Dotty Chocolate Smarties Cookies

I've been eating a lot of junk food recently. Smarties are my current favourite.

The switch from "healthy greens with every meal" to "Pocky sticks and coffee for breakfast" wasn't intentional. I believe it to be a symptom of the overall unstructured nature of my life recently. Without the structure of university lectures, hospital rounds, and group study sessions, my research year has quickly degenerated into a seemingly endless and timeless continuum of number-crunching, data-manipulating, and journal article-perusing. Most of the time I walk around in a semi-asleep state. It doesn't help that I only interact with other human beings (who are not family) maybe once or twice a week. That's the thing - I miss people. I miss social interactions. I miss the hustle and bustle of the hospital environment, the beeping of machines, the charts, talking with patients, listening to hearts and lungs...all those things about my clinical placement which overwhelmed me last year, I miss with an almost painful intensity now.

Not that I dislike research. A few days ago I realised that I had recoded the variables in my dataset with the wrong values, and that was why the results weren't making any sense. I corrected the values, and suddenly, there were trends and correlations and associations. Not just any associations, but significant ones. As in, 'p < 0.05' significance. I got a massive high out of the findings. If research was all about ground-breaking discoveries, then I may very well consider it as a long-term career. However, the reality is that most of it is number-crunching, data-manipulating, and journal article-perusing. But when you do make that discovery, it's all the more rewarding.

Anyway, the fact that I don't have to see my peers on a regular basis has meant that I've kinda...let myself go. Not in the sense of gaining huge amounts of weight. Just...very out of shape. Compared to last year, where I was eating a lot of protein and fibre and exercising almost every day, my current lifestyle is ridiculously unhealthy. I feel breathless walking uphill to the shops, where as last year I could have sprinted the entire distance and not broken a sweat. I can't even run 2km anymore, let alone the 14km that I did for City2Surf last year.

Moreover, I've found myself getting quite moody around noon, and quite predictably so. I suspect it has a lot to do with crashing from the refined sugar highs induced by my junk food breakfasts. My cognition has also suffered a lot. I had such brain fog one day that I couldn't remember how I got from one place to the other. It felt like I'd suddenly materialised at the shopping center, and I had very little recollection of the actual trip. What mode of transport had I taken? How long did my journey take? It was a very disturbing sensation indeed.

Therefore, I've made a pledge to myself to go back to eating proper, wholesome foods from now on. These cookies are my way of using up the last of my Smarties stash, while also acting as a remind that there is nothing inherently wrong with refined carbohydrates and these so-called "empty" calories. I admit it - while I was actively trying to lose weight, and for the first few months of maintenance, I was very neurotic about food. I could eat this, but not that. Some foods were "bad" and should never be consumed. Protein bars were okay, but chocolate bars were not (even though the former was probably just as lacking in real nutrition). I didn't allow myself to have any junk food, and as a result of that I went nutso and ate EVERYTHING once I couldn't stand my restrictive, "healthy" diet anymore.

Since then, I've learnt moderation, and that junk food doesn't make you gain weight as long as you don't overeat in calories. It's how it makes you feel that should make you think twice about consuming it in excess. I want a good-looking, healthy body, but a healthy mind also. I don't want to have a depressive slump every afternoon. I don't want my brain to be so fogged over by high blood sugar levels that I can't interpret lab results, or fall asleep over my textbook. The point is, by all means eat junk food, but don't use it as a replacement for real nutrition. It's common sense to most people probably, but it's taken my own experiences to make me actually believe it.

Healthy or no, these cookies are delicious, and oh-so-adorable. I love multi-coloured dots, whether it be in fashion or food. They are super-easy to make. Just combine the ingredients for the cookie dough, pop it in the fridge to firm up a little (so that the cookie doesn't spread too much while baking), shape it into small discs, then press on the smarties. They take around 8-10 minutes to bake. The texture is a little harder than cakey, but not quite crunchy, I suspect that if you bake it for an extra minute, you'll end up with a crisp, chocolatey cookie.

Dotty Chocolate Smarties Cookies
Makes 32 palm-sized cookies

Ingredients

200g unsalted butter, softened
300g white granulated sugar
2 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
350g plain flour, sifted
50g cocoa powder, sifted
2 teaspoons baking soda
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
Smarties to decorate (enough for 5 per cookie)

Method

1. Preheat oven to 175 degrees Celsius (350 degrees Fahrenheit). Place baking rack at the bottom 1/3 of the oven.

2. In a dry bowl, stir together the sifted flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, baking powder and salt. Set aside.

