Month: April 2013

Roast Pumpkin and Brown Sugar Blondies

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If you are unsure what a blondie is, you are definitely not alone. I showed these to my Dad and got “what on earth is that?!” For those of you wondering, blondies are fairly self explanatory. A blondie is a brownie, made with white chocolate instead of milk or dark. Genius, hey? I think so, because I can assure you these delicious slices definitely taste a lotttttt better than they look.

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There are lots of great flavours you could put in a blondie. I decided to branch a little out of the ordinary, and I’m pretty happy that I did. I think pumpkin in desserts is great when done well – the humble pumpkin pie is an all time American classic. With a hint of cinnamon, salt and olive oil, the pumpkin in these blondies was quite the delicious bite. It was really subtle, but you could definitely taste it. If I were making it only for myself and other pumpkin lovers, I would have gladly put in a bit hell of a lot more.
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Pumpkin Mash:
  • 3/4 cup diced pumpkin (if you really love pumpkin you could definitely use more)
  • Olive oil, to drizzle on top
  • Cinnamon, to sprinkle
  • Salt and Pepper
Preheat oven to 190c (180c fan forced). Prepare oven tray with baking paper. Spread pumpkin out on baking paper, drizzle generously with olive oil and mix with hands to coat. Sprinkle with a tiny bit of pepper, salt and a generous amount of cinnamon. Bake for 30-40 minutes or until soft. Remove from oven and let cool slightly for 5 minutes. Place pumpkin pieces in mortar and mash with pestle until it reaches a mash-y consistency, but still a little bit chunky. Set aside.
Pumpkin
Roast Pumpkin and Brown Sugar Blondies: (adapted from Katy’s Lazy Blondies on Nigella Lawson’s forum)
  • 100g white chocolate, chopped
  • 100g butter
  • 200g brown sugar
  • 2 eggs
  • 110g plain flour
  • 100g additional white chocolate chips
  •  roast pumpkin mash

Blondies

Prepare a slice tin (approx. 20cm long) by spraying with olive oil spray or butter and lining with non-stick baking paper. In a microwavable bowl, heat 100g chocolate and butter until melted. For me, this took about a minute and I still had a few lumps, and being a bit silly I heated it for an extra 10 seconds and it curdled a little, but it didn’t make a difference at all to the final product 🙂 Set aside. In a separate large bowl, beat brown sugar and eggs until well combined. Slowly add the chocolate and butter mixture. Stir in the flour gently until fully incorporated. Mix in the additional chocolate chips and the pumpkin mash, and ensure they are evenly distributed. Pour mixture into prepared tin, sprinkle with cinnamon and bake in preheated oven for 30-35 minutes. If you like your brownies/blondies gooey, you can probably take them out a little earlier. Just keep testing with a skewer until you are happy 🙂 Set tin aside to cool, then slice into 15 pieces. Store and serve at room temperature, but they are also delicious warmed up!
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If you have never tried, or have never heard of blondies, I stongly urge that you familiarise yourself 🙂 You won’t regret it!

Salted Butter Popcorn Macarons

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Macs are back! This makes me very happy. Very happy indeed. As you would have seen earlier in the year, the last time I made macarons, it didn’t go so well. These still weren’t perfect, that’s for sure, but they do look like macarons, and they taste pretty amazeballs. And that’s all I really care about 🙂

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This mac flavour is from Zumbo’s Fantasy Land of Macarons (p. 57), and the recipe had intrigued me for a quite a while, but I was just a bit scared to give them a go. I’m very glad I did though, because they were definitely worth it. Surprising or not, they taste exactly like a big mouthful of butter popcorn, just with a few different textures. I am a massive fan of sweets with salt, so these were a major winner in my eyes! The only thing I think I would do differently next time, would be to blitz the popcorn a bit more, because I had some big chunky bits on my shells, so they didn’t look quite as dainty as Zumbo the Great’s.
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Macarons:

This recipe is Adriano Zumbo’s, and was published a couple of years ago in the Herald Sun. You will definitely need kitchen scales to make macarons.

