tried to create some dishes that do these delicious, buttery nuts some justice. In the meantime, we’ve just planted a baby macadamia tree in our yard. I can’t wait til we start getting our own. On a side note, our mango tree has just started flowering. I was concerned because the first mango flower photos were being posted on Instagram by other Perth folk almost two months ago! I was worried that after our haul of 50 mangoes last year, this year our tree was going to give up on us!

Now to today’s recipe. This recipe can be made as a big pie, but mini desserts are always more fun, yeah? I like making small desserts for gatherings, rather than a big cake. Little things you can pick up and eat with your fingers. No knives and plates and whatnot. And often I’ll make a few things so you can sample all the desserts without feeling both ridiculously full, and having to do that awkward ‘just a *teeny* piece please’ thing…with accompanying hand gestures to indicate how teeny you want it. I have made these gorgeous little tarts a few times now and they never fail to impress. They are so moreish. The perfect mix of salty and sweet. And the macadamias add such a decadent richness to the whole situation.

 The base itself can be made just as biscuits, or like this, pressed into a pie shell. It’s a really simple food processor dough made using pretzels and macadamias. Not overly sweet, but delicious nonetheless. The filling is an adaption of a recipe I was given to test for the Recipes and Ramblings Cookbook – and it’s a basic caramel panna cotta. So likewise, the filling can be served by itself as a panna cotta. Together, their forces combine to be a wonderful portable dessert.

They are best made the day of serving, as the base can go a bit soggy (still yummy though!). But remember that the caramel will need about 2-4 hours in the fridge to set. So the base doesn’t soak up too much of the caramel, ensure the biscuit base is cool. And sprinkle the fine sea salt on just before serving, so it doesn’t dissolve and you still get the delightful flakey texture. Then try not to eat all of them before your guests come!

Macadamia Salted Caramel Tarts

Macadamia Pretzel Base

1 cup macadamias
1 cup pretzels (loaded fairly full)
2 tbsp raw sugar
2 tbsp butter
1 egg

Preheat oven to 175C

Pulse the macadamias, pretzels and sugar in a food processor until fairly fine, but some chunks still remain for texture. Pulse through the butter until well mixed. Then add the egg and process until it comes together into a dough.

Spray mini muffin tins with cooking spray, then press a heaped teaspoon or so into the tin, creating the pie base. As you add the caramel as a liquid, it needs to be a solid base without gaps.

Bake for 10-15 minutes or until golden. Check around the 7 minute mark. If they have puffed up a lot, gently press back down and finish baking. Remove from the oven and leave to cool in the tin.

Caramel Filling

330mL cream
85g caster sugar
5 grams leaf gelatin
Fine sea salt flakes

Soak the gelatin leaves in a shallow bowl of cold water.

Place the caster sugar into a large pot over a medium-high heat. Stir gently with a wooden spoon to encourage the sugar to melt. It will become a clear liquid, then leave over the heat and stop stirring until it goes a caramelly golden colour, but watch carefully to make sure it doesn’t burn. 

When it’s golden and it smells caramelly and delicious, carefully pour the cream in. It will spit a bit, so be careful. This will make the caramel turn hard and crunchy. Stir the cream constantly to dissolve the caramel. When all of the caramel is melted back into the cream, gently squeeze the excess water from the gelatin leaves and dissolve them one by one into the cream. Stir for a further minute then strain through a fine sieve into a jug.

Set aside to cool for 5-10 minutes, then carefully fill each tart base as high as you dare. Slide the tray into the fridge to set.

Just before serving, sprinkle a few salt flakes on each tart

P.S. The Beaufort Street Festival is on November 15th where you can buy the Recipes and Ramblings Cookbook!

