Daring Bakers - perfect party cake

A sweet treat was on the agenda for this month's Daring Bakers challenge. Hostess Morven chose a recipe for "Perfect Party Cake" from Dorie Greenspan's Baking From My Home To Yours. Dorie's introductory notes to the recipe were glowing: "Stick a bright-coloured Post-it to this page, so you'll always know where to turn for a just-right cake for any celebration ... The cake is snow-white, with an elegant tight crumb and an easygoing nature: it always bakes up perfectly; it is delicate on the tongue but sturdy in the kitchen - no fussing when it comes to slicing the layers in half or cutting tall, beautiful wedges for serving; and it tastes just as you'd want a party cake to taste - special."

I must admit that I was a little sceptical when I read these notes, as it seems extravagantly high praise for a cake. However, having made the cake, I now agree with Dorie's sentiments. This is an easy cake to make but the end result belies the simplicity - it looks impressive and tastes even better than it looks. My panel of eager cake-tasters did not believe me when I told them how easy this cake was to make. The cake is a basic butter cake, flavoured with lemon, and split into layers that are sandwiched together with raspberry jam and a rich buttercream or whipped cream. I chose to use the option to substitute whipped cream for the buttercream, as I couldn't stomach the thought of an icing made with 375g butter! Although the buttercream sounded delicious, I thought the raspberry jam and whipped cream made a delicate combination that suited the cake's subtle flavour.

The cake's ingredients were simple: flour (I used plain flour instead of cake flour and it didn't seem to affect the final result), baking powder, salt, milk or buttermilk, egg whites, sugar, lemon zest, butter and lemon extract. A slightly unusual twist was to whisk the egg whites and milk together. I had expected that I would have to beat the egg whites until they were stiff but this was not the case - the tablespoon of baking powder gave the cake enough rising power to not need the extra from fluffy egg whites. The cake was baked in two tins, split in half when cool and then sandwiched together to make an impressive-looking layer cake.

Thanks to Morven for choosing such a wonderful recipe. I've not come across Dorie's books before but am now inspired to search them out. This cake is going into the "definitely make again" file. It is very versatile and would be suitable for a birthday, elegant afternoon tea or a glamorous dessert.

Too many recipes

At what point does collecting recipes cross from a passion or hobby to an obsession? I have drawers overflowing with recipe clippings, hand-written recipes stashed everywhere, and copies of old food magazines taking over my cupboards and yet I still collect. Not a week goes by without at least one recipe being saved from Epicure, Good Weekend or the Sunday Life magazine (or all three!) Then there's a new edition each month of Gourmet Traveller, Delicious and Donna Hay magazine to drool over. The Internet means I can collect recipes from The Times and Guardian websites in the UK and I recently discovered the excellent Cuisine magazine from New Zealand, which has a wonderful online archive.

I've tried all sorts of systems over the years to try and keep my recipes in order and easily accessible: pasting into a scrapbook, filing into plastic pockets in a folder, and sorting into filing folders according to food type. I commandeered two drawers in our large filing cabinet and embarked on filing in earnest but quickly grew tired of the project and dumped the lot, mostly unfiled, into one drawer. Currently I'm stashing away recipes in a large filing box from Ikea with no filing system whatsoever.

I'm not alone in this passion to collect recipes. Ivonne from Cream Puffs in Venice blogged about how she was always collecting recipes to make in the future. The crunch point came when she discovered a large stack of food magazines and recipes that she'd stored in her cupboard a year earlier and forgotten about.

"Why do I keep all these magazines? And why do I have all these loose bits of paper with recipes printed on them flying around my house? What is this all about?" Ivonne asked. "As I sifted through the endless pile, I kept thinking to myself that I couldn’t possibly throw this recipe out or recycle that magazine. This is the 2002 issue of so-and-so that has that perfect recipe for watchamacallit that when I finally get around to making it will be the best thing ever."

Ivonne is a far braver woman than me because, confronted with this massive pile of clippings, she did something I can't bring myself to do: she dumped the lot. She farewelled years of recipes without a backward glance and did not regret it.

While I agree with Ivonne's sentiments, I can't bring myself to throw out recipes. I always hope that I'll get around to making them, even though I know that I could spend the rest of my life doing nothing but cooking and still not make them all. I have managed to stop myself collecting some types of recipes - after all, how many lemon delicious, lemon tart and chocolate mousse recipes can you have? Looking at the several versions I have, I see that all use the same ingredients but only the proportions differ. (The same can also be said of chocolate cake but that is one recipe I can never stop myself from collecting, no matter how many I have!)

