The ultimate comfort food

Baked custard might be an old-fashioned dessert but it is a dish that deserves to be made more often. It is the ultimate comfort food: its silky-smooth texture makes it deceptively easy to eat half of the dish before you realise how much you've eaten, but it also has an easy elegance to it that is more than the sum of its simple parts of cream, milk, eggs and sugar.

Thankfully, Donna Hay has resurrected this lovely dessert in the latest issue of her magazine. There's a step-by-step guide to making basic baked custard, plus twists to the base recipe using spices, chocolate, rice and brioche for a modern take.

I had forgotten how much I loved this dessert until I made it recently. Surprisingly, my toddler was not overly enthused by the custard, but Adam and I quickly polished off the dish before we realised how quickly we'd eaten it! Not to worry - this is a dish that doesn't keep and tastes best warm from the oven. Its comforting texture will enfold you like a cosy doona and it is a dessert to enjoy on cold nights.


Baked custard
From Donna Hay Magazine, issue 50

500ml single (pouring) cream
250ml milk
1 vanilla bean, split and seeds scraped, or 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 eggs and 3 egg yolks, extra
110g caster (superfine) sugar

Preheat oven to 150 degrees Celsius (300 degrees Fahrenheit). Place the cream, milk, vanilla bean and seeds in a saucepan over high heat until the mixture just comes to the boil. Remove from heat and set aside.

Place the eggs, extra yolks and sugar in a bowl and whisk until well combined. Gradually add the hot cream mixture to the egg mixture, whisking well to combine.

Strain custard into a 1.5 litre capacity (6 cups) ovenproof dish.

Place dish in a water bath* and bake for 1 hour 25 minutes or until just set.

Remove from the water bath and allow to stand for 15 minutes before serving. Serves 4-6.


* To make a water bath, place the custard dish into a deep-sided baking dish and pour in enough boiling water to come halfway up the sides of the custard dish.

Coffee break: 65 Degrees

The north-eastern end of Exhibition St is an unlikely home for a world champion barista. It's a quiet area, away from the main CBD shopping strips, but that hasn't stopped 65 Degrees becoming a big hit with those in the know. There's a steady crowd of loyal regulars lining up for take-aways - even three businessmen, who were in Melbourne for just six hours, were thrilled by the tip-off that led them there. "We'll definitely be back!" they chorused as they left.

Con Haralambopoulos, one of three brothers behind the cafe, has an impressive list of coffee titles to his name, including world espresso champion and world latte art champion. The brothers previously ran 7 Grams in Richmond, but closed that to start this new venture. The obsessive attention to coffee detail even extends to the name: 65 degrees Celsius is the correct temperature for milk when making coffee.

The narrow but light-filled interior has tall tables and stools at the front and smaller tables at the back. The best seats are those by the leadlight full-length windows that overlook Exhibition St. This end of the street is quite pretty, lined with trees, and with less traffic than other, busier streets in the CBD (there were even some carparks available out the front on the morning that I visited).

A substantial breakfast and lunch menu is chalked on a blackboard at the front of the cafe and the glass display case is full of sweet and savoury treats. But the focus is on coffee, made here with beans from Gridlock, and Con's impressive coffee skills. Warm cocoa notes dominate in a smooth and silky short black that is a delight to sip. The café latte is simply stunning: there’s a hint of toasted nuts but no flavour predominates in the smooth, balanced brew that slips down without effort. I am in raptures as I drink it: this is, quite simply, the best cafe latte I've ever had in my life!

The only drawback to 65 Degrees is that it is at the opposite end of town to my office, so I can't visit as often as I would like. If you love coffee, do yourself a favour and get to 65 Degrees as soon as you can: it's a must-visit destination.

65 Degrees
309 Exhibition St, Melbourne
Mon-Fri 6.30am-4pm

Hot pies

Subscribing to food magazines makes me realise how quickly the months slip away. I feel like I've just opened an issue and a new one is already on the doorstep. Donna Hay Magazine's 50th birthday issue has just arrived, and it has a magnificent chocolate layer cake on the front cover that is begging to be made.

