How to poach a quince.

Winter is upon us and making the whole of Melbourne feel cozy and indulgent. I have started to go into hibernation, and when Im working such long shifts in the city, I really cant think of anything better than staying in at night with a glass of red wine. Winter is bringing with it some wonderful things, such as quinces, silverbeet, and lovely citrus fruits. I've really fallen in love with quinces, a fruit from the apple family that I really havent explored before. They are super hard when you get them from the supermarket, and have to be peeled a poached. I've been putting them in tarts and crumbles and eating them on top of muesli and toast.

This weather makes me want to go to the markets and buy smelly cheese and think about planning dinner parties. It makes me want to make an afternoon snack instead of going for a long run in the park. It makes me want to go on a romantic picnic in the park where all the leaves are turning yellow (but I believe I have sent any gentleman callers packing recently.) It makes me want to cook a big pot of seafood and serve it with crusty bread to some of my favourite girlfriends. It makes me want to get in bed super early and turn off my phone. It makes me want to pour some tea. It makes me want to drink the nicer wine (none of that cheap stuff for me when its cold.) It makes me want to visit my parents and tell them I miss them. It makes me want to say pretentious things to my best friends new girlfriend (because in winter I think Im a big shot.....I'm not sure why.) It makes me so glad I have friends who will pick me up and take me out to brunch after I have been dancing until the wee hours of the morning on my days off. It makes me so happy.....in a very still way....that is sort of sad, but still sort of happy. It makes me want to teach you how to poach quinces....because they are lovely, and so are you.

Poached Quinces

You will need:

• 2 or 3 quinces
• Pot of simmering water
• 1 cup of sugar
• 1 cinnamon stick
• Rind of one orange.

What to do:

• Peel your quinces and cut out the core.
• Cut into quarters
• Bring your pot of water to the boil with the sugar, cinnamon and orange.
• Turn water down to a simmer and add the quinces.
• Leave to poach...this could take between 20 minutes to an hour depending on how ripe your fruit is. You can check the quinces by poking them with a knife. If it slides in easily they are done. 
• Drain the quinces and serve however makes you happy
  
  
  
  

Cranberry and White Chocolate Cookies.

I've just had two very blissful days off. On my way out of work before my two day rest, one of the head chefs asked me what I had planed. I felt silly to admit that I would probably spend the majority of my time in the kitchen, working on recipes and pouring through cook books. Its been such a crazy busy intense year, with so many emotions packed into a really short time.....and mainly I have been left just feeling inspired. 

 So I spent to days rolling out pastry, caramelising pears, poaching quinces, and baking cookies. Dont get me wrong, there was an awful lot of breakfasts out.....and a wee bit of wine....ok a lot of wine, with some of my favourite people. 

 I've been feeling so at home with this winter chill, but I have to admit our tiny home has been starting to get a bit cold. So to warm it up a bit today I baked a big batch of cookies. I rolled the leftover cookie dough up into logs and froze it. There is something so very comforting about having cookie dough in the freezer in winter. After two glasses of wine on a girls night its the best to be able to pull a log of dough out of the freezer and quickly bake off a batch to help with any late night sugar cravings.I also like having it there for when friends drop by.....It looks so organised to always have fresh cookies in the house....maybe thats silly, but it makes me very so happy, so I really dont mind. 

 So I'll share my recipe with you, that way you can feel inspired, and very organised (its amazing how much a cookie can do for your life.)

White Chocolate and Cranberry Cookies
Adapted from a Donna Hay Recipe.

You will need:

• 3  1/2 cups of sugar
• 300g softened butter
• 1 tbs of vanilla extract
• 3 eggs
• 3 cups of plain flour
• 3/4 tsp of baking powder
• 1 and 1/2 cups of white chocolate chips
• 1 cup of dried cranberries

What to do:

1. Cream together sugar and butter with an electric mixer until pale in colour. 

2. Add vanilla essence. 

3. Beat in eggs one at a time. Beat well between each addition. 

4. Mix in dried cranberries and white chocolate.

5. Mix in flour and baking powder.

6. Mix well. 

7. Roll into balls using a 45ml ice cream scoop. Place the balls on a baking tray lined with grease proof paper leaving room for spreading. Press slightly to flatten. 

8. Bake at 160 for 18 to 20 minutes. 

9. Eat one with a big cup of green tea while they are still hot. 

Chocolate Chilli Mouse Cake with a Cinnamon Crust... come check it out!

This week one of the head chefs asked me to design a desert for the restaurant. I put I huge amount of time into trying to come up with something that I would like to eat, cook, and meant something to me. They say to write about things you know.....I think the same goes for cooking. Dont get me wrong, I'm by no means suggesting that you shouldn't try new recipes....Because you really really should, but you should also cook things that 'feel' right to you. 