3. In another bowl, cream together the butter and sugar with an electric or hand mixer until light and fluffy. Add the eggs and vanilla extract, and continue to mix until fully incorporated.

4. Add the dry ingredients to the creamed butter mixture, and mix at low speed until just combined. Do not overmix or your cookies will be tough. If necessary, use hands or a wooden spoon to finish mixing together the dough.

5. Wrap the dough in cling wrap, and chill in fridge for 30 minutes.

6. Line a baking tray with non-stick baking paper. Grab a ball of dough slightly smaller than the size of a golf ball. Roll it into smooth ball, then flatten into a disc. Place onto baking paper, and press 5 Smarties on top of each disc.

7. Bake in oven for 8-10 minutes. Remove from oven, and allow to cool slightly and harden before transferring onto a wire rack to cool completely. But, by all means, eat them while they're still warm and soft! :D

Black Forest Gateau

Some recipes are just too good not to share, and this is one of them. This Black Forest Gateau was made for a dinner party I threw for some friends last night. It was such a hit that my siblings, who are usually only mildly interested in my baked goods, actually squabbled over the left overs.

Black Forest has long been my favourite type of layer cake. And what's not to like? Cherries soaked in kirsch (or some other liquer), sandwiched between layers of intensely chocolatey sponge cake, and the whole thing smothered with freshly whipped cream. The contrast of textures and flavours - plump, juicy cherries against soft, yielding cake, the dulcet creaminess of the fresh cream against the bite from the alcohol - makes a well-made Black Forest a true pleasure to eat.

The key, as always, is to use the best base ingredients possible. In this case, the chocolate cake involved copious amounts of insanely expensive Ecuadorian cacao powder. A slight overkill? Perhaps. But these were very good friends that were coming over, and I like feeding the people I love the real deal in edibles. And also because this was the only cocoa powder I had lying around. Just avoid the nasty cheap stuff that doesn't even smell like chocolate (which, embarrassingly, I have used before in thriftier times) and you should be fine.

Just so you don't end up broke by the time you're done making this cake, you can cut some corners when it comes to the cherries and opt for fresh ones soaked in a liqueur of your choice instead of going out of your way to acquire maraschino cherries. I know it's not traditional, and some people would argue that it's not Black Forest unless it's soaked in kirsch (a cherry liqueur), but as long as it tastes good, right? I myself used a mixture of vodka, schnapps and rum. Add the amount to taste. Drain the cherries when you're ready to assemble the cake, but don't throw away the liquid! You'll need that for brushing onto your cake layers.

A nicely assembled layer cake is a thing of beauty, but it takes a bit of fussing around with levelling the cake layers, and applying a crumb-coat (as seen in the picture above). Since this was to be served amongst friends, I didn't go nutso on the decorating. Just a bit of piping, and going around the edge with a comb tool. You can see bits of the cake showing through the cream frosting, but I quite like the effect.

For the cake itself, I consulted my beloved copy of Rose Levy Beranbaum's Rose's Heavenly Cakes and went with the chocolate cake recipe used in her German chocolate cake. True to her word, this chocolate cake does indeed remain soft when chilled in the fridge, but has enough structural integrity to lend itself well to carving. The texture is a thing to marvel at - fudgy, almost like mudcake, yet the recipe requires only cocoa powder, not melted chocolate. I think I've found a winner in this recipe, and can see it becoming my default choice for future birthday cake bases.

Recipe for Black Forest Gateau

Makes two cake layers, around 23cm (9 inch) in diameter

Ingredients

For the chocolate cake:

3/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons (66 grams) unsweetened cocoa powder

1/2 cup (118g) boiling water

1/2 cup (108g) canola oil

4 large eggs, separated, plus 2 whites

1 teaspoons pure vanilla extract

3/4 cup (75g) cake flour

2/3 cup (75g) all-purpose flour

1 1/2 cups (300g) caster sugar

2 teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/4 teaspoon salt

For the liqueur-soaked cherries

Around 30 medium-sized sweet cherries

5 tablespoons liqueur of your choice

For the whipped cream filling and frosting

600ml thickened cream, suitable for whipping, chilled

6 tablespoons confectioner's (icing) sugar, sifted

2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract

For decorating

6 medium-sized cherries, with stem attached

Chocolate block at room temperature

Method

1. A day before baking the cakes, remove the stones from the cherries. (I used a specialty cherry de-stoner which allowed me to keep the cherries whole, but you can also cut the cherries in half and pry the stones out that way.) Douse the destoned cherries with the liqueur and toss everything around. Place in an airtight container, and keep in the fridge overnight.

