White chocolate and raspberry scones

The other day, my team at work had a catch-up at The Tea Salon in Emporium. I purposely didn't bring my wallet so I wouldn't be tempted to indulge in scones. But then I watched my team eat scones, and couldn't stop thinking about scones all day. So, when I got home that evening, I whipped up a batch of raspberry and white chocolate scones. Then I spent all week eating the scones. Scones scones scones. Oops.

So, these are more of an American-style scone than the ones I normally make. Being full of tart juicy raspberries and buttery rich white chocolate, they're great on their own, with no need for cream or jam. (Although I snuck a little butter onto mine - yum). I chose to make raspberry and white chocolate because it is one of my favourite flavour combos, and I happened to have two punnets of awesome raspberries in the fridge. I totally love raspberries, and am so happy that they're abundant (and reasonably cheap) right now!

Raspberries

I adapted this recipe from Martha Stewart's recipe for Fast Raspberry Scones, with the main changes being that I added white chocolate chips, and that I made the dough by hand rather than using mechanical assistance. (I often find that dragging out the food processor - and then cleaning it, ugh - is more hard work than just getting stuck in with my hands, especially if I'm not working with big quantities).

The dough for these scones is a standard one - rub butter into dry ingredients, then pour in liquid ingredients and stir to a form a dough. In this case, tangy buttermilk for a tender dough and an egg yolk for extra richness. Boom.

Flour, sugar, baking soda, salt, butter

After you've added the liquid ingredients, the dough is quite shaggy, but don't be tempted to add more liquid. The dough comes together as you press it out, and it gets extra moisture from the raspberries.

Dough

Dough, berries, white chocolate

I used fresh raspberries this time, but frozen raspberries would work too. Come to think of it, frozen raspberries might be even better, as they wouldn't squish as much. As you can see, I got a couple of super moist areas on the dough from the squashed raspberries, which were messy and a little tricky to slice (but still delicious).

Ready to be cut

Scone squares!

Raspberry and White Chocolate Scones

White Chocolate and Raspberry Scones
Recipe adapted from Martha Stewart

Ingredients
2.5 cups flour
1/4 cup sugar, plus 1 tablespoon extra for sprinkling
1 tablespoon baking powder
3/4 teaspoons coarse salt
112.5 grams cold unsalted butter, cut into small pieces
3/4 cups buttermilk
1 egg yolk
1.5 cups fresh or frozen raspberries
1/2 cup white chocolate chips

Method
Preheat the oven to 200C.
Place flour, 1/4 cup sugar, baking powder and salt in a large mixing bowl and whisk to combine.
Rub the butter into the dry ingredients using your fingertips, until the butter is evenly distributed and the mixture resembles coarse breadcrumbs.
Whisk together the buttermilk and egg yolk. Pour into the dry ingredients and stir gently until just combined.
Tip out onto a lightly floured surface and press out into a large rectangle. Scatter half the raspberries and chocolate chips over, then fold in half and gently press out into a large rectangle. Top with the remaining raspberries and chocolate chips, fold in half again and gently press out into a rectangle approximately 4 cm thick.
Cut into roughly evenly sized squares and place on a lined baking tray. Sprinkle over the extra tablespoon of sugar.
Bake for 15-20 minutes, rotating halfway through baking, until golden brown and cooked through.
Allow to cool slightly, then eat.
Makes 15 scones, depending on how big you cut them.

More scone goodness:

• Classic Scones
• Spelt, Buckwheat and Buttermilk Scones
• Date Scones

Raspberry and white chocolate deliciousness:

• Raspberry and White Chocolate Muffins

Shiraz-braised beef short rib, Petits pois à la Française, Scalloped potatoes

We had some friends over for lunch today, and as I sit down to write this post, I realise that I haven't entertained for ages. (I certainly haven't blogged any dinner/lunch parties since March's Miranda Party post, and before that, February's Lobster Party post!) Although I love cooking, and more importantly, feeding people, my current flat isn't particularly suited for entertaining - the lounge room is carpeted, which always makes me a bit nervous if we're drinking red wine, and our dining room is kinda set apart from the kitchen, so preparing and serving many courses can be a bit awkward. When we have had people over recently, I've preferred to do simple weeknight dinners with small groups of people, like a bowl of Taiwanese Meat Sauce on Rice, eaten off our laps in the lounge room, as opposed to my usual Cecil B. DeMille productions. Or perhaps those are just excuses and I've been really enjoying hibernating this winter!

Anyway, for this particular lunch, I wanted to make something special, but still reassuringly "Sunday lunch-y". I thought that beef in a red wine sauce, scalloped potatoes and peas would do the trick.


