apple and raspberry crumble

i cant come up with anything really coherent to say – about this crumble (which i felt to be disturbingly good and completely inspired) or anything else for that matter. i got broken by an unfortunate train of abuses, principally among them, physical exertion to the point of paralysis and because of, or perhaps as a result of that, intellectual stasis which has left me entirely unable to finish this sentence. so i will give to you this recipe which i made up – and i love love love it. and if my brain hadn’t melted i would tell you why. but as it is, i cannot and so i suggest you make it for yourself and see.

ingredients

2 apples

1 punnet of raspberries

1/2 cup flour

1/2 cup brown sugar

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp baking powder

pinch of salt

tsp vanilla extract

60g melted butter

100g chocolate chopped (either white – if youre using raspberries because obviously. or dark – dark with raspberries would also be a delight)

preheat oven to 190 degrees. melt the butter in a saucepan and set aside.

mix together the flour, salt, sugar, baking soda and baking powder in a bowl. add some cinnamon if you choose. i chose no.

pour over the melted butter. the original recipe had 85g melted butter but it was too much and it started to get too wet. i then had to add more flour. so i say 60g and i think thats probably right. but just check its consistency. should be like wet sand. not a wet mixture though.

then add chopped up chocolate.

put raspberries and apples into ramekins and fill to nearly the top.

crumble over the crumble.

bake for 20-30 minutes.

raspberry and caramelised white chocolate cakes

i recently happened upon a moralistic, self righteous blog about correctly crediting recipes. and i dont like that kind of sermonising…about anything really. to misappropriate the immortal words of pipi longstocking: “how can you sell a recipe? you cant wrap it up, you cant carry it away and you certainly cant put it in your car.” not quite the point but as margurite, the great spokeswoman for the great intellectual organisation Resistance put it (every single saturday morning on the steps of flinders street station), “a seed is not a tree”…and so it follows that an amalgamation of ingredients is not a recipe. its an idea. a spark. and for these caramelised white chocolate cakes my spark was stolen. and not credited. adapted. but even if it werent i wouldnt apologise for it. if this post seems a bit obnoxious and bolshy, it might be on account of the amount caramelised white chocolate i consumed this evening. i also used some raspberries. fresh ones. ten dollars a raspberry. highly unseasonal. highly unlocal. highly unfriendly. but mainly delicious. im not going to lie – caramelising white chocolate is no easy thing and its slow. but worth every minute.

ingredients (makes about 4-8 ramekins, the small ones. i halved the original recipe.)

85g almond meal or ground almond

55g plain flour

pinch of salt

170g caramelised white chocolate (warm)

22.5g butter

22.5g sugar

2 eggs

to caramelise the chocolate: heat the oven to 120C. break up the chocolate into small bits. put it in the oven to warm for ten minutes. remove and spread it with a spatula – it will melt as you spread it. its not easy to move around but no one ever said it was gonna be easy.

put back in the oven for another ten minutes. then remove and mix again.

repeat this until the chocolate starts to turn a golden brown colour. mine took about an hour – with mixing/spreading at ten minute intervals.

it might be lumpy or grainy but if you put it in a bowl and stir your brains out, it should smoothen up. yes. smoothen.

to make the cakes, preheat oven to 190 degrees. mix together the flour, almond meal and salt and set aside.

mix the melted butter into the warm caramelised chocolate mixture. then add the sugar and the eggs and whisk like madness.

fold the flour into the chocolate mix and stir to combine

pour into ramekins and fill just over 2/3 the way up. i filled about a quarter of the way up and then placed raspberries on top and then filled the rest up.

put into preheated oven for 12-15 minutes.

theres a fine line between moist and uncooked. but as an eater and supporter of raw everything – cookie dough, cake mix, muffin mix, pastry dough et al, its one i like to tread. and indeed i did. so much so i might suggest you leave them in for a bit longer. until golden and cooked on top and slightly less so in the centre. fin.

