Chocolate Quince and Almond slab

Without doubt, My favourite day of the week is definitly Wednesday. I cant wait to get home, snuggle up in front of the warm fire with a big bowl of winter comfort and watch my idol, Maggie Beer. She makes THE best comfort food I have ever seen, usually simmered in a pool of butter, baked in a tin lined with butter and garnished with hmmm butter. Her creations are not intirely a good influence, but I could watch that jolly little country nanna every night. But what has struck me recently is her love of Quince. A strange variety of fruit which is rarely seen or used in peoples kitchens. This winter, ive decided to give them a go for the first time. Ive pot roasted them and oven baked them in a coating of caramelised sugar and vanilla on several cold wintery nights until they turned a deep ruby red and then served them up with the creamiest vanilla icecream. And shes right, they really are a winter delight.

The other morning i was searching through her website and I came across this recipe for a dark chocolate, roasted almond and Quince paste slab. It is really a surprising combination. Sure, i would mix together nuts and chocolate, maybe a few marshmallows (I am a major rocky road fan) but Quince paste? I had to give it a go.

When mentioning it to fellow work collegues, one came up with the obvious but I think very bright idea that it could perhaps be similar to turkish delight. Seeing as im also a major turkish delight fan (infact i think im a fan of anything that contains chocolate and isnt good for you) I had to make this straight away.

I bought Maggie Beers signature Quince paste (never settle for any other, hers is by far the best, I love you mag-mag), a block of 70% Lindt chocolate (although next time i might go a shade lighter!) and some fresh roasted almonds. Once I set off to begin, I took one look at the quantities and realised I had no where near enough chocolate ( Lindt is only a 100g block) so I pretty much quarted the amounts and only made a small slab. So of coarse mine turned out alot thinner as it just spread out across the tray rather than filling it but it was still really nice. Its kind of like nut and raisens in chocolate done as a slab, basically! But not quiet raisens, more like rasins that arent hard, just soft and nice. Let me try again, its like dark chocolate with almonds but then real sweet little surprise bits in it! As you can see its very difficult to explain, I suggest you give it a whirl yourself. (it'd be great for when a rich guest over the age of 60 pops in for a cuppa, drop in a few lines like yes, its the finest lindt chocolate, I only ever eat 70% anything less is purely dogs droppings, ahh yes and those mooorish little fruity parcels, that is maggie beers gourmet quince paste my dear, just glorious really, excuse me while I take these gigantic diamonds out of my ears, they are just so solid and heavy not to mention this 1kg solid gold necklace ohh dear i should of settled for the deep ocean pearls this evening, not to worry ill let charles know and he can pop down tomorrow evening in the merc and purchase some...)

Ingredients:
400g Dark Chocolate
200g Roasted Almonds
100g Quince paste

Method:
Melt the chocolate in a bowl covered with cling wrap (so the chocolate doesnt sieze) over a saucepan of boiling water. When done, stir in a heap of almonds and lightly fold in some chopped up quince paste. Set in a paper lined tray, not in the refridgerator. Break up or cut into irregular shapes and serve.

Choc-chunk cookies

Ahh yes, the famous choc-chip cookie, perfect with an ice cold glass of fresh milk. Ruth Wakefield, owner of the Toll House Inn in Massachusetts, is credited with inventing the world renowned chocolate chip cookie. Apparently one day she decided to cut up a Nestle chocolate bar and add it to her butter cookie recipe. They were a hit, Nestle caught on and so was the birth of the famous Nestle Toll house cookie. Reported to be the Americans fav cookie, Ruth Wakefield's recipe set off hundreds of bakers across the globe creating their own variations. Back in 1987 Chester Soling, owner of an Inn in Massachusetts, decided to sponsor a nationwide contest to find THE best chocolate chip cookie recipe. Over 2,600 entries were received and the 100 best recipes were compiled in a book called "The Search for the Perfect Chocolate Chip Cookie" by Gwen Steege. Thats alot of baking and alot of cookie eating, it would not surprise me if the last 400 recipes they tested were the worst. You would be so put off after eating 2100 other lots that it would be the last thing you'd want to be eating let alone there being any chance of you liking it, liking it even more than cookie one thousand seven hundred and fifty four, but i guess he would of had employees for that and thats why I have my family!

