Kitchen Alchemy

When I was a kid my parents attended many a party hosted by members of the Apex Club. This was an exclusive club for men under the age of forty, and where we lived, there were loads of young dads in the club. The rules for these parties were simple: blokes bring the booze, ladies bring a "plate" and kids run amok until you pass out with exhaustion. There would be tressle tables, sometimes in marquees, or maybe set up in the garage, covered with all sorts of culinary delights like cabanossi and cubes of cheese, pickled cocktail onions on tooth picks, slices of devon wrapped around mashed potato, and of course plenty of potato chips and a new concept in catering for a crowd - dip. I remember the Apex party we went to on new year's eve, 1976, very clearly because I was sitting on my mum's lap at midnight. "There goes 1976!" she said, pointing to the night sky. I started crying because I didn't want the year to go. I don't think Mum expected t...

Well this year I didn't shout it to the world, I suspect because I felt there were many flaws in my work that I couldn't come to terms with. But I keep going back and looking at the cake we created this year for my son's second birthday. And the more I look at it, the more I like it. We rented the "2" shaped tin from a local cake decorating shop. We made the butter cake a week in advance and put it in the freezer. It needed to sit on a board until it was frozen because the neck of the two was so fragile. It was heaps of fun cutting the cake through the middle to fill it with white chocolate ganache, but worth it as it looked a picture when it was sliced. My husband appointed himself maker of the racing cars - which was just as well as he did a brilliant job of it. I used my texture mat for fondant for the first time, and had to have two goes to get the imprint right. Note to anybody using a texture mat, use firm pressure when you roll, and only roll on...

When my husband arrived in my life, I was surprised to find how much he loved poached eggs. We would go out for breakfast and he’d order Eggs Benedict with beautiful poached eggs enveloped in delicious hollandaise sauce. At the time I was travelling a lot with work. One morning I found myself dining in a hotel that had the chef standing in the dining room at a table ready to cook eggs for me on the spot, exactly how I liked them. I noticed he had a pot of water gently simmering over a hot plate – clearly for poaching eggs. I asked him if he could show me how it’s done. The chef told me the first and most important tip was to have very fresh eggs. He said eggs more than three days old just weren’t good enough for the job. Second, he said you needed to add a goodly amount of vinegar to the water. And finally, he said you needed to simmer the water just so. No rolling boil! I went home a tried to cook poached eggs for my husband. The farm fresh eggs were not available at my...

It's been over a year now since I wrote, designed and photographed the cupcakes for the My Little Pony Cute Cupcake Recipe Book. To my delight, the initial distribution for that book has gone much wider than originally anticipated, with copies available in many mass market retailers across Australia and New Zealand. Last month I donated a My Little Pony Party Pack to my office's annual Pink Ribbon Day Raffle. The pack included a copy of the book, MLP plates, MLP serviettes, and a certificate for 24 MLP cupcakes. This week I had the pleasure of baking and delivering the cupcakes to the winner of the prize. She was invited to choose three of the cupcakes in the book. Her selection was Love (red velvet), Friendship (banana) and Sweetie Belle (vanilla). I was delighted to find that the recipes hold up to everything that was published. In the book I stated each batch of cupcake batter would make 12 cupcakes. In fact, I got 15 out of each. I had no trouble finding all the...

When the Spanish explorers found the Americas they also found many different new foods that, when brought back to Europe, revolutionised the way food was being cooked. Tomatoes, corn and avocados are just some of the foods brought back from the New World to Europe. At the same time some European recipes have found their way to the New World. The recipe for these nutty shortbread cookies has arabic origins which passed into culinary tradition in Europe, thanks to the Moors. The recipe was then adapted in Mexico to include pecan nuts, which are native to the Americas. Pecans grow on trees and are acorn-shaped. They have a similar taste to walnuts, and in fact the name they were originally given by the Spanish – nogales – translates as “walnut tree”. These delicious cookies are saved for special occasions, like weddings or even Christmas. Ingredients 250g butter, softened ½ cup caster sugar 2 tsps vanilla extract 2 tsps water 2 cups plain flour 1 cup finely chopped pecans ...

