Christmas baking

I can't believe Christmas has come and gone already. It feels like I just finished last year's Christmas dinner and here we are again, bellies groaning from good food while we pack up presents and throw out the wrapping paper and rubbish.

Christmas is my favourite time of the year and I love the preparation for Christmas: soaking the fruit for puddings and cakes, setting aside a day to steam the pudding, choosing which sweet treats to make for gifts (nougat, chocolate fudge, panettone, spiced biscuits) and making our family's traditional favourites of shortbread and mince tarts.

This year though, my Christmas preparation and baking was very limited, as we have a newborn in the house and there was not much free time available to do any baking. However, I've been stockpiling a collection of new recipes to try next year. Of course there's no reason why I can't make shortbread or panforte at any time of the year but it just doesn't feel right!

Two days before Christmas, my reservation at the local library for Nigella Christmas arrived. It's a sumptuous book, lavishly photographed and full of delicious and inspiring recipes. There's cocktails and canapes to start, followed by soups, salads and side dishes, different ways to cook turkey, goose, pork and beef, main dishes for vegetarians, sweet treats and edible gifts. I love the way Nigella writes about food. Her comforting, practical tone is combined with a sweet turn of phrase that makes you feel you can tackle any cooking task she sets. I must admit though that, although I've been collecting Nigella recipes for years, I've never actually made any of them, even though I've been inspired to many times. So, when I saw the recipe for the Yule Log, which looked impressive but used only a few basic ingredients (eggs, caster sugar, cocoa, butter), I thought it was the perfect dish to quickly whip up for our Christmas Eve meal.

And so it proved to be. I made a basic chocolate roulade that is spread with a rich chocolate butter cream and then rolled up into a log shape and covered with the rest of the butter cream. A few squiggles with a skewer to make it look like a log, a dusting of icing sugar to make it look like the log is covered in snow and voila! an authentic yule log. Although Nigella says in her recipe notes that the recipe looks finicky and is not a doddle to make, I found it quite easy to put together and thought that the final result was impressive and made it look more difficult than it actually was.

Christmas might be over for this year, but I'm looking forward to trying many more of the recipes from the Nigella Christmas book. A lot of the salads and the sweet treats, such as rocky road and gingerbread, can certainly be made year round. It will elevate your Christmas feast to a domestic goddess level but it's not a book that needs to be put away and only referred to once a year.

Cocoa Farm shiraz chocolates

I find the rich, sensual taste of chocolate hard to match with wine. It tends to pair beautifully with the honeyed richness of Rutherglen tokays, muscats and ports and I've been to several Melbourne Food and Wine Festival events where we sampled a range of chocolates matched with these Rutherglen wines, with some interesting combinations.

But I've tended to steer clear of matching chocolate with other wines. Now, however, I've discovered that the peppery flavours of shiraz can match wonderfully well with smooth dark chocolate - and it can happen without the need for separate glasses and plates.

Farm By Nature is a Melbourne-based chocolate company that makes the Cocoa Farm brand. I've discovered their range of Wine Chocolate: milk and dark chocolate combined with raisins that have been infused with shiraz, pinot noir or merlot. The latest release is shiraz wine chocolate barrel gift boxes. Cutely shaped like a wine barrel, the individually-wrapped chocolates are studded with plump raisins and have a distinctive peppery shiraz aroma. The first mouthful yields strong peppery notes on the palate, followed by a smooth wine aftertaste mixed with satisfyingly rich, but not cloying, dark chocolate. The aftertaste is long and you could almost believe that you had just had a sip of shiraz. I found it impossible to stop at just one chocolate and had to hide the box to ensure Adam didn't polish them all off. I hope Santa brings me some more of these in my Christmas stocking!

For stockists, see www.farmbynature.com.au

Daring Bakers challenge - pizza

Pizzas are a great meal to make at home. If you have plenty of time, you can make your own pizza bases, which taste so much better than the take-away shop version, or you can cheat and use ready-prepared bases or pita bread. By making it at home, you have full control over the toppings you choose, so you can come up with your own creative combinations, or use as many (or as few) anchovies as you like!

