Not your average box mix brownies

Lately, it feels like life is spinning, rushing past, so, so quickly, and I barely have time to say “woa!”.

Times like this, I like to bake and cook, take time out, slow down, and feel (slightly more) grounded. Baking and cooking helps me to remember that I don’t have to do everything at work before we head off on holiday. Other people will step in and help out, because they are good colleagues, smart people and good friends, and we’ve always helped each other out.

But, when baking starts at 9 or 10pm at night, I’ve been at a loss about what to bake. Nothing that takes too long (baking past midnight is fun but slightly surreal), or requires the Bosch kitchen mixer (our neighbours will start to give me odd looks). And I don’t want to beat eggwhite by hand and develop hausfrau muscles in my right arm only (that would be funny, but surreal and possibly impractical clothes-wise).

Last night, I found the answer. Box mix brownies – with home made box mix.

I was thinking about house warming presents for some friends we’ve known forever. They have never wanted very much, and have always been happy with what they have. Instead of giving them the usual wine glasses or home furnishings, we wanted to give them something that won’t end up cluttering their modestly minimalist life.

And last night, it came back to me: box mix brownies. I give them the mix of dry ingredients and add-ins, and all they need to do is add butter and eggs. Home made brownies within 30-40 minutes, including baking time.

I used an Alice Medrich cocoa brownies recipe to make up a box mix. I first saw this recipe on Smitten Kitchen, where Deb explained how she was converted to the idea of a good cocoa brownie, where cocoa is intentionally used in preference to blocks of dark, shiny chocolate. I was intrigued, and this idea lingered in the back of my mind like one of those cat pictures that never quite stop doing the rounds of office emails.

“Ultimate” banana bread?

‘Ultimate’ is a fraught word. When someone claims something is the ‘ultimate’, I can just see the pitfalls open up and a line of other ‘ultimate’ versions ready to fight for the title. For something as simple as banana bread, the word ‘ultimate’ becomes even more complicated.

Everyone has an opinion on what makes a banana bread the ‘ultimate’ of its kind. Research on the internet reveals a panoply of secret techniques / ingredients / you name it. All for what is basically a cake made with mushy bananas.

Some say the secret is really ripe bananas (but, there are even disagreements about the right degree of ripe: whether we are talking a few black spots, or black all over and squidgy and, you know, the word ‘rotten’ starts to come to mind). Some say it’s how the bananas are mashed / pureed / chopped. Still others say the secret lies in the other things in the batter – type of flour or sugar, baking soda versus baking powder, vanilla / cinnamon / nuts / chocolate, even yoghurt / butter / oil / sour cream.

There are ‘quick’ recipes, ‘quick’ and ‘ultimate’ recipes, ‘best’ recipes, ‘quick’ and ‘best’. Recipes with icing, recipes without icing, recipes with cinnamon sprinkled on top, and recipes made with coconut oil. I half expected to find a recipe for raw banana bread (now I’m curious, is there such a thing as raw banana bread?)

Finally, some swear that the secret is for mum, or grandma, or that special friend who runs that bakery, to make the perfectly imperfect banana bread that brings back childhood memories.

Phew! Are we overwhelmed yet?

Deconstructed rosewater savarin, black star pastry style

 

Usually, I don’t blog about the cafes and patisseries that we visit. In part because there are so many food bloggers in Sydney who discover and review each new place, often months before I make my fashionably late way there.

But Black Stars Pastry’s strawberry watermelon cake is really something special.

The cake has almost a cult following among BSP fans. It’s made of two pieces of almond dacquoise, layered with rose scented cream, rose scented watermelon slices, and topped with an artful jumble of red grapes, strawberries, dried rose petals, and bright green flashes of pistachio slivers.

For me, it’s the taste of Sydney summer in every mouthful.

I served a variation of this cake for a dinner party, where the seven courses alternated between the colours red and white. Dessert was the watermelon cake turned into a trifle, with an extra sprinkling of pomegranate seeds. It was one of the hottest, most humid days in living memory. As guests began to eat the trifle, conversation around the table came to a standstill. There was only the sound of dessert forks clinking against dewy, chilled wineglasses that doubled as trifle bowls.

And tonight, the same flavour combination – rosewater, cream, watermelon and strawberries – worked their magic on savarins, for a weeknight dinner party.

 

Pierre, there’s butter in my brioche

I had to laugh when I saw Pierre Hermé’s brioche recipe described as “richer than Bill Gates!” The archetypal French viennoiserie, compared to an all-American capitaliste?

Then, a few days ago, I read that Bill Gates is once again the richest man in the world, taking back the title from Mexico’s Carlos Slim. Such is the world of impossible riches (72 billions, really??), shady dealings and fickle finance.

If I were Bill Gates, I’d be celebrating with a bottle of the best champagne, and a few slices of baguette liberally smeared with smelly French cheese and garnished with truffles. Whole truffles. Make that the biggest truffles, just like Alice B Toklas wrote. Then, I’d spend time learning to make the perfect brioche.

I guess that’s why I will never be rich like Bill Gates or Carlos Slim. They love making money and owning Microsoft / America Movi. I like baking, and reading books for hours on end. And learning to make brioche.

This “richer than Bill Gates” recipe is the closest I’ll get to feeling like a multi-billionaire. There is a whopping amount of butter, as much butter as there is of flour. “Enriched” doesn’t begin to describe what happens to the dough, ‘supersized by butter’ is closer to the mark.