To make the cakes:

2. Preheat the oven to 175 degrees Celsius (350 degrees Fahrenheit). Place the baking rack close to the bottom of the oven. Grease two round cake pans, both 22cm in diameter and 8cm high.

3. Mix the cocoa powder with the boiling water in a bowl until a smooth paste forms. Cover with cling film to prevent the mixture from drying out. Set aside to cool slightly. Add in the oil and egg yolks to the paste, and beat with a hand mixer or stand mixer until it becomes the consistency of a soft buttercream. Scrape down the sides of the bowl. Add in the vanilla. Beat for another 30 seconds.

4. In another bowl, whisk together the cake and all-purpose flours, sugar, salt and baking soda. Add half of this dry mixture to the cocoa mixture from step 3. Beat on low speed until the dry ingredients are moistened. Add in the rest of the dry mixture and beat on low speed until everything is moistened. Increase mixer speed to medium, and beat for 1 minute, scraping down the sides of the bowl occasionally. Turn down mixer speed to low, and add in the egg whites. Gradually raise speed back up to medium, and beat until mixture resembles a thick soup. Scrape half the batter into one pan and the rest in the other. 

5. Bake for 25 to 35 minutes or until a cake tester inserted into the middle comes out clean. Take out of oven and allow to cool for 5 minutes in pan, before unmolding and letting the cakes cool completely on cooling racks.

To make the whipped cream filling/frosting:

6. Pour the chilled thickened cream into a a bowl which has been chilled in the fridge. Add vanilla extract and sifted icing sugar. Beat with a whisk or electric beaters until soft peaks form.

To assemble the cake:

7. Drain the liqueur-soaked cherries, reserving the liquid. Set aside.

8. Divide the whipped cream into two portions. One portion will be used to fill and crumb-coat the cake, and the other for decoration.

9. Using a cake-leveller, (or just a serrated knife if you've got a good eye and steady hand), slice off the domed tops of the cake layers. Brush the bottom layer with the liquid from the cherries, then top with a layer of cream, the cherries, and another layer of cream. Brush the other cake layer with the cherry liquid, then place on top of the filling, brushed-side down. Brush the very top of the cake with some more cherry liquid.

10. Using a spatula, crumb-coat the cake with whipped cream. Chill the crumb-coated cake in the fridge for at least four hours, before using the remaining cream to decorate the outside of the cake. Complete the decorating with the chocolate curls (made by scraping the chocolate block with a potato peeler) and fresh cherries-with-stems-attached.

11. Return to fridge to chill. Take out from the fridge 20 minutes prior to serving.

Ben 10 Cake (and the PERFECT chocolate ganache buttercream)

It was my brother's birthday last weekend, and to celebrate, we threw him a party at one of those laser-tagging places that is all the rage with hyperactive boys his age. My personal present to him was a Ben 10 birthday cake!

I've never really been interested in cartoon/anime, apart from my obsessive viewing of Sailor Moon, Pokemon and Cardcaptor Sakura on Cheez TV every morning before school back in the 90s. Therefore, I was unsurprised (though slightly put out) when one of the brother's little friends informed me snidely that "Ben 10 [was] for babies!" I was suffering from severe sleep deprivation at the time, due to having gotten up at an obscene hour to put the edible icing transfer and other finish touches on the cake, and it was only out of consideration for my dignity that I didn't snark back. Making little kids cry is uncool, no matter however much they may deserve it xD

This particular cake marked many 'firsts' for me. It was the first time I've put an edible icing image transfer on a cake, and that was a nerve-wracking task in itself. It involved letting the image harden in the freezer, and then taking advantage of the 5 seconds it remained hard when taken out of the freezer to remove the backing sheet, and position it on the cake. I was a bit slow, and as a result some of the image didn't come off the backing sheet, but I managed to cover the boo-boo with the fondant border.