I haven't missed an issue of Donna Hay Magazine since I first subscribed to it and I find inspiration in every issue. To make sure I get the most out of my food magazines, I file them according to season (so I put all the autumn issues together). Each year, when the season changes, I take out that season's past issues and flick through them to see what I've made in the past that I enjoyed, or to get some new recipes to try.

Tonight's dinner came from my random flickings. I rediscovered this easy but tasty pie dish that I had first made in 2008 and marked as "definitely make again". It is such an easy dish to make but it is very impressive, whether you serve it as a weeknight dish for the family or dress it up for dinner with friends. The Dijon mustard is the hidden secret here, adding piquancy to the pie filling. I made two large pies, as specified by the recipe, some smaller pies for the children, and had some filling left over that I piled into ramekins and topped with leftover pastry scraps to make a lid. The pies are easy to reheat as leftovers.

Easy chicken, leek and mushroom pie

From Donna Hay Magazine, issue 38 (April/May 2008)

1 Tb olive oil

50g butter

1 leek, sliced

200g button mushrooms, chopped

2 x 200g chicken breast fillets, trimmed and chopped

sea salt and cracked black pepper

2 tsp Dijon mustard

6 sheets store-bought butter puff pastry

1 egg, lightly beaten

Preheat oven to 200 degrees. Heat the oil in a non-stick frying pan over high heat, add the butter, leek and mushrooms and cook for 5 minutes. Add the chicken and cook for 2-3 minutes until sealed and lightly browned. Add salt, pepper and mustard and mix to combine.

Cut 4 x 14cm rounds from 2 sheets of pastry and 4 x 16cm rounds from remaining sheets. Place 14cm rounds on baking trays lined with baking paper, top with chicken mixture and brush edges with egg. Top with remaining pastry, press edges to seal and brush with egg. Bake for 20 minutes or until golden. Serve with steamed green beans or a simple salad.

Preparing for an Easter feast

My latest issue of delicious magazine has arrived and I've already bookmarked lots of recipes to try. My favourite spread is the Easter baking
feature by editor Kylie Walker. White chocolate truffle cake, Easter biscuits, braided fruit loaf, orange drops, chocolate coconut Easter cakes - I want to try them all!

The hot cross muffins particularly attracted me. I like the idea of an alternative to hot cross buns, which, while fun to make and delicious to eat, are reasonably labour-intensive. These looked easy to make and I had all the ingredients in my larder, so I decided to try out a batch in preparation for Easter. This recipe gets the thumbs-up: easy to make and even easier to eat! The aromatic muffins are a cute twist on tradition and, if you leave off the cross, they are also yummy enough to whip up year-round

Hot cross muffins

From delicious magazine, April 2010

135g dried cranberries

1 cup (150g) currants

2 1/2 cups (375g) self-raising flour

1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda

2 tsp ground cinnamon

1/2 tsp ground nutmeg

2/3 cup (165ml) sunflower oil

1 cup (250ml) buttermilk

2 eggs

200g caster sugar, plus extra 2 Tbs

80g icing sugar

1 tsp lemon juice

Preheat oven to 200 degrees. Grease a 12-hold muffin tray and line with paper cases.


Soak dried fruit in just enough boiling water to cover for 10 minutes. Drain well, then pat dry with a paper towel.

Sift the flour, soda and spices into a large bowl. In a separate bowl, whisk together the oil, buttermilk, eggs and sugar until combined. Add to the dry ingredients and stir to combine. Gently stir in the fruit. Divide the mixture among muffin cases, then bake for 20-25 minutes until lightly browned and a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean. Cool completely on a wire rack.

Meanwhile, place the extra 2 Tbs sugar in a pan with 2 Tbs water and simmer over a low heat, stirring, until sugar dissolves. Brush the glaze over the muffins.

Sift icing sugar into a bowl. Add lemon juice and just enough hot water to make a thick, pipable icing. Use a piping bag, or drizzle from a spoon, to draw a cross on each muffin, then serve.

A cure for most ills

When you enjoy baking as much as I do, baking for others can sometimes be more stressful than people expect. Friends and family are surprised if I stress about what cake to bake or dish to cook. "But you're a good cook," friends say. "You have heaps of recipes to choose from."



