Cake Decorating

I don't think I will be able to catch up on posts with all the different cakes, so one post with all of them up to now.

I wish I could have found a more rounded glass for the top.

This was supposed to be sprayed with lustre spray, well it was but it splattered out instead of a fine mist. No one else knew it wasn't supposed to be like that. I was annoyed though.

This was a decorated fruit cake that was ordered.

Fruit mince cheesecake

Okay, so this one was a bit of a disaster but I know what I did wrong and I am sure it would be fantastic if that was rectified.

I had a jar of fruit mince in the cupboard that I had been given. I was part of a hamper received by a friend from her employer and she said that she wouldn't use it. I decided that it should be used up and I thought about making a cheesecake for dessert on Christmas. I ended up not taking it to the dinner at my uncle's as I had something else to take. It was a good thing too as it was almost inedible. In fact the after the one small slice that I had last night the rest ended up in the bin.

My biggest error in this was not remembering just how strong fruit mince is. The other thing was that I had never used bought fruit mince before, only ever my own. I, stupidly, used the whole jar in the cheesecake when in reality I should have only used probably a 1/4 of it. I would say a couple of tablespoons. To be honest, I only mixed in half the jar to start with but the flavour didn't seem that strong so I put the rest in. Oh, but it intensified during the cooking process.

The cheesecake recipe is one that I have made a number of times before. It comes from the October 2003 issue of Delicious magazine. It is a low fat version that uses ricotta and low fat cream cheese. I have never had a fail with the recipe. The original recipe says to cook in 3 10 cm springform tins. I do have them but the recipe also says that you can use a 20 cm tin which I do all the time. The low fat is achieved by using ricotta and low fat cream cheese in it. The only problem I have with the recipe is that every time I make it I forget that the recipe for the base has way too much butter in it and I end up with it leaking butter all over the oven. I don't like to mark my delicious magazines but I might have to for this recipe.

Low-fat Cheesecake

150g plain sweet biscuits, crushed (I like to use gingernuts)

40 g butter (original is 70 g)

500 g ricotta

250 g light cream cheese

1/2 c (110 g) caster sugar

2 tsp lemon zest

2 tbsp lemon juice

1 egg (I put the extra yolk in)

1 egg white

Preheat oven to 160 C.

Line base of 20 cm springform tin.

Mix biscuits and butter. Press into tin and refrigerate until needed.

Beat ricotta, cream cheese, sugar, zest, juice and egg until smooth.

Beat egg white to soft peaks and fold into ricotta mix.

Pour over base.

Bake for 40 - 45 minutes.

Refrigerate overnight.

Redcurrant & Balsamic Glazed Ham

Happy new year to all of you that are reading my little blog. I am not sure how much I will be posting. I am still not feeling very inspired to write much about food. I wasn't really that inspired to cook much either until the past week or so. I have gotten back to menu planning and have stuck to it reasonably well so far. 

Since I was away for Christmas I didn't make myself a ham before I went away however once I got home I decided that it would be a good idea to buy a ham and glaze it so that I could get some meals out of it and then slice it up and vacuum pack it in portions for me to have throughout the year. I ended up buying an exceptional ham from my local butcher. I got them to remove the skin and score the fat for me, so that was two less steps for me to do. 

I decided to go with this recipe over on Taste.com.au. However, I didn't have much cranberry sauce left but I did have a jar of redcurrant jelly in the cupboard so I decided to use that as suggested in the notes. I also added some wholegrain mustard into the glaze mixture, probably 1 - 2 tablespoons. I also pour over about a third of the glaze and then basted with more every twenty minutes for an hour. It was lovely and caramelised after that. The ham itself was smoky and salty and the glaze was the perfect contrast to that. I really enjoyed this glaze. I would like to try it with the cranberry sauce as the original recipe intended. 

December 2010 - White Christmas Ice Cream Cones

When I started out this blog at the beginning of the year I certainly didn't realise that I would find myself finishing up the year long trip through the issues of delicious. magazine with the 100th issue but it sure is a wonderful way to end up. The scanner did some delightful things to the holographic "delicious."  on the front cover of this issue too. Like I said in my last post I have thoroughly this journey through my back issues (and current issues) of delicious. I plan to keep using them regularly and posting new recipes from them, although not as strictly as I have this year. 

