Blue Coloured White Chocolate Lamingtons: the experiment

Lamingtons are one of those Australian staples that everyone grows up with. At my school, to raise money for our school we would do the regular chocolate drive but we also did lasagne and pasta drives (such a good idea if you ask me) and lamington drives. In fact, at all fetes and things where kids had to bring cakes to sell, you could guarantee there would be lamingtons. They are made with sponge cake that has been left out overnight so they go a bit hard and don't fall apart when you're trying to dip them in chocolate icing (which can be made with coco powder or cooking chocolate and some icing sugar) and then have coconut sprinkled on them, some people also put a layer of jam and cream in the middle.

This is what a lamington traditionally looks like. It can be plain sponge inside or have a layer of jam and cream in the middle.
http://www.theage.com.au/national/damage-by-lamington-that-takes-the-cake-cake-20081210-6vw9.html

I have to admit though, I'd never actually made one. To my recollection, my mother had only made a cake TWICE in my life and it was the same butter cake recipe both times. It was a nice cake though, I'll give her that. I went baking crazy in the last few years and would spend hours procrastinating from my studies by looking for amazing cakes and things that I just had to try my hand at and I came across a cake store in Sydney that sold these beautiful pastel coloured lamingtons and just knew I had to have a go.  "How hard can it be?" I thought to myself, everyone makes lamingtons and these are just made with white chocolate instead of cocoa powder/cooking chocolate so that you can colour them.

These are the lamingtons I found on the store's website. I've completely forgotten which store it is but once I remember or if someone knows, I'll provide a link. They have some beautiful things including some spherical cupcakes that I also want to try to make.

Now that I've tried it, I have to admit that I was fairly defeated by the end. It can be hard to convince the cake not to fall to pieces when you're dipping it in the icing and I also discovered that you can't put it on a coolingrack to let the icing drip dry because the surface of the cooling rack leaves an impression on the bottom of the lamington. I also completely bombed at making a sponge cake, it came out flatter than my mood was by the time I finished making the lamingtons. Fortunately, I used a pre made sponge cake for my lamingtons and made the failed sponge cake for a supposed next batch. I think perhaps the fact that I used pure icing sugar instead of the regular stuff you buy in the supermarket which is actually a mixture of things (pure icing sugar sets much faster) migt have played a big role in the cake destruction.

 

Overall I'm happy with my first attempt and will definitely try it again. I like how the store that sells them (in the photo I posted earlier)  used big flakes of coconut, I think it looks really pretty that way because it contrasts really nicely with the dyed white chocolate.

Lenore wasn't quite sure of what to make of my neon blue, white chocolate icing mixture.

 I think next time I'll try making them really small to see if they resist falling off the fork while I'm dipping them in the chocolate mixture.

And Mica was so overwhelmed by the craziness of it all that she ended up head-butting Lenore just to prove a point. What that point is, I'm yet to understand.

Lulu Lenore Encounters a Technical Difficulty

I managed to leave both my computers bereft of life in one day around three weeks ago and have only now gotten one of them back in the clutches of existence. Unfortunately all my photos are on my other computer and this computer is so old that it doesn't have a memory card reader for my camera nor do I have one that I could plug in. So photos and new recipes will have to wait.

So I'll entertain you with some photos my friend emailed me that she took while I was cooking when she came to visit and Lenore showed all intentions of helping me out.

Foodie Blogroll Royal Foodie Joust - Sweet Potato, Garlic and Lemon

Fresh basil and chives taste nice but also leave the kitchen and my hands smelling nice when cutting them up

I joined a website recently (Foodie Blogroll), partly to promote my blog, partly to meet other foodies and while looking in the forums I discovered they hold a little competition each month where you are given 3 ingredients and have a month to come up with something. This time, we were given September AND October instead of just September to get it done and the ingredients were garlic, sweet potato and citrus, I chose lemon. This is a good thing for people like me.

Being Spring here in Australia I thought I'd do something creative and a little "out there" and make a sweet potato ice cream/sorbet (depending on which one went better with the biscuit) with a wafer type of biscuit thing flavoured lightly with garlic (and maybe lemon juice). Everyone who heard my idea screwed up their face and poo poo'd my garlic biscuit idea. "You can't have a GARLIC biscuit with ICE CREAM!" they yelled at me.

Hmph.

WELL. Fortunately for them, perhaps, my ice cream machine was being held hostage at the house of a friend and I ran out of time to make experimental biscuit prototypes and things.

What on earth was I to do? I'm highly partial to these potato pies the bakery near my train station sells and I always think how I should try to make them. This is where my mind went last night. The pies I made are nothing like the ones from the bakery but who cares, THEY'RE MARVELLOUS AND I LOVE THEM. I WILL CALL THEM FRANK AND KEEP THEM FOREVER.

