Cookbook Challenge: Week 36, Comfort Food

Recipe: Lemon delicious puddings
From: AWW Bake

The theme for this week's Cookbook Challenge is "comfort food". After a rather busy week, this weekend has been incredibly lazy so something comforting and puddingish sounded good to me.

I have rather a lot of lemons (due to Maria giving me 5kgs from her tree) and I've been doing my best to cook and bake my way through them. So for this week's theme, I decided to make lemon delicious in an effort to use up more lemons. If you don't know what lemon delicious, it's a classic - a baked pudding that ends up with two layers: a light sponge on top of a tangy sauce.



My puddings were well risen when I took them out of the oven, but by the time I got around to taking photos they had deflated. Well, they still tasted good! I loved the lightness of the sponge layer, and the almost custardy sauce. But next time I make it, I would reduce the sugar - they were a bit sweeter than I wanted.

It's such a great pudding - warm, but not too heavy. And well named too, since it really is delicious!

See previous Cookbook Challenge posts here



Lemon delicious puddings

From The Australian Women's Weekly Bake

Serves 6

125g butter, melted
2 teaspoons finely grated lemon rind
1&1/2 cup (330g) caster sugar
3 eggs, separated
1/2 cup (75g) self-raising flour
1/3 cup (80ml) lemon juice
1&1/3 cups (330ml) milk

Preheat the oven to 180°C and grease six 1-cup ramekins.

In a large bowl, combine the butter, lemon rind, caster sugar and egg yolks. Stir in the sifted flour and lemon juice.

Gradually add the milk, stirring until combined and smooth.

Beat the egg whites with an electric mixer until soft peaks form. Fold a third of the egg whites into the lemon mixture with a large spoon. Gently fold in the rest of the egg whites.

Place the ramekins in a large baking dish and divide the lemon mixture among them. Add enough water to the baking dish to come halfway up the sides of the ramekins.

Bake the puddings for about 35 minutes.

Cookbook Challenge: Week 15, Muffins

Recipe: Citrus poppy seed muffins
Cookbook: Australian Women's Weekly "Bake"

The theme for the Cookbook Challenge last week was "muffins", so I turned to the trusty AWW Bake as it has a whole chapter on muffins. Despite the entire chapter, nothing really took my fancy. Perhaps there's still a lingering obsession with cupcakes, and muffins just seem unrefined and boring by comparison?

In Bake, there were a lot of recipes for savoury muffins, but I had already decided I wanted to make sweet ones. There were also quite a few recipes with berries and banana, neither of which I wanted to use. In the end, I finally decided on citrus poppy seed muffins. It was a pretty good choice because it's a really easy recipe to put together. All the ingredients get thrown into an electric mixer and voila! Muffin batter! I think it took me longer to line the muffin trays with baking paper.



As you can see in the pictures, these have quite a cakey texture, unlike most other muffins. They definitely need a good amount of citrus rind - don't skimp on the rind if you make them. It's also far too easy to over bake them. Mine tasted okay when they were warm from the oven, but the next day they seemed a bit dry. Ahh well. It was okay when washed down with a cup of tea but I'm not sure if they're good enough to warrant another try. So many muffins in the world, and so little time!

Update: See the round up at My Food Trail.



Citrus poppy seed muffins

From Australian Women's Weekly "Bake"

Makes 12 regular sized muffins (I got 8 large ones out of the batter)

125g butter softened
6 teaspoons finely grated assorted citrus rind eg lemon, lime and orange
2/3 cup (150g) caster sugar
2 eggs
2 cups (300g) self-raising flour
1/2 cup (125ml) milk
2 tablespoons poppyseeds

Preheat oven to 200°C. Grease a 12 hole muffin pan.

In an electric mixer, beat the butter, citrus rind, sugar, eggs, flour and milk until combined. Increase the speed to medium and beat until the colour of the mixture is paler. Stir in the poppyseeds and spoon the mixture into the muffin tin.

Bake for about 20 minutes or until a skewer in the middle comes out clean. Stand the muffins int he pan for 5 minutes, and then tip out on to a wire rack to cool.

Lemon cheesecake

Mhmmmm cheesecake. I love cheesecake but it's not something I have often because it's so decadent. But any food consumed during Christmas has no calories (right??) so I took this cheesecake along on the day. There was tons of food already, so we only ate half of it, and the other half went home with me. I was super happy - because it meant I was able to plate up a piece to take photos. That's right, I didn't care about eating the leftovers, I just wanted to photograph it!