I can hardly believe that I have a stack of 100 issues of delicious. magazines now. I am glad that I do though. There are so many recipes, 1000's I am sure, to go through and to try out. I have only really scratched the surface here this year. I have had a few failures and a couple of things not to my taste but I think that is to be expected when you are trying new recipes. I have to be honest and say that Valli Little has become my foodie hero over this past year. Her recipes are almost always amazing and there are so many of them. I have to wonder how she comes up with all of them. I would think that a large proportion of the recipes I did this year were from her and I am sure that there will be many, many more to come in the future. 

While I earmarked a number of recipes in this issue there were only 2 that I really, really wanted to make. The first I will write about next month, since this is a double issue after all. The second was the magnificent cover recipe, Valli's White Christmas Ice Cream Cones. They just looked fantastic. The styling of the cover was just so beautiful as well. I figured that since it was the 100th issue I just had to do a cover recipe and it was a bonus that it was one of Valli's recipes too. I wish that I could have styled mine like the ones on the cover but, alas, I did not need 6 of these nor did I want to take out the three that I did make at once so my picture looks rather plain. I will also admit that I didn't really follow Valli's recipe either. Instead of using glace fruit chopped and soaked in sherry I used the last of my homemade fruit mince. For the chocolate, all that I had in the house was dark chocolate chips so I roughly chopped some of those up. I don't own wine flutes but I do have some ice cream soda glasses so I put my filled paper cones into them to refreeze. I really enjoyed this dessert a lot and it looked really good. I am sure that it would be just as good using Valli's original recipe but I wanted to use up some stuff that I had on hand so mine are more fruit mince Christmas cones than white Christmas cones but still very, very nice. 

White Christmas Ice Cream Cones

Makes 8 (I halved the recipe and got 3 with a little bit left over)

Ingredients 

• 125 gr mixed glace fruits
• 1/3 cup sherry
• 125 gr dark chocolate
• 1.25 litres vanilla ice cream, softened
• 2/3 cup slivered almonds, toasted and chopped

Method:

• Finely chop fruits and place in bowl with sherry and let soak overnight.
• To prepare paper moulds, cut eight 30cmx20cm sheets of baking paper. Trim 8 sheets of plain A-4 paper into the same size. Lay baking paper sheet over a sheet of regular paper and bring top right corners into the middle of the paper and then roll to form a cone shape. secure with sticky tape. Repeat with the remaining sheets of paper and place in 8 champagne flutes or slim wine glasses.
• Finely chop or grate chocolate.
• Drain the fruits and discard the liquid. 
• Fold into softened ice cream with the almonds and chocolate.
• Scoop the mixture into the cones, packing down ice cream tightly to get it into the point. 
• Put in freezer overnight to refreeze.
• To serve, remove tape and unwrap the paper. Invert cones onto serving plates.

December 2005 - Roasted Spatchcocks with blood-plum glaze

This month is starting to sneak away from me. Before we know it Christmas will be here and gone and then it will be 2011 and I will be wondering where the previous year went. It really is amazing how quickly the past few months seem to have gone. I will admit that early in the year, in the midst of problems at work, I wondered if the year was ever going to pass by. Thankfully those problems were fixed and time did seem to move much quicker after that. Only one more day of work for the year. At 5:00 pm tomorrow I get to lock the door of the office, put up the closed sign and not go back until the new year. We always close down between Christmas and new year. It is a wonderful thing to do. It is a great time to recuperate from a long year and get ready to start the new one. 

This gorgeous red covered issue with drool worthy Macerated strawberries with Champagne sorbet on the front cover had a wonderful Christmas feast in it. All of the recipes were wonderful looking from the Glazed ham through Spicy prawn cocktails & the alcoholic 24-carat Christmas drink to the wonderful sides of Kumara crumble and baby green vegetables with lemon pepper butter. It was all glorious and the recipe that really hooked me was Valli Little's Roasted Spatchcocks with Blood-plum glaze.  I was surprised recently to find spatchcocks in the meat section of one of the local supermarkets and I knew that I just had to buy some to use. They were kind of expensive but if we want the local supermarkets to stock these things in smallish rural towns then we have to be willing to pay for it (within reason of course). I also noticed recently that my favourite butcher in town in now stocking a range of more unusual meats since they have moved into their new larger premises. The day I was there they had some quail and venison and some other things that I can't quite remember at the moment. 

Valli's recipe, like almost all of hers that I have made, was fantastic. I couldn't get the blood-plum paste so I went with the quince paste, which I already had in the fridge. It was simple and quick to make and so very nice. The meat was so tender and moist but quite rich. The glaze gave it all a lovely sweetness while the hint of lemon just cut through it nicely.  I used prosciutto instead of pancetta as that was what I had on hand. I served it with the asparagus dish from the December 2002 issue sans the bocconcini. It was a lovely combinations and would be just as perfect as a Sunday roast as it would be a Christmas meal. Oh and the recipe indicates one spatchcock each I don't think I even ate half of one, I am not sure how anyone could eat a whole one in one sitting.