Maybe.

This was also my first attempt at piping. I envisioned beautiful piping and swirls of orange and white, sweet potato and regular potato in an entwining potato mash. I can tell you with all certainty that that is not how it looked. So I gave in and just lumped lots of mixed mash together and shaped it with a fork. I also used an instant mash potato which I'm sure some will gasp at. I don't drive and have to carry all my shopping home and was not interested in carrying a couple of kilos of potatoes home. No thanks. It also meant that I could use a mashed potato that already had onion in it.

Getting fancy can wait for another day I think.

It also gave me a chance to use some herbs from my new garden so that made me happy too.


Potato Pies with Sweet Potato and White Potato Mash.

500g beef mince

2 table spoons tomato paste 

Gravy (I made some in a jug without measuring, but enough to cover the mince in a frying pan)

Herbs (I just took stuff from my garden; basil, parsley, chives), minced

Garlic, 5 cloves, minced

Juice from 1/4 - 1/2 lemon
1 sweet potato, cooked (steamed, baked etc)
1 kg of potatoes or a packet of instant potato mash
3 sheets of filo/puff pastry
Salt/pepper to taste


1. Brown the garlic in a pan on medium-low heat. I didn't have any but you could also add onion and mushrooms. Once the garlic has begun browning, add the mince.

2. Once the mince is brown add the tomato paste, you can add more if you like, as with the other ingredients. Just go with those measurements to begin with and taste and see if you think it needs a bit more or some other ingredient I didn't come up with. Add the chopped herbs, salt and pepper and lemon juice. Heat will evaporate some lemon juice so you can always add it at the very end if you prefer a stronger taste.

3. Once well coated, add the gravy and leave to simmer and thicken but make sure to stir frequently and to especially stir the bottom. The last thing you want is bits sticking to pan or burning.

4. Boil potatoes and make mashed potato, or make it with instant mash potato. Cook the sweet potato however you like. I guess it would change the depth of flavour. I steamed mine because it's easier for me and pretty damn hard to burn. Put some milk and butter and salt in both lots of mash for a creamier consistency. Combine both types of mash in a bowl and mix lightly, enough to have a swirled consistency but not lose the white mash.

5. Cut circles of pastry with round cookie cutters and place in muffin tray, or just make squares and have sticky outy bits if you're not too fussed about neat, round edges. Fill with mince and top with mash mixture and place in an oven at 175 C/345 F and just keep an eye on them. They should take between 10-20 minutes. They should look cooked but not burnt. Burnt is bad.

6. Take out of the oven and let cool for 5 minutes before removing from the tray. I discovered that taking them out too early leads to the pastry being soft and mushy and losing its round shape and potentially leaking all over your hands and burning you. ALSO bad.

Mixed with the tomato paste and herbs, it's a gorgeous sight and smell

Make sure that there's enough gravy to cover all the meat and simmer away. If you didn't make enough just add more boiling water

I tend to use my cats as judges of my food. If they sneak a bite while I'm trying to take a photo, then it's a winner.

The pies with their original attempt at piping. They look like ugly, orange, brain pies and really don't have enough mash on there, not even an inch deep. Plus it made it impossible to show that there was 2 types of mash residing there.

I made a last ditch attempt on just 3 and gave up on the pretty piping idea and went berserk with a fork. Much prettier now. 

I decided to experiment with the remaining bits of pastry and cut them in to strips and blobbed the mash and mince, folded the pastry over and pinched it shut with a fork and baked at the same temperature as the pies for 10 minutes. These turned out very nice. As the mash was sealed inside the pastry it stayed soft. I would definitely make them again.

I kept have to fending the pastry and mash of all things from the cats. They appear to have forgotten that they are cats and supposed to go for the meat. I won't tell them if you don't.

Crave Sydney International Food Festival - Night Noodle Markets

A pivotal part of the Crave Sydney International Food Festival for 2010, the markets are packed to the brim with people, smells, sounds and stalls upon stalls of food that begs to be eaten. My dad was in Sydney for just a few days so I made sure to drag him out. Reader beware, this is seriously picture heavy.

I think this is what sums up why I love living here. People often complain about how packed Sydney is and how fast and bustling and often intentionally isolating we are, that we are rude and don't have time to stop and say hi to people walking past but I think that's just rubbish. I have never been somewhere that has such a wide range of nationalities all living together, no other place that offers so many cuisines.

