Little chocolate, orange & hazelnut cakes

There's a lot to like about these little cakes. Most importantly they're chocolately and delicious. They're also very simple to make as all the ingredients are whizzed together in the food processor. And they're lovely to look at with their pretty sprinkle of candied orange zest.

This recipe also just happens to be gluten-free so it's perfect if entertaining gluten-free guests as everyone can enjoy these little cakes together. I love recipes that fit particular dietary requirements without having to be adapted.

The candied orange peel isn't essential but is simple to make and looks so pretty. It also adds a nice little crunch. The method for the candied zest makes more than you'll need for these cakes but keeps well in the pantry for a few months, ready for when the urge to make these delightful little cakes strikes again.

For eight little cakes...

1 thin-skinned navel orange

2 eggs

125g caster sugar

100g ground hazelnuts

25g cocoa

1/2 generous tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp baking soda

Place the orange in a pot of water and cover with cold water. Bring to the boil and simmer for one until (until tender). Drain and leave to cool. (I try and do this the night before.)

Once the orange is cool, slice into quarters, remove any large pips and the "navel" and place in the food processor bowl. Add the remaining ingredients and run until just combined. You want the mixture to be flecked with pureed orange.

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius and grease 8 cups of a muffin tray. Place a small circle of baking paper in the base of each muffin cup (it's worth taking the time to do this to avoid the inevitable heartache when it's time to remove the little cakes from the tin).

Fill each muffin cup, just to the top and place the tray in the oven. Bake for 15-20 minutes. A skewer should come out almost clean when inserted into the centre of a little cake.

Leave to cool completely in the tins then carefully remove and place, inverted, on a cooling rack.

If you'd like to make you cakes extra-special make candied orange zest while the cakes are baking. A citrus zester makes life easy but if you don't have a zester, peel the skin finely leaving the white pith on the orange and slice into very thin strips.

For candied orange zest...

Zest of one orange

1/2 cup sugar

1/4 cup water

1/2 caster sugar (extra)

Place the orange zest in a small sauce pan, cover with boiling water, bring back to the boil then drain. Place the zest back in the pan and repeat twice.

Return the zest to the pan and add the water and the first measure of sugar. Bring up to a gently simmer and simmer for 15 minutes. Drain the zest and discard the syrup. Place the second measure of syrup into a shallow bowl and tip in the zest. Shake to coat and then discard the excess sugar. Any unused candied zest will keep for a couple of months in the pantry in an airtight container.

Now make the ganache.

Chocolate ganache...

100g good quality dark chocolate, finely chopped (I love Whittakers Ghana dark 72%)

100ml cream

Heat the cream in a small saucepan until almost boiling. Remove from heat and add the finely chopped chocolate. Leave to sit for two to three minutes. Stir gently until the cream and chocolate are just combined. Don't overmix or your ganache may split, leaving you with an oily mess that can't be saved. Leave to cool for 20-30 minutes to thicken.

Once the ganache is cool, spoon over a generous amount of ganache - you want it to run down the side a little. Decorate with a few sprinkle of candied orange zest.

Serve with a spoonful of softly whipped cream.

Sunday lunch

A glazed leg of ham is always on our family's Christmas menu. It's usually a once-a-year treat but with me at home for the weekend and Mum and Dad returning from a holiday we decided it was the perfect time to use the half ham from Havoc that Becs had acquired when helping out at the Taste Farmers Market Awards a few weeks ago. We invited our aunty and uncle over and made an occasion of it: Sunday lunch.

We defrosted the ham in the fridge for a couple of days then on Sunday morning, a couple of hours before lunch, we put it into a nice warm bath (sealed in a plastic bag) to help it come to room temperature before going in the oven.

Our glaze "recipe" is very simple and only requires two ingredients: marmalade and brown sugar. You can use any type of marmalade you like. On Sunday I used Rose's English Breakfast marmalade because it has a high fruit content (compared to some other brands) and lots of nice orangey-bits.

The very first step is to prepare your baking tray. Use a tray or dish deep enough to contain the glaze and it's absolutely critical that you cover it with a layer of tin foil and at least two of baking paper. Failure to do so will result in very difficult-to-clean sticky mess.

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius.

To prepare the ham for glazing you need to deal with the mildly unpleasant task of removing the skin. Carefully ease back the skin, leaving the thick layer of fat behind...

...once you have the skin off, use a sharp knife to score nearly all the way through the fat in a diagonal pattern.

Press a whole clove into the centre of each diamond...

...now for the glaze: smother the ham with as much marmalade as required. We used about 1/3-1/2 a jar for a half-leg. Then pack on the brown sugar... don't be shy - pack on a really thick layer into the marmalade. Watch out for little fingers...