Dream Inspiration - Cheese Platter Pie Hazelnut and Balsamic Pear Galette with Goat's Cheese Ice Cream

I had a dream in which I was at a café and I was eating an apple pie with goat’s cheese ice cream. A lot of other random stuff happened in the dream, but when I woke up I had this strong sense of needing to make goat’s cheese ice cream. My mind started churning (not unlike an ice cream maker) and I decided to make the pie to go with it, and as a whole, the dessert was going to be an homage to a cheese platter. I am a huge cheese fan, so I was already drooling over the concept. 

So the ingredients in this pie are all things that you might typically find on a cheese platter, there’s crisp buerre bosc pears, balsamic vinegar and hazelnuts. Then there is three types of cheese – cream cheese in the pastry, a soft stracchino cheese as part of the pie filling and the goat’s cheese in the ice cream. I decided to go with the rustic galette form of tart, rather than a more formal tart or pie – because that’s more what a cheese platter is for me. Rustic. You can change the stracchino out for a sharper style of cheese – I have also made it with an Emmenthal to great effect, or a basic sharp chedder. I like the stracchino best.

This is currently my favourite ice cream. I've made litres and litres of it. It is creamy and rich, with the subtlest hint of tanginess from the goat’s cheese. It’s perfect by itself, and is the perfect accompaniment to the galette. But even if you don’t want to make the pear galette or make the hazelnut dough to go with it – I really urge you to try just the ice cream. Maybe serve it with some balsamic roasted strawberries!

Goat Cheese Ice Cream

4 egg yolks
1 cup whole milk
1 cup cream
1 vanilla bean
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup honey
¼ tsp salt
½ tbsp. white balsamic vinegar
200g goat cheese, broken up into small crumbles

Set a large fine mesh strainer over a medium bowl and set the bowl in larger bowl of ice water.

Add the sugar, salt, honey and balsamic vinegar to a medium saucepan over low heat. Stir briskly to mix well. The honey mixture will lighten in colour as the sugar starts dissolving into the honey. Turn the heat up to medium. Add the milk, cream and scrape the vanilla bean and add the seeds and pods to the pot. Heat the milk mixture until sugar and honey are completely dissolved and small bubbles start to appear.

In a separate bowl, whisk the egg yolks and slowly stream in 2 ladles full of the milk mixture, whisking constantly as you pour. This tempers the eggs and stops them scrambling. Add the eggs/milk mixture slowly to the pot with the milk mixture, stirring constantly with a wooden spoon. Continue to cook over moderate heat, stirring constantly, until it starts to thicken and coats the back of the spoon, around 4-5 minutes. Strain the ice cream into the bowl set over the ice water bath.

Add the goat cheese to the sauce and whisk until melted and incorporated. Keep stirring for a further 4-5 minutes to help the custard mixture cool down. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap, pressing down onto the surface to stop a skin from forming.

Refrigerate until completely cold – at least 4 hours or overnight if possible. Pour into your ice cream making and churn according to directions. Transfer to a freezer-safe container and store in the freezer until hardened, around 4 hours.

Hazelnut and Balsamic Pear Galettes

1 cup spelt flour
¾ cup hazelnut meal
1 tablespoon dark brown sugar
60g butter cold and cubed
60g cream cheese, cold and cubed
2-3 tablespoons cold water
2 buerre bosc pears, quartered, cored, sliced thinly
2 tsp white balsamic vinegar
1 tbsp dark brown sugar
1 tbsp water
50g Stracchino cheese, as finely sliced as possible
1 tbsp Milk for brushing galettes
2-3 tsps Raw sugar for sprinkling

In a food processor, pulse the spelt flour, hazelnut meal and sugar until combined. Pulse in the butter and cream cheese until the mixture looks like breadcrumbs. Tablespoon by tablespoon, add in water pulse until dough only just comes together. Take out of the processor and form into a disc, wrap with plastic wrap and put in the freezer for 15 minutes (or the fridge for an hour).

While dough is chilling, combine water, vinegar and brown sugar. Then add the pear slices and stir until coated. Let sit until dough is done chilling.