Never waste your time making some wanky, layered, piled high contraption if what you really feel like making is a simple batch of cookies (I always want cookies.) When musicians write songs, it has to resonate with them in order to make sense to us. 

So this is what I thought about. I sifted through my emotions. I sifted through my intentions. I shook my heart and said "what do you want to cook?" I thought about who I cook for mostly, and who I've been pouring time and energy into. 

Someone I knew recently left the country. There visa ran out and they headed back to South America to get on with their lives, and I wanted to make a desert to pay respect to a beautiful short romance that blessed my heart and made me smile for a good month. 

This desert is insanely dark, rich and spicy. Its the sort of thing I would totally order if I went to a restaurant, and every time I get stressed at work trying to get the prep done for this desert I hear the accented voice of my friend saying "Hey, its just food. Dont worry. You love food." And this my friends.....is very true. 

Unfortunately I'm not going to leave you with the recipe, because I want you to come into my work and try it. It will be on the menu as of today. 

So here my friends is a very sexy little chilli chocolate mouse cake, with a cinnamon crust, hazelnut and pistachio praline and double cream. Come try it, and high five me on how fun life is.

Gracias mis amigos maravillosos y hermosos amantes

  

Blueberry and Orange Afternoon Cake

This whole year is rushing past me so quickly, and after five long months of running around, I've decided its time to get very serious.....about doing more of the things I love. Ife I have learnt anything so far this year, it would be that life is fleeting (and beautiful.) So many lovely things happen so quickly that at times I forget what is really really important. For example....dinner parties, and talking to your friends, calling your mum and ranting about boys you go on dates with, eating pastries for breakfast and appreciating how delicious and warm they taste while you walk in the dark to work, and just feeling free.   

(Pretty Mothers Day Cakes we made for days on end for high tea)

Speaking of important things, this week was mothers day! Its such a lovely celebration but I always feel a little sad not to be at home with my mum. The pastry chef I work with, and I spent the two days leading up to mothers day in the kitchen for 12 hours or more without time to stop for anything. We rushed around baking and decorating cakes for the mothers day feast and 200 high teas that were booked to come in. Our organised little kitchen took on this buzzed chaos as we worked away. All the other chefs kept gathering in our little nook to see what we were making, and it was so exciting to see everything come together. When it was finally over everyone seemed so light and joyful. I felt so proud of some of the creations we put out and really loved the little kitchen family feeling that is created when everyone is too busy to stop, but help each other out. I understand why chefs get addicted to the lifestyle. Yes there are downsides (someone looked at me today and said "Wow Cherry those dark lines you have under your eyes are the same as mine. You must be as stressed as me.")but there is also this wonderful community feeling as well, where a group of people work towards feeding a crowd. I like that. 

I've put a recipe in here, that really isn't anything too fancy. Its just a simple 'home cake.' The sort you have sitting on your bench incase you fancy a piece with a cup on tea in the late afternoon. The original recipe comes from a cook book called 'Apples for Jam' but I tweaked it a little because I didnt have all the ingredients and wanted to change a few of the flavours. 

I hope you had a lovely Mothers day. 

Blueberry and Orange Afternoon Cake

You will need:

315g of plain flour

3tsp of baking powder

90g caster sugar

1tsp of cinnamon 

1tsp of allspice

2 eggs

250ml of buttermilk

60g butter

Zest of one orange

150g fresh blueberries (not frozen)

2tbs of Demerara sugar

What to do:

1. Sift together baking powder, flour, sugar, and spices.

2. In a small pot melt the butter and cook until nut brown (this gives it extra flavour.

3. Beat together eggs, zest and buttermilk.

4. Mix wet ingredients (egg mix and butter) in with the dry (flour mix.) and stir until combined. Dont over mix! 

5. Pour into a lined cake tin. I used a baking dish....because I thought it looked prettier. This is really meant to be a rectangle cake not a pretty circle one.....it just changes the feel. Ideally use a 30 x 20 cm one.

6. Poke in blueberries and sprinkle with the demerara sugar. 

7. Bake at 200 degrees for 25 minutes or until a skewer somes out clean when the cake is pricked.

Pear Parsnip and Fig Cake

As winter starts to settle upon us in Melbourne town the days are starting to get shorter and the weather more gloomy. I am saddened by the knowledge that for everyday that it is cold outside it will be at least ten degrees colder underground in the pastry kitchen I am working in. Some days I feel I live my whole existence going to and from my job and all my spare time is spent organising functions and cooking for the hotel. Last week I started to feel like the cold was seeping into my bones and no matter what I did I couldn't get warm. I tried going for a run. I tried eating lots of cake. I tried drinking lots of wine, but nothing would pull me out of the gloom that had descended upon both me and the city.

