Mixed Berry and White Chocolate Friands

As a general rule I am more of a savoury snack type person. I love pretzels and salty little morsels. Sit me down with some cheese and crackers, or some chips, and I will be one happy little Corinne. There are times however when you just want something sweet. And there are a few sweet things I will never say no to. Last week I told you my all time favourite dessert was cheesecake. This is so true I could eat cheesecake any time of the day or night. This week I am going to share my favourite afternoon tea sweet. Berry and white chocolate friands.

Coffee dates with friends, while super trendy and lots of fun, can be a little boring for me when it comes to ordering. I don't often drink hot drinks and when I do order one I usually only drink two thirds of the mug before I lose interest. This means that at catch ups I am often the one sitting there with a glass of water or soft drink while everyone sips away at their hot beverages. Because of this I always try and ensure that we are headed somewhere that serves something tasty to eat. I love looking at all the delicious, pretty little sweets in the glass fronted cases. I do not, however, enjoy making a decision on which sweet to buy. Decision making and I are not exactly buddies, in fact I hate it! Friands are the exception to this rule. If I spot friands in that glass fronted cabinet all bets are off, the decision is made and I am guaranteed to not have ordering remorse.

That's a thing right? I'm not the only one who suffers from buyers remorse at restaurants am I? You know, when you um and ah over the menu, eventually making a last minute decision when pressed by the waitstaff and regret your decision as soon as it arrives. I am notorious for it.

Anyway friands never give me ordering remorse. They have also become one of the most requested sweets for me to bake by my family. So I thought it was time to share one of my most popular recipes with you.

This week's hints/tips:
* I used mixed berries today, I usually use just raspberries but thought I would mix it up this time. I was also out of raspberries, haha. So basically you can top them with whatever you think will work.
* I usually bake my friands in muffin cases. This is for a few reasons: it makes cleanup easier; I am too lazy to grease my pans; I don't own a proper friand pan.
* Save your left over egg yolks. They can be used to make pudding or lemon curd or custard. Store in an airtight container, covering the yolks in water, for up to two days in the fridge.

Enjoy!

Mixed Berry and White Chocolate Friands



Makes: 12
Prep time: 10 minutes
Baking time: 30 minutes

Ingredients
6 egg whites
185g butter, melted
1 cup almond meal
1 1/2 cups icing sugar, sifted
1/2 cup plain flour
100g white chocolate chips
100g (roughly) frozen berries

Method
Preheat oven to 180°C. Line or grease 12 pan muffin tray or friand tray.
Place egg whites in a bowl and whisk lightly with a fork to combine.
Add butter, almond meal, sifted icing sugar, and flour. Stir to combine.
Add chocolate chips and stir through.
Divide batter evenly between pans.
Bake friands for 10 minutes, then top with berries. Bake for a further 15 - 20 minutes, until golden.
Cool on wire rack (right side up).
Drizzle with melted white chocolate or dust with icing sugar before serving.

Nan's Pavlova Roll with Mixed Berries and Pistachio

Ahhhh what is that saying about life and the best laid plans? Let's just say that despite my meal planning, shopping and excitement about my list of new recipes to try, I am yet to try one. Thanks to Aunty duties (which I love), gastro, a busy weekend and now a lovely (note the sarcasm) cold. I did manage to sneak in a dessert to use up some leftover egg whites though.

 One of my Dad's favourite desserts is pavlova. I recently made my first ever pavlova and was quite surprised by my success. I wanted to try something slightly different this time though and my Nan makes a fantastic variation with her pavlova roll. Thanks to my 'best laid plans' I had a variety of berries in the fridge begging to be eaten, so all I needed was some cream and I decided to spice it up with some pistachios. This is a super easy recipe, which takes very little time to prepare, only 15 minutes to cook and then a little while to cool, roll and decorate. And it is delicious!

My couple of tips or words of warning. I overwhipped my meringue, there was about 20 seconds between not whipped enough and over, I was doing it in Doris my thermoblend though which I haven't mastered yet. Luckily it still worked well, but just be careful. Also while you need to roll the pavlova while it is still slightly warm make sure you give it some time to cool or you will melt the cream. After rolling I placed it in the fridge for about 15 minutes before I decorated the outside. Finally the sky is the limit with your filling and topping. I used berries because that is what I had and I love berries but anything that you would top a traditional pavlova would work. My family love peppermint crisp with pavlova and I think that would be awesome with this variation!

