Back To Melbourne Town

I have been so naughty with not keeping up with my blog over the last two weeks! I really cant stand to type on any computer that isn't my tiny little mac, and life has been a wee bit hectic. I am finally back in my little Melbourne apartment, and back to 'normal' life. It always feels so strange coming home to Melbourne......sometimes I am so excited, and other times I feel so sad. It was hard to leave this time. Sometimes I'm not so sure what I am doing so far away from my family and the sunshine........but when I think back over the last week and everything I got done, it helps me remember why I'm here.

Speaking of everything I got done!! I have now officially catered my first wedding. Such bliss! Such madness. Catering a wedding is a huge huge job......but when you combine it with catering your sisters engagement party its all becomes a little insane. Luckily I was staying at my best friends house who constantly fed me coffee and wine the whole time. I had so many mornings waking up before six (or even before five) blurry eyed, and exhausted stumbling into the kitchen to make an espresso and start on a batch of cakes. Between the two parties I  must have hand rolled over 150 tart shells, made over 10 batches of cakes, 2 wedding cakes, 8 batches of butter creams..........and what feels like 1000 other things.

The craziest thing of all this is the fact that I actually got through it all. The day after the wedding (which was the day before the second party) I called up my ex so exhausted I could hardly focus my eyes on anything. "I'm about to say something you have never heard me utter before," I told him , "But I think I have taken on a wee bit too much." These few words are something he has been expecting to hear from me for years, as he has always been the one trying to convince me to slow down. This is the boy that told me not to study two courses at once in case I got run down, the boy that warned me against  launching a cafe opening in Noosa when I had an immune system virus, the boy that told me doing 14 hour shifts would be too hard on me...........however I did all these things regardless. So this was his big chance, his chance to be right. AND WHAT DID HE DO??? Tell me to get on with it, and I'd be fine, and of course I was......I just made another espresso and popped the next batch of cakes in the oven.

Despite being exhausted for five days, and drinking excessive amounts of red wine and coffee.........I had such a good time. I felt so very much in my element. The few days I had to rest at home with my family just encouraged me to get back to Melbourne and keep chipping away at doing what I love. It was also amazing to be part of the start of two beautiful relationships (a wedding and an engagement.)

Every time I go home I feel I get a little of my inspiration back again. I'm not sure if its just getting some vitamin B from the sunshine, or its all the amazingly creative things going on there. The sunshine coast is so packed full of amazing people doing some amazingly creative things. There are so many quirky cafes, patisseries and artists just doing what they love. (I'm also going to be a bit of a bitch and note that there can also be way too many bogans as well.) It makes me want to keep doing what I love, and doing it well.


Its nice to be home in Melbourne, in my little life that I have made for myself. Its nice to be walking distance from the coffee shop. Its nice to have my computer. Its nice to be near the city. Its nice to see my friends and its nice to curl up in my quirky little apartment. Be expecting lots of blog posts and cakes coming up soon.......I'm super inspired, and want to share it with you.

Raspberry and Lime Cake

Over the last few days I have been stuck in bed with the flu. So you will understand that I haven't much felt like cooking or writing.......or walking for that matter. Its been really quite awful. Mainly I've been watching lots of trashy t.v. shows and napping. I've discovered a lovely show called Miss Fishers Murders, thats all about a lady detective from Melbourne in the early 1920's (I've got a little girl crush on her.) She runs around solving crimes, all in lipstick and heals.

Secretly I would love to do the same with my career (the lipstick and heels part not the solving crime part.) One of my friends always says I will be the 'chef who wears Chanel.' One can only hope.

Until then though, I will leave you will this delicious lime cake recipe which I made last week. Its so very moist.....and just a wee bit stylish (like a chef in Chanel.) I wish I had a picture of this lovely to cake to show you....but well we ate it all before I got the chance.

Raspberry and lime cake.

Ingredients:

• 225g soft butter
• 225g caster sugar
• 4 medium eggs
• grated zest of 2 limes
• 5 tbs of lime juice
• 250g self raising flour
• pinch of salt
• 25g almond meal
• 200g of raspberries

• For the syrup
• Juice of five limes
• 150g of caster sugar

What to do:

1. Cream together butter and sugar in electric mixer.
2. Slowly add one egg at a time, beating well in between each addition.
3. Add lime juice.
4. Fold through dry ingredients
5. Fold through 2/3 of the berries.
6. Pour cake into a lined cake tin and sprinkle over the remaining berries.
7. Cook at 180 for one hours.
8. While cake is cooking mix together lime juice and sugar in a small pot. Cook on a low heat until sugar dissolves (be careful not to boil mixture.)
9. When the cake comes out of the oven prick it all over with a squire, and pour over the syrup. 
10. Let cool in the tin for one hour before serving. 