Pizza and toppings was the October challenge, hosted by Rosa's Yummy Yums, for the Daring Bakers. The pizza dough recipe came from Peter Reinhart's The Bread Baker's Apprentice. It made a delicious thin, crispy yet chewy pizza crust and the only drawback is that it involves two days of preparation. Although the actual dough is easy to make (a standard mixture of flour, salt, yeast, oil, sugar and water kneaded into a dough), it needs to rest overnight in the fridge, which means the chef needs to do some planning ahead for pizza night.

Once the dough has rested overnight, you then bounce and toss around the pizza dough before putting it onto a pizza stone or baking tray, covering with toppings and baking for 5-8 minutes.

The toppings I chose were salami, olives and mozzarella; mushrooms, olives and caramelised onions; and potato and rosemary. The pizzas were absolutely delicious and enthusiastically received by my tasting panel.

I make pizzas reasonably regularly and I enjoyed testing this recipe. However, I think in future that I will stick with my Jill Dupleix pizza base recipe, as it only needs to rise for an hour or so before you can use it. Even this does require some planning ahead (it's not a meal you can whip up in 10 minutes after work, unless you've already pre-prepared the dough), but it's a recipe that I'm more likely to use than one that needs to be prepared the day before. Although it sounds daunting, it only takes about 10-15 minutes to actually prepare and knead the dough, and then it can prove for as long as you like. I strongly encourage you to try making your own pizzas, as the take-away versions will pale into comparison once you've tried it.

Baking days

We've finally moved into the new house and have most of the boxes unpacked. It's such a massive, daunting job to move house that I'll be quite happy not to move again for a very long time. At least in this house I have space to unpack a lot of my kitchenware that's been stored away in boxes for a long time. It's like going on a shopping spree, as I uncover dishes, bowls and platters that I've not been able to use. Many of the beautiful dishes were wedding presents and I'm pleased to finally be able to use them and display them.

Moving into a new house has also meant acquainting myself with a new kitchen. Fortunately this one was renovated a few years ago, so is filled with lots of cupboards and new appliances. I have a dishwasher for the first time in my life! And I'm loving the new oven, with its gas hotplate and electric oven. My last oven was perfectly functional but it was so old that it was still in Fahrenheit and it took some trial and error in the early days of baking to work out just how long it would take to bake a cake or biscuits (cakes usually took at least 10-20 minutes longer than the recipe specified).

So it was time to try out the new oven and the recipe I chose for the occasion was choc oatmeal cookies from Bill Granger's bills food. This recipe has special resonance with this house: the previous owner baked a big batch of these cookies on the day of the auction and we nibbled on them afterwards as we signed the contracts. She told me the oven was a great baking oven and glowing testaments from neighbours about her baking prowess are testament to that. These cookies are now known to us as "auction cookies", so it was only fitting that they were the first thing I made in the new house. I can report that the oven works like a dream!

BILL GRANGER'S CHOC OATMEAL COOKIES

150g unsalted butter, softened
230g soft brown sugar
1 egg, lightly beaten
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
125g plain flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
a pinch of salt
235g rolled oats
175g choc chips

Preheat oven to 180 degrees and line three large baking trays with baking paper.

Cream the butter and sugar together in a bowl until fluffy and smooth. Add the egg and vanilla extract and beat until smooth. Sift the flour, baking powder and salt into the bowl and mix lightly. Add the oats and choc chips and stir to combine.

Roll tablespoons of mixture into balls and place on the baking trays. Flatten the balls with a fork dipped in flour. Bake for 20 minutes, or until pale golden. Remove from the oven and cool on the trays for 5 minutes before transferring to a wire rack to cool. Makes 30.

Recipe from bills food by Bill Granger

Food bites

With some free time on my hands as I prepare for a big house move, it's been nice to indulge in some foodie past-times recently. Packing up all my food magazines has taken quite a bit of time, as I stop to flick through the glossy pages and make yet more lists of recipes I want to try. The latest Donna Hay magazine has arrived and is full of enticing recipes and entertaining ideas. I'm trying not to stock up the cupboard or freezer with extra food at the moment, so have had to content myself with marking "must-try recipes" with sticky notes.

