Caramel ice-cream

Oooo - this was a stunner.
Caramel ice-cream from River Cafe recipe. I tasted the magical consistency of this at River Cafe itself on 4th Feb. It was amazingly soft yet icy enough. Just beautiful. So I went to them for the proportions. However - my homemade version was too fatty. I tuned down the smokiness of the caramel, I felt it had cooked too far in the one we had at the restaurant, and that part was brilliant. But I'd prefer a less fatty ice-cream, one that doesn't leave a residue on your spoon! The flavour and iciness of the ice-cream was lovely tho', and kept us feasting for several days :)
From reading Heston Blumenthal's Fat Duck book, he has investigated the fat, sugar, ice proportions rigorously. I'll take a small leaf out of his very large book on that. Was also reading Roux brother's Patisserie, and they use much much less cream in their ice-creams. This one is a trial and error candidate. The taste and texture are potentially worth it.

Custard

My first custard :) Delicate and lovely. Very happy with that. (shop bought pie ;)

Sticky toffee - mark II

Another day, another sticky toffee recipe.
I saved up my money to get pudding tins :) They're very cool.
I made the toffee: butter, cream, sugar - heated (but not boiled) up, so the sugar dissolves.
But - I wasn't using dark brown - only light brown and demerara. The crystals demerara are too large to dissolve easily, so struggled to get the consistency of toffee I wanted: very smooth, deep tasting.
Also - it doesn't produce the right tarry, deep blackish delicious mollasses-y toffee I wanted. This is literally a pale imitation.
Steamed sponge is always nice - but I messed up the bain marie - next time I'll use hot water in it from the off. SIGH. I must have been tired.

So - all in all - I made four very cute puddings, which needed DARK brown sugar, and a proper bain marie technique. We'll get it right next time.

Sticky toffee pudding

Its a classic. I wanted some. Bingo.
Toffee sauce was brilliant: brandy, butter, demerara sugar, double cream - boil it all up to thicken, and you're done.
The pudding itself was just lovely. Prue Leith all the way. A real winter treat.

Panettone bread and butter pudding

Ok - so this is related to this: Night Bakery

There was too much bread product for Matt and I to manage, so I wanted to find a way to not let it go to waste. On Monday night we had the bath buns pretending to be savoury bread - with soup. It worked very well. Let them eat Brioche...
But the panettone I wanted to use properly - so made up a custard and made bread and butter pudding with it.
Its fantastic. The smell from the kitchen was superb. The custard set really nicely and the bread was light with good flavour. At last it found its millieu.

Salammbos

These are from Michel Roux's brilliant "Pastry" book. They are choux buns filled with chocolate creme patissiere and topped with caramel.

I'd made the choux buns on friday, so they were ready to go.

I made up a small amount of creme patissiere (250ml), added chocolate. Then whisked up some double cream and blended the two together.

Then I made the caramel - 150g sugar to 25ml water - so it was very thick. I boiled it up til it started to turn amber, then as directed, plunged the pan into cold water. This stopped the cooking process, but also hardened the caramel very fast. In order to dip the choux buns in and for them to come out smoothly, i had to keep returning the caramel pan to the stove to melt again - without over-cooking it. I got there in the end, with only a few blisters on my hands where the caramel got me.
Once the choux was coated with caramel, I piped the creme patissiere in.
They were really delicious - very light - not at all heavy feeling, which is surprising with all that sugar, pastry, cream ;) I liked the almost smoky deep flavour of the caramel, with the soft choux bun, and creamy chocolatey middle. Yum.

Choux buns - better

After feeling very low and ill on thursday, I cheered myself up with some Choux buns on Friday. These turned out lovely.
I only did one tray this time - to avoid the choux mountain i created before - and they cooked so much better in the oven. The oven struggles with two trays - and cooks very unevenly and weirdly across them both.
There's a terrific Michel Roux recipe for these covered with caramel and filled with chocolate creme patissiere. Watch this space. (update: Salammbos made 21 Nov)

Baked ricotta cheesecake

The entire cheesecake is represented here by some little stars i made with the excess that wouldn't fit in the tin.
The Cafe changed the menu, and still had a quantity of ricotta, so I offered to make a cheesecake that we could sell. Duly made, i decided to see if you could make cheesecakes in christmas cookie cutters. You can.
And are they any good? I don't know. I gave them to the chef to taste - and they were gone pretty quickly. Good enough?

Quick summary of ingredients:
ricotta, marmalade, orange zest, brandy, vanilla, eggs, flour.

This is one of my favourite desserts - delicate orange vanilla aroma.