Spinach and Ricotta Gnocchi

I wish I could report that I spent my whole day studying for exams that are next week....but unfortunately this is not the case. Instead after school I took a (much needed) nap and did some cooking. Neither of these things will help me pass my law subject, but I can always convince myself that cooking is a justified procrastination......as I am studying at a culinary school after all, which is basically just cooking..... sort of......

My intentions have been so good all week. I was going to run more, and organise more 'things' that need organising, and be wonderful and productive. I have been pushing so hard lately to get everything done, and now the end is in sight I have fallen into a bit of a heap. At the start of the term I made a list of things I really wanted to achieve. I wanted to get ready for the wedding I am catering, I wanted to do more yoga, I wanted to fit into my tiny silk dress, and I wanted to meet a nice boy(lets just leave that last one alone, as I have decided that the boy on the tram who offered me a shot of tequila probably wasn't relationship maternal). I am happy to report that I am extremely prepared for the wedding. The good work stops there though. I have not attending one yoga class, and despite going for 30 minute runs 3 to 4 times a week it is starting to become glaringly obvious that that dress does not want to fit (goodness....who wants to be a size 8 anyway?) The longer I continue my profession as a pasty chef, a cake maker, and food blogger, the more I realise I may never be the size of all the wildly inappropriate girls my ex boyfriend back home dates.

The thing is though.......I love my life here in Melbourne selling cakes and practicing recipes, and I wouldn't give it up....even to be size 8. I have this beautiful tiny little apartment and some amazing friends.......and right now, thats kinda perfect.

Today one of my best friends and I went to a little community market and sold all our old clothes. We sat in the sunshine all day eating organic cakes and drinking lots of coffee. It was super lovely. To prepare for this though and discus our market plans we had a 'pre market stall dinner' the night before......followed by martini's at one of my favourite little spots in Melbourne.

Its about time I post up a savoury recipe after all the cakes I've been cooking lately. Here's the dinner I made.

Cheats Spinach and Ricotta gnocchi with chunky tomato and prosciutto sauce.

What you will need:

Gnocchi:

• 2 eggs
• 300g blanched silver beat
• One cup of ricotta
• 2/3 cup plane flour
• 2/3 cup of grated parmesan cheese
• salt and pepper to taste

What to do:

1. Break up ricotta cheese
2. Mix all ingredients together, until it forms a sticky dough.
3. Roll teaspoon sized balls, using floured hands.
4. Place balls on a floured tray and set aside.

Sauce:

• One onion
• Five clothes of garlic
• One tine of diced tomatoes
• 3 slices of prosciutto
• Half a cup of red wine
• One cup of stock (chicken or vegetable)
• Half a bunch of basil
• 1 tbs of tomato paste

What to do:

1. Dice onion and garlic and saute in a fry pan on low heat until clear.
2. Finely dice prosciutto and add to onion and garlic. Cook until slightly crispy.
3. Add tomato paste and cook, stirring continually for one minute.
4. Add wine and let cook down for 4 minutes (this gets out the bitter flavour, but leaves the yummy wine taste.)
5. Add the tomatoes, stock and half the basil (with stalks and all.) 
6. Bring to the boil, turn down and simmer for half an hour.
7. Add the gnocchi (oh oh but first remove the basil stems) place the lid on the sauce.....cook for five minutes, or until the gnocchi is firm. If it is not fully submerged in the sauce you may want to turn the gnocchi half way through the cooking. 
8. Shred the remaining basil and add to the sauce. 

Gluten Free Raspberry Cup Cakes

I remember when I first moved to Melbourne, everything seemed like an adventure. I was so excited to meet everyone, and do anything new. It was new, it was fresh, it was exciting. Some days now just getting out of bed feels like an effort. The walk to the supermarket is a grand ordeal at times, and meeting friends with coffee can feel like such a stretch.

The magic of this city has work off a little. At times the magic of life wears off too. Buying my morning coffee is no longer a treat, its just another step I have to go through to get to the next stage in my day. Somewhere along the way I stopped going to the pastry shop before collage to by croissants because I realised how much butter goes into them. I stopped eating chocolate for breakfast, and I stopped flirting with waiters (nothing good comes of it....ever!)