I've written up the recipes or the short rib and peas at the bottom of this post. You can find the recipe for the scalloped potatoes on Martha Stewart's website (click here), and the chocolate fudge cake is from the The Ottolenghi Cookbook.

The whole menu was reasonably easy to put together - I started cooking at ten in the morning, didn't feel particularly rushed, and we sat around the table to eat at one thirty.

I started by making the chocolate cake. Ottolenghi's chocolate fudge cake is a super dense, rich, chocolatey monster of a cake - just chocolate, sugar, butter, and eggs. I love how glossy the mixture looks!

Chocolate fudge cake mixture

The cake's schtick (if cake can be said to have a schtick), as I've mentioned previously, is that you bake two thirds of the mixture first, before adding the rest of the mixture and baking it fully, to give you a two-textured cake.

Cake after the first baking

Topped with the remaining mixture

The cake was still quite liquid after the allotted baking time, so I baked it for an extra ten minutes, then let it cool, and stashed it in the fridge to firm up while cooking and eating lunch.

Now, onto the beef ribs. I enjoyed braised short ribs at Stillwater restaurant last year, and had been looking for an excuse to cook them at home. My local supermarket occasionally sells short ribs, but they come pre-marinated in a spooky looking sauce, and I prefer to have control over the flavourings! I made a special trip to Prahran Market to get these beautiful short ribs.

Beef Short Ribs

I didn't follow a recipe to cook the ribs - having made a zillion stews during my How to Eat project, I now make them on easy autopilot. (I did take notes however of what I did, and have written the full recipe below for your, and my, reference!) So, I dusted the ribs in seasoned flour...

Floured beef ribs

...browned them over a high heat, and set them aside.

Browned beef ribs

In the same pan, I then cooked a mixture of aromatic vegetables - celery, carrots, shallots...

Mirepoix

... as well as some garlic.

Garlic

I added some tomato paste, a whole bottle of Shiraz, some beef stock and herbs. Then the whole lot went in the pressure cooker for forty-five minutes, until the meat was tender and falling off the bone. To finish, I set the beef aside and viciously boiled down the sauce until it was thick and glossy, adding porcini powder, salt and sugar to correct the flavour.

Shiraz-braised beef ribs

I loved the glossy, rich sauce and the tender, melting meat. I know it looks like a really wintry dish, and we're well into Spring, but Melbourne's variable weather means you never know when you'll feel like hunkering down with a nice bowl of stew. I'm a bit low on iron, and I recently heard that cooking beef bones (e.g. in a stew like I did, or in soup or stock) increases the iron content of the dish - bonus!

Let's have a look at the accompaniments! Here are the scalloped potatoes. (Martha's recipe is my favourite recipe for scalloped potatoes).

Scalloped Potatoes with Leek

I love cooking peas French style - I've included my recipe below, which is a simplified, pared down version of Nigella's petits pois à la Française from Feast.

Petits pois à la Française

Cake time! I served the cake with cinnamon whipped cream. (1 cup cream, 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon and 1 teaspoon caster sugar, whipped until fluffy).

Chocolate fudge cake with cinnamon cream

Ok, so I know the last time I made this cake it was super melty and I said: "Next time I'll be more patient and let it firm up completely before digging in. Maybe."

Clearly I was not good to my word. Dammit, it was even meltier than last time! Check out this river of molten chocolate!

Chocolate fudge cake

Next time, I promise I'll make it the night before and let it firm up properly in the fridge overnight before slicing it. Maybe.

Luckily no-one was complaining, haha.

Chocolate fudge cake

Melty, melty goodness

Two-textured cake

Shiraz-braised Beef Short Rib
An original recipe by Sarah Cooks

Ingredients
1.5 kg beef short rib
1/2 cup plain flour
2 tablespoons olive oil
3 shallots, finely sliced
2 sticks of celery, chopped into small squares
2 carrots, peeled and chopped into small squares
2 cloves of garlic, finely sliced
2 tablespoons tomato paste
250 millilitres beef stock
750 millilitres Shiraz wine
2 stalks thyme
2 bay leaves
1 tablespoon brown sugar
1 teaspoon porcini powder

Method
Dust the beef ribs in the flour. Season with salt and pepper.
Heat half the olive oil in a large saucepan (or in a pressure cooker). In batches, brown the beef ribs on all sides, allowing them to get nice and brown. Set aside.
Add the remaining oil to the saucepan, followed by the shallots, celery and carrots. Cook for 5-10 minutes, until the shallots are softened. Add the garlic and cook for a further 2 minutes. Add the tomato paste and stir to combine.
Place the vegetable mixture in the base of a pressure cooker. Arrange the browned beef ribs on top. Pour over the stock and Shiraz. Add the thyme and bay leaves. Cook on high pressure for 45 minutes.
Remove the beef ribs with a slotted spoon to a serving dish and keep warm under a tent of foil. Cook the sauce over a high heat, boiling until reduced by half. Add the brown sugar, porcini powder and salt to taste, stirring and cooking until dissolved.
Pour the hot sauce over the beef ribs to serve.
Serves 6

