It's a date, darling!

How fantastically wonderful are dates?  They are versatile and so incredibly good for you.  Not to mention, sweet and 'caramelly' and decadent.  Today's recipe is brand new and incorporates - you guessed it - dates!  This Caramel Date Loaf is based on a very old recipe from one of my favourite 'research' cookbooks.  (Yes, my cookbooks have categories!)  It's called "Jim Fobel's Old-Fashioned Baking Book: Recipes from an American Childhood" and is an insightful reference to how it should be done.  We take so many short-cuts and use so many convenience ingredients, these days.  I think it's wonderful, when you have the time, to immerse yourself in baking and do it the 'right' way.  So with Jim as my inspiration, I've tweaked his Date Loaf recipe (from the coffee cakes chapter of the book) and it's fantastic!  My Caramel Date Loaf is dense, but not dry...sweet but not sickenly so....perfect to share with friends, or to slice and freeze to have a little every day, all for yourself.

Caramel Date Loaf

1 cup brown sugar

1 cup fresh dates, chopped

1 cup boiling water

80g unsalted butter

1 1/2 cups plain flour

1 tsp baking powder

1 tsp vanilla extract

1 egg

Preheat your oven to 180 degrees celsius and line a loaf tin.  In a bowl, dissolve sugar in water before adding the dates and butter.  Leave to soak for around 15 minutes.  Sift in your flour and baking powder and mix.  Stir in the egg and vanilla.  Pour your batter into the lined tin and bake for 50 minutes or until a skewer comes out clean.  Allow to cool in the tin before transferring to a cooling rack. 

Caramel Glaze

1/2 cup brown sugar

50g butter

2 tbsp milk

1/2 cup icing sugar, sifted

Place the brown sugar, butter and milk in a saucepan over a low heat.  Cook, stirring, for a few minutes until the sugar has dissolved.  Continue to stir and allow to thicken slightly.  Remove from the heat, sift over icing sugar and beat to ensure no lumps.  Drizzle over the loaf while the loaf is still warm.

F. x

Peachy keen.

There isn't a meal better than afternoon tea.  It's perfection.  Not a super heavy meal, usually of the sweet variety (my favourite), involving rather large amounts of chatter, and it's completely acceptable for it to go on for more than a few hours.  This week, I baked this fabulously light cake in the morning for an afternoon tea catch-up with friends.  It has a consistency much like a tea cake and the lemon comes through to save it from being overwhelmingly sweet.  

Lemony Peach Cake

175g unsalted butter, softened

165g caster sugar

3 tbsp lemon rind, finely grated

3 eggs

150g plain flour, sifted

1 tsp baking powder

70g natural yoghurt

2 peaches, sliced

Preheat your oven to 160 degrees celsius and line a 25cm round, springform tin in readiness.  Beat together the butter, sugar and lemon rind until light and creamy.  Gradually mix in the eggs, one at a time.  Add your flour, baking powder and yoghurt, stirring until just combined (much like you would do with muffins).  Pour your batter into the prepared tin and even out the top with a spatula.  You now have two options for adding the peaches.  My preferred choice is to neatly arranged them on top in a circular formation.  Otherwise, you could take a more rustic approach and plop the peaches into the batter.  Both work well.  Bake the cake for 50-55 minutes until a skewer comes out clean.  Allow to cool before dusting with icing sugar and serving with whipped, thickened cream.

Happy afternoon tea-ing!

F. x

Winter + White Chocolate

Think about it...
It's a cold winter evening and you're snuggled on the couch with a lovely knitted blanket over your knees.  What could make this a better picture?  Only biting into a warm white chocolate chunk cookie!

Heaven!  You see, white chocolate and I...well, we have a bit of a 'thing'.  But please don't allow this to hold you back from experimenting with this recipe!  Instead of white chocolate, you could use ANY type of chocolate, chocolate bar, nut or dried fruit.  This is the wonderful cookie recipe of my childhood and you really can do anything with it.

White Chocolate Chunk Cookies

250g butter, unsalted

70g caster sugar

70g brown sugar

1/2 can condensed milk

2 tsp vanilla essence

350g S/R flour

80g plain flour

200g good quality white chocolate, chopped roughly

Preheat your oven to 180 degrees.  Cream the butter and sugars until well combined and lightened in colour.  Mix in the condensed milk and vanilla before adding your flours. When your mixture has come together, add the chocolate.  Roll tablespoons of the mixture into balls and place onto baking trays, allowing room for spreading. Bake for 15 minutes or until lovely and golden.

This recipe makes a whole lot of cookies so you could halve the mixture but what would be the fun in that?

F. x

Delightful, darling!

Buttery, crumbly, rich, creamy, melt-in-your-mouth shortbread.  This is it. 

This week, I squeezed my baking fix into 20 minutes after pulling a few easily accessible ingredients from my fridge and pantry. This recipe produces quite a 'grown-up' custard shortbread that is buttery and gorgeous but not sickly sweet. The drizzle of rich dark chocolate across the top perfectly compliments the creamy biscuit which could only be improved with an accompanying cappucino...delightful, darlings!

