Australia Day - Dessert Nachos with Chipotle Marshmallows and Vegemite Salted Caramel

Happy Australia Day! For you today, on this most celebratory of summer days, I have something special. Something very different. Something I want you to trust me on. It is a bit weird, but it’s also very, very good.  Dessert nachos.

Over the Christmas period I attended a few gatherings where the subject of my blog and recipes was brought up by other people. It was actually quite interesting to hear friends and family discuss what they thought of my blog and in a way, ‘sell’ it to others. I am quite passionate about the food I create and eat, and it was quite lovely to hear other people discuss some my recipes animatedly! Made me feel a little like a rock star! The number one recurring word used to describe my food was ‘quirky’. I’m quite happy to wear that badge. I love mixing combinations of food together to create something unique and amazing. Something that might take you by surprise, but you fall in love with. For me, cooking is imagination. For others, that means my cooking is quirky. I like that!

So this is my quirky take on dessert nachos. I’ve already brought you dessert tacos, it’s time for nachos. The basic combination for these nachos is simple to replicate without any cooking, just using bought components. Corn chips + caramel + marshmallow + chocolate. That by itself is a seriously indulgent and wonderful movie night snack. However, if you want a slightly quirkier take, with a little extra work, you make your own marshmallow. And you flavour it with smokey chipotle powder. And you make your own caramel. Salted caramel. Using Vegemite as the salt.

I already use vegemite as a substitute for salt in many savoury dishes. It works great as a ‘stock’ in casseroles, stews and soups. It is absolutely delicious on toast and eggs. Even better with avocado. It adds a deeper savoury flavour than ‘just’ salt. Why could the same not be applied to sweet dishes? Salty and sweet as a combination is now well in the general conscience, with salted caramel being the most popular incarnation of this. So, let’s make it with a little vegemite. Trust me on this. Make this caramel. Make these nachos. Thank me later.

Happy Australia Day!

 

Dessert Nachos

(makes 4 serves)

1 packet lightly salted Tortilla chips (I like Mission brand)

10 tsp Vegemite Caramel (recipe to follow)

1/2 batch chipotle marshmallows (recipe to follow)

4 squares dark chocolate

Heat the oven to 190C

In ovensafe bowls or plates, scatter tortilla chips over 4 plates, drizzle a few teaspoons of caramel over each plate, and tuck in some marshmallow bits. Coarely chop the dark chocolate squares and scatter over the top.

Bake 10 minutes, or until marshmallows are gooey inside and the chocolate is melted.

Vegemite Salted Caramel

1 cup sugar

4 tbsp water

55 g butter

100mL cream

1 tsp vegemite (warmed slightly if hard)

Add sugar and water in a medium pan over low heat. Stir until the sugar dissolves. Increase heat to high and every so often, swirl the pot to keep the mixture moving. Do not stir. The mixture will start turning a nice caramel colour, when this happens, remove from the heat immediately and add the butter, vegemite and cream. Watch out, it will spit. Whisk to combine, then set aside to cool and thicken slightly before pouring into jars to store

Chipotle Marshmallows

1/2 cup water

1 1/2 tsp chipotle chilli powder

1/4 tsp cayenne

23g gelatin powder

1 1/2 cups white sugar

150mL glucose syrup

1/2 cup water

dusting mix

1/2 cup icing sugar

1/4 cup corn flour

Add the first half cup water to the bowl of your stand mixer, whiskn in the chilli powder and cayenne and sprinkle the gelatin over the top. Leave until the gelatin is absorbed and becomes gel-ly.

Line a lamington tray or baking paper with cling film, allow for overhang on all sides. Dust a few tablespoons of the dusting mix along the bottom.

In a large saucepan, combine the glucose syrup, water and sugar. Cook over a medium heat, stirring gently to help the sugar dissolve. Raise the heat and boil until it reaches 130C on a candy thermometer. Swirl the mixture, but do not stir. When it reaches 130C, immediately remove from heat.

Whisk the gelatin mixture on low for 1 minute, then turn the mixer up to around 3/4 top speed and slowly drizzle the hot sugar mix whilst it's still going. Don't let the stream touch the whisk. Increase the speed to high and leave it whisking until the mixture is pale and fluffy and looks like glossy meringue. It'll take at least 5 minutes. It's ready when strands pull from the sides like bubblegum.