December 2003 - Easy Mincemeat Danish

Back to working full time has left me with little time to swan around doing whatever it is that I do. It also means that I have less time to get everything done. Needless to say I have been a little bit slack on posting. I am not sure if I like working full time. So far, I have managed to get up and get going in plenty of time each day so that is a start. Pretty tired in the evenings though and not overly keen on doing too much in the way of cooking unfortunately. 

I had planned on making Barry Vera's Peppered beef salad from this issue, but I couldn't find any nice tapanade that didn't cost the earth. I will have to make a trip out the the winery to get some. They have a variety of different local produce in the cellar door shop including a very nice tapanade. 

Bill Granger's Chicken noodle salad looked really good. Nice fresh ingredients with a lovely Asian-style dressing. Although it does use egg noodle and most noodle salads that I make I use glass noodles. The egg noodles would probably make it a bit more filling than a glass noodle salad. I just didn't feel like making it though. 

Actually what I did make was Valli Little's Easy Mincemeat Danish. One night I just wanted some thing sweet to eat and I have a jar of mincemeat in the fridge that I made. I also had some puff pastry in the freezer that had been in there for ever. The edges were starting to dry out but it was still okay. They were so simple to make and very tasty. Plus with the homemade mincemeat it is just perfect. I highly recommend making your own it tastes amazing and is so easy to do. Although I remember the first time that I did it after I bought my KitchenAid processor and I ended up with a paste as it processed things so much more quickly than my old one and I a just didn't realise it. 

Fruit Mince

2 cups sultanas
2 cups dried fruit mix
1 1/2 cups currants
2 medium granny smith apples, peeled and grated
Finely grated rind of 1 lemon, 

1/4 cup lemon juice
Finely grated rind of 1 orange
1 cup dark brown sugar
1/2 cup good Brandy 
2 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp mixed spice
1 tsp ground nutmeg
1/2 tsp ground cloves

Put sultanas, mixed fruit, currants, apple, rinds and juice into a food processor and process until finely chopped. Transfer to a large mixing bowl. Add sugar, Brandy, cinnamon, mixed spice, nutmeg and cloves and stir until combined.

Spoon fruit mixture into a 5 cup capacity sterilised screw-top jar. Refrigerate for up to 3 months.

January 2002 - Fruit Mince Muffins

As I said in my first post delicious. magazine launched in November 2001 and since I am using each month's previous magazines I will have to start with issue 2 which was for Jan/Feb 2002.

After having a through look through the magazine there seemed to be an extraordinary amount of seafood recipes in it. I am not a huge fan of seafood. I think part of it is because my mother did not like seafood at all and the other part is that since I live in a inland rural area it is difficult to get good fresh seafood that is not outrageously priced. I did manage to find a few recipes that piqued my interest along with one that I had made before but had forgotten about.


Valli Little's Fruit Mince Muffins on page 53 are a great way to use up the last of the fruit mince from Christmas. It is a great recipe that produces a soft, moist muffin which is great for breakfast. I decided to go with this recipe as I made my own fruit mince in October last year but I never got around to making any fruit mince tarts for Christmas so I have a very large jar of it in the fridge to use up. I think I will definitely be making several batches of these muffins.

Fruit Mince Muffins

Ingredients

• 300g plain flour
• 75g brown sugar
• 1 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp bicarbonate soda
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1/4 cup chopped pecans or walnuts
• 250g fruit mince
• 300ml buttermilk
• 75ml milk
• 4 tbs vegetable oil
• 1 egg
• Icing sugar, to dust

Method

1. Preheat oven to 180°C. Grease or line the muffin pans.
2. Sift the flour, sugar, baking powder, bicarbonate soda and 1/2 teaspoon of salt in a bowl. Add the cinnamon, pecans and fruit mince and stir to combine.
3. In a separate jug, mix together the buttermilk, milk, oil and egg. Fold into the dry ingredients until just combined.
4. Fill the greased muffin pans with the mixture and bake in the oven for 20-25 minutes until cooked through. Set aside to cool slightly. Dust with icing sugar before serving.

The recipes says that it makes 6 however they must be huge as I made 19 and they are wonderful. If you find yourself with some leftover fruit mince I would definitely recommend giving them a try.