I decided, thanks to a mild weekend, that I would bake. Summer in Melbourne has been quite mild, so it’s been easier to cook than not. And since my sister had kindly given me The Australian Women’s Weekly All-time Favourites, I decided to give these recipes a try.
As you’d expect from the Australian Women’s Weekly, the recipes are all triple tested, tasty and likely to succeed. The two complaints I have about this book was that the recipes suggested, at times, that you use a “small mixing bowl” without actually defining what that was, and that it recommends melting chocolate and cream in a saucepan on a stove versus in a glass bowl over boiling water (which is less likely to split the cream or burn the chocolate).
The recipes I made were very tasty, were highly enjoyed by everyone in the house, and I’ll definitely be cooking from this cookbook again. Overall, 4 out of 5 stars.
Passionfruit Melting Moments
Ingredients:
- 250g butter, softened
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1/2 cuip icing sugar
- 1 2/3 cups plain flour
- 1/2 cup cornflour
- 2 tablespoons passionfruit pulp
Passionfruit butter cream
- 80g butter, softened
- 2/3 cup icing sugar
- 1 tablespoon passionfruit pulp
Method:
- Preheat oven to 160C. Grease three oven trays; line with baking paper
- Beat butter, extract and sifted icing sugar with an electric mixer until pale. Stir in combined sifted flours, in two batches; stir in passionfruit pulp.
- With floured hands, roll 2 level teaspoons of mixture into balls. Place on trays 3cm apart. Dip a fork into a little extra flour, press onto biscuits to flatten slightly.
- Bake biscuits for 15 minutes or until pale straw in colour. Stand biscuits on trays for 5 minutes before transferring to wire racks to cool.
- Make passionfruit butter cream
- Sandwich biscuits with a teaspoon of passionfruit butter cream. Dust with a little extra sifted icing sugar before serving, if you like.
Passionfruit butter cream
- Beat butter and sifted icing sugar in a small bowl with an electric mixer until pale and fluffy. Beat in passionfruit pulp.
Notes on this recipe:
- I have had requests for this to be made again. They were really tasty, though quite rich with all that butter.
Chocolate chunk and raspberry cookies
Ingredients:
- 125g butter, softened
- 3/4 cup firmly packed brown sugar
- 1 egg
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1 cup plain flour
- 1/4 cup self-raising flour
- 1/3 cup cocoa powder
- 1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
- 90g dark chocolate, chopped coarsely
- 125g frozen raspberries
Method:
- Preheat oven to 180C. Grease oven trays; line with baking paper.
- Beat butter, sugar, egg and extract in a small bowl with an electric mixer until combined. Stir in sifted flours, cocoa and soda, in two batches, then stir in chocolate and raspberries.
- Drop level teaspoons of mixture 5cm apart onto trays; flatten into 4cm rounds.
- Bake cookies for 15 minutes or until a cookie can be pushed gently with breaking. Stand cookies on trays for 5 minutes before transferring to a wire rack to cool.
Notes on this recipe:
- This is the recipe with the small bowl issue. You shouldn’t be beating stuff in a small bowl, it’ll go everywhere. And if you’re adding almost 2 cups of powder to it, then it should be in a large or medium bowl. Not sure what the editor and writer thought they were saying here.
- That aside, these are pretty tasty. Pretty simple to make, very fudgy, and tasty raspberries. Raspberries are one of my favourite things.
Rich chocolate and coconut tart
Ingredients:
- 1 cup desiccated coconut
- 1 egg white, beaten lightly
- 1/4 cup caster sugar
- 300ml thickened cream
- 300g dark chocolate, chopped finely
- 4 egg yolks
- 2 teaspoons coffee-flavoured liqueur (or something else if you prefer)
- 2 tablespoons cocoa powder
Method:
- Preheat oven to 140C. Place oven rack on the lowest rung. Grease a closed 20cm springform pan.
- Combine coconut, egg white and sugar. Press mixture evenly over base and 4cup up the side of pan. Bake on the lowest shelf of the oven for 40 minutes or until golden. Cool.
- Heat cream in a small saucepan until almost boiling. Add chocolate; stir until smooth. Cool mixture slightly.
- Whisk egg yolks and liqueur into chocolate mixture; strain. Pour chocolate mixture into coconut shell.
- Refrigerate tart for 6 hours or until set. Serve dusted with sifted cocoa.
Notes on this recipe:
- I forgot to dust mine with cocoa. Which is probably ok, because I find cocoa powder quite bitter.
- I had to double the amount of the coconut mixture because I didn’t seem to have enough to coat the base and go up the sides as instructed.
- If making this, heat the cream in a glass bowl over a saucepan of boiling water, or in a double boiler. Applying heat (and note it doesn’t discuss what level of heat) directly to cream can cause it to separate. My instructions would be to not do it directly over heat, and to put the chocolate and cream into the double boiler/glass bowl at the same time, and once melted and cooled slightly, then do the rest of the stuff.
- This was incredibly rich (thanks to all the cream) but incredibly tasty. Definitely a special occasion dish.
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