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http://www.tumblr.com/blog/cherrythechef

Lemon Curd Tart

Making lemon tarts is one of my favourite baking experiences. There are so many processes involved. There is the pastry.....I love making pastry, all that rolling and resting, and shaping. Then there is the curd. There is something so meditative about making curds, and custards. You have to stand there for half an hour, just stirring. I never think about bad things when I'm doing this. Just lovely, light beautiful things as I slowly watch my curd thicken. It reminds me of falling in love, a boy I once dated (he loved lemon curd), parties, and my best friend back home (her sister used to make amazing lemon curd.) Next you have the meringue. Its tick, and rich and glossy, and just oh so beautiful. You put them all together and its amazing. Its the perfect way to spend the day if you ask me.

The recipe I'm working on at the moment is for an old friends wedding back home. The man she is marring loves lemon tarts, so I'm perfecting them for the wedding party. Along with this there will be cup cakes, macaroons, salted caramel tarts and a few other peti fours I'm working on. Its so nice to have an excuse to practise all these recipes and get them exactly how I want them.
A morning spent baking is one of my best pass times. Here's the recipe I used.....

Lemon Meringue tarts.

For the pastry:
300g flour
200g butter
100g sugar
2 egg yolks

1. Rub the butter into the four and sugar. This can be done with your fingertips if you have time, or in an electric mixer with the paddle attachment.
2. Add eggs, and mix in. Dont mix too much as you dont want to overwork the dough.
3. Give the dough a 5 second knead just to bring it together, and then wrap in glad wrap and place in the fridge.
4. Let the pasty rest for about half an hour, then take out of the fridge to roll out.
5. Roll out the dough on a floured bench and cut into the shapes you want. You can use special pastry shells, or simply use a muffin tin. I do both. 
6. Prick the pasty all over with a fork and place back in the fridge to rest for another 30 minutes.
7. Take out of the fridge. Place some squares of baking paper in each pastry shell, and fill with baking weights, or uncooked rice.
8. Bake in a preheated oven at 180 for 10 minutes.
9. Remove the baking weights and cook until lightly golden. This should take about 20 minutes.
10. Remove from oven and let cool.

Lemon curd
Juice of three lemons
200g caster sugar
3 eggs
100g butter

1. Juice the lemons and stir together with the sugar
2. crack the eggs into a bowl and whisk lightly. Push them through a sieve to remove any lumps and add to the lemon mix.
3. Place the mix over a double boiler with lightly boiling water, and stir constantly. Make sure that the water is not touching the bowl otherwise you mix will scramble!! It may take between 20 to 30 minutes to thicken.
4. Cut the butter into little cubes.
5. Once the mix is coating the back of the spoon you know its thick enough. 
6. Take it off the heat and stir in the cubes of butter a little at a time. 

Meringue
4 egg whites
1 cup of sugar
pinch of salt

1. Place the egg whites in a bowl of an electric mixer and beat until bubbly.
2. Slowly add the sugar while the beater is running.
3. Add salt.
4. Continue to beat until the mix is thick and stiff. 

To assemble

1. Once the pastry shells are cool spoon in some lemon curd.
2. Pipe the meringue on top.
3. Eat them......all. You will. 

Flourless blueberry and almond cake

Where have I been hiding the last week? I have been high up above the streets of little Collins Street sipping tea and eating toast. Such luxuries!

This past week Iv'e come down with an awful flu that has left me feeling a bit limp so I've been taking life pretty slowly. Luckily my parents are in town so I haven't had the added worry of actually having to get out of bed to look for food, go shopping, and clean the house. Instead I've been tucked up in a little hotel room overlooking lane ways and right near hardware lane, and my favourite macaroon shop. This would be glorious if only I was well enough to eat some macaroons!!

Its so lovely having family around, and we have been venturing out on little explorations such as the CRES organic farm and cafe, record shops in brunswick and a few little cafes. Mostly what I love though is waking up in the morning, making a pot of tea, having some toast and jam, and reading the paper that my dad has gone down to the shops to buy for me. Its one of my favourite rituals, and the three of us do it every time my parents are in the city. Its one of my fondest memories I take from their visits, not the eating out, or little treats...........but just sitting with them quietly in the morning eating tea and toast.