I have made baked cheesecakes tons of times before (see here or here), but have never made a gelatine based cheesecake. It's actually much easier to make than a baked one, although I really do like a baked cheesecake.



If you're like me, and don't like your desserts sickly sweet, this cheesecake is perfect. I think I added double the amount of rind specified (I grated the rind of two lemons and just decided to add it all in) so it was tangy, but not too much so. The biscuit base did seem quite soft, although perhaps that was due to sitting in the fridge for a day. Next time I make it, I'm going to try baking the biscuit base in the oven to firm it up more.

I do still prefer a baked cheesecake over unbaked, but this is a good version and I'll make it again. What about you - do you have a cheesecake preference? Do baked cheesecakes or unbaked cheesecakes have your heart?



Lemon cheesecake

From The Australian Women's Weekly Food We Love

Serves 8

250g packet plain sweet biscuits
125g butter, melted
250g cream cheese, softened
395g sweetened condensed milk
2 teaspoons finely grated lemon rind
1/3 cup lemon juice
1 teaspoon gelatine
1 tablespoon water

In a food processor, pulse the biscuits until they resemble fine breadcrumbs. Add the melted butter and process until combined. In a 20cm springform tin, press the biscuit mixture evenly over the base and side, and refridgerate for about 30 minutes or until the biscuit mixture is firm.

Beat the cream cheese with an electric mixer until it is smooth. Add the condensed milk, rind and lemon jice and beat until smooth.

In a small heatproof bowl, sprinkle the gelatine over the water, and stand the bowl in a small pot of simmering water. Whisk until the gelatine dissolves and let it cool for 5 minutes.

Stir the gelatine mixture into the cream cheese mixture. Pour it into the biscuit crumb crust, cover and refrigerate for about 3 hours or overnight until set.

Cookbook Challenge: Week 1, Citrus

Recipe: Rice and lemon souffle
From Made in Italy by Giorgio Locatelli

Hooray! It's my first Cookbook Challenge recipe. The theme for the first Challenge is citrus and I decided to make a rice and lemon souffle.

This is not a quick recipe to make and it uses rather a few bowls. I started with the lemons - large lemons are halved and hollowed out, before being brushed with a juice, sugar and butter syrup. The lemon "ramekins" are popped into the fridge while the rice is cooked in two parts. One part becomes like a "rice milk" and the second batch is to just cook the grains until they are al dente. After this, you're supposed to drain and discard the milk the rice was cooked in. I missed this step, but it didn't seem to affect the end result.

After the cooked grains have cooled, the rice milk and the grains are combined with cornflour and gelatine. Next, meringue is whipped up, and combined with the rice, before being spooned into the lemon halves and baked until they (hopefully!) rise and become golden.

I didn't have any issues with making the souffles - mine rose well and they looked very pretty in the lemons. It did take me a while to get everything together though. And as soon as the souffles were out of the oven, the race was on to photograph them before they deflated!



But most importantly, how did they taste? Well, actually, I thought they were rather bland. The rice was only cooked with milk, so I didn't think the souffle was sweet enough. Not only that, but cooking the souffle in the lemons only imparted a TINY amount of lemon flavour. It smelt fantastic while it was in the oven, but once out you could barely taste any lemon. It didn't seem worth the fuss of making the lemon ramekins.

I think this would be better if these were cooked in normal ramekins, with a layer of rice pudding on the bottom, then some lemon curd, and finally the meringue on top. So it's probably not something I would make again, at least, not without significant variations.

Finally, I halved the recipe below, but I had a ton of rice/meringue mixture left over. I filled 3 lemons, and still had enough for four LARGE ramekins. The souffle in the ramekins rose really well though - check it out below!

Update: for a round up of all Cookbook Challenge posts for week 1, see My Food Trail for details. Thanks Rilsta!



Rice and lemon souffle

From Made in Italy by Giorgio Locatelli

Serves 6 (I reckon more like 10, but whatever)

200g carnaroli rice
2 litres milk
1/2 vanilla pod, split lengthways
25g orange juice
50g caster sugar
50g unsalted butter
3 big similar sized lemons or oranges
65g cornflour
3 gelatine leaves, soaked in water and squeezed (the book doesn't specific what strength gelatine leaves, I substituted with 3/4 tablespoon gelatine powder)

For the meringue:
250g egg whites
190g caster sugar

Place a tray into the fridge so that it gets cold. Preheat the oven to 200°C.