When I was 12 years old both my parents were workers. My sister and I would arrive home from high school, and we would have three or four hours alone in the house before Mum and Dad arrived home. My parents weren't the kind of people to wait on their kids hand and foot. Instead, there were jobs to do, and woe be tide the child who did not do them. There were three key jobs - washing up the breakfast dishes in the afternoon, cooking the dinner and drying up the dishes after dinner. My sister and I would take turns week on week for each job (although I must say I got out of drying up the dinner dishes for as much of my teenage years as I possibly could). We worked it so that we cooked the dinner for a week one week, and swapped to do the breakfast dishes the following week. This provision of dinner for my family from the tender of 12 is when I really learned my chops as a cook. And there is one meal I cooked every week without fail - spaghetti bolonese. In the 1980s, we ha...

When my husband and I were in France in 2007, we found a hole in the wall vendor selling crepes in Montparnasse. I think she was there as part of the Night of Music Festival, where people come out on the streets all over Paris to listen to music, sing, dance, and eat a lot of food. This particular creperie was part of a pub. A girl with Suzi Quatro hair was stationed inside a little booth with a big black flat griddle, a jug of crepe batter, a wooden trowel and a bunch of fillings. We stepped up to the window and ordered: “un crepe avec jambon, fromage et champignons”. And she set to work. When the job was done, the girl used a giant spatula to fold the crepe into quarters, slip it into a little paper cone and hand it over. And let me tell you, that crepe was goooooood! I have finally perfected my own crepe recipe. Lately I’ve become a little obsessed with crepes. When you try this recipe, you’ll understand why. Ingredients 1 cup plain flour 1 large egg 375ml full cream...

I have been working with a recipe over the past weeks for the new book I'm writing. While its origin is Mexican, the biscuit it produces is so familiar to so many people from other cultures, I feel like I've stumbled on a universal biscuit base that could be converted to suit many purposes. Flush with a full stock of lemons, thanks to Janet at work, today I thought I would turn my recipe into Lemon Shortbread - a very easy variation on the original recipe and certainly, a very delicious one. I hope you agree! Ingredients 250g salt reduced butter 1/2 cup caster sugar 1 tsp lemon juice 1 tsp water 1 tblsp lemon zest 1/2 cup flaked almonds 1/2 cup ground almonds 2 cups plain flour 1. Combine the butter, sugar, lemon juice, water and lemon zest in the bowl of your Kitchenaid (I'm not going to pretend anybody owns any other mixer, okay?). Beat on sixth gear until the butter is pale and creamy. 2. Add the almonds and plain and mix on first gear until the ingredie...

I have talked before about my desire to have an eternally fruiting lemon tree in my backyard. I do have a lemon tree, which I was given as a wedding present (well, my husband was given it too), but it spends most of the year ripening just one or two lemons. But Janet, at work - her lemon tree is a different story! She brought in two massive bags this week filled with gorgeous, ripe, almost orange lemons, and invited everyone to take as many as they wanted. I was lucky enough to score eight lemons. And I told everyone who took lemons too that if they wanted, they could give me their lemons and a jar and I would turn them into lemon curd. It's been some years since I made lemon curd, so today I thought I better turn the lemons I took into lemon curd so I can be sure I can fulfil my promise! Ingredients 140g butter 1 cup caster sugar 3 large eggs 200ml lemon juice 1 tblsp lemon zest 1. Melt the butter in the top of a double boiler. You can use one small saucepan sitti...

At the weekend I was using a recipe I found on a blog to cook Karelian Pasties, a popular treat from Finland. It had multiple elements to be cooked, and two out of the three had problems with the actual recipe. Instead of having fun cooking something delicious I found myself correcting problems with the recipe at every turn. I would like to assure you that the recipes I post on this blog have been cooked over and over again in my home kitchen. Some of the recipes have been made for my family and friends for over 20 years. If you find a problem with any of my recipes, please let me know. My aim is to ensure every Kitchen Alchemy recipe you cook is not only fun to make, but delicious to eat.