Well i have been promising recipes all week, and haven't been delivering the goods. But today I will!!! I have this beautiful almond and blueberry cake that is gluten free and just delicious! I made it recently for a dinner party at a friends house..........and after 2 courses we still all managed to eat two slices of cake each. I blame the amount of wine consumed, and the fact that the cake is sooooo good.

Flourless Almond and Blueberry Cake
165g caster sugar
6 eggs separated
Zest of one lemon
1 tsp of vanilla extract
125g butter, melted and cooled
2 cups of almond meal
pinch of salt
half a cup of blueberries
Berries and natural yoghurt to serve

What to do:

1. Preheat the oven to 170. Line and grease a cake tin.
2. Set aside a tablespoon of sugar. 
3. With an electric beater, whisk together the egg yolks and sugar until pale and fluffy.
4. Reduce the beaters to low speed and mix in the essence, butter and lemon.
5. In a separate bowl whisk the egg whites until bubbly, add the one tbs of sugar and beat until soft peaks form. 
6. Fold the almond meal though the egg yolk mix
7. Fold one spoonful of the egg whites though the almond and egg yolk mix to loosen it up. Then fold though the remaining egg white......do this carefully so as not to loose all the air! Pour into the cake tin
8. Push in the blueberries.....they will happily sink a little bit.
9. Bake for 50 to 60 minutes.
10. Let the cake cool completely and then top with yoghurt, and berries.
11. Eat two serves......because I did. 

No coffee

I haven't been doing too much blogging in the last two weeks, and for this I am terribly sorry. You see the thing is I was so overwhelmed with pastry school assignments that I just wanted to hide under my bed. Then an old school friend came to visit, and then my parents came. In between all of this I also got very sick. So these are my valid excuses.

Where to even begin......I've been eating so much good food lately. While my school friend was here, we went from cafe, to restaurant, to bar, to foodie markets for four days. By the time he left my jeans where getting tight and the headache that had begun after the first night he came to stay had turned into a full blown hang over. Oh dear, the life of indulgence is tough!! I was lucky enough to go to a new restaurant called Albert street food and wine, I'll write a little review on it later when I'm not so time poor.

My parents are still here now, so we have been exploring the city and eating out a little bit. Its been nice apart from being sick. I went to the doctor a few days ago and they instructed me to say off wheat, sugar, alcohol, and coffee for two weeks. I smiled and nodded telling the doctor I could easily do this. Really what I was thinking was "WHY, WHY WOULD YOU AKS ME THIS!! LEAVE ME SOMETHING GOOD IN LIFE." Such first wold problems, and I am ashamed at how much I am attached to my coffee, food and wine.

A while ago, after spending some time with some super new age hippies, I convinced myself to give up coffee and alcohol to prove to myself that my happiness does not come from these things.......and its true, it shouldn't. I struggled with the idea for weeks. Trying not to buy a coffee, to be strong. In the end I decided that realistically, it was no big deal, life can be hard, and yucky and a struggle at times, so if a few treats make it a wee bit more enjoyable.....then I'm damn well going to have them........until now when the doctor has taken them away from me.
Wish me luck!

So I'll be back in a few days with some new recipes and restaurant reviews.....but for now, I think I'll have a nap....because I'm on holidays! 

Easter treats

There is something so very special about easter. Its the only holiday of the year I really stop. Most of my life feels so crazy at times running around trying to get everything done. Christmas is constantly busy and always leaves me more exhausted than when I started.......there is just so much cooking to be done! Easter though, is actually a break for me. I lay in bed and read books, I bake fresh bread, and drink big cups of tea and coffee out of mugs the size of bowls. This is magic to me.

What I do love though, is the dinner parties. I haven't hosted any for this holiday but I've been lucky enough to be invited to a few. Its wonderful just to sit around with friends, drink wine and unwind.

Last night at a little dinner I had the pleasure of meeting a lovely chef. It was so wonderful to meet someone with the same passions as myself. Often times at parties I will find myself wanting to talk about food. I spend most of my time cooking, at pastry school, reading cook books and studying recipes that talking about this comes so naturally. However not every other 22 year old at a party wants to have a conversation about the new technique you learned and ingredient you're in love with.

Last night however I got to sit and talk to a boy for hours about the lamination process in puff pastry, and how to make a sourdough culture. Such bliss!!