Ivonne concluded: "It finally occurred to me that the best chocolate cake I will ever make is the one that I actually make. The imagination is delicious, but reality is even more so. It occurred to me that it was time to squelch the insecure little baker in me that keeps telling me I can bake a better this or a better that and just get down to the act of baking."

It's not an insecure baker that keeps me collecting recipes - it's an addict who wants to keep trying new and different dishes and flavours. I'm not on a quest for better recipes; I just like to experiment. I have a treasured collection of family favourites that I make frequently and these are supplemented with new recipes that I collect. How else would my repertoire expand?

But Ivonne is right - we just need to bake. She has come up with the concept of "Magazine Mondays", where each week she makes a conscious effort to get in the kitchen and actually cook all the recipes she's bookmarked. It's a great idea and I might try and do something similar myself. In the meantime, here is a family favourite recipe that is regularly made: my sister's easy melt and mix chocolate cake that she makes every year for family birthdays. It is a never-fail cake and always disappears quickly.

FELICITY'S EASY MELT AND MIX CHOCOLATE CAKE

1 1/2 cups SR flour
1 cup caster sugar
60g butter
2 tablespoons cocoa
1/4 cup boiling water
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 cup milk

Mix cocoa and boiling water together.

Sift flour into a bowl and add sugar. Melt butter and mix in, along with egg, vanilla extract and milk. Lastly mix in cocoa mixture.

Bake at 180 degrees for 30-35 minutes.

Ice with chocolate icing or vienna cream.

To make vienna cream, beat 125g butter in an electric mixer until as white as possible. Sift together 1 1/2 cups icing sugar with 2 tablespoons cocoa. Gradually add half this mixture. Beating constantly, add 2 tablespoons milk gradually, then beat in remaining icing sugar mixture. Vienna cream should be smooth and easy to spread.

Daring Bakers - French bread

I love making bread. Although it requires an investment of time and planning on the cook's behalf, it's surprisingly easy to make. I love the simple chemistry of bread; that you can combine flour, water and yeast - ingredients that are quite unappetising on their own - with some good kneading and time for proving and come up with a wonderful, crusty loaf of bread. A lot of people are put off by yeast and it can be temperamental and formidable at first. But the more you use it, the friendlier yeast becomes as you get to know its quirks and foibles and how bread should look and act in each stage.

So I was extremely pleased that this month's Daring Baker hosts, Breadchick Mary and Sara, selected Julia Child's classic French bread as this month's challenge. I've heard of Julia Child's name in relation to cookery writing but nothing else and I've never read any of her work (my inspiration has come from Australian and English cookery writers). Some quick research established that Julia was an American cookery writer who died in 2004. She spent many years in Paris and her cookbooks and TV shows influenced a generation of American cooks, particularly in relation to French cookery.

In their introduction to this month's challenge, Breadchick Mary and Sara said they both fell in love with the idea of cooking by watching Julia on TV. The classic French bread recipe, an "eighteen-page love poem to French bread", came from volume 2 of Julia's Mastering the Art of French Cooking, published in 1970. Breadchick Mary and Sara chose to include all of Julia's useful instructions, as well as the recipe.

It was a delight to be introduced to Julia's cooking but I did find the lengthy recipe and notes overwhelming at first. I had to read the recipe four or five times to get the gist of it and even then I kept it close by for quick reference as I made the bread.

The ingredients for French bread are simple: yeast, flour, salt and tepid water. But the investment of time is enormous, far more than I've ever devoted to bread-making before. It took me an entire day to make (although I didn't need to be hovering around the kitchen for the entire time, as most of it involved leaving the bread alone to prove). But the end result was definitely worth the time and effort.

A basic summary of the recipe is that the yeast (I used dried) is activated in tepid water and then stirred into flour and salt with some more tepid water. I've discovered a new brand of specialised flours (cake, bread, pizza etc) at the supermarket and am finding them excellent. This dough is a little softer and stickier than other bread doughs I've made. It's kneaded for 5-10 minutes, then set aside to prove for 3-5 hours, or until tripled in volume. We're having an unseasonally cool end to summer and I found this part took the full five hours. The bread is then kneaded again once more, quickly to release the gas bubbles and set aside to prove again for up to one-and-a-half hours. Then the bread is cut and shaped (eg into baguettes, batards, rolls etc - I chose to make a large round loaf called pain de boules), set aside to prove (again for up to one-and-a-half hours), then baked in a hot oven for up to 25 minutes. French bread is not baked in a pan, so it is vital that it is shaped in such a way that it will hold its shape when baked. After baking, an important step is to let the loaf cool for up to three hours to allow the crumb to compose itself. According to Julia, if you cut the loaf too quickly, it will be doughy and the crust soft.