Profiteroles with Sauternes poached pears

Digging into the previously mentioned choux mountain, I decided to fill the buns with a mix of cream and creme patissiere - from my abandoned pear tart plan.
I decided also to rescue the sauternes poached pears and serve alongside.
The plan worked deliciously in the end - via two rounds of ceased/siezed chocolate, which drove me nuts.
Making the chocolate go grainy and separate out was ok once, but when it happened again I got cross. Resorted to internet for advice.
Seemed that recipe that said put 'chocolate, butter and water' over a pot to heat - was madness as the chocolate and water together would always make the chocolate seize. So ignored that bit and it worked lovely.
All in all it was a day of seizures and splits : /

Pear and Honey tart

This was too fiddly for the taste pay-off.
Make pastry, chill it.
Roll out, lay over tart pan.
Bake for 10 minutes with dried beans to stop it puffing up.
Bake for 5 minutes without beans.
Peel, core and quarter and cook pears, puree them.
Peel, core and slice and cook pear slices to brown them.
Whisk up cream, eggs for the custard.
Layer puree onto baked pastry.
Layer pear slices onto baked pastry.
ERK - except don't because by the time you've got pastry and pear puree in the tart pan, there's not going to be room for the sliced pears and the custard. So I decide to cook them in a separate dish. Then have to turn it all upside down in various stages to get it all together again.
And after all that - the honey isn't strong enough and the pear puree is too wussy for my tastes. And the pears started so beautifully.

tarte tatin

This is another dish I've always wanted to do well. I was inspired by Rowley Leigh's recipe - which uses Cox apples, cored with a teaspoon, and cooked in a frying pan with lots of butter and sugar. Very pleased with the results - altho' i need a bigger plate which doesn't have sharply raised sides.

 Tasted really good. Apples weren't too sweet and had enough acidity, despite the sugar and butter :) Meant the dish was really well balanced. Also the coxs keep their shape, so you get pillowy texture but not overcooked or mushy apples.

White chocolate mousse

In college:

18 portions - white chocolate mousse, tuille biscuit.

Getting better at not burning the tuille biscuit. Mousse still needs attention not to a) turn into scrambled egg, b) gelatine lump mess.

wild mushrooms, cupcakes, papardelle, pannacotta

Sunday 03 Oct
At home:
Wild mushrooms, ham ends, hand-made linguine
Very exciting mushrooms - from farmers' market. Shiitake, King Oyster, Pied Blue. Absolutely delicious. Also picked up the hand-made linguine which is lovely. Would like an attachment to my pasta maker to make linguine.
The ham ends are a bargain. 45p from waitrose of thick lumps of ham. Great value.

Panacotta.
Double cream, lemon, vanilla, gelatine. Then, more double cream with icing sugar.
Still cooling down. Will see if it sets. Not sure - looks pretty liquid. And tastes very sweet. Was supposed to include grappa, maybe that would have cut the sweetness. Raspberries will have to do.

 update: 8th Oct - pannacotta set very well, and the texture was brilliant. Deeply cushiony creamy, with enough bounce, but not like jelly. Great!

Papardelle pasta.
No semolina flour, so only tipo 00. Went cautious with the flour as the eggs were small. Resulted in soft dough, needed plenty of flour when putting through the pasta maker to stop it sticking together. Also more difficult to cut when soft. All done, 4 portions, ready for tomorrow.


Saturday 02 Oct.
At work:
Prep tomatoes, onions for salads. Prep carrots, fine green beans for mains.
- Tuna fish cake, scallop, pea & chilli puree
- Leek and potato soup
- Crostini - goats cheese, caramelised onions and cannelini bean & red pepper pate
- Waldorf salad - salad, apple, celery, walnuts. Yoghurt dressing
- Chicken salad - waldorf plus roast chicken breast. Yoghurt dressing
- Spring roll with salad
- Duck pate with warm crusty bread
- Grilled peach salad, with feta and mint

Marzipan, apricot and almond cake.
Roll out marzipan onto 20cm cake tin. Chop up apricots, spread over marzipan. Make cake mix - sugar, butter, flour, baking powder, eggs, almonds, almond essence. Spread over top of apricots - bake in low oven for 1hr.


At home:
Delicious simple bolognese. Onion, garlic, 10% fat mince, tomato puree, tomatoes. cooked long and low. Beautiful and simple.

Roast pork shoulder with sage, onion, apple.
Cut onion, place on roasting tray with sage. Place shoulder joint on top. Roast for 2 hours. Keep the onions and sage under the meat to stop them over-cooking/burning.
Cut up apple and place in roasting tray with 40 ish minutes to go.

Bertinet sourdough bread.
Ridiculously good. Chewy, tasty, sweet. Beautiful bread. Benchmark.


Friday 01 Oct

In College:
White chocolate and orange cupcakes (x48)
With buttercream & white chocolate icing.
With white chocolate squares.

Cupcakes = 3x sponge mix (weigh 3 eggs, add same weight sugar, flour, butter). Add 150g white chocolate chips. Zest 2 oranges, add to mix. Pipe into cupcake paper cases in muffin trays.

Buttercream = 1kg icing sugar, 600g butter. whip up butter in electric mixer, gradually add icing sugar, covering machine with tea towel to keep the powder down.
melt chocolate (under the hotplate) add half to buttercream. mix.

pipe icing onto cupcakes.

Spread remaining white chocolate onto silicon paper. Shape into a rectangle. Put on tray in the freezer.

Score across in 1.5" lines, to make squares. Take squares off with small palette - avoid touching with fingers. Place on cupcakes.
Get leftover ganache - pipe into small paper bag, pipe small dark chocolate spot at base of white chocolate square.