Prepare the lemons or oranges by trimming each end (so that it sits flat). Cut each fruit in half width ways and scoop out all the flesh with a spoon. Discard the flesh. Place the fruit "ramekins" into the fridge for 30-60 minutes.

In a small pan, place 80g of the rice with half of the milk. Bring it to the boil, then turn to a simmer and let it cook until the rice is really soft. Blend the rice and milk with a hand/stick blender until smooth and then put the mixture through a fine sieve. Set aside.

Scrap the seeds out of the vanilla pod, and place with the rest of the milk into a pan. Add the vanilla pod and bring the milk to the boil. Add the rest of the rice, turn down to a simmer, and cook until the rice is al dente. Drain through a fine sieve, remove the vanilla pod and spread the rice out on the tray that you placed in the fridge. Set it aside to cool (but not in the fridge).

In a separate pan, warm the orange juice and sugar. When the sugar has dissolved, take if off the heat, and whisk in the butter until incorporated. Brush the inside and rims of your prepared fruit with the orange juice mixture. Make sure each bit is completely covered, this seals and smooths the insides so that the souffle doesn't catch as it rises.

Lay the fruit upside down on a tray and place it back into the fridge for about 5 minutes to drain off any excess syrup.

With a knife, chop through the cooled rice grains to produce finer pieces. Place into a bowl.

Put the reserved rice "milk" back on the heat, keeping back 4 tablespoons. Add the cornflour to this milk.

When the rice milk comes up to the boil, add the cornflour mixture, stirring all the time. Cook for about a minute.

Remove from the heat and add the gelatine. When it has dissolved, pour the mixture over the ice grains, stirring all the time as it will be very thick.

Next, make the meringue. Whisk the egg whites in a mixer until soft peaks form. Add the sugar slowly, until the whites form stiff peaks.

Fold a third of the meringue into the rice mixture. Add the rest of the meringue to the rice mixture and fold in lightly. Don't overwork it.

Spoon the mixture into your prepared fruit, to about 1/2cm below the rim. Bake them in the oven for about 8 minutes, or until puffed up and golden.

Lemon meringue cupcakes

After all the cupcaking over the past month, you would think that I would want to take a break from cupcake baking. Erm... nope! After reading Maria's post, lemon meringue cupcakes have been on my "to bake" list for a while... a rather long while, I'm afraid. But I finally got around to it last weekend - and now I wonder why it took me so long!

I started off making the lemon curd, following a recipe that I found on taste.com.au (I have rewritten the overly complicated recipe below – there is enough curd there to make two batches of cupcakes). Next I baked the cupcakes, which is fairly easy, and waited for them to cool before I tackled the meringue. The meringue required a sugar thermometer and a stand mixer to make, but the end result was light, delicate, and delicious. I confess to eating rather a lot of meringue.... erm, let's just say
I was cleaning the beaters prior to washing up. Finally, after I had gorged on enough meringue, the cupcakes were assembled - I cut a small hole in the middle of each one, filled the holes with lemon curd, and then piped the meringue on top. Alastair expertly blow torched the meringue for me (and we won't discuss how he set a couple on fire!).

And the result? Ohmygod! They were amazing - heaven in a mini cake form. The cupcakes were really moist, and delightful with the gooey, sourish lemon curd and sweet fluffy meringue on top. Swoon!

If you like lemon based desserts, try these. It may seem like a lot of effort, but it's totally worth it!



For the cupcakes, see cuisine.com.au for the recipe.


Basic lemon curd

Adapted from taste.com.au

2 tsp finely grated lemon rind
½ cup lemon juice
200g caster sugar
3 x 60g eggs, at room temperature, lightly beaten
100g unsalted butter, cut into 1cm cubes

This recipe makes more than you’ll need for 12 cupcakes so have a sterilised jar handy for the rest of the lemon curd (if you need instructions for sterilising a jar, go to the original recipe).


Place the lemon juice and sugar in a stainless steel bowl placed over a saucepan of simmering water. Stir to combine.

Pour the eggs through a sieve into a separate bowl, and use a wooden spoon to gently push the egg through.

Add the strained eggs to the juice and sugar mixture. Mix to combine. Bring the water to a gentle simmer and stir the mixture for about 20 minutes or until it thickens and thinly coats the back of the wooden spoon.

Remove the bowl from the pot and add the butter, a couple of pieces at a time, stirring until the butter melts and mixture is combined.