Preheat oven to 180C

Remove dough from freezer and roll out into 30cm circle or divide dough into quarters and roll out into smaller circles for individual galettes. Place gently on baking trays covered with baking paper. Leaving a 3cm ring on the edge free, cover the pastry with slices of stracchino and top with slices of pear in a swirling pattern. Fold the edges up and over, pinching together to hold the pears in place and form the crust. Brush galettes with milk and sprinkle with sugar.

Bake for 45 minutes until crust is golden and pears are softened. Leave to cool for 10 minutes before serving with the ice cream

Winning at Cupcakes - Chocolate Cupcakes with Salted Caramel Filling and Peanut Cream Cheese Icing

I don’t eat a great deal of cake. When I was a kid I baked a lot, and I love it…but there’s not a huge need for cake in my day-to-day life and I wouldn’t want it to go to waste, so I don’t bake terribly often. Which is why there isn’t a great deal of desserts on my blog, seeing as this is more a food diary more than anything else. This means, when I do have to bake cake for something, I tend to go ridiculous. These cupcakes are ridiculous.

I was designated cupcakes for a Cousins’ Catch-Up games night, and these are what I brought along. This chocolate cupcake recipe is my go-to chocolate cake/cupcake recipe. It is simple, it’s easy and the cakes are always great. It produces a nice, moist and fluffy cake. I then cut a little hollow to fill with salted caramel, because I’m obsessed with my caramel at the moment. You’ll remember it from my Salted Caramel ChocPavlova, and I used it for Chocolate Tacos, and for my bacon bark and Lance has taken to making salted caramel and melted chocolate dessert nachos with it. Oh. My. Goodness. That is delicious. You should do that. And then I added icing. I must admit, I’m not a big buttercream fan. To me, buttercream icing is just plain icing you used to make when you were a kid, but then it got a fancy name and now it’s the shizz. But really, it’s just butter and icing sugar. Nice and it definitely has it’s place, but nothing spectacular, and too much when piled high on a cupcake. I tend to scrape half of it off. Give me cream cheese icing with that delicious cheese-cakey tang and you have me won, though. This cream cheese icing is peanut butter flavoured. Because peanut butter and chocolate is a match made in heaven. You'll see I used Maple Peanut Butter - that's because it was the only smooth peanut butter I had. You can mimic that by adding 2 tsp maple syrup to normal peanut butter. To just make it the most ridiculous cupcake ever, I then topped it with peanut praline. Epic, yeah?

These are not for the faint hearted. They are *quite* sweet. I recommend keeping them refrigerated after icing them and taking them out around 30 minutes before serving. The warmer they are, the sweeter they are. You can tone them down a bit by having just the cupcake and icing, but at Cousin’s Catch-Up Games Night, I play to win!

Speaking of ‘when you were a kid’…we played Nightmare that night. Do you remember that ol’ VHS game? Yeah, it was awesome…my little maggots!

Chocolate Cupcakes

1 1/2 cups plain flour
5 tablespoons cocoa powder
1 1/3 cups sugar
3 tsp baking powder
pinch salt
85g butter
1 cup buttermilk
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract

Peanut Butter Cream Cheese Icing

1 cup icing sugar
250g Philadelphia Cream Cheese
4 tablespoons Peanut Butter

1/4 cup Caramel Sauce
Peanut Praline, chopped

Preheat oven to 170. Line a 12 cupcake tray with cases.

In the bowl of a standmixer, blend together the flour, cocoa, baking powder, salt and butter on a slow speed until it combines to look like breadcrumbs.

In a separate bowl, whisk together the eggs, then the buttermilk and vanilla. Pour half of this into the flour mix, then beat on high to make sure there are no lumps. Turn the mixer down to low and slowly pour the rest of the milk mixture in a steady stream. Mix for another minute or so until completely smooth.

Spoon batter into paper cases until 2/3 full, then place in the oven for 20-15 minutes. A skewer inserted into the centre should come out clean. Let cool in their pans for 10 minutes, then remove to a wire rack to cool completely.