The full recipe contained a lot of instructions and useful explanations about what was happening to the bread as it proved. It also was extremely specific in terms of equipment used (eg yeast had to be dissolved in tepid water in a glass measure and equipment requirements included canvas sheets for the pastry to rise on and a stiff piece of plywood to unmould the bread). Although this was interesting, on reflection I found the recipe too detailed for me. The reason I felt the need to keep referring to it was because of the detailed instructions; I wanted to ensure that I was getting it right. I now realise that these instructions are so detailed because they are for people who've never made bread before - quite rightly so, as you need these details if it's the first time you're making bread. But for someone who has kneaded bread many times before, reading the kneading instructions made me feel as if it was a new technique. However, this is just a small quibble, and I will be far less reliant on the recipe next time I make this bread.

I also admit that I didn't use a canvas sheet for the rising (I just rubbed flour into a cotton teatowel), I didn't use plywood to unmould the bread (I flipped it gently from the teatowel into my baking tray) and I didn't read the specification for using the glass measure until after I'd poured my yeast into tepid water in a plastic bowl. However, none of these slight deviations seemed to harm or make a difference to the final result.

This loaf of bread was the best bread I've ever made - indeed, I'm immodest enough to say that it is one of the best breads I've ever eaten. It had a soft but chewy texture, similar to sourdough, and was quite addictive. Even though we were ready to go to bed by the time the bread had cooled, we couldn't resist cutting some to try and we ended up demolishing half the loaf! As pointed out in the recipe notes, French bread doesn't contain any preservatives and is best eaten on the day it's made. I had a few slices left over by the next night and they had gone rock hard, so I blitzed them in the food processor and they made a great crumb crust for fresh fish.

Thank you to Breadchick Mary and Sara for choosing such an excellent recipe. I will definitely be making this again and I think it will become one of my favourite bread recipes. I also enjoyed the opportunity to learn about Julia Child and intend to do some more exploring of her cooking in the future.

Rosy red rhubarb

I think of rhubarb as a grown-up treat. Although mum grew rhubarb at home, I never really enjoyed it as child. I found the tart taste too sharp for my palate and was frightened by the knowledge that the leaves were poisonous (although we never ate the leaves, it was one of those pieces of information that tends to lodge in a child's mind).

Now, however, I adore rhubarb and cannot resist buying a bunch when I see it for sale at a market (provided that it's in season and looks healthy). My palate now enjoys the sharp-edged sweetness of rhubarb that I disliked as a child. I love its ruby-red colour and the way something that looks like red celery can be cooked down with sugar into a meltingly soft puree to stir through custards for a pretty dessert or mixed with natural yoghurt and muesli for a delicious, healthy start to the day. Soft rhubarb topped with a rich, nutty crumble is a favourite winter dessert.

After buying a bunch of rhubarb at the Slow Food Farmers' Market, a rhubarb crumble was the first recipe on my list. But that only used half the bunch, so I turned my attention to other recipes. Most was used for a sweet compote to eat with yoghurt for breakfast but I used some of the compote to top spicy, buttery baby cakes in a recipe that I found on the Gourmet Traveller website. These simple cakes have a gingery taste that is beautifully offset by the little jewels of rhubarb puree dotted on the top. Although I made these cakes in the mini loaf tins as specified, I think these would also work well in muffin tins. This recipe is definitely going into the "make again" file.

BABY SPICE AND RHUBARB BUTTER CAKES

225g soft unsalted butter
3/4 cup golden syrup
3 eggs
225g plain flour
2 tsp baking powder
2 tsp ground ginger
2 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp ground cloves

Rhubarb compote
2 stalks of rhubarb, thinly sliced
55g caster sugar

For rhubarb compote, combine rhubarb, sugar and 1 Tb of water in a saucepan. Bring to boil over high heat, reduce heat to low, cover and cook for 2 minutes or until softened, then cook, uncovered for eight minutes or until liquid has reduced and rhubarb is soft. Cool.

Cream butter and golden syrup until pale, then add eggs, one at a time, beating well between each addition, until mixed in.