Petits pois à la Française 
Adapted from Nigella Lawson's Feast

Ingredients
1 teaspoon olive oil
1 shallot
500 grams frozen baby peas
1/2 cup chicken stock

Method
Heat the oil in a saucepan over a medium heat. Finely slice the shallots and add to the pan, stirring occasionally, until softened. Tip in the peas and stir to coat in the oil and shallots. Add the chicken stock. Bring to the boil, then turn down to a simmer. Cook for 5-10 minutes, until the peas are cooked through and are piping hot.
Serves 6 as an accompaniment

Maple-Walnut Cupcakes with Maple Buttercream

Cupcakes! As I sit down to write this post, I realise it's been over a year since I baked cupcakes. (Remember my Black Forest Cupcakes?). I guess I don't really go in for cupcake baking these days, but a Canadian co-worker gifted me a packet of maple flakes (flocons d'érable in French), and I thought that cupcakes would be the perfect way to use them.

Maple Flakes - Flocons d'érable

Maple flakes are awesome - pure maple sugar in crunchy little flakes. When you open them, the pure maple smell that hits you is incredible! According to the product website, apparently you can use them on salmon for a kinda crunchy maple-glazed salmon, or simply sprinkle them over vanilla ice-cream or yogurt. I have about half the packet left, and want to try them in waffle batter. Can you imagine? Self-mapling waffles!!! (Don't y'all be stealing my idea!)

But, back to cupcakes. I googled a recipe for maple walnut cupcakes, and stumbled across these beauties by Martha Stewart. I subbed half the sugar in the recipe for maple flakes, reduced the overall sugar content and used salted butter to cut through the sweetness. (American recipes tend to be too sweet for me).

Cupcake batter

Another reason I was so cautious with the sugar in the cake batter is that I knew the icing would be really sweet! Martha's maple buttercream is like an Italian buttercream (i.e. heat sugar to a certain temperature, slowly whisk it into egg yolks, then add cubes of cold butter, one at a time, until fluffy and smooth), but with maple syrup instead of sugar. You have to use exact ratios of egg yolks, maple syrup and butter, and can't reduce the sweetness in the buttercream without affecting the texture. (I used unsalted butter in the buttercream, but did add a good pinch of sea salt at the end, to try and balance it out a little without going too salty.)

Ever since our last Mexican feast, my cousin Catherine (AKA "Cuz") and I have been trying to organise another one.  That one was two and a half years ago, and even a less-than-inspiring dinner at the terribly overrated Mamasita in between hadn't kicked us into gear.  Oops!  But finally, last month, everything fell into place, and we managed to arrange lunch for one afternoon.  Well, almost everything.

Sarah: Are we all free this Sunday? Can we finally do our Mexican feast?
Cuz: I think so! But wait a minute, (my Mexican boyfriend) Oscar won't be able to come.
Sarah: Wait, can we really have a Mexican feast without any Mexicans?
Cuz: Why not? The rest of Melbourne is doing it!

Woah, feel the burn, Melbourne dining scene!  Hehehe!

With quite a bit to cook, we split up the shopping and cooking duties between our five attendees.  I make no particular claims to authenticity here, we just chose a variety of dishes that we liked the sound of and that we thought would work well together.  Most of our recipes were googled or improvised, and the two recipes that I did follow came from two non-Mexican authors: David Lebovitz and Martha Stewart.

The night before I baked a tres leches cake (Martha recipe, available here) - a simple sponge cake soaked in a mixture of condensed, evaporated and regular milks.  I also prepared slow-cooked pork carnitas, using David Lebovitz' recipe. I learned the hard way these should not be spelled "carnitos" unless you want to refer to a part of the male anatomy!  The pieces of pork shoulder need to be fried, then cooked in the oven with a little water and a lot of spices.  Frying the pieces of pork resulted in a bit of a splattery, oily mess, but this was easily forgotten once the tray was stashed safely in the oven.

Carnitas, before going in the oven.  I love the ochre colours of the spices!

I had managed to find whole ancho chillies at Leo's Supermarket, which I used as a substitute for the dried ancho chilli powder David includes in his recipe - I'd never tried them before, but I love their sweet aroma and their intense black colour!

Dried ancho chillies

Chipotle peppers in Adobo sauce; the completed marinadee

I cut some chicken thighs into strips, and slathered them Cuz' improvised marinade: chipotle peppers in adobo sauce, Worcestershire sauce, barbecue sauce, an onion and honey.  We placed the soupy, moist mixture in the oven, where they took about an hour at 180C to cook through.  (The carnitas were reheated on the shelf below the chicken).