At one of the easter dinner parties I attended I was asked to bring the desert course (I always volunteer to bring desert.......such a good excuse to bake a cake.) I made some salted caramel tarts. I'm all about salted caramel at the moment. I'm not going to lie..........they were kind of amazing. I'll post the recipe up for you some time over the long weekend.

For now though, I'm going to stay in my peter alexander p.j.'s sip a massive cup of coffee, and read a book.

Happy Easter everyone. Hope your resting too. 

My girls

There is nothing like best friends is there? My mum always makes fun of me because I call about 80% of my friends "my best friend", but its only because there are so many amazingly incredibly ladies in my life (gosh I wish I could say that about men!! Sooooo many amazing men in my life...sigh.....ummm I'm off topic.)

If its just a chat, a bottle of wine, a coffee date, or a long phone call I know these girlies have my back, and its so nice to have that.

I once had a boyfriend who everyday would tell me how wonderful I was. On a daily basis he would let me know I was amazing, beautiful, and could do anything I wanted to. when we stopped dating I felt a little adrift without all this reassurance in myself. I've been learning recently that its so much easier to believe in yourself when you have a personal cheer team in the form of a sexy brunet. Alas this isn't always possible. I was telling one of my best friends this recently, and how I was finding it hard to feel as confident. After we finished talking and she was just about to hang up the phone she stopped and said "Cherry, I think your amazing, and beautiful, and I think your doing so well." At times like these it makes me so grateful I have so many best friends.

So this is just my little thank you to all my girls. I wish it was a cake, or a cookie, or a treat to say thank you.

Chocolate and salted caramel layer cake

I made this cake recently, and it was so pretty I thought I would share it with you. Its super yummy because its chocolate and caramel, but also really pretty with all the layers varying in colour when you cut into it. When I first looked at the recipe I was a little scared because of all the elements, but once you get stuck into it, its pretty easy.

The first two layers are chocolate and vanilla
You will need:
150g unsalted butter, very soft
150g caster sugar
2 large free range eggs, beaten
100g plain yoghurt
120g self-raising flour
60g ground almonds
2/3 tsp baking powder
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 1/2 tbsp cocoa powder

What to do:

• Cream together the sugar and butter.
• Beat in one egg at a time, beating well between each egg. 
• Add vanilla. Beat
• Sift together flour and baking flour and almond meal
• Fold in half the flour. 
• Fold in the flour mix, the yoghurt and then the remaining flour.
• Split the cake mix into two bowls.
• Sift the coco into one of the cakes and fold through the mix.
• Scrape the cake batters into two papered and buttered cake tins.
• Bake both cakes at 180 for 20 to 30 minutes or until cooked
• When cakes are slightly cooled take them out of the tins and place on cooling racks.

For the second two cakes....the caramel and caramel chocolate cake.
150g unsalted butter, very soft
100g light brown muscovado sugar
50g dark brown muscovado sugar
2 large free range eggs, beaten
50 ml milk
120g self-raising flour
60g ground almonds
2/3 tsp baking powder
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 tbsp cocoa powde

• Repeat the following steps as in the above cakes except substituting the caster sugar for the muscovado sugars, and the milk instead of yoghurt.
• Again split the cake batter into two portions and fold the coco only through one.
• Bake the same as the above cakes.
• Place on cooling wracks and let cool completely.

Chocolate Icing
100g dark choclate
100g milk chocolate
220ml double cream

• Break up the chocolate and place together in a bowl
• Bring the cream to a boil in a small pot
• Pour the boiling cream over the chocolate and leave for five minutes
• Stir the chocolate and cream mix until smooth, and all lumps of chocolate are melted
• Set aside to cool.

To assemble the cake:
You will need 300g of salted caramel. If you have your own recipe feel free to use it. I used one I found online at :
http://www.davidlebovitz.com/2008/01/how-to-make-the/
However I promise to do a little lesson on here about making caramel soon!!
If your feeling a bit scared of caramel its ok to used tined caramel and add a little salt to it.

• Take your first cake, the vanilla and sit it on a plate. Slather it with 1/4 of the caramel, some of the chocolate icing.
• Next place the caramel cake on top. Spread on 1/4 of the caramel, and another layer of chocolate.
• Next there is the chocolate caramel cake, repeat the steps above.
• Finnish with the chocolate cake.
• Cover the whole cake with the chocolate icing.