I think what I have realised lately.....is that I'm growing up, and I'm not so sure how much I like it. I feel like I'm facing the real world while all the 'peta pan's' I've ever dated are still back in never never land, doing as they please. At times this doesn't seem very fair. Finding the magic in life seems to come so easily for some, while the rest of us are forced to grapple with the reality of life.....such as bills, broken hearts, bathrooms that need cleaning, washing, stress, sensitive emotions, calories, and assignments about law.

What I'd like to know is.....can we get on with life, and have some magic? Can we have our cake, eat it too, and still fit into a little black dress? I hope so. I'm going to make more of an effort to look out for magic over the next few months. I'll start with these gluten free raspberry cakes.

Gluten free Raspberry Cup cakes

1 and 1/2 cups of icing sugar
1 cup of almond meal
1/2 cup of rice flour
6 egg whites
250 g melted butter
Raspberries

What to do:

• Sift together icing sugar, almond meal and rice flour. Stir.
• Melt butter and let cool
• Fold butter into dry ingredients
• With a hand whisk, whisk egg whites until bubbly and foamy.
• Fold egg whites though cake batter
• Spoon into patty pans
• Poke in raspberries
• Let sit for 20 minutes
• Bake for 20 to 30 minutes or until set in a moderate oven. 

I used the buttercream icing that I used on the blueberry and rosewater cake in an earlier post to frost the cakes. 

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A small cat

Today I found out that my pet cat back home died. I know that this isn't a very happy blog topic.....but today wasn't a very happy day. I had no idea how to deal with this news. Deaths are always such strange things to deal with. How do you morn the loss of an animal? I started by calling my ex boyfriend at seven thirty in the morning.......crying. "Isabell died," I sobbed down the phone. "Who's Isabell? " he enquired, half asleep, and confused. I spent the rest of the day in a haze. I did some baking, talk to friends, went out to dinner and then came home. I settled in to drink my housemates beers (which doesn't interrupt my healthy eating week as beer is liquid....not food.....there is no logic in this I know....just go with it, and let me pretend, I'm in morning for goodness sake!)

I think I'll really miss my cat when I go home. She was one of my favourite pets. This may sound silly.....but I liked her because she was so fiercely independent. I'm not a huge animal person, but I really liked Isabell for the fact that she just came and go as she wanted, and never really needed anyone. She was pretty aloof, and secretly I think I admired her. I'm always running around jumping from relationship to relationship, worrying about work, working about a career, trying to get everything in order, discover the perfect recipe, buy the perfect dress, fit into that perfect dress, be a good friend, be a good person, remember to just be alive...... and no I'm not crazy and I totally understand that my cat probably never had the pressure of working and going to pastry school all while trying to meet a nice boy, but still, I thought she was pretty cool in her own catish sort of way.

Loss is such a hard emotion to deal with, as it is pretty consuming. I was so grateful to have some recipes to work on so I could take my mind off it. Salted caramel tarts can be so soothing to make with all the boiling of sugar and rolling of pastry. I think my cat would have approved, because they are full of cream.......and she really liked cream.

Coconut Jam Heart Cookies

 Some days I just want everything in life to be pretty. I want my unit not to look so old and run down. I want to wear my favourite black dress all the time. I want to open the pantry and see all the ingredients I need to bake the perfect cake. I want to wear Chanel. I want a new handbag. I want all my skinny clothes to fit me. I want my fake pearls to be real. I want Champagne in the fridge. I want blueberries for breakfast. I want to look french......I want to be french.

In reality though there are runs in my stockings, the fridge is empty, I buy the cheapest wine with the last of my money, I drink green tea instead of anything sparkling, bald girls do not look french, and I wake up with the flu.

Reality isn't always fair. So this is what I do:

• I decorate my room so it is as neat and pretty as can be.
• I put on some red lipstick
• I wear my most french looking hat
• I scrub my apartment until it sparkles
• I drink so much tea......and pretend its the expensive kind (not the kind you get on sale for $1 at the supermarket)
• I try to make my hair sit flat, instead of sticking right up into the air like I have been sticking forks in the toaster.
• I put on my fake pears
• I carry on with life
• But most of all I bake something beautiful.

Sometimes having beautiful things and luxuries is a bit hard on a pastry chefs budget, but you can always make a wee bit of your own beauty. After all Coco Chanel was just a dancer before she made it in the fashion scene.......so really we all must start somewhere.

Making these cookies certainly brings a bit of beauty to your life. They just feel so lovely and pretty.

Coconut Jam Heart Cookies (Adapted from a Donna Hay Recipe.)

You will need:

• 125g soft butter
• 1/2 cup caster sugar
• 1 egg
• 1tsp of vanilla essence
• 1 and 1/2 cups of plain flour
• 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 cup of desiccated coconut 
• Icing sugar (for decoration)
• 1/2 cup of Jam.......I used boysenberry but you can use any jam you like, just try to use something thats good quality. 