I was at Ikea on the weekend, scouring the shelves of their food section to look for ideas for Scandanavian food. I was surprised to find a pre-mix pack for Lingon Berry Bread, and it was so cheap, I thought I’d buy it and give it a go. The mix itself was quite dark and very heavy on rye. It was quite bitter to the taste and I expected the bread would come out quite bitter as a result. Having worked in a bakery as a teenager, I know how much hard work is required to produce a really good loaf of bread. I’ve taken to using my Kitchenaid with the dough hook attachment to do a lot of the work dough requires to develop the glutens and made it taste great. After ten minutes of working the dough I sat it next to the heater and let it rise for half an hour. I could hardly wait to get to the next stage, which is where you punch down the dough to knock out the air it's acquired is it rises. Then I divided the dough into two and formed the pieces into loaves by kneading it in a ro...

I As part of my review of seventies recipes, I've checked a great Aussie favourite - chocolate caramel slice - a bit of a revamp. Chocolate Caramel Slice entered the scene in the seventies when The Australian Women's Weekly first published its recipe cards. But since then some things have changed. The size of the tin condensed milk comes in, for one. And slice tins seem to have changed too. These days the brownie tin is easier to find than a traditional old slice tin. Although in the original CCS recipe, they do call for the slice to be assembled in a lamington tin! I've made some revisions of Chocolate Caramel Slice, and I have to say I'm pretty happy with the result. One important note: the quality of your slice hinges on your choice of chocolate for the top. If you choose a cheap chocolate, you'll get a very ordinary result. Try and choose cooking couveture that has at 70% cocoa content - your slice will be so much better for it. Ingredients 1 cup s...

I have been watching the news unfold about the humanitarian crisis in Somalia and have been horrified at how desperate the situation is, not only in Africa, but in other places in the world too. While I am at home in my kitchen, dreaming up culinary creations, there are people in the world who have never seen the inside of a supermarket. Yet i can go to one any time I like, buy any food I like, and eat as much of it as I like. This seems incredibly wrong to me. I am so grateful for the privilege of being born in Australia, where food is abundant and where I will never experience the anguish of famine. But I am also aware that because I'm privileged, it's my responsibility to make a difference to those who are not. So I've registered for the 40 Hour Famine - a World Vision initiative that has been going on since I was a little girl. On August 19 I will stop eating food for 40 hours in an effort to raise money for people starving across the world. This year the 40 H...

There have been a couple of occassions now where we have made colourful cupcakes for kids functions and found that parents just won't let their kids eat our product! The first time was at a Baby Bazaar back in 2008. We were invited to set up a stall amongst mothers who were selling buckets loads of clothes and toys their kids had grown out of. The idea was to promote our product in the hope of landing private orders. We made brightly coloured cupcakes to attrack the kids, but when it came time to purchase, the parents inevitably chose plain vanilla. It happened again a couple of weeks back when we made cupcakes to donate to our son's daycare fundraiser. The cupcakes pictured looked like a technicolour dream next to most other things on the table. But again, the parents were avoiding them in favour of the plain brown offerings. I have to admit, when I give my son a cupcake I pick the icing off and just let him have the cake. But this isn't because of the colour ...

We've have the great pleasure lately to produce some big cakes for customers that have pushed our skills to new limits, and I wanted to share them with you because they're just so delicious to look at! The first was a Dora cake for a little girl turning three. Inside was a vanilla buttercake layered with white chocolate ganache. We spent quite a lot of time working up the colour density in the fondant to give this cake the vibrant theme that Dora is famous for. We thought it was all about the colours! But when our young customer laid eyes on it, the first thing she said was "Where's the monkey?". Turns out Dora doesn't go anywhere without Boots the monkey! Next time we'll have to work out how to incorporate him into the cake. Last weekend we made a cake for a new t-shirt company called Yellow & Co. Yellow's philosophy is quite simple - different colours represent different frequencies and you choose your colours based on the frequency ...