Chocolate-Drizzled Custard Shortbreads

250g unsalted butter, softened

1/2 cup icing sugar, sifted

1 tsp vanilla extract

1 3/4 cups plain flour, sifted

1/2 cup custard powder, sifted

dark chocolate

Preheat oven to 180 degrees C and line two baking trays with grease-proof paper.  Cream butter, sugar and vanilla. When colour lightens, mix in flour and custard powder.  Roll teaspoon sized amounts of the mixture into balls and place on the trays.  Press each ball down a little before putting in the oven.  Bake for 10-12 minutes.  When cool, drizzle melted chocolate across the top of the biscuits.

F. x

Sweet treats

It's no secret that my favourite dessert is Sticky Date Pudding. In fact, I display an abnormal compulsion to order it should it appear on a menu. It's perfection in all its juxtaposing facets: spongy in texture and dense in flavour. Who can go past its sickly sweetness and deep amber colour?

This recipe is slightly more versatile than one I have previously shared. It is baked as a cake and easily prepared in the food processor. You can serve large squares of this incredible pudding cake with warm caramel sauce and ice cream and stick to the traditional, or (as I have done today) cut it into "two-bite" sized bars with a smear of caramel for a light afternoon morsel. No one is going to accept a bowl of hot pudding and ice cream for afternoon tea but they'll be all over this is a jiffy.

The secret to getting neatly cut bars is to put the cake (once cooled) in the freezer for half an hour before cutting. This firms it up and takes off the stickiness that makes slicing difficult. Once out of the freezer, use a serrated-edge knife to portion the cake as you wish. These little bars suit me because you never feel quite as guilty stealing a second one! If you are serving in this way, also set aside your sauce for a couple of hours to cool (and thus, thicken sufficiently). This naughty sauce is a perfect one to have stashed in the fridge for topping ice cream, drizzling over cakes or shortbread (the sweetness cuts through a tart cheesecake remarkably well) or for attacking with a spoon when no one else is looking.

Sticky Date Cake

315g fresh dates

375mL boiling water

1 1/2 tsp baking soda (bicarb)

150g unsalted butter, softened

175g brown sugar

3 eggs

225g SR flour, sifted

Preheat your oven to 160 degrees C. Place dates, water and bicarb in the food processor with the cutting blade. Allow to sit for 5 minutes.  Pulse the processor 3-5 times to roughly chop the dates.  Change to the mixing blade before adding butter and sugar. Process until well combined.  Mix in eggs and flour until just incorporated. Pour mixture into a greased and lined 30cm square slice tin. Bake for 30 minutes or until skewer comes out clean. Allow to cool in tin for at least 10 minutes before transferring to a cooling rack.

Sticky Caramel Sauce

150g unsalted butter, chopped

250mL single cream

265g brown sugar

Place all ingredients into a saucepan over a medium heat and stir until the sugar has dissolved.  Bring to the boil, keep stirring and cook for 8 minutes.  Caramel will thicken as it cooks.  Serve hot for a thin sauce or at room temperature if you prefer it thick and gooey.

Don't you wish you were at my house for afternoon tea today?

F. x

Afternoon Delight

The brilliant thing about a brownie (well, one of the many brilliant things about a brownie) is that even though it's aesthetically ugly, the uglier, the goey-er, the browner....the better! There's absolutely no fussiness in serving them up.  They are a guilty comfort which should look homemade and rustic.  Having some gorgeous ladies over this afternoon meant that I simply had to bake something.  Not sure how much time I would have (if only babies worked around our schedule!) my decision was based on ease and people pleasing.  Who doesn't love a brownie?!

These brownies are quick and easy but also have a yummy twist - coconut.  I, however, cannot take the credit for this addition after being inspired by my mothers groups' recent obsession with Summer Rolls (hence the name of these delights).  You know, that delicious chewy nougat covered in chocolate and coated in coconut - heaven!  As a result, I have also rekindled my lost love with the humble Summer Roll which has obviously now filtered in other aspects of my culinary existence.  Prepare yourself for mouthfuls of chocolatey goodness as you bite through the crisp exterior to reveal a molten and decadent core.  These glorious things are appropriate for all levels of entertaining, be it accompanying a coffee as you steal a quiet moment at home to yourself, or as a dessert served warm with icecream and a dusting of cocoa as you entertain.  And all put together in 10 minutes before you set the oven timer and forget about it until your house fills with the devine scent of warm chocolate baking.  It's too much!  Do yourself a favour...bake these!

Summer Brownies

175g unsalted butter, chopped

175g dark chocolate, chopped

3 eggs, lightly beaten

1 1/2 cups caster sugar

1/2 cup dessicated coconut

1 tsp vanilla extract

1 cup plain flour

1/3 cup cocoa

Preheat oven to 170 degrees celsius. Melt butter and chocolate together in a microwave safe dish, stirring every 30 seconds.  Set aside to cool slightly.  Sift together flour and cocoa.  In a different bowl, mix together eggs, sugar, coconut and vanilla.  Fold through chocolate mixture and combine well before adding flour and cocoa.  Ensure all ingredients are combined and pour mixture into a pre-prepared 20x20 baking tin (or a slice tin).  Bake for 35 minutes.  Top will be crisp but inside will still be soft.

This will become your 'go to' brownie recipe, I am sure of it!

F. x