And as if my family hasn't had to deal with downing enough of my own batches of these calorific cant-stop at one morsels (although probably not quite two thousand), I go ahead and bake up another batch. And so off i set and boy George am i glad i did. This is definitely a worthy recipe, close to the best i could imagine a double chocolate chip cookie could be. I borrowed the recipe from Stephanie Alexanders the cooks bible and after one mouthful, i could see why she says everyone loves them.

They were like brownies in a biscuit, the kind of cookie where a glass of cold milk is vital to wash them down. Boy they were good, and i speak in past tense because although it has not been 24hours since i baked them, the entire batch is gone. And i thought you were sick of chocolate chip cookies, I remark with a sly grin to my family.

I used Cadbury Dream chocolate for the choc bits because after batches and batches of cooking, i have definitely learnt one thing, quality over quantity. The cookies will always taste so much better if you use a block of eating chocolate rather than cooking, trust me. Stephanie's recipe was for straight out choc-chip cookies, but i am a little chocolate piggy so i always go for adding cocoa into the mix. And i must say, i feel like sending Mrs Alexander a letter, an sms even, although she doesn't quiet strike me as the kind of woman who would own a mobile phone to tell you the truth, more a traditional "hello operator" style wall phone. Anyway, i think she ought to know the wonders the added cocoa did to these little chunks of chocolate goodness.

However, my search does continue for that chewy cookie, waiting for me out there in the yonder... but if you want to give these baby's a go:

Ingredients:
125g plain flour
1/2tsp salt
1/2tsp bi-carb soda
120g roasted nuts eg. almonds, macadamias, hazelnuts, walnuts (optional)
170g hunk of a block of chocolate, white milk or dark
110g softened butter
1/3cup Castor sugar
1/3cup raw sugar
1 egg
approx 1/4cup cocoa (if you want them to be chocolate bikkies)

Method:

Sift flour, salt, cocoa and bi-carb into a large bowl. Add nuts and chopped up chocolate into chunks. In an electric mixer, cream the butter and sugars until light and fluffy. Add egg, then fold in the chocolate flour mix. It will appear to be extremely too dry and you'll be tempted to add water, but don't! persevere, keep mixing and eventually amazingly it will all come together and actually be very very gooey, it takes about five minutes. Form the mixture into two fat logs and wrap tightly in cling wrap. Chill for one hour before baking.

Preheat oven to 175 degrees and line a baking tray with paper. Unwrap logs and cut into thick slices. Place on baking tray, allowing room to spread and bake for 12minutes exactly. Cool on a wire rack. eat up!

Chewy Choc chip Cookies

I set out on a hunt to discover the recipe for the best Choc chip cookie. Not just the best, I am talking THE best. And now, after I thought the hunt would be a never ending one, and after batches and batches, some worthy, some absolutely rubbish, some like shortbread, some like little cakes, some only eaten out of sheer boredom, the hunt is complete. The cookie has been found. And the magical ingredient....condensed milk.

What can i say, these cookies are amazing, their thick but not cakey, their thin but not crispy they are like pigs in the middle. They are chewy. They dont spread like rabbits across the fields, they dont 'not spread' like i wish my savings account would. Their absolutely marvelous and until 'Wonkervision' is real and i can send you one, fresh from the oven, through the screen of your computer with a glass of cold milk, you will just have to bake a batch for yourself. Trust me, you'll be speechless (and not because you have just stuffed three in your mouth).

Ingredients:
180 butter
1/3 cup sugar
1/2 cup sweetened condensed milk
1.5 cups Self raising Flour
250g block of chocolate cut into chunks
(you can add nuts if you want)

Beat butter and sugar until creamy, then beat in the condensed milk. Add flour, stir until combined. Add choc chunks, mix well. Roll teaspoonfuls of mixture into balls, place on greased oven trays or lined with baking paper, press gently with fork. Bake 10 min or until golden at 180 degrees. sooo good, try and resist eating until they have cooled at least enough for you to handle them.