Well, with out further ado unto the recipe! Enjoy! And please let me know if you try it out.

Nan's Pavlova Roll with Mixed Berries and Pistachio

Ingredients
6 egg whites
1 1/2 cups caster sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla bean paste
1 teaspoon white vinegar
2 cups fresh mixed berries
A handful of crushed pistachio nuts
500ml whipped cream

Method
Line a tray with gease proof paper.
Preheat oven to 170°C.
Beat egg whites until firm peaks form.
Add sugar, one tablespoon at a time, beating until dissolved.
Blend in vinegar and vanilla.
Spread meringue evenly into pan.
Cook in oven for 12-15 minutes.

Assembly

While pavlova is in the oven, whip the cream, chop up the berries and crush the pistachio nuts.
Remove pavlova from oven and allow to cool for 5 minutes.
Once slightly cooled spread 1/3 of the cream onto pavlova. Place 1/2 the berries down the centre of the pavlova (length ways).
Roll the pavlova, so that the berries run down the centre of the roll.
Place pavlova roll on plate and refrigerate for 15 - 30 minutes.
Once completely cool cover the pavlova roll with remaining cream and top with remaining berries and the pistachio.

Upside Down Mango and Coconut Cake

Sorry for the late post this week folks. While I aim to cook my feast on a Friday or Saturday night so that I can have the post up to break up the Monday morning monotony for you, life of course can spoil the best laid plans.

Upside down mango and coconut cake.

For the last six weeks I have had the please of having my Nan visiting and staying with us. She lives 1000km away so when she visits (generally for 4 - 6 weeks twice a year) other things can get put on hold while I enjoy some time with her. I started this challenge while she was here and she has been awfully encouraging, as she is with everything her grandchildren strive to do. But as I said this week life got in the way of a perfectly timed blog post (haha).

Success on the Pandora front
with a new little doggy charm
for my birthday present to myself.

February is a month of birthdays in my family. I particularly like to refer to the first week of February as birthday week. My birthday (26 this year for those playing at home) falls on the 2nd, I'm closely followed by my cousin (the big 21 this year!!) on the 3rd and then Nan (it's impolite to ask a lady over the age of 21 how old she is so I won't tell you, but I will say we are getting ready to celebrate a milestone birthday next year!) on the 4th. Nan and I don't get to celebrate our birthdays together very often, so when we do it still feels like a big treat to me! 

I am trying to encourage myself to do this
properly by setting up a study space

As I said this year held a milestone birthday with my cousin's 21st. Well this meant a trip to Sydney on Friday night (roughly a 5 hour trip) to get Nan almost halfway home and celebrate the birthday. I love visiting the family in Sydney, sadly we don't see each other nearly enough and it always seems to be short visits. But it was a great weekend none the less, with a family lunch on Saturday for the birthday boy, a spot of shopping in the afternoon (I was desperate to hit a Pandora store as we only have a small selection locally), a BBQ Saturday night and then the drive home on Sunday. Which left little time for cooking and blogging, as you can imagine.

Just to add something else into the works, I started studying today. After a year of casual work and career apathy I decided to try something new. I'm feeling enthused to be studying again, it is something I really enjoy. I do however love a good study break! Which is where this weeks Feast comes in.

We have a mango tree in our yard, which this year has produced the biggest crop we have had since moving here. Unfortunately we hadn't had the chance to eat them and noticed today that they were nearing the end of their fresh life span. Enter the Upside Down Mango Coconut Cakes from SBS Food . I love the idea of upside down cakes but have never actually cooked one. This was a great recipe to use up our aging mangoes and a few other pantry staples.

