Bavarian Sugar Cookies

I know, I know, it seems a little cheesy to be making heart-shaped cookies around Valentine's Day. But I can assure you that I made these without even the slightest thought about Valentine's Day. The only thing that inspired these was the fact that they were featured in the movie Stranger Than Fiction, and ever since watching that movie a while back I've been fixated on recreating those cookies for myself. Those of you who have watched the movie will know that I'm referring to this scene: (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=moL_fMkjSJk). I found that scene, and the movie in general, to be extremely cute and surprisingly charming, which is rare for most romantic comedies these days. And ever since, I've wanted to try a Bavarian Sugar Cookie. The same way I was obsessed with pink lemonade thanks to The Sound of Music.

A quick Google search led to a fair amount of confusion and reading about a lot of people asking if these biscuits even existed. I can assure you that they do, but it wasn't too easy finding a recipe that looked right. Eventually I decided to test out the recipe that was posted on this forum, I mean, it was in German after all. A little tweaking and improvisation was necessary since the recipe was a little vague, but the result was the one of the most delicious biscuits I've ever made. I was calling them Crack Cookies because I would go to eat one and end up eating five.

The large amount of butter in the recipe creates a melt-in-your-mouth cookie dough that needs very little baking in a very hot oven after you roll it out to as thin as you can, and then the crisp, paper-thin layer of meringue over the tops creates a lovely contrast in textures. I love it. I also mixed a little pink dye into the icing for half the biscuits, but completely forgot how incredibly strong my powdered food colouring was, so I ended up with this crazy pink...but I kind of like it.

I'm pretty hopeful that these biscuits are very close to the ones that you see in the movie (even though I have no idea what they're meant to taste like in real life except for descriptions on the forum). Trust me, I spent a fair while squinting at the screen to make sure I got a good idea of how those cookies looked. And though I may not have had Valentine's Day in mind while I was making them, in hindsight they are kind of perfect to make for your loved one. I'm a hopeless romantic at heart, mostly due to the excessive amount of Disney movies & musicals that I watched as a child. I used to love Valentine's day, well the idea of Valentine's day, but like most people slowly grew out of it. This was probably assisted by my boyfriend's complete apathy towards the event. My brother always says that it's more special if you give your loved one flowers on any other day besides Valentine's day. Of course this only applies if you actually do get flowers at some point during the year.

Bavarian Sugar Cookies
(adapted from this recipe)
300g plain flour
250g cold unsalted butter, cubed
80g caster sugar
1 large egg yolk
pinch of salt

1 large egg white
100g pure icing sugar
Optional: food colouring

Mmm butter

Preheat oven to 225 degrees C. Sift flour into a large mixing bowl. Combine the butter into the flour either by using a butter knife or your finger tips into rub the butter into the flour until it resembles a coarse meal.

Stir in the caster sugar and then add the egg yolk and salt and mix to combine. Knead mixture lightly with your hands to form a soft dough and shape into a ball. Wrap in cling film and refrigerate for about 30 mins.

When dough is firm, remove from fridge and carefully roll out on large sheet of floured baking paper. I had to flour the top and the bottom of the dough as I rolled it to stop it sticking to the paper, it's a very delicate and light dough. Roll to about 3-4mm thick. Use cookie cutters to cut into desired shapes and place on a lined baking tray.

Beat egg white with an electric mixer on low speed in a medium mixing bowl and gradually add the icing sugar. Beat until the mixture is smooth, shiny and white. Add food colouring if you wish.

Using a small spoon, spread a little of the icing over the tops of each of the cookies, taking care to not let it spill over the edge of the cookies or it will burn in the hot oven. (That's right, you ice the biscuits before you bake them, not after.) The thinner you spread the icing over the cookies, the crisper it will be and the more likely it will be to crack slightly.

Bake for about 5-6 minutes, or until they are just turning golden on the edges. Keep a close eye on the biscuits while they are in the oven, the window of time between undercooked biscuits and burnt biscuits is tiny.

Carefully move to a wire rack and cool completely. Can be stored in an airtight container for several days.

I'm only realising now how incredibly emo this above picture is, so please excuse the emo-ness, it was just meant to demonstrate how lovely and crunchy the texture of the meringue is after you bake it! I hope that you all have a lovely Valentine's day, and to those who aren't a fan of the day, I hope you have a nice old regular Saturday and maybe you can enjoy some of these cookies, just because everyone likes cookies :)

Flamed AKA The Dirty Burger Place, Northmead

This corner shop might not look like much from the outside, but inside it hides some of the tastiest burgers ever. Now I don't usually blog about my weekday lunch spots, (my work area is pretty pathetic when it comes to lunch options) and I definitely don't blog about takeaway joints too often, so trust me when I tell you this is a pretty damn good burger. This discovery was thanks to Tomred, who found this place and then whinged incessantly because he couldn't satisfy his burger craving as they were closed during the Christmas break. We only knew them as the 'dirty burgers'.