Now your ham is ready to go in the oven. Bake for 30 minutes at 180 degrees C, basting every 10 minutes. Then turn the oven up to 200 degrees C and bake for a further 15 minutes. By this time the glaze should be lovely and sticky. We put the ham under the grill for a few minutes for extra stickiness but if you do this you need to watch it very closely - by this point in the process there's a lot at stake!

If glazing a whole ham, increase the cooking time to 1.5 hours or so.

We like to eat the ham hot so carved it straight away... and poured over the delicious, citrusy glaze that had collected in the bottom of our well-lined pan.

The ham hadn't suffered at all from spending a little time in the freezer - it was deliciously pink and tender and juicy. Havoc say once you've tasted their pork you'll know the difference and I have to agree. We enjoyed the ham with mustard fruits (another family Christmas staple), freshly-baked focaccia, and a salad of greens, oranges, blanched broad beans.

For a sweet treat, Becs made roasted pears with chocolate and walnut crumble served with vanilla cream in her cute pink Crown Lynn bowls. It's sort of a deconstructed crumble - honey roasted pears topped with an oaty, chocolate, walnut cookie-type crumble. The recipe is on page 86 of the current (July 2011) Cuisine magazine. If you don't have it already, buy it and make these pears!

Edited March 2012 to add recipe as Cuisine stll haven't loaded it on their site :(

1/4 c honey

150g butter
juice 2 lemons
6 ripe but firm pears, peeled, cored and halved
1/2 c brown sugar
1 c rolled oats
1/2 c flour
70g walnuts, chopped
150g dark chocolate, chopped

Preheat oven to 180c.  Place pears cut side up on a lined baking tray. Melt honey and 50g butter, brush over the pears. Cover with foil and roast for 20 minutes. Mix remaining butter with brown sugar, flour, oats, walnuts and chocolate.  Crumble over pears and bake uncovered for a further 30 minutes.

Chocolate pudding

Simply called "chocolate pudding, this recipe is from Dorie Greenspan's Baking: From My Home to Yours. You can find the recipe here. "Chocolate pudding" makes me think of the stodgy self-saucing variety that we used to love whipping up in the microwave. But this chocolate pudding is on a completely different level - its more of a dense chocolate mousse, deliciously rich, with a lovely smooth velvety texture.

The pudding only contains modest amounts of butter, sugar and chocolate and surprisingly, given the texture, no cream. The combination of milk and cornflour seem to give it the creamy texture. It's not all that nutritious though - I entered the recipe into the FSANZ Nutrition Panel calculator/generator and was bitterly disappointed!

The recipe requires lots of pouring mixtures between saucepans and the food processor so it pays to read the instructions all the way through to avoid making a wrong move. But in saying that, its not at all difficult to make. You just have to be prepared to wash a big pile of dishes once you're done!

We enjoyed the pudding with some less-than-perfect early season strawberries and a spoonful of softly whipped cream. But it's even better with some beautifully ripe raspberries and a little Cyclops sour cream.

for old times sake...

In my early cooking days as a young schoolgirl I used to love poring over Mum's vast collection of Australian Women's Weekly Cookbooks, seeking inspiration for potential creations. I was particularly fascinated with replicating 'bought' food at home, hence the lemon chicken and fried rice banquet from AWW Chinese Cooking in attempt to rival the local takeaway's version, the cream buns like they sold down the road at Geyserland Hot Bread Shop, the numerous attempts to bake a deep dish pan pizza as crispy bottomed as those that were all the rage at Pizza Hutt at the time, and the deepfried potato scallops just like the potato fritters from the local fish & chip shop. Perhaps it was a deprivation of takeaways in my early childhood that fueled the desire to make my own?!

At the other, more high-brow end of the culinary spectrum, I was precociously attracted to quite complex recipes with intriguing ingredient combinations and elaborate garnishing. Hence the appeal of the - exotic sounding at the time - Cheese Crusted Apple Tart. This recipe featured in an AWW book titled 'Easy Entertaining'.

Our lifestyles seem to have changed quite a lot since this book was printed in the 1980's, as these days making pastry, chilling, rolling and blind baking it, meanwhile peeling, chopping and cooking the apple filling, preparing the crumble topping, followed by more cooking of the assembled tart (not to mention whipping and piping the cream garnish) wouldn't really cut it in the easy entertaining stakes!

However, despite the labour intensive process this dessert became a family favourite. I decided to make it recently for nostalgic reasons - piped cream, sprinkled cinnamon and all - and we found it to be just as delicious as ever. The cheese pastry is really tasty, and a nice contrast to the sweet filling. it would also make a delicious, crispy pastry for savoury tart.