On top of that, Sydney is known for it's sunny months and the mad onslaught of festivals. It's currently spring and no one seems to have sent the memo to the weather because it's still raining. The newspaper tells me we're facing a wet season thanks to El Niño/La Niña that will likely last all spring and summer. Do you believe for a moment though that it stopped Sydney siders from coming out to Hyde Park for their chance to eat under a giant Morton Bay Fig tree or on eroding patches of grass? Of course not!


Dad and I settled on the stall with the shortest line which I'm glad we did; impatience aside I really enjoyed the food. We had a mixed box of salt/pepper squid with chilli sauce, bbq pork, fried rice with whole prawns (peeled and de poop veined) and satay chicken. Very nice food, very filling. 


Now for the photos!!

Hand sanitiser in spray form. Paper napkins are now a thing of the distant, sticky past.

My dad snuck up behind me while I was taking photos of the lanterns in the trees and surprised me with the most amazing, teeny tiny, maple syrup smelling pancakes. So horribly good and over far too soon.

I harass my dad continuously to send me the photos he took. When I get them, I will share them, I promise.

The Rocks - Aroma Festival July 25 2010

Yes yes, I know. I'm posting these so very very late. I got so overwhelmed by the rain and the massive hordes of people at the Aroma Festival that I completely forgot to take any photos of coffee, which is what the festival is all about and only managed to get some photos of some Chinese street performers. Oh well. Maybe next year.

THE DRAGON KEEPER 

BOO!

WHY HELLO THERE

DRAGON LEAP!

This is what happens when I can't sleep...

I don't mean I become a gender-bending lion. I just procrastinate. LOTS. Things could have been done; I could have painted my flat some more, I could have shampooed the carpets a bit more, I could have cleaned the kitchen or finished reading those books for my assignment that I haven't started on, or worked on the OTHER assignments. I could have done many, many things.

Instead, I chose to spend longer than I care to admit, turning myself in to a lion.

Cha-spiced tea biscuits

If there's something I like, it's cinnamon and vanilla. I put cinnamon in all my cooking; some cultures even consider it an aphrodisiac or spice connected to love and passion. The smell of vanilla makes me week at the knees, there's just something in the aroma that captivates my imagination and sends me daydreaming about romantic rendezvous which inevitably end in silver platters piled high with caramel-vanilla fudge in a room lit by candles.

I'm a big chai fan in general. My understanding is that the word chai actually means tea, so I always get a little giggle when I hear people say chai tea as they are essentially saying 'tea tea'. I'm a bit of a nerd like that, I guess.

This recipe is a constant hit and miss with me for some reason. Sometimes it's perfect, other times it comes out too dry or too wet. It doesn't specify whether the vanilla extract is supposed to be real vanilla extract or imitation so that would change the how wet/dry and strong in flavour they come out. Also, since I haven't yet attempted to learn how to do piping I did all the icing with paint brushes, which doesn't take that long when you're used to painting as a way to deal with insomnia.

I found this recipe on a site near the beginning of the year when I was on a high tea recipe manhunt and I printed off the recipe without writing down the website and google isn't finding the recipe for me so I can't give credit unfortunately.

The recipe suggests rolling the dough in to balls and in theory they would flatten out as they bake but the one time I tried to make them as balls they stayed in ball form and were like giant dry lumps of clay. Rolling them out and hacking at the dough with cookie cutters gave me better results and the icing also helped with the dryness factor.

Just as a note, this was an American recipe, what Americans call all purpose flour is plain flour in Australia, granulated sugar is white sugar and powdered sugar is icing sugar. I'll write the instructions out with the American terms and temperatures converted for Australian (metric) measurements/terms. Also, it says to roll the cookies in the sugar AFTER baking but you could roll them in sugar before hand and let them become crunchy and a bit caramelised like in my ginger snap cookie recipe.

1/2 C unsalted butter at room temperature
1/4 C white/granulated sugar
2 tea spoons vanilla extract
1/2 tea spoon ground cinnamon
1/2 tea spoon ground ginger
1/2 tea spoon ground cloves
3/4 tea spoon ground cardamom
1/4 tea spoon salt
1 C plain/all purpose flour
1/2 - 3/4 C icing/ powdered sugar


1. Preheat oven to 175 C/ 347 F
2. Beat butter with white sugar in a medium bowl. Stir in vanilla.
3. In a separate bowl, combine spices, flour and sat with a whisk until well mixed. Add flour mixture to butter mixture and stir until combined.
4. Scoop tea spoons of dough and roll in to small balls. Place on a baking sheet (baking paper/parchment/wax paper), spacing them about 2 inches apart.
5. Bake until lightly golden, about 15 minutes. Cool on the sheet for 5 minutes.
6. Place icing sugar in a plate and roll warm cookies through the sugar. Leave to cool on a wire rack.