Oh yes, look at The Dirty Burger. Dirty in a good way, dirty like they smell like they're going to clog up your arteries with their fatty goodness and possibly make you feel completely nauseous for the rest of the day, but is totally worth it because it tastes so good while you're eating it. You know what I mean. It's the type of food that's perfect after a hangover. And so when they reopened we tried these so-called Dirty Burgers, and have been going there regularly ever since. Because The Dirty Burgers are GOOD.

Plain burger ($4.50) with extra pineapple (60c)

Recently I've been getting my burger fix at The Counter, and anyone who's been there will know that once you've had a Counter burger, you don't need another burger for a long time. But I keep going back for these dirty burgers, because unlike the Counter ones, they don't leave you feeling like you have a boulder in your stomach. The patties are nice and thin so there's no dryness in the meat, and best part is the generous slathering of their BBQ sauce that oozes out of the burger. Sooo good. And I don't even like BBQ sauce! In truth it's a fake dirty burger - you get all the enjoyment while you're eating it without any of the guilt nausea afterwards. A deadly combination. And dirt cheap too.

Burger meal ($8.00) - Burger with the lot, chips & a can of drink

I usually order the plain burger, but the others go all out. The burger meal comes with everything; a burger with the lot, chips and a can of drink. A fair bit more than I can handle, but the boys can polish it off easily. The Hawaiian burger is almost exactly the same as the burger with the lot - with extra cheese, pineapple and bacon. The chips here are okay, they're always freshly fried and if you say yes to chicken salt you get a lot of chicken salt :)

Hawaiian burger ($6.30)- Plain burger with bacon, pineapple and cheese

Small chips ($3.50)

Small Greek salad ($5.80)

The salads, along with all the fresh vegetables in the burgers are very fresh, I think I've seen them getting their vegetables delivered from the Northmead Growers Market, which is just across the road, definitely a good sign. The salad is a tad pricey for the size, but at least it's nice and fresh, which is more than I can say for some of the food I pay for at the canteen at work.

Quater chicken ($4.90), potato scallops (80c each)

For research purposes we tried out some of the other things on the menu, and discovered the chicken burger is not as fabulous as the regular burger, and the BBQ chicken actually makes you feel guiltier about it's heavy grease levels than the burger does. The potato scallops, like the chips are decent enough, but my stomach usually can't handle much more after scoffing down that huge burger.

Mediterranean set ($13.50) - Grilled fish, two prawns, two calimari, baby octopus and chips

The Mediterranean basket is good value and surprisingly tasty. The fish is moist and is the type that's lightly battered and grilled, a style that I have come to prefer over the usual heavily battered deep fried fish. The prawns are nicely marinated and the calimari and baby octopus isn't chewy at all. The service is always cheerful and very efficient, they were even nice enough to bring us our food at the outdoor seating area when we were too lazy to wait inside for our order. Mmm yes, I will be looking forward to my dirty burger fix next week.

Flamed & Grilled Seafood Burgers
Northmead Shopping Plaza
Level Ground, Shop 10, 2-4 Campbell Street
Northmead NSW 2152
(02) 9890 3252

Mon to Sat: 8am - 7.30pm

Eclair 'Notdogs'

This is not a hotdog.

In fact, it's not even savoury. Or hot. Are you confused?

This is my 200th blog post, so it only seemed right to pull out something crazy & fun for the occasion. These are eclairs, made with a chocolate pastry cream for the 'sausage', raspberry sauce for the 'ketchup' and lemon icing for the 'mustard'. And they taste really, really good.

I know I must sound like a total nutjob right now, but I kind of love these. It was an idea that I've had for a long time, making choux pastry and filling it with chocolate pastry cream to make it look like a hotdog. The only problem was, I had never made choux pastry. In fact, I didn't really like choux pastry. Is that a terrible, shocking thing to say? I've just had so many badly made profiteroles that are hard and tasteless at birthday parties, it had totally put me off choux pastry. When did people give up on the humble birthday cake?? But then I had a really wonderful, freshly made one at Blancharu, and I knew I had to try making it for myself. After watching all the crazy drama of the croquembouche making on Masterchef, I was expecting it to be scary and guaranteed to fail.

But then I started making my pastry cream. And it came out smooth, and silky and rich. It was divine, and it chilled to the perfect texture. And then I prepared my very first choux paste, and it went quickly, smoothly and just like the pictures in my Le Cordon Bleu cooking book. Then I piped my mixture out and stuck it in the oven and like magic, they puffed up! Even my little practice profiterole came out like a perfect, little hollow sphere. Yep, it was magical.