Sift over flour, baking powder and spices and stir to combine, then spoon into nine lightly greased 2/3-cup capacity mini loaf pans and spoon 2 tsp rhubarb down centre. Bake at 180 degrees for 12-15 minutes or until just cooked. Allow to cool slightly, then turn out onto a wire rack and cool.

Recipe from Gourmet Traveller website

Slow Food Farmers' Market

The weather forecast was for a cool day and possible rain. Not the most enticing forecast, especially when we're still officially in summer. There were a few grey clouds dotting the sky and a cool wind but otherwise rain seemed far away, so we set off to the Abbotsford Convent on Saturday morning for the Slow Food Farmers' Market.

The Abbotsford Convent is a treasure for Melbourne. Slated for residential development in the late 1990s, the local community fought hard to keep the Convent precinct out of the hands of developers and it is now a thriving arts colony. Eleven heritage buildings and beautiful gardens are set on nearly seven hectares of land near the Yarra River, just four kilometres from the CBD. There's studios for individual artists, writers, craftspeople and health practitioners, a community radio station, and the food options include the Convent Bakery, Handsome Steve's House of Refreshment (licensed cafe) and Lentil As Anything (a vegetarian restaurant where you pay what you think the experience is worth).

Among the various festivals and events hosted by the Abbotsford Convent is the Slow Food Farmers' Market, held on the fourth Saturday of each month. Farmers' markets are a key part of the Slow Food principles, which treasure tradition, cherish communities and celebrate conviviality. Farmers' markets are a direct source of fresh produce and a chance for the buyers to meet the growers.

We pass people pulling trolleys loaded with food along St Heliers St as we approach the entrance gate at 9am. The market opens at 8am and the earlybirds have already enjoyed the array of fresh produce available. There's quite a crowd inside the grounds and there's a wonderful buzz and sense of community in the air that comes with the exhibition and purchase of delicious seasonal food. Stalls are displaying fresh organic vegetables including mounds of fat pumpkins, enormous shiny eggplants, long plump zucchinis, bags of Swiss brown mushrooms, a wide range of different potato varieties, punnets of enormous fire-engine red strawberries, glossy capsicums, small French plums, and a variety of fresh greens, such as bok choy, spinach, cabbage and cauliflower. We taste fresh pistachios from north Victoria. They are quite soft and don't taste much like the dried, salted variety you normally see in shops. The stallholder tells us that they make a good pesto, so we buy some to try.

It's easy to plan the week's meals with the variety of food on offer. A glossy purple oversized eggplant will be sliced into wedges and roasted with olive oil, some spices and tinned tomatoes to make a hearty side-dish. Bunches of crisp green asparagus can be mixed into pasta with pancetta and parmesan. The potato stallholder recommends Royal Blue potatoes, saying they are a good allrounder. (We steam them that night and serve with some fresh better and they are a truly delicious potato, with a creamy, nutty texture). A bag of Swiss brown mushrooms, cooked and flavoured with some herbs and balsamic vinegar, will make an indulgent Sunday breakfast. Broccoli, zucchini and pumpkin go into the bag to use during the week. And I can't resist a bunch of rhubarb that can be cooked into a rich crumble made with hazelnuts, flour, chocolate and butter.

There's plenty of other food on offer to sample and buy, including pates, dips, ice-cream, cheeses, saltbush lamb, free-range pork, bread, free-range eggs, blueberries, sultanas and currants, dukkah, jams, muesli and Turkish delight. We buy coffee and ciabatta rolls from the Convent Bakery for a mid-morning snack.

The rain stays away and we leave for home loaded up with food and a vow to return next month.

Daring Bakers - lemon meringue pie

It was another sweet month for the Daring Bakers, with this month's host, Jen from Canadian Baker, putting the classic lemon meringue pie on the menu. Lemon meringue pie has long been a favourite in both my and Adam's families, so I knew this recipe would have to be good to inspire us to substitute it in the future for our own recipe. Although this recipe was not challenging as I have made lemon meringue pie many times before, I enjoyed trying a new version and it had some different steps to my tried-and-true recipe.

The first step was to make the pastry. This was a simple sweet pastry and easy to make. I would normally not consider making pastry on a 30-degree day but, as a group of lemon meringue pie lovers were coming for dinner that night, I had no choice. The pastry consisted of cold butter, plain flour, sugar, salt and ice water, all blended in a food processor, then chilled for at least 20 minutes. This is very similar to the sweet pastry recipes I have, and it all came together nicely. It rolled out easily and made a very nice tart base.