I have always been a big fan of sherbet in the many forms it comes in. As a kid, I loved those sherbet cones you bought from the corner store – semi solidified sherbet in a stale cone, with chewy marshmallow on the top, coated in hundreds and thousands. I also loved Wiz Fizz – fruity sherbet in a glassine bag with a little plastic shovel. I’d most often buy these on the way home from the pool, because they were only five cents. Unfortunately, my hands were usually still wet from the pool, turning the bag to a sloppy mess before I could eat its entire contents. For my 10th birthday my mum decided to include homemade sherbet cones on the menu. Thanks to The Australian Women’s Weekly recipe cards, we had the recipe for sherbet and marshmallow, albeit, on different cards. My clever mum bought flat bottomed square cones, half filled them with sherbet and then topped them with pink or green marshmallow. Of course each had a liberal sprinkling of hundreds and thousands. In my explo...

When I was a kid there was a culinary revolution in our house that was triggered by the release of The Australian Women's Weekly recipe cards. Every week for something like 26 weeks a new set of cards was released and my mum snapped them up and began using them. I relied heavily on those cards when I was learning to cook, and I was delighted a few years ago when my mum found an entire set for me in a garage sale. Last month I decided to have a go at making the now famous Caramel Chocolate Slice, which can be found in most cafes in Australia. The recipe cards are now around 35 years old, so I shouldn't have been surprised to find that the recipe needed some adjusting. Firstly, the old slice tin has been replaced by a brownie tin. It's roughly the same dimensions, but it's deeper. So while the biscuit base fitted perfectly, there was scant caramel to cover it. When I checked the tin of condensed milk, I found it is now 390g, whereas it used to be 440g. You wou...

In the late eighties I discovered a café in Sydney called Dean’s. Dean’s was (and still is) located in Kellett Street, Kings Cross. It was a small, somewhat dingy café with retro memorabilia hanging off the walls and old fifties tables and chairs with rattan chaise longues for furniture. Dean’s was one of the few vegetarian restaurants in the Cross at the time. Not that I cared too much – but their menu was faithful. It included vegetarian lasagne, baba ganoush, vegetarian pate, and the piece de resistance, bean nachos. Because Dean’s was open until impossibly late on weekends, we’d frequently head there after a night our clubbing or as the obligatory dawn end to a dance party. Our menu choice: the monster nachos. We’d get one, share it, and woe be tide anyone who was tardy into getting to Dean’s. There was never any left for them! We made friends with the people who ran Dean’s and eventually some of us even got jobs there. I asked what the secret of the beans on the nac...

On this blog I talk about food and eating as if everyone in the world can get a meal of anything they want, any time they want. But for some people in the world that simply isn't the case. Millions of people on our planet struggle to get to have a single meal a day. So my husband and I decided to do something about it. My husband is a brilliant illustrator, whose work appears at Brandi . He's donated one of his illustrations, printed on canvas, to The Hunger Project's silent auction, which takes place in Pert this weekend. But thanks to the web, anyone can bid on his artwork no matter where they are in the world. if you'd like to own this piece of art, just bid using the absentee bid button. Follow the link here: Brandi art auction . We also sponsored another artist, photographer Tess Peni, to donate an artwork for the auction. It's a beautiful photo of carp printed on canvas. You can check it out here: Carp by Tess Peni . Every dollar raised in this ...

How many of us feel hamstrung when it comes to producing something that involves pastry? I have to say as I've gotten older and more experienced in the kitchen, my pastry skills seem to have diminished. To the point where I've basically given up and just buy frozen ready-rolled pastry. But when I saw Maggie Beer demonstrate her approach to pastry last Friday night, I felt I could give it another go. It's worth noting that I don't have a food processor. It's the one thing in my kitchen that is missing - mainly because I have no where to put one. And to be honest, in the past I've been let down by food processors. But that's a story for another post! This recipe is made using my trusty Kitchen Aid. Ingredients 250g plain flour 200g salt-reduced butter 5-6 tblsp milk 1. Place the flour and chopped butter in the bowl of your Kitchen Aid. Using the dough hook attachment, begin mixing the flour and butter together until it resembles lumpy bread ...