Emptying the freezer has enabled me to use up food and do some extra baking. The frozen raspberries left over from last year's berry picking have been turned into glorious jam and a raspberry and pistachio cake that was quickly gobbled up. Some of the frozen boysenberries were cooked in a sugar syrup and then sandwiched between puff pastry triangles with warm custard and dusted with icing sugar to make a quick and tasty dessert. In winter, I spent a wonderful day poaching quinces, the house filling with their wonderful spicy scent as they slowly poached into ruby globes of goodness. I couldn't use them all at the time, so froze the remainder and have just baked them with a brown sugar and hazelnut crumble on top. Fortunately the weather is still cool enough that a crumble is a welcome, rather than stodgy, dessert.

And there's been some time to pop out and try new places. When I lived in Brunswick as a student in the mid-90s, it was not the gentrified, trendy place that it is now. We tended to head to the city or Carlton to eat out but now East Brunswick is full of fabulous cafes and restaurants, all within walking distance of my old student houses. How I wish places such as Thaila Thai, Small Block, Gingerlee and Rumi's existed when I lived there! Although Brunswick is still an easy drive for me to get to, it's not the same as having the cafe around the corner from your house. My sister, her husband and I enjoyed the summer breakfast at Small Block last week: two triangles of thick bread topped with poached eggs and accompanied by beetroot relish, fat, creamy chunks of Persian fetta and a sweet avocado drizzled with lemon juice. It was a refreshing, summery start to the day, especially accompanied by good strong coffee.

A few days later, it was time to pay another visit to Noisette in Bay St, Port Melbourne, for a French-inspired breakfast of a creamy flat white and a crispy, flaky pain au chocolat that melted in my mouth. The plain and almond croissants were also tempting but the chocolate won in the end. This is another lovely little cafe that I wish was my local.

Not that I can complain about my local cafe, Nosh @ Newport, which has gone from strength to strength since it opened 18 months ago. It's filled a real niche in Newport. Once cafe-starved locals needed to travel to Yarraville or Seddon (I don't find much worth bothering with in Williamstown) for a coffee or cafe fix, but now we have Nosh within strolling distance. With books and toys, as well as a healthy children's menu, it's also popular with local families. The coffee, a Supreme blend, is always excellent. My favourite breakfast dish is the Turkish bread egg and bacon roll: two fried eggs, a mound of crispy bacon, aioli and melted cheese squashed into a fat toasted Turkish bread roll, accompanied with spicy relish. It always hits the spot!

Auction Rooms in North Melbourne is a relatively new cafe that's been receiving rave reviews for its excellent coffee and food. Situated on Errol St, you can sit in the front window, enjoying the morning sun and gazing through the enormous glass windows over towards the Town Hall. Inside is flooded with natural light and the tall ceilings and wide open spaces give an airy and warm feel to a space that doesn't feel overwhelming, despite its size. Coffee is freshly roasted each day, with details of the day's bean, its characteristics and the best way to enjoy it chalked up on a blackboard. I had a long black that was perfectly extracted. The coffee was smooth and sweet and there was no need to add sugar. Auction Rooms is also an outlet for Dench Bakers Bread, which features heavily on the menu, where dishes have cute names such as the Counter Bid and Opening Bid. I had the Real Deal, a dish of spicy baked beans with crispy grilled chorizo and cheesy polenta bread. It was a great late-morning breakfast and I can't wait to visit Auction Rooms again.

Daring Bakers Challenge - lavash crackers

It was a savoury challenge for the Daring Bakers this month. In a historic first, the recipe was also vegan and gluten free - Alternative Daring Bakers Natalie and Shel hosted this month and provided a gluten-free lavash cracker recipe (but thoughtfully included a gluten version for those who wanted to use flour). The dips to accompany the lavash crackers had to vegan- and gluten-free. This extra challenge was enthusiastically embraced by most DBers and many came up with amazingly creative combinations.