What to do:
1) Messure out all your ingredients
2) Sift together the plain flour and baking powder
3)In an electric mixer (or with a hand held beater) cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy.
4)Beat in egg and vanilla
5)Fold though the dry ingredients, and work into a dough.

6) Wrap the cookie dough in some cling wrap and place in the fridge to rest for half an hour.
7) On a lightly floured surface roll out the dough to about 3 cm thick.
8) Use a round cookie cutter to cut circles.
9) Use a heart shaped cookie cutter to cut hearts out of half of the cookies.....make sure you have an even number otherwise you will have to eat the mismatched one.

10) Bake in a moderate oven for 10 minutes.
11) Place on a cooling wrack to cool completely.

12) Dust half of the cookies with icing sugar.
13) Spread the other half cookies with jam.

14) Sandwich the cookies together. 

15) Let them make your life a wee bit more fancy.

Caramel Crunch Brownies

Before you read today's blog post I'm going to put out a warning......... These brownies are like crack (not that I do crack) and if you make them........you probably will eat the whole tray...by yourself, right out of the fridge, in your nighty, right after breakfast........... This is purely hypothetical....and I didn't do this, I wouldn't do this, I'm just saying that YOU might.

Ok, I totally did this. 

My mother would be horrified to hear this......but I put cake eating down to 'research' for my career as a food writer and pastry chef. What can be done? 

I mad these brownies this week for a dinner party at one of my favourite friends houses. I love dinner parties so much. There is something about them that makes me feel so content about life. Everyone sits together and laughs and drinks wine and eats food and I wonder.....what more could you really want? 

Whenever there is a dinner party I always offer to do the deserts. Its the perfect excuse for me to try out a new recipe. This one I've been meaning to make for months but the right occasion hadn't come up. Its a chocolate caramel fudge brownie with a dark chocolate topping. Its insanely rich.....and very tasty.

I really loved making it with all its different layers and flavours. Lately I've really enjoyed making caramel. Its such a beautiful process and it makes me think of falling in love. At the start there are huge bubbles and everything is really exciting, then it simmers down a bit, and you have to cook it, slowly, and watch it continually. Then if your lucky and know what your doing the caramel turns a deep golden colour and its perfection. If you take your eye off it or leave it too long it smokes and goes brown. Its all a bit temperamental, but if it works out.......its perfection. 

I spent all of yesterday baking, taking photo's, reading Donna Hay and drinking big cups of jasmine tea. It was cold and rainy outside and inside I just felt so very happy and content with my caramel. 

 You will need:

• 100g chocolate
• 125g butter
• 1 cup of brown sugar
• 2eggs
• 3/4 cup plain flour
• 1 tbs of coco
• 2 tsp vanilla essence

For the caramel crunch:

• 2 cups of caster sugar
• 1/2 cup of water
• 1/2 cup of single pouring cream
• 50 g butter
• 2 cups of puffed rice

For the topping:

• 300g dark chocolate
• 1/2 cup pouring cream

What to do:

1) Firstly you start with the brownie. Melt together butter and chocolate and let cool.

2) Lightly beat eggs.

3) Sift together dry ingredients.

4) In a large bowl mix together dry ingredients, the melted chocolate mix, eggs and vanilla essence. 

5) Pour into a greased and lined brownie tray and bake for 30 minutes at 180 or until just firm to touch.

 7) Once brownie is cooked, remove from the oven and allow to cool.
8) Place the sugar and water in a pot over low heat and stir until sugar dissolves. Use a wet pastry brush to brush down any grains of sugar that stick to the side of the pot, this way you wont get lumps or grains in your caramel.
9) Once the sugar is dissolved turn the caramel to high heat and cook for 8 to 10 minutes without stirring.
10) When it reaches a warm golden colour stir in the cream and the butter.
* Make sure both these ingredients are at room temperature of the caramel may set right away. I usually cut the butter into little squares which makes it easier to mix in.
11) Stir though the puffed rice and pour onto of the brownie. Use an offset spatular or a knife the spread it out evenly.
12) Leave to set at room temperature for half an hour

 13) On a low heat melt together the chocolate and cream.
14) Pour over the caramel mix and leave to set at room temperature for 3 hours.

I always eat a tiny bit out of the corner because I cant wait to see what it tastes like

 The Whole this is pretty amazing and decedent. It looks so very pretty from the side with all the golden caramel and puffed rice.

  I hope you fall a wee bit in love with it too.