This sounds a little serious yes, but last week I felt serious. I had so many moments of wondering what I was doing working my life away and missing out on all the sunshine. "This," I thought to myself "Was never the plan." I was meant to be making cakes to change the world and make people happy, not simply to pay the bills and supply me with cocktail money. When did these ideals shift? When did I stop writing? When did I stop having dinner parties? When did I get so damn serious?

I invited a beautiful boy over for dinner the other night and spent an hour fighting with him over the most trivial of trivial things........and this is when I realised things had to change. The moment I stop simply cooking for the people I care about in favour of arguing with them is the moment that I know life is out of whack.

So this is what I did.......I threw a dinner party for some of my favourite ladies, and it reminded me of how supported I am. I baked a cake for a beautiful artist, to remind him that I'm not just a crazy argumentative girl. I put on my prettiest dress and sat in a cafe to write and I spent the good majority of one day in bed.

These things are beautiful, but they still didn't remove the chill from my bones, because the thing I realised is, it doesn't matter how wonderful your friends are, or how beautiful the boy sitting next to you is, or how much cake you eat......unless you view these things with gratitude.

This is the only thing that will remove winter chills......thankfulness.

So this week Im going to try to be so incredibly grateful for all the small and all the significant things in my life.....and then I'll go about baking some more cakes. 

Here is a cake Im grateful for having made....because it was delicious... I hope you like it to. The recipe is from a beautiful book


Parsnip, Pear and Fig Cake

You will need:

• 250g of a mix of grated pear and parsnip. 
• 100g of dried figs diced finely 
• 20 grated fresh ginger
• zest of one lemon
• juice of one lemon
• 150g of spelt flour
• 1tsp of mixed spice
• 1 tsp of baking powder
• 150g of almond meal
• 3 eggs
• 150g of brown sugar
• 125ml olive oil

Frosting:

• 125g butter (softened)
• 200g cream cheese
• 250g icing sugar
• 1 tsp of vanilla essence.

What to do:

1. Mix together pear, parsnip, figs, ginger lemon and lemon juice in one bowl.

2. In a separate bowl mix together flour, spices, baking powder and almond meal.

3. In an electric beater beat the eggs and sugar until thick and pale. This will take about 5 minutes. While the motor is still running slowly drizzle in the olive oil and whip of another 3 minutes.

4. Fold in the dry ingredients.

5. Fold in the vegetable and fruit mix.

6. Place the mix in a oiled and lined cake tin and bake in a preheated oven at 180 for half an hour or until a squire inserted in comes out without looking wet. The recipe that I adapted this from said half an hour but realistically I think it probably took over an hour....just keep an eye on it.

7. To make the cream cheese frosting beat together the butter and cream cheese until incorporated. Add icing sugar and vanilla and beat again.

8. Once cake is completely cooled spoon the icing on top!   

Spiced Banana Cakes with Candied Popcorn.

"Why haven't you been writing as much lately," my mother enquired late last week. It made me realise how much I've missed this little blog, and how much my new job has been taking over my life. Who knew helping to run a five star hotels pastry kitchen could be so demanding. Last week on my way home I stopped off at a friends house in order to just pop in and say hello, and instead fell asleep in there bed and ended up not leaving it until 5 am the next morning where I picked myself up, put myself on a tram, bought some coffee and pastries and headed into work to do it all over again.

So yes life is being a tiny bit exhausting, but also very beautiful at the same time. This job (which is so demanding at times I feel like I'm in a second relationship with a very needy man who always wants my love, time and effection) is teaching me a lot, and that is my favourite thing about falling in love (with jobs and people) is it stretches you.....it pushes your limits and it examines the things that make you happy and those that make you awfully sad. It takes you to your limits so you can take a good hard look at yourself and say "oh this is what I need" or alternatively "I do not need this at all."

These things, this stretch, this growth of career and the heart is what has been keeping me away from writing, but let me asure me, it has not kept me away from cooking. In the past few months I have made some of the most beautiful cakes and creations that I really cant wait to share with you. I have also been spending a wee bit of time with a beautiful sweet toothed boy which is allowing me to shower him with  new recipes and treats.

This recipe that Im going to share with you is one of those such treats. I made them and presented them with an off hand comment of "oh yes I just had these cakes sitting around the house. I made them for my blog but your more than welcome to have one." Such such lies. Lets be honest here friends......I made these cakes for him....0N A THIRD DATE....(because thats what I do) and had spent a day considering what sort of cake he would best like and look the most impressive. My housemates boyfriend came over the same day I made these and the two boys sat together at our kitchen table munching on the sweets.......and let me tell you, it was the happiest moment of my week. Nothing at all makes me more happy than seeing to beautiful boys hungrily eating food I've prepared. Whenever this happens I have moments of "This is exactly what I want to be doing with my life" and all the early mornings working at a hotel,  working late into the afternoon, and not having time for lunch breaks really doesn't matter anymore.