Yet, such is the miracle of brioche, what came out of the oven wasn’t stodgy, or greasy, or heavy. Although the bread was richer than any bread I’ve ever had, although we knew we were eating butter by the spoonful, the bread was light, with an open, tender crumb, almost fluffy. There was a flaky crust that shattered – but oh so delicately – when we bite into it. Then there’s the ‘chiffon cake-like crumb’, as TX Farmer from the Fresh Loaf describes.

Lazy sophistication in a goats curd, fig and walnut tart

Sometimes, a recipe says to me, ‘Make me, now, don’t wait.’

And I don’t wait. (Really, who would dare say no to a talking recipe?)

I had one of those moments when I saw a goats cheese, walnut, dried figs single crust pie on Johnny’s blog, Feed the Piglet. I recently discovered his blog, and it had me at hello. Those recipes for home made stock, beautifully laid tables complete with tall-stemmed glassware. As someone who often grabs a hasty lunch in the CBD, those tall-stemmed glassware, architectural potato stacks and parsley soup speak of holidays, weekends and fabulous feasts.

When I saw the recipe, I sat there looking at the computer screen for a good few minutes, trying to imagine the mingling of sweet and savoury, soft and crumbly. There was a roux made with home made stock, goats cheese, walnuts, dried figs and plumped-up prunes, all in a made-from-scratch shortcrust pastry case. It was intrigue at first sight.

So I went ahead and made the pie, or a lazy person’s version of. There was goats curd instead of goats cheese, no roux (the stock had run away with the risotto earlier in the week), and puff pastry instead of home made shortcrust. Then, the finished product looked more like frivolous tarts than sturdy serious pies, probably because I made them in mini pie dishes, and the puff pastry was a bit frou frou. 

Nonetheless, the finished tarts were things of beauty, despite my shortcuts and the slapdash rustic presentation (it was the best kind of Sydney winter’s morning, with such an achingly blue, cloudless sky, I couldn’t stay indoors for too long). The sweet, soft figs were set off by the tangy goats curd and the savoury walnuts. I added some roasted apples to the filling mix, and they provided a softer, tart-sweetness that melted into the goats curd filling.

The word that came to mind was sophisticated. There was nothing superficial about the flavours, they pulled you in and demanded that you think about and savour every bite.

And if my slapdash version was good, just think what Johnny’s original would be like.

Eurovision! brioche pockets, blinged-up cookies

Can you believe it’s 30 years of Eurovision song contest?

Eurovision has a surprisingly large fan base in Australia, probably since we fell in love with ABBA way back when. These days, our multicultural broadcaster SBS despatches two commentators to the host city, dedicated to living, breathing, and relaying every sparkle, tassel, costume reveal, key change (intentional or otherwise) and pyrotechnics from the extravaganza. It’s almost like Tour de France season. We even got a mention from the presenter Petra Mede this year, *squeal*.

Some fans in Australia are pretty seriously committed. A previous Australian commentator got in trouble with some fans when he made fun of the show. (Really? They don’t find it mesmerising-funny that Cesar from Romania was channeling Dracula, and then broke out in a magnificent falsetto?)

On Sunday night, when Eurovision was broadcast on Australian TV, we were at an Eurovision party dressed up to the crazy nines. I was dressed as one of the Russian grandmothers or babushkas from last year. Anyone remember them? They brought out trays of cookies from an oven while singing on stage! My costume of course included a tray of freshly baked cookies – food as costume, wowza.

It’s not a proper Eurovision party without a smorgasbord of dishes from the contestant countries. Someone brought Portuguese chicken, which was technically not permitted because Portugal didn’t enter this year’s contest, but we ate the chicken anyway. I had two food entries: savoury brioche pockets, which was this week’s Tuesdays with Dorie (TWD) assignment, and blinged up chocolate chip peanut butter cookies, which was part of my babushka costume.

We love our bread and butter (and apple and pudding)

Sydney has suddenly remembered winter is coming, and we had better start to prepare for it. For the past week, the mornings have had a decidedly wintry vibe. My light weight coats look more inviting in the evenings. Even in our temperate winters, there is something bracing about walking into a gust of cold wind, knowing that you are well wrapped up and no cold air can sneak under your collar or around your fingers.

Summer (and summer picnics), it’s been nice, see you on the other side.

On a brighter note, autumn and winter can be a good time to visit towns and attractions on the northern or southern coastline that are often overrun by weekenders and tourists in summer. We did exactly that this weekend, meandering through 2-3 cities and towns, and ending up at the start of the southern escarpment of the Great Dividing Range overlooking a valley that is still green from summer. Our accommodation – just outside the nearest town – was low-key yet unexpectedly good. The highlight for me was finding a rickety old set of home-made swings in a corner of the garden, and swinging on it until I got the neighbours’ labradors’ attention. I think they wanted a go too.

Earlier in the week, I made a poshed-up version of bread and butter pudding that seemed an apt way to ease us into the rusticating weekend. It also used up the mountain of brioche I had made a few days ago (brioche-specific post(s) coming up). Both Mr Gander and I have had some pretty uninspiring examples of this pudding in the past. Sometimes, the bread just tastes like stale bread, or the custard is too thin, too sweet, or there just isn’t enough excitement to make me forget that I’m eating soggy bread. This recipe was a little different, and I felt more confident it would succeed in winning us over to bread and butter style puddings.

And succeed it did. (as Yoda might say)

Brioche is very thinly sliced (frozen brioche was easy to slice thinly), and placed in a cake or loaf pan in alternating layers with thin slices of brandy-scented apples. A vanilla custard-like mixture is poured over, left to soak up for an hour, and baked.