raspberry and white chocolate tarts

it sounds sickly sweet. it sounds unsophisticated. its a play on a very prolific muffin. but in terms of my own creative production it represents an apex. an aesthetic apex. and a rather elegant solution to a glut of tart tins. it was a long lazy day when i happened upon 20 tartlet tins. this incident was closely followed by a catering request. i cant help but wonder how intimately the two were linked. i suspect the latter was an attempt by a primary eater to offset the results of the former. in any (pastry) case, suddenly 20 tarts had to be made. this therefore is the first of a number of tarts which will appear in this space. i have given a recipe for shortcrust pastry. instead of using one large tin, roll this chilled pastry out, cut out circles, and put the pastry into 20 mini tart tins. or use a muffin tray. probably two. this recipe for the filling will make about 10 (max.). for the other 10, use your imagination if you have one. if not, do as i did and refer yourself to a reference book like ottolenghi. i would like to add, not because of any coercive influence, that these tarts were made with BBC worldservice on in the background. the soothing british voices, the calm english panic about the rise of indias economy, the human interest story about little madeleine who disappeared in portugal three years ago, and the exquisite interview technique of the bbc journalist who asked the pertinent question of her parents “are you ever able to laugh?”, provided an intellectual and emotional space in which these tarts were so lovingly and tenderly made. i think they speak for themselves. and they are made in memory of little madeleine. as well as for snow and berry who taught me the true meaning of raspberry and white chocolate.

ingredients

1 quantity short crust pastry – this should be divided into mini tart tins. it will make about 18 pastry cases.

180g white chocolate (very finely chopped)

20g butter – cubed. very little ones obviously.

90ml cream

40g raspberries

6tsp raspberry jam

first mash up the raspberries through a sieve to remove the pips. what this will give you is raspberry coulis. you may have to do this twice if you have a penchant for pureed raspberry and have absolutely no self control so perhaps should amend this to be 80g of raspberries for those restraint-challenged

then chop up the chocolate and butter and put into a heat proof bowl

in a small saucepan heat the cream over medium heat. just as it gets to boiling point remove from the heat and pour over the chocolate and butter. stir with a spatula until all the chocolate has melted and you have a very sexy ganache on your hands

quickly spoon in a teaspoon of raspberry jam into the base of each tart case. (quick because the ganache will set and then it will all, very quickly, fall apart).

pour the chocolate in, over the jam. dont lick the spoon too much…remember what you are licking (refer to ingredients.) it will only end in a stomach ache.

fill the tarts to the rim

then put a small teaspoon of coulis into the centre and with a pointy implement (i used a very groovy cocktail umbrella. it was orange and i think came from the seventies) swirl the coulis around and make it look like something you cannot believe you made. put them into the fridge to set and i think, remove them 15 minutes before serving. i cant say for sure because here, there is no chilling and no serving. just eating.

they are very rich. and potentially sickly but the raspberry elevates it all…as only raspberry can. they are beautiful and if you have 20 mini tart tins and 6 hours free i suggest you make them.

white chocolate and cranberry cookies

just because you can, generally means you should

why would the first post of this blog, written by the girl who likes all things to be beautiful, generally french, delicate, subtle, and refined, (think they call it a snob) be something so saccharine, so deeply and shamefully american, so obscene in its excess, and so wholly unrefined as an oatmeal and white chocolate cookie? could the answer lie in the fact that i didn’t know where to begin? could it be that i simply wanted a cookie (because who on this sweet lonely planet doesn’t?) could it be that i, like my cookie, am just another toothsome, chewy, rich victim of american cultural imperialism? no, none of that. its because i’ve been told that cooking is about eating and so ultimately the task here is to produce something everyone wants to eat. e.v.e.r.y.o.n.e. so far in this life, i’ve not met anyone who doesn’t like cookies. the point is this is not just another food blog which promotes ‘comfort food’ and ‘milk and cookies’ as the miserable destiny of human beings. no this blog and this cookie is about democratising food. and if i have to start with a soft, chewy, unrefined, sexless yet somehow mouthwatering (unless you’ve had too many) cookie, so be it.

the chocolate and red one and the chewy bumpy one

ingredients.

225g unsalted butter

1 cup brown sugar

1/2 cup caster sugar

2 eggs

1 tsp vanilla (or 1/4 of a bottle depending on whether or not you subscibe to the ‘you can never have too much vanilla/garlic school of thought)

1-1/2 cup plain flour

1 tsp baking powder

pinch of salt

1 tsp cinnamon

3 cups oats (the little instant kind – for chewiness. use big if you want to see your oatmeal better)

1 cup dried cranberries

1 cup white chocolate

(if you wish to make the chewy bumpy variety replace white with milk chocolate and replace cranberries with hazelnuts, almonds or whatever scrap nuts you may have lying around)

pre-heat oven to 175 degrees

beat sugars and butter until creamy. a boy is good for that sort of laborious tedious manual activity. they seem to like it. add eggs and vanilla and beat again. add combined flour, baking powder, cinnamon and salt and mix to combine. add oats, cranberries and chocolate.

place tablespoonfuls of the mix on baking trays lined with baking paper and bake for 10-12 minutes.