Just a quick post today. My poor blog has been neglected lately but with good reason - I'm in the process of writing my honours thesis which is due in exactly 3 weeks! What with all the statistics analysis and writing everything up for my supervisor, it's been a hectic two weeks and I can only imagine it wil only get worse until October 13th when it will all be over. Luckily thanks to a few people I have plenty of fun things lined up for after I finish which gives me something to look forward to while I'm staring at a screen full of words for hours on end.
Sometimes when life gets crazy busy it makes me appreciate the simple things in life, like this strawberry tart. There's no fancy brulee and no fancy decorating. It's just pastry, creme patissiere and strawberries, with a light dusting of icing sugar. No more, no less.
And while it may not have the delicacy of a macaron, or the richness of a chocolate brownie, it tastes just as good, if not better. I can say with certainty that it tastes a thousand times better than thesis-writing.
There's always one thing that I absolutely HAVE to get every time I go to Bourke Street Bakery, and that's a strawberry vanilla brûlée tart. I went to Bourke Street Bakery a few weeks ago late in the afternoon and I was so disappointed that they had sold out of them that I went back the next week just to satisfy my craving. And oh it was so good, the crispy, buttery pastry with the creamy custard filling and of course, that crunchy, slightly bitter toffee on the top.
Sadly Bourke Street Bakery is quite far from me and so I thought I'd try making these yummy tarts at home using the recipe from the Bourke Street Bakery cookbook. It was surprisingly straightforward and to me the worst part was having to wait for the pastry to relax because I just wanted to bake them, blowtorch the hell out of the sugar on the top and devour them all!
Ok, so I admit I was still impatient and I didn't go through all the resting periods for the pastry which is why it shrank in the oven. But apart from having slightly shallower tart shells, the pastry was still as flaky and crisp as I remember it to be from the actual shop. I was also a bit ambitious with the amount of strawberry puree at first so when I put the custard into the tart shells it started to displace the strawberry puree that was in there - that's why there's not much strawberry in the photo unfortunately.
I've provided the original recipe below but since I only had 6 small tart tins that weren't quite the same size as specified, I just adjusted the measurements for my requirements. I found that even after doing that I still had some leftover strawberry puree but you can always use this as a topping for ice cream or another dessert. Or just do what Sir D did and drink the leftovers!
It was my grandma's birthday and my family had requested I make a cake for her. Something light. Something 'healthy'.
I didn't think there was such thing as a healthy cake but I spent my time poring over cookbooks to find one that didn't have too much fat and wasn't too dense and heavy. I came across this beautiful cake in Nigella Lawson's Forever Summer and since my grandma's favourite colour is red, I thought it was quite appropriate to have plump, rosy red strawberries standing out against a white cream surface.
It all seemed to be going well except when I took my cakes out of the oven, the meringue hadn't puffed up as I expected it to but instead had flattened down into a sugary, slightly chewy layer. I read and reread the recipe and I'm quite sure I did everything right, so anyone have any suggestions as to why my meringue didn't puff up?
In any case, the cake was still ethereally light and sweet and sandwiched a delicious combination of lightly whipped cream and strawberry halves in the centre. It was well received even by my grandma who even ate a whole piece to herself! She usually insists she can't eat that much and tries to offload some cake to other family members or gives it to my grandpa. I took it as a compliment that she managed to polish off her own slice of cake this time :)
After eating a delicious Strawberry Eton Mess at Assiette, I was singing its praises to anyone who would listen. And listen they did - Queen Chu's mum knew that I was thinking about making it myself at home and kindly gave me a giant slab of leftover meringue! I was a happy penguin indeed =D
Giant slab of meringue courtesy of Queen Chu's mum!
After eating a hearty dinner of roast chicken and vegetables, a warm comforting dessert was in order. We picked up some divine smelling strawberries from the supermarket and decided to use them in our dessert. I had read about a strawberry clafoutis on Citrus and Candy only the night before, and after salivating over pictures of a baked custardy dessert I knew I had to give it a go. It's a great recipe because I don't often have cream in the fridge and whilst most clafoutis recipes require cream, this one uses butter which I pretty much always have on hand.
It turned out to be a great hit - BLT loved the custard mixture so much she practically licked the bowl clean! Make sure you eat it while it's still warm out of the oven as a great remedy for the winter blues.