I hope you enjoy these cakes, I hope they make you as happy to make as they made me. I hope you have someone to give them to, and I hope he is keeping a cheeky smile on your face throughout a long day at work.

Banana and Spice Cupcakes with Candied Popcorn. 

You will need:
Cakes:

• 185g butter
• 230g sugar (caster)
• 3 eggs
• 310g self raising flour
• 1/2 tsp of baking soda
• 185g sour cream
• 2 tbs of maple syrup
• 3 very ripe mashed bananas
• 1 tsp of vanilla
• 1 tsp of cinnamon
• 1tsp of allspice (the sweet one not the savoury one......sometimes I get confused which is silly really)
• 1/2 tsp of nutmeg

For the frosting:

• 80g cream cheese (soft)
• 50g butter (soft)
• 1 and 1/2 tbs of honey
• 250g icing sugar (sifted)

For the popcorn:

• 1tbs of oil 
• 1/3 cup of popcorn kernels
• 15g unsalted butter
• 1/4 cup honey
• 1/2 cup of caster sugar
• 1/4 tsp of baking soda
• 1/2 tsp of salt

What to do:

Cakes:

• Preheat the oven to 180
• Beat together the butter and sugar until light in colour, this will take about 5 minutes.
• Add the eggs one at a time, whisking well in between each addition. 
• Fold in dry mixture, banana, sour cream, and maple syrup.
• Divide mix into patty pans and bake in the oven until they are light golden in colour and when you insert a skewer it comes out clean (about 20 minutes)
• Let the cakes cool

Frosting:

• Beat together the butter and cream cheese.
• Add honey.
• Mix in icing sugar.

Popcorn:

• In a saucepan heat the oil. 
• Add the popcorn and cover with a tight fitting lid, shake from time to time, and cook until all the popcorn has popped (this is seriously really really fun.)
• Put the popcorn aside (if you can....)
• Place the butter, honey and sugar in a small saucepan over a low heat and stir until butter has melted. 
• Turn the heat to high (dont stir it from this point in) and cook for about 4 minutes until it becomes golden and thickened. You can swirl the pan from time to time to make sure its cooking evenly.
• Remove from the heat and add the bicard soda, stir to combine.
• Working quickly pour the caramel mix over the popcorn and mix.
• Pour the popcorn out onto a piece of baking paper and leave to set. 

To assemble: 

• Frost the cupcakes
• Top with as much popcorn as your heart delights!

Autumn and Weddings.

My life lately has been so very consumed by work (and dating) and I fear that I haven't had as much time as I would like for some of my favourite things (such as this blog) and people (such as you.) Its crazy how much of your life gets taken up being a pastry chef. Its such an all consuming job at times. Putting in ten hour days and doing seven day weeks is fast becoming the norm for me. Its such a strange burn out existence at times. Speaking of burning, I am not officially covered with the marks of a chef. I come home nearly every day with a new array of burns, scars and cuts. Secretly I like them. They feel like a physical reminder of how much passion I am putting into this job. 

Melbourne is starting to feel a little bit more chilly.....which means sumer has departed us and its time for the anual Ceres Autumn fair, which I'm really excited for. Its a little celebration on a community farm where they have bands, markets and food stalls. Best of all though they have a cake competition. Last year I entered a cake and got third place (I was beaten by two old ladies who have been baking cakes all their lives) and was sorely disappointed. This year I'm planning to win, and give those old ladies a run for there money. Apart from my ego getting involved, I really just like entering to support the event. The farm does some amazing work, and after they judge the cakes they sell them by the slice and all the money goes toward supporting their projects. Its such a fun tradition and I love the idea of celebrating the coming of the cooler weather. If you have any suggestions for what sort of cakes I should enter I would love to hear from you. 



On much more important news, my sister got married recently. It was one of the most magical weekend of my life. There really is something so amazingly inspiring about witnessing two people promising to spend the rest of their lives loving and supporting each other. I cried so many tears of joy for my beautiful sister. I loved getting to share this day with her and contribute in the way of cakes and cookie, and to spend some time with some of my favourite people. My best friend back home was kind enough to let me use her kitchen to bake the cakes in, and supplied my with a constant supply of coffee and wine (she knows me too well) and didn't at all mind when I got 'cake stress.' 


I hope you are all enjoying the change of seasons. I'm off to have a small drink, wrap myself in a blanket and read recipes. Enjoy the wedding photos!