Sticky date pudding with warm toffee sauce and whipped cream

Winter is such a comfort food time in Melbourne and what better way to fill that warmth craving in our slowly widening waists than with a good pudding. Sticky date pudding is all the go in the Australian colder months, the stickier the better. Its the ultimate winter warmer dessert and a sure hit with everyone, in fact rarely have i come across someone who doesnt like it. One warm comforting mouthful as the sauce runs down your throat like a gentle liquid streamand im hooked. Served with whipped cream or cold ice cream, this pudding is beyond compare, I could easily gain a compulsive eating disorder with this, its hard to stop once begun. Your guests will be drooling at the mouth once you mention that you are making this dish for desert and wait till they try how good this variation is. Once eaten, never forgotten, a tasteful memory worth those extra kilos to the hips.

There really are so many different versions out there, all quiet similar but with slight variations, especially in the amount of butter used which can make it taste all the better but can sometimes I believe be unneccesary. In this case, it was necessary. I tested a few recipes out but the ones with more butter seemed that bit better, that bit more caramelly, stickier and satisfying and I found this to be the best recipe, taken from a canadian gourmet magazine. This quantity is for a big slice tin of pudding with enough sauce to cover it all and will last a family of four, as piggy as mine, a couple of nights or a dinner party of 6-8 quiet generously. However, I generally halve this quantity.

Ingrediants:
For pudding
1 3/4 cups packed pitted dates
1 cup water
1 cup orange juice
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon salt
(6 tablespoons) unsalted butter softened
1 cup granulated sugar
3 large eggs

For sauce
3/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 1/2 cups packed light brown sugar
1 cup heavy cream
1/2 teaspoon vanilla

Method:
1. Preheat oven to 375°F and butter and flour an 8-inch square baking pan (2 inches deep), knocking out excess flour.
2.Coarsely chop and in a saucepan simmer dates in water and orange juice, uncovered, 5 minutes. Remove pan from heat and stir in baking soda. (Mixture will foam.) Let mixture stand 20 minutes.
3. While mixture is standing, into a bowl sift together flour, baking powder, ginger, and salt.
4. In a large bowl with an electric mixer beat together butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in eggs 1 at a time, beating well after each addition.
5. Add flour mixture in 3 batches, beating after each addition until just combined. Add date mixture and with a wooden spoon stir batter until just combined well.
6. Pour batter into baking pan and set pan in a larger baking pan. Add enough hot water to larger pan to reach halfway up sides of smaller pan and bake in middle of oven until a tester comes out clean, 1 hour. Remove smaller pan from water bath and cool pudding to warm on a rack.

Make sauce while pudding is cooling:
In a heavy saucepan melt butter over moderate heat and add brown sugar. Bring mixture to a boil, stirring occasionally, and stir in cream and vanilla. Simmer sauce, stirring occasionally, until thickened slightly, about 5 minutes. Cool sauce to warm.
Cut warm pudding into triangles, poke holes in pieces with a fork. Serve with thick cream and warm sauce which will drizzle into the holes in the pudding and become moist and sticky.

Warm Orange Pikelets with butter and 100's & 1000's

So here i was, all set to blog my little obsessed heart out and continue on my neverending search this weekend and what happens...ive got the flu. Damn you winter months of melbourne. So, no extreme baking this weekend, my tastebuds are officially on strike and are only seeming to settle for vegemite and salty greasy potato chips. However, just to fill my day, i decided to whip up a batch of orange pikelets with hundreds and thousands. I dont know why i did it, i took one bite of the first one and threw it in the bin but at least it gave me something to do and of course the smell of them drew in the rest of the family who gobbled them up quick smart, they are after all a fantastic recipe passed on from my nanna to my mother and now to me. Drop em on the frypan, watch em rise and turn golden and coat em with organic butter and hundreds and thousands. Eat immediatly. Yum and your kids will think your a god, but i think for now ill just settle for my pack of soothers.