And that, in a nutshell, is the problem. Too many recipes, too much choice, too much pressure to come up with the perfect dish for the occasion. A simple slice is easy to make but will it have the 'wow' factor? Should I risk making a new cake that I haven't tried before? Biscuits are a nice treat but will they seem too small and boring?



Of course, all this pressure is self-imposed. Most people are impressed simply by the fact that someone has gone to the trouble of baking something homemade for them. The cook may bewail the fact that the corner of the cake broke when it came out of the tin, that the icing didn't set properly, or that the finished product doesn't look picture-perfect, but I guarantee that most of the recipients won't even notice.



If you want to impress people, I find that a homemade chocolate cake is always a winner. A chocolate cake can be dressed up or down, adorned with simple butter icing or a rich ganache, filled with whipped cream, or left plain. Morning tea, afternoon tea, dessert, birthdays - chocolate cake suits all occasions.



This chocolate cake, from Allan Campion and Michelle Curtis's excellent In The Kitchen, is a recent addition to my repertoire but an instant hit and one I've made several times since. I made this cake recently for the regular Friday morning tea at my work. Although I normally serve it plain at home, usually dusted with a mixture of icing sugar and cocoa, this time I dressed it up with a chocolate ganache. It is a rich fudgy cake that is guaranteed to impress - there were definitely no seconds when I served this one!

Artisan bread - Dench's Bakery

I've long wanted to visit Dench's Bakery in North Carlton, especially as my friend John continually regales me with tales of this wonderful bakery, its enticing aroma of freshly baked bread, and the wide variety of breads available.

Dench's has an impressive website, filled with some of the most stunning, evocative shots I've ever seen. Ciabatta, baguette, focaccia, schwarzbrot, panini, beer, farmhouse, spelt, brioche, raisin, potato and walnut, apricot and honey are just some of the loaves available from its store in Scotchmans St, North Fitzroy. There is also a cafe, which serves breakfast and lunch and baked treats such as pastries, cakes, tarts and biscuits, and Genovese coffee.

My friend John recently discovered that Dench's also sells bread at the Queen Victoria Market and he brought me in a loaf of grain bread as a present. Although the loaf sat in my bag under my desk for the day, every now and then I would catch a smell of fresh bread, which made my mouth water. I couldn't wait to get home and try some!

Made from wholemeal flour, the grain bread also contains sunflower kernels, linseed and sesame seeds. It is soft and chewy, with the seeds giving it body and depth. This bread elevated my simple sandwich of ham, cheese and lettuce to another level, making it truly special. I can't wait to try more loaves in the range.

Dench's Bakery, 109 Scotchmer St, North Fitzroy

The milkman returns

I didn't grow up in the city, so the milkman delivering milk early in the morning was never part of my life experience. Growing up in the country, all of my neighbours were dairy farmers, so we bought billies of fresh milk from them. It wasn't until I moved to Melbourne as an adult that I began to drink what I called "shop milk" from a carton.

Now, with two rapidly growing children, we consume a large amount of milk, as well as bread, butter, cheese and orange juice. Many times I've had to load the children in the car or pram to duck out and buy some milk and bread to replenish supplies. And supplies always seem to dwindle or run out just when we are busiest and have no time to go to the shops!

So I was thrilled when my friend Trudi told me about Aussie Farmers Direct, a free home delivery service offering fresh products that are 100 per cent Australian owned and produced. AFD has a My Milkman, My Green Grocer and My Butcher, meaning that most of your fresh produce needs can be met.

The AFD website says that it cuts out the middle man, ensuring that the produce comes directly from farmers and is delivered straight to the customer's door. Orders are taken online, making it a fast and easy service to use.

The AFD milkman delivers to my area on Mondays and Thursdays and my first order arrived this morning. Packed in a soft esky bag (provided free of charge), my milk, bread and orange juice were fresh and cold. We didn't hear the milkman but the order was on our doorstep when we checked at 7am.

I'm very excited to discover this service. Not only is it saving me time in rushing out to buy a few essentials, but I'm always happy to support Aussie farmers.