But then I sliced open my cooled eclair pastries, and proceeded to pipe my little chocolate 'sausages'. And then I realised they looks a little bit like dog turds. Shoot. It was mostly the fact that they were sausage like and very shiny. I tried to solve the dog turdness by sprinkling some cinnamon over the top of the sausages, which I think was quite cool since it sort of gave them a kind of charred look. And the squiggles of the raspberry sauce (which was a little runny so it bled into the pastry unfortunately) and the lemon icing seemed to reduce the poo effect. But some people still made dog poo comments.

The part that surprised me the most about these is that they tasted so much better than I expected. The pastry was light and crisp, the pastry cream was smooth and creamy and the sauces on top provided a gentle acidity and a little extra texture. And to me, they were pretty close to looking like hot dogs. There's something so satisfying about creating something that looks nearly exactly like you pictured it in your crazy brain. And it was surprisingly easy. On the matter of choux pastry, I think I might be converted. They were so fun to make! Don't be scared off by the long method and all the different ingredients, if you are organised and do the pastry cream the night before, then it will all come together easily.

Eclair 'Notdogs'
(adapted from Le Cordon Bleu 'Complete Cooking Step-by-Step')
Yield: About 16 mini dessert hotdogs

For the choux paste:
125g butter
1/4 tsp salt
150g plain flour
4 medium eggs

For the pastry cream:
335ml milk
3 medium egg yolks
15g cornflour
100g caster sugar
75g dark chocolate

For the 'condiments':
Ground cinnamon
Raspberry jam OR 100g frozen raspberries + 1 tbsp sugar
75g unsalted butter
75g icing sugar
2 tsp lemon juice
yellow food colouring

Prepare the pastry cream; bring milk to the boil in a medium saucepan over high heat. Meanwhile, whisk egg yolks with caster sugar in a large bowl until smooth. Whisk in cornflour until combined. Gradually whisk hot milk into yolk mixture in bowl. Melt chocolate in a heatproof bowl over a double boiler or in the microwave.

Return mixture to pan, cook over high heat, whisking constantly until the mixture thickens and boils. Do not take your eye off it or it will turn into scrambled eggs. Reduce heat to low and cook, whisking for 2 minutes. Remove from heat and stir in melted chocolate and then pour pastry cream into a shallow dish. Press cling film onto surface to keep skin from forming as it cools. Refrigerate pastry cream for at least 2 hours hours or overnight.

Preheat oven to 200 degrees C and line two baking sheets with baking paper. Heat butter, salt and 225 ml water in a 3 litre saucepan over medium heat until the butter melts and the mixture boils. Remove from heat. Using wooden spoon, vigorously stir in flour all at once until mixture forms ball and leaves side of pan.

Cool slightly. Add eggs to flour mixture, once at a time, beating well after each addition, until mixture is smooth and satiny.

Spoon paste into a large pastry bag fitted with a 1cm round nozzle (or use another zip loc bag). Pipe paste into strips about 8cm long 2cm wide, 2-3cm apart, onto baking sheet.

Bake for 30-40 minutes or until golden. Transfer eclairs to wire rack to cool.

If using the raspberries, gently heat raspberries and sugar in a small saucepan on low heat, mushing them up with a fork until they cook down into a thick syrup. Strain out seeds and then cool. Beat butter and sifted icing sugar using an electric mixer in a small mixing bowl. Add lemon juice and enough yellow food colouring so that it looks like American mustard. Place both the raspberry sauce and the lemon icing in two separate squeeze bottles or piping bags with narrow tips.

With your cooled eclair pastries, use a serrated knife to slice horizontally through the top middle of each eclair. Cut halfway and leave the bottom half still attached.

Pipe your pastry cream using piping bag a 1cm round tip (or a zip lock bag with a hole cut out of one of the bottom corners, this will save you a lot of washing up), along the middle of the eclair where you made your cut. Try to make it look as much like a sausage as you can, using your fingers to gently pinch the edges so they are slightly rounded and peek out each end of the eclair. Dust the surface of the piped pastry cream with ground cinnamon.

Pipe the raspberry sauce in a squiggle over the top of the pastry cream to represent the ketcup, followed by a squiggle of the lemon icing to represent the mustard.

Serve immediately. Can be stored in the refrigerator for a couple of days, but is best eaten on the day it was baked.

So as I mentioned before, this is my 200th post on this blog. It's taken a little longer to rack up my second 100, but I've had even more fun doing it and I hope it continues that way for the however many hundred posts that there may be in the future. I do this because it's a fun hobby and an escape from the drab routine of fulltime work, I don't think I would keep it up if it felt like a chore or a job. It's exciting to challenge myself to be a better baker. Plus it's a good excuse to go out and eat tasty food with my friends :) So thanks for reading, and for all your lovely comments, you know I appreciate them so much!