Ingrediants:
1cup self raising flour
4tbsp sugar
pinch salt
1tsp bi carb
2 eggs
1/2cup milk
1/4 cup freshly squeezed orange juice

Method:
Combine all ingrediants, fry spoonfulls as you would for normal pikelets and then serve warm with butter and hundreds and thousands.

THE scones with Jam and Cream

I am about to let you in on the biggest secret I have. Thats right, I have discovered THE recipe for scones with Jam and Cream. I know what you all are thinking, how everyone raves that they have the best concotion to create the greatest scones, but, after 26 months of scone hunting and 26 months of reading and testing all their crappy recipes, I think I have a right to claim this and I have found THE BEST!!

It was in fact the scones that led me on this whole foodie hunt blog in the beginning. They were my first ever hunt and now that ive found the treasure, the pot of scone gold at the end of the rainbow, i want to find the gold of everything!

I had always enjoyed a good scone but knew they could be better than the spongy cakes i had tried. And, i was right, this sacred recipe delivers crunchy crust and soft scone interior and they wont give your teeth that strange floury taste. The recipe is the result of my own researching and testing based along the guidelines of a recipe passed onto me by a woman who works in counselling. Every afternoon before counselling services they would have warm scones and a cuppa.

No, she didnt give it to me while i was being counselled by her, i am perfectly sane, she is just a friend.

Just thinking about them is making my mouth water. Served warm with homemade fresh and sweet raspberry jam (the quality of jam is very important, there is no point whatsoever in making these if your going to eat them with cottees strawberry jam which is more like watery jelly really) and a thick dollop of fresh whipped cream, these babys have caused me to gain a considerable amount of puppy fat.

Risking sounding like every other scone recipe out there, try these, because mate you will not be disapointed I PROMISE.

FRESHLY BAKED SCONES WITH RASPBERRY JAM AND THICK CREAM

Important pieces of information you must soak up before beginning:

In order for the scones to have a crispy outer, you have three options.
1. A pizza stone which is what I use, can be purchased from a kitchen supplies store for around 10 bucks ( in fact i have even seen them advertised in the catalogue for the reject shop) These stones are the best investment you will ever make, they bring scones and homemade pizzas to a whole new level.
2. When we were renovating our home and were without a kitchen, I learnt how fantastic the BBQ is for cooking, I swear you can cook just about anything on those things! (of course im talking a BBQ with a big pulldown lid thingy, not just an average hotplate, you need the whole oven thing happening) So, you can place your scones in foil and put them straight on the hot plate.
3. Or, Build yourself a massive woodoven in your backyard, this is the ultimate although only worth the trouble if your a serious scone cooker haha.

Dont knead or play with the dough too much, you dont need to know why, just dont do it! DO NOT roll the dough out with a rolling pin, just pull it out a bit with your hands.

Make sure the oven has been preheated and HOT so that when entering, the scones get a great surprise and theyll PUFF up!!

Good luck!

Ingrediants:
2 cups Self Raising Flour or 2 cups plain flour with 4tsp baking powder
30g Butter
3/4cup milk with a squeeze of lemon in it
sprinkle of sugar

Method:
1. Lightly sieve or if too lazy like me, just put flour and powder in a bowl. Rub in butter till the mix resembles fine breadcrumbs. Add a sprinkle of sugar and also optional, some like to add some finely grated lemon zest which they think adds a freshness to the scones, i dont but try it if you like.
2. Add milk with lemon in it and combine with your hand till just combined and mix is soft. Turn onto a floured board, pat out to about 1.5 inches thick, do not roll out, do not knead. Cut into rounds using a twisting motion with the cutter.
3. Place on preheated pizza stone in a hot preheated oven with sides of scones only just touching that way the sides will be crisp also. Glaze the tops with a little milk. Bake in a very hot oven 220 degrees for 12-15mins till golden. Serve warm with homemade jam (remember the quality of jam is so important i can not stress to you anymore this vital point) and fresh whipped cream....oh they are so good!

Welcome one and all to the greatest hunt of all time. Everyday i am searching for the best of everything. I am glad you could join me for the ride. Its important you remain in the vehicle at all times, tighten your seatbelts ladies and gentlemen, the hunt begins...