The lavash cracker recipe was quite simple: 1 1/2 cups of unbleached bread flour, or gluten-free flour blend, was mixed with 1/2 tsp salt, 1/2 tsp instant yeast, 1 Tb agave syrup or sugar, 1 Tb vegetable oil and up to 1/2 cup of water. After kneading for 10 minutes, it was rested for about 90 minutes (or until doubled in size), then rolled out into a paper-thin sheet, sprinkled with assorted toppings (I used paprika, sea salt, caraway seeds and sesame seeds to make four different types of cracker) and baked at 180 degrees for 15-20 minutes.

The finished result was superb! So easy to make and it tasted much better than the store-bought versions. This is the type of cracker you could easily whip up before a dinner party and serve with various dips, or just have on hand for a snack. As we're coming into spring here, this is the perfect weather to have crackers and dip. I didn't have time to research or cook a creative or delicious vegan- and gluten-free dip recipe (although quite a few DBers recommended hummus and guacamole, both of which I love), so I just mashed up some avocado with lemon juice and salt and pepper and this was a very satisfactory accompaniment.

I left a bowl of the crackers on the kitchen bench and Adam polished off quite a few before he asked where they came from. His verdict? "This is the best challenge you've done yet. You should definitely make these again." A ringing endorsement - and one I heartily agree with! Thanks to Natalie and Shel for their inclusive and fun recipe this month.

A little bite of sweetness

When my youngest sister got married earlier this year, she had a Middle Eastern/Moroccan theme. With the wedding ceremony and reception being held at a city bar, it was easy to customise the venue and decorations to suit this theme. Amidst the coloured lanterns and rose-petal cocktails, Bec and John decided to forgo the traditional wedding cake and instead have tasting plates for dessert featuring Turkish delight, Persian fairy floss and rosewater mini cupcakes. And this was the source of Melbourne Larder's first baking commission!

When Bec asked me if I would make the mini cupcakes for her, I instantly agreed without thinking it through. After all, I bake all the time for friends and family and this was no different. But then I felt some performance pressure - after all, these would be on display as a finale to the wedding feast and would feature in photographs. I like to present food nicely but I've never really taken a huge interest in food presentation and I find that I get the best results when I don't really try. Every time I've taken extra care for a special occasion, I've felt that the finished product has fallen short of my expectations.

Still, mini cupcakes aren't difficult to make and Bec wanted a fairly simple presentation. We decided to make a butter cream icing, tint it pale pink, and pipe it onto the top. The test batch turned out beautifully but we decided the pink icing was a shade too dark and made it lighter for the final product.

As I only have one mini cupcake tray (it makes 12), the day before the wedding was spent making a triple batch of mixture and cooking 100 cupcakes. Once made and iced, we then sourced every container we could find in order to transport the cakes to the venue, where they were set out on dainty tiered cake trays and looked absolutely wonderful (if I do say so myself!) Despite stiff competition from the Turkish delight and Persian fairy floss, the cakes were a great success and quickly disappeared.

I've since made another large batch of these cupcakes, this time for the high tea we put on for my middle sister's hen's day. The beauty of these cupcakes is that they're easy to make, they have a lovely soft texture because of the sour cream and they look cute. People also tend to go back for seconds because they're so small. Although the cupcakes are perfect for a special occasion, they also make a nice sweet morning or afternoon tea treat.

MINI ROSEWATER CUPCAKES

125g butter
125g caster sugar
2 eggs
1 1/2 cups self-raising flour
125g sour cream
2 teaspoons rosewater

Preheat oven to 180 degrees. Line a mini cupcake tray with paper cases.

Cream the butter and caster sugar together until pale and creamy and then add rosewater. Add eggs, one at a time, and beat well between each. Stir in the sifted flour and the sour cream in alternate batches. Spoon into the paper cases and bake for about 10 minutes, or until golden and cooked through when pierced with a skewer.

To make icing, beat 125g butter with an electric mixer until as white as possible. Sift 1 1/2 cups icing sugar and add slowly to make a thick icing. Add 1-2 teaspoons rosewater and then add a few drops of pink food colouring until you reach desired tint. Spoon into a piping bag and pipe in a circular motion on top of each cake.