Duck a L'Orange & Duck Fat Roasted Potatoes

I had to giggle a little bit about the fact that we were eating duck a l'orange for lunch on Australia Day. While others were enjoying barbeques and lamingtons around the country, we were preparing this classic French dish. BUT, it did happen to be from my Margaret Fulton Christmas book, which was given to me as a present from the lovely Karen from Citrus and Candy. And what could be more Aussie than Margaret Fulton?!

We had originally planned to cook this duck for Christmas. We had a bacon wrapped turkey breast, a ham and prawn cocktails on the menu, it was meant to be a daggy, retro Christmas dinner. But our eyes were bigger than our stomach and we barely managed to finish just the turkey and the prawn cocktails. So we finally got a chance to use our duck on Australia Day.

It was surprisingly simple to put this dish together. I don't cook often (this is the first savoury recipe on here in how long??), so I was happy to help my brother while he did most of it. Most of the energy goes into making the rich sauce, strongly flavoured with orange. And the sauce is the key to this recipe, you can't enjoy the duck without it. I found the meat on it's own wasn't orangey enough for me, but with the sauce it packed a nice citrusy punch.

And OH MY GOD, how good are potatoes cooked in duck fat?! I hadn't had it in so long, and I had a foodgasm when I tasted them again. If you haven't tried duck fat roasted potatoes yet, you haven't lived. These potatoes were cooked to within an inch of their life, and then fluffed up and tossed into a roasting pan full of the fat that had dripped off our duck. All those little fluffy bits of potato on the outside crisped up into crunchy brown pieces of deliciousness.

Duck a l'Orange (and duck fat roasted potatoes)
(from Margaret Fulton Christmas - I have halved the original recipe)
1 x 2.5 kg duck
Rind of one orange, pared
Salt and freshly ground black pepper

1/6 cup sugar
1/8 cup sweet red wine vinegar
3/4 cup chicken stock
3/4 tbsp arrowroot mixed with 1 tbsp port (we substituted the arrowroot for 1 tsp of potato flour)
Rind of one orange, cut into shreds,
1/4 cup port
1 tbsp orange liquer such as Cointreau or Grand Marnier
8g butter
Flesh from 2 oranges chopped into segments

Approx 1 kg potatoes, peeled

Preheat oven to 220 degrees C. Remove all the excess fat from the inside of the duck and insert the pared orange rind into the cavity. Season with salt and pepper and truss the ducks. (We didn't have any string so we just skewered everything together...it sorta fell apart but it didn't seem to matter). Pat dry with paper towel and place the ducks, breast side up, in a roasting pan. Bake for 20 mins until the ducks have browned lightly and released some of their fat. Remove the ducks from the roasting pan but keep the excess fat in the roasting pan. Lower the temperature to 190 degrees C and return the duck to the oven in another roasting pan for an hour.

Boil the peeled potatoes in a large pot of water for approximately 20 minutes, until they are cooked through and just about to fall apart. Drain potatoes and very gently toss them around in the colander so that the exterior fluffs up. (If you have time, place the cooked potatoes into the fridge to remove moisture from them, this will make them extra crispy). Return the duck fat to the oven to heat it slightly, then remove from the oven and gently toss the potatoes in the roasting pan of hot duck fat. Roast potatoes in oven for around 45 minutes, or until they are crisp on the outside. Ensure they do not burn.

Meanwhile, for the sauce, boil the sugar and vinegar over a high heat until it forms a thick syrup. Remove from the heat and gradually stir in the chicken stock. When smooth, put back over the heat and bring to the boil. Gradually add the arrowroot mixture and the orange rind. Simmer the sauce for about 4 minutes or until the sauce is clear and thickened.

When the duck is cooked, remove the trussing and place them on a serving dish and keep warm. As the duck is awkward to dave, it might be best to carve in the kitchen. Cut straight down through the breastbone and back (use scissors or poultry shears to cut through bone). Lay each half of board and make a slanting cut between ribs to separate the wing and leg, making two good portions of each half. With scissors or shears, trim away any carcass bone. The portion should be two wings and two legs with a good portion of breast attached to each wing portion.

Remove all the fat from the baking dish which held the duck, leaving the juices in the bottom. Place over the heat and stir in the port, scraving up the pan juices, allowing it to reduce by half.

Strain into the prepared sauce base and bring to a gentle simmer, then stir in the orange liqueur. Adjust the seasoning and when ready to serive, remove the sauce from the heat and swirl in the butter. Add the orange flesh to the sauce and spoon a little of the sauce over the ducks to give them an attractive glaze.

Serve with the remainder of the sauce and your roasted potatoes. We also served them with peas and buttered carrots.