  • 135g almond meal
  • 135g icing sugar
  • 125g caster sugar
  • 45g egg whites
  • 50g egg whites
  • 40g water
  • 1/4 tsp colouring gel, yellow

Spray four oven trays with cooking oil spray around the edges, and line with baking paper and set aside. Place almond meal and icing sugar in a large bowl, and sift together 3 times. Set aside, along with the 45g egg whites. Put 50g egg whites in a separate bowl. Heat caster sugar and water in a small saucepan, over a low-medium heat, until the sugar completely dissolves (if it slightly burns my tongue, it’s done!). If you do not want to burn your tongue, Zumbo suggests investing in a candy thermometer and heating the syrup until it reaches 118 degrees C (244 degrees F). If the syrup becomes thick and powdery in appearance, you will need to start again. This is because the sugar has been heated too much, too quickly, and instead of dissolving, it has cooked.

Begin beating the 50g egg whites with one hand, and with the other, stream the hot sugar syrup down the side of the bowl to create an italian meringue. Beat until stiff peaks form, the meringue should be thick and very glossy. If you want to add flavouring/colouring, now’s your moment. So add the colouring now. Just lightly beat them into the meringue. Pour meringue into the almond meal, icing sugar and 45g egg whites mixture and mix roughly to combine. When combined, fold mixture together (one single stroke) until there are no air bubbles left. Make a spread across the top of the mixture, and it should disappear in about 20 seconds. Spoon mixture into a piping bag fitted with a round nozzle. (If you don’t have a piping bag set, most supermarkets sell plastic ones, they are Multix brand, in an orange box and contain 5 piping bags with a few different nozzles, plus they’re only about $3. You should be able to find them in the baking aisle). Lock the bag by spinning the top around 4 times. Pipe 3-4cm rounds on the oven trays prepared earlier. Tap the bottom of the trays on the kitchen bench and let them sit for about half an hour, or until mixture is dry to the touch. Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 145c (135c fan forced).

Making

Place in oven and bake for 16-20 minutes. Check macarons at 16 minutes, and to test if they are cooked, pull a macaron off the baking paper. If it is stuck, keep cooking and checking regularly. Cool on trays for 5 minutes, then peel off and place on a wire rack. The mixture should make about 12 -15 large macarons, and about 25 smaller macarons. Macarons keep really well (about 5 days in the fridge) and some say that the longer they are refrigerated, the more the flavour is likely to develop. Macarons taste best when they are stored in the fridge, then brought down to room temperature to eat.

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Buttercream: (from Zumbarons: A Fantasy Land of Macarons, p.57.)
(I still made the full recipe, even though it could have filled double the shells I had. I am sure I will use it for something…maybe eating it from the bowl…maybe…)
  • 100g caster sugar
  • 38g water
  • 75g lightly beaten egg
  • 45g egg yolks
  • 200g butter, chopped and softened
  • Sea salt, to taste
You will need digital scales and a thermometer to make this buttercream. The thermometer I use is just an ordinary one used for coffee. You can find them at homeware or discount stores.
Beat the butter until pale and creamy, about 4 minutes. Put the egg and egg yolks together in a large bowl, and set aside. In a small saucepan, combine the sugar and water, and cook over a low-medium heat until sugar dissolves. Turn the heat up to medium, and cook mixture until it reaches 121c. Begin beating the eggs for a minute or so, and then very slowly pour the sugar syrup down the side of the bowl into the egg mixture. Continue whisking the mixture until it is thick, and cooled to 50c. A teaspoon at a time, add the butter to the egg and sugar mixture, and mix well after each addition to ensure there is no lumps. Once all the butter has been incorporated, fold in the salt to taste. It should look a little something like this:
Buttercream
Assembly:
Cook the microwave popcorn according to instructions. Blitz approximately half of the popcorn in a food processor, until they look like small chunky crumbs. Place popcorn on a large plate or in a shallow bowl. Pair up macaron shells. Spoon buttercream into a piping bag fitted with a round nozzle, and pipe 1/2 tsp onto shells, and sandwich with another. Melt 1 (if you want to brush 1 shell) or 2 tablespoons of butter (if you want to brush both shells) and completely brush the shell/s with the melted butter.
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Immediately place buttered shell/s into the popcorn and place on an oven tray with baking paper. Once you have completed all of the macarons, place in fridge to set overnight. This will help develop the flavour. After 24 hours or so, place macarons in airtight container if not serving immediately. Store in fridge, and bring down to room temperature to serve.
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