Category Archives: picnic

Lemon curd and blueberry sanga – a take on the Victoria Sponge

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Once upon a time, I feared sponge cakes.  I had a few bad experiences with sponges of a temperamental nature.  They were teases really.  You know the kind.  The kind which get all worked up after you’ve fluffed their egg whites, aerated their flour and handled them with delicate fingers, before they deflate into a sunken frown.  Somehow, by looking at the recipe, I just knew that Victoria was going to be different.  Victoria was going to be no fuss. Victoria was going to be sweet and gentle, but confident in herself.  Victoria wasn’t going to collapse in fear of her début… she was going to shine.  And shine, she did.

Recipe from the trusty Australian Women’s Weekly’s Bake cookbook.  This recipe works best when all ingredients are at room temperature.

Ingredients
250g softened butter
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup (220g) caster sugar
4 eggs
1/3 cup (80ml) milk
2 cups (300g) self-raising flour (sifted)
1 punnet blueberries
lemon curd

Preheat the oven to 180°C (or 160° fan-forced).  Grease and line two deep 20cm round cake pans with baking paper.

Beat butter, vanilla and sugar in an electric mixer until light and fluffy.  Beat in eggs, one at a time before beating in milk.  My mixture curdled at this point because my milk was straight from the fridge.  But, once I started adding flour it was all fine again.

Stir sifted flour into mixture in two batches.  Don’t overwork the batter at this point.  But, thankfully, you also don’t need to be as gentle as some sponges require here either.

Divide the mixture evenly between the two pans.  I weigh what goes in each pan to make sure it turns out even, because I use to always think they were about the same and then end up with one skinny cake and one fatter cake, which took a different duration to cook.

Gently smooth out the cake batter.  I usually lightly oil the back of a spoon and use that to edge the batter about evenly until the batter is flat, or slightly raised around the edges (to accommodate the fact that the middle of the cake will rise).  This stops the batter sticking to the spoon and makes it easier to work with.

Bake for 30 minutes.

Turn sponges out, top side up, onto a baking paper lined cake rack.  Lining the rack helps to stop the sponge sticking, or getting cake rack lines on the cake.

Once completely cool, sandwich the cake bottoms together with curd and berries and dust the top with icing sugar.

If I had my time over, I would have spooned curd on both layers, so that they stuck better together.  My top cake sat on top of the blueberries and wasn’t firmly stuck to the bottom layer, making it difficult to cut and serve.  I think a bit more curd would had done the trick.

I’d recommend using a large serrated knife to cut this cake in a light sawing manner, as it helps to keep the layers together.  I cut the whole cake in half to begin with, as that made it easier to then cut neat and even slices.

 

Lemon Curd

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Spring is a time for foraging farmers’ markets, whipping up wonderful treats and prancing along to picnics in the sun.  But, with summer and swimwear on the horizon, it’s also the time to unshackle the kitchen from nasty ingredients such as… and I hate to say it… butter.

So, when the gals and I got together to forage the farmers’ market and whip up wonderful treats, ahead of prancing along to our picnic in the sun – we found a recipe for lemon curd that was butter-free!  A much lighter alternative than the usual recipe… but it tasted good! I assure you!  Trust me, don’t be alarmist, it has all the good stuff – lemon and sugar and eggs!

In truth, this butter-free recipe was the sacrificial lamb, to allow us to gorge on other nasty treats like heavenly, gooey and stinky cheese, fig and nut bread and Jamón Serrano.  I like to think of this lemon curd as the carbon offset you can buy nowadays when booking flights.  Just a little something to make yourself feel better about the unintended consequences of your indulgence.

We found this treat-of-a-recipe on Food.com and we send our thanks to the contributor, Mandy, for sharing this gem.

Ingredients
1 cup fresh lemon juice (the recipe suggests you could make it on lime juice, and we added some fresh orange juice with the lemon and it was delicious)
grated zest of the lemons, oranges, or limes you use (avoid the white part, which is bitter)
1 scant cup of sugar
3 farm fresh eggs at room temperature (the bright orange colour of our curd came from the vibrant egg yolks we used)
seeds from 2 vanilla pods, or equivalent in extract or paste
sterilised jars for storage

In a small saucepan, over a medium heat, dissolve sugar into juice and add zest.
Lightly beat the eggs in a bowl. Whisking constantly, slowly pour the slightly cooled lemon/sugar syrup into the egg. Beat for 2 minutes then slowly transfer back into the slightly cooled saucepan.

Heat slowly over a low heat, stirring constantly, until it just starts to bubble at the edges and begins to thicken.  Remove from heat and stir in vanilla.

Transfer to a container and store in the fridge.  Alternatively, if you’re looking to prolong the curd’s life, pour warm curd into warm sterilised jars and screw down the lid immediately, allowing it to cool sealed.

To sterilise jars, place clean jars and lids into an oven set between 90-120°C until hot.  Carefully remove from the oven and fill and seal whilst hot (or the same temperature as the curd).  I prefer jars with metal lids, that are plastic coated on the inside and have a visible dent on the top which, when sealed hot, sucks inwards and when opened pops out, as this popping is a surefire way to know the contents is fresh.

I’ve since used the remaining curd to fill a sponge cake with blueberries.  I’ll have to share that recipe with you soon because it was delicious, albeit, not summer swim-suit friendly (but, I guess you can’t have everything in life).