Meanwhile, I made some tortillas using some masa flour that Cuz had brought, and a hastily googled recipe.  Without a tortilla press, or any previous tortilla-making experience, we really just winged it.  I made the dough (kneaded by machine), whilst Sandra had the tedious job of rolling out the dough and frying them.  (Phew, it takes ages!)

Tortilla dough

My friend Kristine made some classic Tex-Mex nachos for us all to nibble on while lunch was being prepared: corn chips, cheese, hot salsa, sour cream, and fresh guacamole that Cuz had prepared seconds earlier.

Nachos! Tex Mex heaven!

My friend Alae was in charge of cocktails.  Mojitos, whilst not Mexican themselves, were an acceptable south-of-the-border substitute for margaritas when we realised no-one had any triple sec.

Mojitos! (Before soda water was added).

Cuz also brought these fab Mexican drinks, which, in the hustle and bustle of the day, we didn't get around to drinking.  Oh well, next time!

Orgeat / Orchata and Jamaica Flower drink concentrates

Lunch!

Tortillas

Our tortillas were rather irregularly shaped, and some were more like large crackers than soft flatbreads, but I still thought they were pretty good for a first go!  (The recipe had said "add water until the dough looks right", I clearly had no idea what "looks right" meant exactly).  Whilst not perfect, they had that wonderful corny aroma from the masa flour.  Cuz gave us a couple of kilos of the flour to keep, so I'll have lots of opportunity to practise making tortillas!

Carnitas

The spicy carnitas tasted fabulous, although I found some of the pieces to be a bit hard - I think I may have overcooked them a little, so next time I'll use more liquid and shorten the cooking time.

Chipotle Chicken

Much easier to make than the carnitas, and dare I say it, even tastier, was Cuz' chipotle chicken, with its flavourful, soupy gravy and tender meat.  It was slightly sweet from the barbecue and Worcestershire sauces, with a background of heat from the chipotle chillies.  I'm definitely making this one again!  Hot tip: stir through some cream or sour cream at the end for a smoother taste.

Frijoles Negros

Cuz had prepared the frijoles negros in advance, and we just reheated them in the microwave before we ate.  A very loose recipe: soak black beans in water overnight, then simmer for a few hours in a mixture of tomato paste, onion, coriander (seed, leaf and root), cumin, a bay leaf, cinnamon, oregano, orange rind, orange juice, stock and any roast chicken fat or carcass that you might have on hand.  It's so nutritious and filling, and I can definitely understand why versions of frijoles negros are a staple across Latin America.

Pico de Gallo

A bowl of pico de gallo provided a welcome sharp contrast to all the heavy proteins.  It's a mixture of tomatoes, red onions and coriander, all finely chopped, and dressed generously with lime juice, salt, pepper and some olive oil.  I adore this flavour combination!

Guacamole

For me, a Mexican feast isn't complete without guacamole - no tomatoes please, just ripe avocados, finely chopped onions, coriander, salt, pepper and a big squeeze of lime juice.

Cabbage Salad

I also whipped up a vaguely Mexican-inspired cabbage salad - a quarter of a red cabbage and half a red onion, finely shredded in the processor, with fresh coriander, a finely chopped jalapeño, a drizzle of olive oil and the juice of a whole lime tossed through.  Very refreshing, and I thought it was so cool that the cabbage and onion pieces immediately softened and turned a blushing pink upon contact with the lime juice.

Party on a plate!

Although there was a lot of food, and we stuffed ourselves silly, somehow by late afternoon (perhaps aided by a few mojitos!), we were ready for dessert: the tres leches cake, served with Mexican coffee.  And by "Mexican Coffee", I simply mean plain coffee topped with a little whipped cream and a dusting of cinnamon powder.

Tres Leches cake, Mexican coffee, super-cute baby milk jug (thanks Sandra!!), and Rapadura sugar

I'd never made tres leches cake before, and I was worried that a plain sponge cake, enriched with condensed milk, would either be too sweet or too soggy, but this wasn't the case.  It was absolutely gorgeous, very moist and light, with an almost puddingy texture.  My friend Kristine described it as being like suji cake (Nyonya semolina cake), which should be more than enough incentive to get baking!  As far as I'm aware, whipped cream is not a traditional topping, but it made the whole cake look very pretty, and the bland fattiness of the cream was a welcome foil to the cake.

The next day I made some fab tostadas with the leftovers - tortillas with chipotle chicken or beans, topped with cheese and grilled until bubbling and crisp, and finished with sour cream, guacamole and pico de gallo.  So delicious!