When you have stirred in all the butter, add the lemon rind and pour into sterilised jars. Cool to room temperature before storing in the fridge.

Lemon and poppy seed cookies

I’m a bit of a sucker for kitchen gadgets and kitchen tools. Some would say that all you need is a good saucepan and a good knife, but I like my kitchen stuff. One of my favourite kitchen things is a microwave steamer for steaming vegetables in. I love this thing so much that when we bought a new microwave, I made sure that the steamer fit first! (Yes, yes, I know that you can steam vegetables on top of the stove but with this I don’t need to drag out a pot and pan and take up a hob – plus it takes four minutes in the microwave.)

Last weekend I was keen to make cookies (or biscuits if you prefer) and I wanted to use my cookie press, just one of my many kitchen gadgets. When I was looking up cookie recipes online, I decided that I wanted to do something with lemon and poppy seeds. After some searching, I found a simple recipe for cookie press cookies that I was able to adapt.

They were pretty easy to put together but it did take me a while to get all the cookies pressed out and baked..... because I ended up with about 80 of the little buggers! I tried out several different shapes - the hearts tended to lose their shape but I found that the flower shapes faired better.

But presentation isn't as important as taste, and the verdict? They were awesome! The cookies were buttery and crisp, but kind of melted in the mouth. They had just the right amount of sweetness, were rather lemony, and the poppy seed added a bit of savouriness. Oh my, they were moreish. I found it really, really difficult to eat only one... One day I came home after work and found myself eating six in a row. Gulp! Cookies are a sometime food, people.

Note – if you don’t have a cookie press, I think it would work if you rolled the dough into small balls and flattened them. But if you love kitchen stuff like me, you might have a cookie press too?!



Lemon and poppy seed cookies

Adapted from this recipe.

Makes about 80 small cookies

225 grams butter, softened
1/3 cup caster sugar
1 egg
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon vanilla essence
Finely grated rind of a lemon
2 tablespoons poppy seeds
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 cups flour, sifted

Preheat your oven to 200°C.

Cream the butter until pale and fluffy. Gradually add the sugar and beat until well combined. Mix in the egg, vanilla essence, lemon rind, poppy seeds and salt. Gradually add the sifted dry ingredients and mix until combined.

Fill a cookie press and shape on to an ungreased cookie sheet. If you don't have a cookie press, roll the dough into small balls and flatten with a fork or your hand.

Bake until golden brown - my cookies were small so I baked them for six minutes. If you have larger cookies, bake them for longer.

Transfer to a wire rack and let them cool completely.

Lime coconut syrup cake

A few years ago we lived in Fitzroy, in a little house with a little courtyard. There wasn't much to the courtyard out back: a few bushes, brick paving, and a lime tree. We never looked after the tree - didn't even water it - but it seemed to thrive on neglect. When it fruited, there were so many limes I couldn't get rid of them fast enough. I kept forcing limes on people; bags and bags and bags of the bloody things.

At our place now, I have another lime tree, but mine hasn't fruited yet. So it's back to buying limes for us. I bought a bag the other week, and haven't found much to do with them apart from putting wedges in a drink. To ease my guilt over having so many limes sitting around, I decided to use up a few in a cake.

The cake is a fairly simple butter cake with lime syrup poured over it while still warm. While some of the syrup is absorbed, I think it would've been better if I had poked some holes in the cake first. I also think it would've been better if half of the syrup had been reduced down further to be used as a glaze. Ho hum. We went over to our friends' place for pizza and took the cake for dessert. Everyone seemed happy with it. I left the rest of the cake there, and I was told later that a piece was eaten for breakfast. Hearing that made me strangely happy!

(The garnish on top is shredded coconut tossed in a few drops of red food colouring. The plate that the cake is sitting on was a Xmas present from my boss a couple of years ago. It's a beautiful plate, but when I took it out for the cake I saw there was a scratch on it. Boo.)



Lime coconut syrup cake

From Australian Women's Weekly Bake

Serves 8

125g butter, softened
1 tablespoon finely grated lime rind
1 cup (220g) caster sugar
3 eggs
1 3/4 cups (260g) self raising flour
1 cup (90g) desiccated coconut
1/2 cup (125ml) yoghurt
1/2 cup (125ml) milk

Tangy lime syrup
1/3 cup (80ml) lime juice
3/4 cup (165g) caster sugar
1/4 cup (60ml) water

Preheat oven to 180°C/160°C fan-forced. Grease 2cm baba pan well.