Check out these other interesting ways to use lemon curd:

Blueberry Babes and Peanut Butter Boys

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Hello,

Yesterday, I threw a friend a bridal shower, and it was a cracking success!  (If you ignore the part where it was supposed to be a beautiful vintage style picnic in the woods, before the torrential rain meant it became a picnic in my lounge room!  Given people in nearly by suburbs have been evacuated due to flooding though, we have little to complain about.)

There are some things in life I’m not proud of.  Not being a maker of my own pastry cases is one of those things.  But, before you switch over to another channel, in my defence, I just really can’t justify the time fiddling around with delicate pastry when you can buy relatively good and foolproof pastry cases, all ready to go, from the deli.  Especially for fiddly mini tarts.

My Dad always has a go at the people on cooking competition shows who don’t make their own pastry, and I agree.  If I was ever to take myself so seriously as to go one one of those shows, I’d pull my socks up – I promise Dad.

I look forward to the days, later in life (when I’m not working full-time and running around like a headless chook most days), when I’ll be able to invest some time in perfecting the art of pastry making.  In the meantime, I resort to the pastry case saviour that is my local deli.

Using a cheat like this, has really lengthened my repertoire of quick and easy things to pull out of the hat at the last-minute, which still have wow factor.

So, for the shower, I made:

  • the Leek and Goat’s Cheese Mini Quiches I posted about early in the week
    …a frozen to oven marvel.
  • some Tomato and Goat’s Curd Tarts
    … which are really just to simple to post about here: I just put some goat’s curd at the bottom of a savoury pastry case and stuck some halved beautiful heirloom cherry toms on top with some herbs, salt and pepper… simple but, delicious.
  •  a set of Blueberry babes
    …a miniature blueberry cheesecake really.  A sweet pastry case filled with triple sec spiked cream-cheese, topped with blueberries and finished with a jelly glaze.
  • and finally some Peanut Butter Boys
    … feeling entirely inspired by the latest Spoon Fork Bacon recipe of Creamy Peanut Butter Pies, I whipped these up.  I didn’t have time to look their recipe up again, but made this from memory and looking back it’s a bit different, but the principle was the same.  A sweet pastry case lined with melted chocolate, topped with a peanut butter and cinnamon mascarpone cream and finished with more chocolate.

We had a feast.  People brought the most amazing food to share.  The groom-to-be made (and dropped off, despite the pouring rain) the most amazing tester wedding cake.  It was so romantic.  The groom-to-be has made many a tester cake and presented us with one for our engagement party about this time last year – it was a real thrill.  I’m certain, that come their big day, they are going to have the most amazing wedding cake in history!

setting up for the indoor picnic

setting up for the indoor picnic

So to the recipes:

A set of Blueberry Babes

mini blueberry tarts

A set of Blueberry Babes

Ingredients
a punnet of blueberries
a set of 12 mini sweet pastry cases
150g cream-cheese (at room temperature)
a splash of triple sec (orange flavoured liqueur)
1-2 tablespoons of icing sugar to taste
one sachet of jelly style glaze (I’ve used a red glaze, by Ruf, a german product available in most good delis)
40g caster sugar for the glaze
250mls boiling water for the glaze

Beat together the cream-cheese, liqueur and icing sugar until smooth (if the cream-cheese is soft enough, you should be able to do this quantity by hand).  Spoon mixture into sweet pastry cases and smooth down with the back of a teaspoon.  Top with blueberries.

Then, whisk together the glaze jelly sachet, the caster sugar and the boiling water until smooth.  If you’ve got lumps, don’t worry, just pass it through a sieve.

Carefully pour the glaze mixture with a teaspoon over the tarts, using the back of the teaspoon to coax the mixture over the berries and to the pastry case’s edge.

Leave to set for a few minutes, and then serve to loved ones.

NOTE:  This recipe can be done with any berries.  It looks particularly beautiful with strawberries, but unfortunately the strawberries at the market yesterday were less than impressive.  But luckily these blueberries were sweet and juicy!

Peanut Butter Boys

peanut butter cups, peanut butter and chocolate tarts

Peanut Butter Boys

A big thank you to Spoon Fork Bacon for their frequent inspiration, but in particular for this recipe, which I’ve adapted slightly.  I should note, they  make their own, amazing looking pastry cases!

Ingredients
a set of 12 sweet pastry cases
150g melted dark chocolate (follow microwave instructions, but be careful not to burn the chocolate)
3 heaped tablespoons of smooth peanut butter (at room temperature)
2 heaped tablespoons of mascarpone (at room temperature) 
2 teaspoons cinnamon
a splash of real vanilla

Beat the peanut butter, mascarpone, cinnamon and vanilla together until smooth and well combined.  Because the peanut butter is so sticky, I used the mixer for this one, but I think you could probably do it by hand.

Spoon some melted chocolate into the bottom of the pastry case.  Top with the peanut butter mixture and smooth the top with the back of a teaspoon or mini pallet knife.  Once all the boys have their peanut butter mixture, dip a clean teaspoon into the melted chocolate and drip flick the melted chocolate over the peanut butter boys.

This, seriously, only took me 15 minutes to throw together… but it tasted SO good!

It was so nice to have a day filled with good friends and great food (that didn’t see me slaving in the kitchen for hours on end).  I hope you’ve had a good weekend too.

xx Heike