Whilst cooling, make the icing. In a large bowl using a hand mixer, blend the peanut butter and cold cream cheese until combined. Add the icing sugar a little at the time and beat on medium high for 5 minutes or until light and fluffy. Don't overmix as it can separate. Refrigerate until ready to use.

When cool, use a thin pointed knife to cut a cone shaped circle down into the centre of the cupcake. Slice the pointed bottom off (and eat!!) and reserve the circular 'plug'. Spoon 1/4 tsp or so of caramel sauce into the hole, then cover with the cake 'plug'.

Use a knife or piping bag to decorate the cupcakes with the peanut butter cream cheese icing

 

Cornbread Crackers

So far, my ‘eat more cornbread’ new year’s resolution is going extremely well. With normal cornbread and cornbread waffles coming into a rotation, I’m averaging about once a month. I was recently laid up with the flu and I made a huge pot of ‘All the Veges’ Soup to help me get better. And given that I was laid up with the flu and didn’t want to do anything, I was happier than I normally am to have a frozen mini-loaf still in the freezer ready to slice and make the most amazing crackers to go with the soup. Variations of Alejandra’s Fruit andNut Crisps and the Choc Hazelnut Crackers from Always Order Dessert are a staple for me now, I make up the loaves based on what I have at the time and freeze them, so if people pop in I just toast them in the oven and in 15 minutes I have an amazing homemade snack.

Making the crackers while I was sick, I had a brainwave…they are essentially just a mini loaf of bread (sometimes I eat one loaf as fresh bread), so I should make a version with cornbread. Cornbread crackers was a thought that stuck in my head like a song that I could ‘taste’ and I knew as soon as I felt up to cooking again, I would be making.

For the cracker flavours, I wanted something smokey and spicy, something to pair with the sweetness of cornbread. I added pickled jalapenos, but not having as many as I’d like, I decided to add capers as well for the extra briney kick. Great decision. For me capers are one of those things that I get obsessive about, go through a few jars in a few weeks and then don’t buy them again for a while. I needed them for the Cuban Chicken and Corn Pie, and haven’t looked back. Add some sunflowers for a textural interest and some semi-dried tomatoes for some not-too-sweet sweetness and you have an amazing cornbread.

Freeze the loaves until completely solid (very important!!), slice as thinly and evenly as possible and re-bake and you have the most amazing crackers. Seriously.

Cornbread Crackers

2 teaspoon cajun spice mix

1 tsp dried oregano
1 cup cornmeal
1 cup plain flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons sugar
1 ½ cups buttermilk
1 egg, lightly beaten
½ cup grated parmesan
1 tbsp capers
5 sundried tomatoes (not in oil), finely diced
1 tbsp finely diced pickled jalapenos
¼ cup sunflower seeds

Preheat oven to 200C. Grease 3 mini loaf tins

Mix cornmeal, flour, baking powder, salt, oregano, spice mix and sugar in a bowl.

Combine buttermilk and egg. Make a well in the centre of the dry ingredients and pour in buttermilk mixture. Stir gently to combine, then stir through the cheese, sundried tomatoes, capers and jalapenos, trying to evenly distribute all the add-ins.

Pour into prepared pans and bake for 20- 25 minutes until golden and spring back when touched. Take out of oven and cool in tins for 5 minutes, then cool on a rack until completely cold.

Individually wrap loaves tightly in cling-wrap and freeze overnight.

When ready to make crackers, preheat the oven to 150C

Using your best knife (I find a ham knife works best), slice the frozen loaves into thin slices, as evenly as possible and place on a cooling rack inside a baking tray. Bake for 10-15 minutes until crisp and golden, watching them so they don’t burn.

Take out of the oven and leave to cool. Then serve with your favourite dip (tzatziki and guacamole work particularly well with these flavours) or as part of a cheese platter. Or as dippers in Avocado Soup!