Beat butter, rind and sugar in a medium bowl with an electric mixer until light and fluffy. Beat in eggs, one at a time. Stir in sifted flour, coconut, yoghurt and milk, in two batches. Spread mixture into pan.

Bake cake about 45 minutes or until cooked through. Stand cake in pan for 5 minutes; then turn out onto a wire rack over a tray.

Make the tangy lime syrup; drizzle hot syrup over the hot cake.

Tangy lime syrup: Stir ingredients in a small saucepan over heat, without boiling, until sugar dissolves. Simmer, uncovered, without stirring for 3 minutes.

Middle eastern orange cake / flourless orange cake

This flourless orange cake is really quite amazing. The cake is unbelievably moist and has a wonderful, deep orange flavour that is quite surprising. Once the oranges have been boiled, it's very quick to put together (The recipe says to boil the oranges for two hours. I only did about one, and they were fine).



Rather than making a big cake, you can see that I made little cakes. Half of the mixture I poured into heart shaped moulds, but the bases stuck when I turned them out and they all broke! Damn delicate things!

On top of the cakes is candied rind (recipe below). Unfortunately, I had too much of the pith and the rind was quite bitter. Well, at least it looked cute.



Claudia Roden's Middle Eastern Orange Cake

From Stephanie Alexander's The Cook's Companion

2 large oranges, washed
6 eggs, beaten
250g ground almonds
250g sugar
1 teaspoon baking powder

Boil oranges, barely covered with water, in a covered saucepan for 2 hours. Allow to cool, then cut open, remove pips and chop roughly, including the rind.

Preheat oven to 190°C and butter and flour a 24cm springform tin. Blend oranges and eggs thoroughly in a food processor. Mix ground almonds, sugar and baking powder in a bowl, then add orange mixture and whisk to combine. Pour batter into prepared tin and bake for 45 minutes - 1 hour. If cake is still very wet, cook a little longer. Cool in tin before gently turning out.

Candied citrus peel and syrup

From Donna Hay's Modern Classics 2

Place 1 & 1/2 cups (12 fl oz) water and 1 cup sugar in a saucepan over low heat. Stir until the sugar is dissolved. Add 1/2 cup shredded orange, lemon or line rind, increase the heat and boil for 6-8 minutes or until the rind is glossy and transparent. Use the rind on its own for decoration or pour over with the warm syrup for deliciously moist cakes.

Little orange poppyseed cakes

I had a free health check at work today. There was good news and bad news. The bad news is that my height was 3cm less than I thought it was. Some might think that's not really bad news, but when you're not very tall, every centimetre counts!

The good news is that, along with my glucose, blood pressure and cholesterol being normal, I was also a couple of kilos lighter than I thought I would be. I've been eating a lot of cake recently, so this was a surprise.

I actually think that I may have been under measured and under weighed, but I can't decide which outcome I'd prefer – to be taller but heavier, or shorter but lighter. Hmmmm.



The other week I felt like cake. Did I mention I've been eating a lot of cake recently? I went and bought a slice of poppyseed cake and felt very under whelmed as it seemed to have a nasty, chemically sweetness. It inspired me to do better! A google search unearthed a diabetic recipe for orange poppy seed cake (or so the website said). I made a few adaptations to the recipe, and rather than a big cake I baked several little ones.

My little cakes were strangely compelling. They weren't too sweet, nor too orangey, and the texture wasn't particularly cakey. In fact, they reminded me of scones. And they were SO moreish – I found myself eating a couple at a time because one wasn't enough!




Little orange poppy seed cakes

Makes 12 regular sized muffins

Adapted from Fitness and Freebies

½ cup sugar
6 tablespoons butter, softened
3 eggs
¾ cup unsweetened yoghurt
Zest from one orange
3 tablespoons freshly squeezed orange juice
2 cups cake flour
2 tablespoons poppy seeds
1 teaspoon baking powder
½ teaspoon baking soda
Pinch of salt

Preheat oven to 180° C.

In a large bowl, beat sugar and margarine until smooth and fluffy. Beat in eggs, yoghurt, orange juice and orange zest until smooth.

Mix in the cake flour, poppy seeds, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Mix until just combined.

Grease a 12 cup muffin tin. Pour batter into the moulds and bake for about 15 minutes, or until skewer inserted in the centre comes out clean. Cool on a wire rack.