I have to admit that I am not a pro mango slicer, in fact I'm pretty terrible but I managed to extract a decent amount of fruit with no injury to myself. I made a few substitutions to save myself a trip to the supermarket and use up some left overs. I had run out of self-raising flour last week half way through a mammoth cupcake baking endeavor and have so far forgotten to replace it so I used white plain flour and wholemeal self raising flour. I don't think this made a great deal of difference. I also used coconut cream instead of milk, as I had some sitting in the fridge. I counter balance this I added a few tablespoons of normal milk to add a bit more moisture. 

The cake did take longer to cook than stated in the recipe. When I tested the cake, at the 35 minute mark, the skewer came out clean however I felt that it did not look quite right and still had a wobble to it. I put it back in for another 10 minutes and am so glad I trusted my instincts. It came out golden, moist and delicious. I am sure it would have been gooey without that extra time. 

I was terrified to turn it out. What if I dropped it? What if it didn't work? What if it tasted horrible? What if? What if? What if?! But it came out beautifully! Served with a scoop of icecream it was scrumptious. I think this recipe may have given me a love of upside down cakes, so watch out for some more of those during the year!  

In case you missed the link you can find it HERE. If you try it out please let me know what you think.

Well thanks for stopping by and I'll see you again next Monday (hopefully!).

Spiral Vegetable Tart and Fruity Port Steaks

Well this week was the first week of the challenge. All week I had friends and family asking me when I was cooking, what I was cooking, when was I going to post about it. Being the first week I wanted to take my time and choose a recipe that I really, really, really wanted. I landed upon a recipe I had seen several months ago on Facebook for a spiral vegetable tart. I watched the video several times when I first came across it and have been dying to try is ever since. So I started trawling back through my posts trying to find the video I had shared. But unsurprisingly, if you know Facebook, it seemed to have been eaten and was never to be seen again. Luckily a quick Google search led me to the Food Republic website. I mean really it just looks amazing!

Now that I had decided on the tart, I had to choose a meat to accompany it. I decided to use meat that we had already purchased, so I set out to find a pork steak recipe to complement the rest of the meal. I settled on this fruity pork steak recipe from the BBC Good Food website. It sounded simple, but delicious.

I first ran into problems when I was shopping for ingredients for the tart. This was mainly my fault for trying to cook an Autumn or Winter dish on Summer! But I pushed ahead. I wasn't able to find the appropriate squash or carrots, instead I used regular carrots and added sweet potato in place of the squash.

I decided to speed up the process by using a mandolin slicer to slice the veges instead of a peeler. I have to say that this made the job of slicing all those veggies way less daunting.

I was worried about the coordination I would need to wrap the veggies into a neat spiral. But I found it far easier than I anticipated and was very happy with the results. Doesn't it look gorgeous! And it hadn't even been cooked yet!

Once the tart was in the oven (and yes I will admit that I checked every 5 minutes until it was ready!), it was time to start on the pork steaks. I liked the minimal amount of prep this recipe required. I took the time to slice the onion and apple before starting, so that once I started cooking everything moved smoothly.

From the moment the steak hit the pan the house smelt amazing. The smell of the Chinese five spice and pork was just mouth watering. I appreciated that it was a simple matter of adding each new ingredient at the right time. When it came to the glaze I had been unable to find red currant jelly, so I substituted raspberry jam. I think I was actually drooling from the smells by now.

Now all that was left was to pull the tart out of the oven and see how well it had cooked. It was stunning! My only criticism is how difficult the tart was to cut. I was worried that I was going to ruin the aesthetics when I was serving it. It was also very difficult to cut when eating. I do wonder if cooked for slightly longer, in a slightly cooler oven would have made the vegetables softer and easier to cut without over cooking the pastry. Or possibly blanching the vegetables before putting the tart together. The flavour however was divine! It was a huge hit and I will definitely be cooking it again.   

The pork was also a huge hit. The glaze was a bit runny, more like a sauce but the flavour was delicious! There were many 'Mmmmmmm's issuing from the family when they tasted it, and the plates were all scraped clean, as was the saucepan.

Overall I would call this week's feast a success! Both recipes will be added into my regular rotation and I would highly recommend them. 

In case you missed the links before you can find the vegetable tart recipe HERE, and the fruity pork steak recipe HERE.

Well that's it for this week, a GIANT thank you to everyone who has stopped by and please leave a comment. See you again next week!