Talking about the fondant...you can see from the close-up above at how shoddy a job I did, but again, this was a first for me! Not only have I never worked with fondant before, but this fondant was one that I'd made myself, using the marshmallow fondant technique. I wouldn't say that it was necessarily cheaper than store-bought fondant when you count the costs of the raw materials and the time and effort that went into making it, but it did turn out to be tastier than the store-bought stuff. There were huge, visible cracks running down two sides of the cake and along the top, and for one heart-stopping moment I thought all was lost when the fondant tore as I pulled it over the cake. Thankfully I was able to rescue the cake, employing the same resourcefulness as I did in those disastrous Design & Technology classes back in high school. 

See, I wasn't exaggerating when I said the cracks were HUGE.

All in all, not the neatest looking cake, but the cake itself (and the filling) was more delicious than any birthday cake we've ordered from professional cake shops. I decided on a no-frills cream cheese pound cake base, filled with chocolate ganache buttercream.

Spreading the buttercream on THICK; I like a 1:1 ratio of cake to filling!

Chocolate ganache buttercream combines the best of two worlds, as its name suggests. There are a few recipes on the internet under the common moniker of "chocolate ganache buttercream", but because I didn't like the sound of any of them, I decided to invent my own. I started by making a chocolate ganache, using the best chocolate I had in the house: 200g of Lindt milk chocolate, 100g of Lindt Excellence 70% dark chocolate, and 100g of Callebaut 70% dark chocolate. I intentionally used double cream which had a high fat content, around 48%. After the chocolate had melted into the 600ml of double cream over low heat, I added in 3 tablespoons of unsalted butter. I poured the whole concoction into an airtight container, put it in the fridge and left it overnight. This is what it looked like when I scooped it out the next morning:

Looks good enough to eat with a spoon, doesn't it? :D My original plan was to use the ganache as is to fill and crumb-coat the cake, but there were issues with quantity (i.e. not having nearly enough ganache to frost three layers) and the fact that the ganache was simply too rich and sweet. The solution: aerate it by whipping it with some butter. The result: a chocolate mousse-like buttercream that was not too sweet, but was unmistakably chocolatey!

I also made some iced cookies using the Easter-themed cookie cutters I recently purchased, but I'll leave the details for another post :)

Here's the recipe for the amazing chocolate ganache buttercream!

Recipe for Lucy's Chocolate Ganache Buttercream

Makes around 3-4 cups of buttercream

Ingredients

200g Lindt Excellence Milk Chocolate

100g Lindt Excellence 70% Cocoa dark chocolate

100g Callebaut 70% bittersweet chocolate

600ml double cream (I used Pura Double Thick Cream, but any cream suitable for cooking should be fine)

375g + 3 tablespoons unsalted butter, at room temperature

Method

1. Put double cream and all 400g of chocolate in a thick-bottomed saucepan, over a gentle heat, until chocolate has melted completely. Keep stirring the mixture and scraping the sides and bottom of the saucepan to stop it from burning.

2. Take the mixture off the heat, and add 3 tablespoons of butter. Stir until butter has completely melted.

3. Transfer the ganache mixture into an air-tight container, and chill in fridge until the ganache has firmed to a spreadable consistency. If ganache is too hard, microwave in 5 second bursts until soft but not liquid.

4. Beat the chilled ganache with a hand beater or stand mixture, until light and fluffy. Add in the 375g of unsalted butter. To help with the butter combining with the ganache, you can chop it into 2cm cubes beforehand.

5. Beat the butter and ganache until it looks like an aerated mousse. Chocolate ganache buttercream, done!

The Happiness Cake

I wouldn't go so far as to call myself a pessimist, but there are certainly times when I fail to see the silver lining in anything. It's usually a case of wallowing in self-pity, and I get over my bouts of folly and narcissism quickly enough. Nothing cheers me up quite like baking a cake, and taking my time decorating it. Sometimes I get accused of wasting precious time by experimenting with swiss meringue buttercream, or building a gingerbread house, when I could have been studying, or cleaning my room, or doing some other 'not meaningless' thing. My only retort is that people have different ways of dealing with stress. Some people go get drunk. Others turn to retail therapy. I play with nonpareils and silver dragees.