Cheese-crusted Apple Tart

Pastry

1 c flour, 1/2 c self raising flour, 2 tbsp castor sugar, 125g butter, 1/2c grated tasty cheese
1/2 c water, approx

Filling

4 large granny smith apples ( I doubled this to give the filling more height)

1 tbsp lemon juice

1 tbsp plain flour

1/3c sugar

1/4 tsp cinnamon

Topping

1/3c brown sugar

1/3 c flour

1/2 c almonds

60g butter

For pastry, combine flours and sugar, rub in butter, add cheese and enough water to mix to a firm dough. Wrap in plastic and chill for 30 minutes.

Meanwhile prepare the filling, coarsely chop the apples and add to a saucepan with the lemon juice. Cover and cook for 5-10 minutes until tender. Add the flour, sugar and cinnamon.

To prepare the topping combine sugar, flour and nuts in a bowl or food processor. Rub in butter until mixture is coarse and crumbly.

Roll pastry out and line a 23cm flan tin (preferably loose bottomed) Cover with a sheet of baking paper, fill with blind bake beans and bake at 190 for 7 minutes. Remove paper and blind bake, and another 7 minutes. Remove and cool.

Place filling into the cooked pastry case, and sprinkle with the topping. Bake at 190c for 15 minutes, then turn the oven down to 180c for another 15 minutes.

If you are after the old school look, when cool pipe whipped cream swirls on top, dust with cinnamon and sprinkle with toasted almonds.

lemon meringue - from the 90's to today

For Easter, Mum presented me with a recipe book entitled desserts & after-dinner treats. We don't normally get Easter presents, but Mum had noticed that the book featured a variation on our favourite circle of choux, so decided it must be good and purchased us each a copy.

I took a look at the book, screwed up my face like a spoilt child and proclaimed it to be 'very 90's'. Unlike the simplicity of modern recipe books, each dish was photographed surrounded by a variety of goodies - usually flowers (fresh and/or dried), some raw ingredients (eggs were an favourite), a few serving utensils, some fine china, and ALWAYS a piece of random fabric draped round the dish.

I thought I better try making something from the book before I judged by it's food styling alone. We were having people round for lunch, so I decided to make the Lemon Meringue Pie featured in the book. I made double the filling, and modified the method of cooking slightly - as otherwise it would have taken all day - the recipe suggested blind cooking the pastry, then letting it cool and similarly making the lemon filling then letting it cool, then putting the cooled lemon curd into the cooled pastry, topping with meringue and cooking again... too much admin for me, so I put the still warm lemon filling into the hot pastry added the meringue and cooked the lot. And the results were very pleasing. The pie was nice and high, and easly came out of the pie dish. The lemons I used were fairly bitter, so the meringue provided a nice sweet contrast, and the pastry was lovely, light and crisp.

Inspired (I'm not sure if that's quite the right word?!) by the food styling in the book, I decided to jazz up my photos too, with some flowers, fabric and a whole lemon! Here's the recipe if you too feel inspired:

Lemon Meringue Pie from deserts & after-dinner treats (reprinted best-seller)

Pastry

1 1/4 cups plain flour

2-3 tablespoons icing sugar

125g butter, chopped

Filling

1/4 cup cornflour

1/3 cup water

1 cup lemon juice

2 teaspoons finely grated lemon rind

3/4 cup caster sugar (I used normal sugar)

4 egg yolks (I only put two egg yolks in - not sure why!)

30g butter, chopped

Topping

4 egg whites

3/4 cup caster sugar (I used normal sugar)

For the pastry:
sift flour and icing sugar, rub in butter until mixture is fin and crumbly. Add almost all the water, mix to a firm dough, adding more liquid if necessary. Roll out, and cover base and sides of a 23cm round pie dish. Refrigerate for 20 minutes the blind bake for 10 minutes (temperature was not specified in the book, but I cooked it at 180c)

For the filling:
combine cornflour with a littler water to make a smooth paste. Combine remaining water, juice, rind and sugar in a small pan, stir until sugar dissolves, then add cornflour mixture. Stir over moderate heat until the mixture thickens. Remover from heat, whisk in egg yolks and butter.

To make the topping:
Beat egg whites until soft peak forms, add the sugar gradually, beating constantly until dissolved. Poor filling into pastry shell, spread with meringue to cover, bake at 150C for 20 minutes or until lightly browned.

We had a gluten free guest for lunch, so I also made an individual pie in a wee ramekin with just the filling and meringue... and of course used the 90's food styling!