Pour the mix into the lined pan and use a greased spatula to smooth the top. Dust with more dusting mix and pop aside in a cool spot to set. It'll take a few hours, depending on the heat & humidity.

Cut the marshmallows into squares and dust the newly exposed sides with more dusting mixture. Store in airtight containers.

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

Friend Inspiration - White Chocolate Mojito Fondue

 

Despite being told on more than one occasion that I talk too much, I often find myself lost for words. If there’s something I’m passionate about, and have limited scope to get out all of that passion, I end up not knowing where to start or what to say at all. So I just don’t. It’s with a little bit of embarrassment that I finally do this post. I took this photoswith Jen to post over a year ago, but I wasn’t sure exactly where to go with the story, so I just didn’t do anything with them.

My whole life, most of my family holidays have been to the South West region of WA. Just a few short hours’ drive south of the city, the air changes, the scenery changes and you just automatically start to relax. Even knowing I’m going ‘down south’ soon makes me feel calmer. As I have grown, my appreciation of the area has too. And nothing more so than the food and wine. There are so many amazing local produce-driven restaurants in the area now. And, of course, there’s the wine. I’ve grown from being a nothing-but-sweet-whites drinker to a heavy reds drinker and everything in between through my south-west education. And the Margaret River wine region provides them all. I’ve lost count of how many wineries I’ve visited down south, but my absolute favourite of all time is Cape Naturaliste Vineyard. The wines here are absolutely phenomenal. And then there’s the owner and frequent cellar door host, Jen.

I first met Jen when I was on honeymoon. Lance proposed to me in the most epic and romantic way possible on Molloy Island, so when it came time to choose our honeymoon destination, it was pretty obvious that we should spend it there as well. We spent just over a month chilling out down south, and it was on a limousine wine tour that we were introduced to Cape Naturaliste Vineyard. We just clicked with Jen the instant we met her, she’s so warm and open. We chatted about everything under the sun and the topic of food came up, as it often does with me. She’s quite the foodie herself (her winery is even hosting a Gourmet Escape Event!) and she told me about her go-to dinner party dessert - White Chocolate Mojito Cheesecakes. Something easy and decadent all at once. She even left us at the cellar door and ran up to her house to find the cookbook the recipe was in and brought it back down to photocopy for me. So it makes sense for this post to go back to where it all began.
You can find the recipe for the original cheesecake recipe on the taste.com.au website. Here, I’ve simplified it even more and made the texture runnier so that it is no longer a cheesecake, but a delicious sweet dip. As with most fondues, you can change the dipping items to suit what you have at home. I always like to use some form of ginger biscuit, because it goes really well and as a nod to the original cheesecake base. Lightly salted tortilla chips work well, as does most fruit sturdy enough to dip. Unlike most fondues, this one is actually served cold. And so is perfect for entertaining as the weather becomes decidedly more Spring! I like to serve it alongside a normal cheese platter and with a glass of white.

Check out Cape Naturaliste next time you're in the Margaret River Region, I promise you won't be disappointed!

White Chocolate Mojito Fondue

1/2 cup sugar
1/4 cup water
1 cup packed mint leaves
zest and juice of 4 limes
1/4 cup Bacardi (or other white rum)
100g white chocolate
500g Philadelphia Cream Cheese (2 blocks)
to serve
strawberries
gingerbread
apple or pear slices

In a small pot, stir together the sugar and water over a low heat until the sugar has dissolved. Leave for 5-10 minutes until the mixture becomes syrupy. Add the mint leaves, lime zest, lime juice and rum. Stir well, then set aside to cool to room temperature. Pass the mixture through a fine sieve, pressing down with a spoon to get all of the minty limey goodness out.

Chop the white chocolate roughly and place in a glass bowl. Microwave in 30 second bursts until melted, stirring between each go. You'll probably only need to do it twice. Set aside to cool for around 5 minutes.

In a food processor, pulse the cream cheese to break up. Then blend for 30 seconds until smooth and soft. Add the white chocolate and blend to combine. Lastly, blend in the minty lime syrup. Mix on a high speed for 2 minutes or until completely smooth and combined. 

Pour into the serving bowl and refrigerate for 2 hours to chill and set slightly.

Serve with fresh fruit slices and gingerbread biscuits for dipping!

 

 *Disclaimer - whilst I might be biased because I love Jen, her wines have won a bunch of awards