The lemon filling was also easy to make. It differed slightly from my recipe in that it used five egg yolks (but it did make a large pie) and also that the method required the sugar and cornflour to be stirred into two cups of boiling water and then cooked over medium heat until very thick, before the egg yolks, butter and lemon juice were added in separate steps. (My original recipe calls for arrowroot to be blended with cold water and then mixed with sugar, lemon juice, eggs and butter and boiled for one minute). This recipe was similar but was made for a larger volume and each ingredient was mixed in separately. Adding the sugar and cornflour to the boiling water meant the mixture had to be carefully watched, as it thickened very quickly and easily turned lumpy (but nothing a whizz with the bamix couldn't fix). I found the filling mixture was a wonderful thick consistency until I added the lemon juice. It then became quite runny and did not set as much as I thought it would or should. When the pie was cut, the filling oozed out rather than cutting into nice slices. At the time, I wondered whether the metric conversions for this recipe were correct but, having since read quite a few comments from fellow DBers, this is apparently a common problem with this recipe. I would add more cornflour next time I made this pie - it called for 1/2 a cup but perhaps 3/4 cup would be better.

The final step was to make the meringue and the result was a magnificent glossy meringue that piled up very high on the tart. The recipe called for 3/4 cup of sugar but I cut this down to 1/2 cup and it was still a little sweet, so perhaps even a 1/4 cup would be enough. The meringue looked and tasted wonderful and I had plenty of willing kitchen helpers lining up to lick the bowl clean! The recipe said the pie should be browned in the oven for 10-15 minutes but I found mine was almost too brown after five minutes, so luckily I had kept an eye on it and pulled it out in time.

The final result was delicious and met with a loud chorus of approval. The meringue melted in the mouth, the pastry was sweet and light and the only hiccup was the runny filling but all agreed that it tasted wonderful regardless.

Would I make this recipe again? I'm not sure. I would definitely use the pastry recipe again for other tarts. I did enjoy this lemon meringue pie but I'm not sure it was successful enough to woo me away from my original recipe.

Cooking heaven

I've been to cooking heaven and it's called The Essential Ingredient. I'm ashamed to admit that a baking aficionado like me, who loves trying new recipes and ingredients and is an avid reader of Gourmet Traveller, whose recipes quite often include an ingredient list marked with an asterisk that says "available from The Essential Ingredient", has never been to this shop. It's been on my list of places to visit for a very long time but I've never done it. This year I'm determined to stop making endless lists of places I want to visit and actually do it.

So I made the effort to visit and I could have spent hours there. Recipes churned through my mind as everywhere I looked I saw jars, bottles and packages of ingredients: preserved lemons; piquillos; anchovies; capers in salt; peppercorns in brine; extra virgin olive oil from around the world; sherry vinegar; verjuice; quince paste; carnaroli rice; harissa; type 00 flour; puy lentils; quinoa; olive tapenade; vanilla beans; saffron threads; chestnut flour; orange blossom water; chestnut puree; jars of milk, white and dark couverture buttons; light and dark muscovado sugar; rich, dark cocoa powder; light and dark demerara sugar; rosewater; cocoa nibs; cornichons in vinegar and slabs of couverture chocolate. There were dozens of glossy cookbooks, a wall of shelves filled with white dinnerware; and a huge range of cooking tools and implements. Oh for a huge budget, unlimited pantry space and a free week to devote to cooking and baking! I could easily have filled the entire car.

But I was forced to restrain myself and came home with just a few "essentials". One small item that made its way into my basket was dried lavender flowers, which I used to flavour some sweet butter biscuits. The lavender flowers impart a gentle flavour to the biscuit, giving them the faint taste of a lazy summer's afternoon. Taking just 15 minutes from the time you pull out the mixing bowl to the time you pop a warm biscuit into your mouth, it is also the sort of biscuit that is perfect to whip up on a lazy summer's afternoon.

LAVENDER BISCUITS

125g butter, softened
1 cup caster sugar
1 egg
200g SR flour, sifted
2 tsp dried lavender flowers

Cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Mix in the egg, then gently mix in the sifted flour and lavender flowers, taking care not to overmix. Roll teaspoons of mixture into balls and place on baking paper-lined trays, flattening slightly with your hand. Leave room for spreading. Bake at 180 degrees for 10-12 minutes or until golden. Cool on wire racks.