This cake proved to be the ultimate stress-buster. For starters, it's hard to obsess over the ever-increasing pile of uni work when you're positioning each dragee with a pair of chopsticks (the only tweezers I own are the ones in my dissection kit). And then there's the anticipation of tucking into a slice of chocolate cake in bed right before lights-out on a Sunday night; a prophylactic dose of sugar before the weekday crazies start anew.

(Yes, I eat in bed. Nigella Lawson said it was okay, so cease your disapproving muttering at once!)

 

So, what's with the "B"? No, this isn't some homage to Nathaniel Hawthorne, or an attempt at disguising my shoddy frosting skills (okay, maybe a little of the latter). This cake is actually for my sister to take to her school chapel service on Sunday, and the "B" is the first letter of the name of the House she is in. Since everyone in her House will be bringing something to the service, I have no doubts that there'll be chocolate cake left over. But if this Happiness Cake proves to be especially popular, I'll make sure that the sister saves me a slice for my planned cake-eating-in-bed.

Some other things which make me HAPPY:

Macarons!

Flowers!

And some more flowers.

Beautiful views.

Eating pieces of the beautiful view (a shard of glacier in this case).

Fruit in bulk.

Jumping in fields of gold.

And, of course, cupcakes.

So...what makes you happy? ;D

Coconut Nutella Crunchies

I tested out a second recipe from The Australian Women's Weekly 'The Afternoon Tea Collection' yesterday. While my dough for the Melting Moments was chilling in the freezer, I got to work on these Coconut Nutella Crunchies:

These are essentially cookie sandwiches made from coconut honey oatmeal cookies, with a layer of Nutella in between. I substituted some ingredients in the original AWW recipe with what I had lying around. I used honey where the recipe called for treacle or golden syrup (although, I did find a jar of golden syrup in the cupboard right after I added the honey. darn it! :D), and used Nutella in the place of chocolate ganache, because I couldn't be bothered to make the latter.

The cookies were made with self-raising flour. This, combined with the eggs in the dough, makes for a crumbly, pillowy cookie. I'm quite happy with my substituting Nutella for chocolate ganache, since Nutella makes everything taste good and the hazelnut flavour adds yet another dimension to the cookie. However, I do believe that chocolate ganache will set harder, and maintain the structural integrity of the cookie, whereas the Nutella sorta just melted and smeared everywhere. A few hours in the fridge did help to rectify the situation.

As with the Melting Moments, I recommend chilling the dough in the freezer before shaping it. I made pretty criss-crossed indentations on each cookie with a fork before putting them in the oven, and I was saddened to see that the pattern was lost after baking. Oh well. When baking for family (and oneself), it's the taste that counts more than anything else. And these taste good, believe you me :D *wanders off to eat another Coconut Nutella Crunchy*.



Recipe for Coconut Nutella Crunchies

Adapted from The Australian Women's Weekly 'The Afternoon Tea Collection'


Makes 30-40 Crunchies, depending on how big you make them

Ingredients

For the cookies:
125g (4 ounces) butter, softened
3/4 cup (165g) firmly packed light brown sugar
1 tablespoon honey
2 eggs
2 cups (300g) self-raising flour
1 cup (80g) desiccated coconut
1/2 cup (45g) raw rolled oats

For the filling:
Large jar of Nutella or other hazelnut spread (no, you won't need the whole jar. I simply didn't take note of how much I used, sorry xD)

Method

1. Preheat oven to 180 degrees Celsius (350 degrees Fahrenheit). Place baking rack towards the centre of the oven, closer to the bottom. Line baking tray with baking paper.

2. Beat butter, sugar and honey in a bowl with electric mixer or beater until smooth, light and fluffy. Beat in the eggs. Stir in the flour, coconut and oats until fully incorporated.

3. Place dough in fridge or freezer and chill until hard enough to roll with hands. Dust your hands with flour, then roll rounded teaspoons of mixture into balls. Placed on lined baking tray, with about 5cm between each cookie. Dust fork with flour, and use it to flatten the dough balls.

4. Bake cookies for about 12 minutes. Cool on trays, then transfer to cooling racks.

5. Once cookies are completely cool, sandwich two cookies with about a rounded teaspoon of Nutella.

Using up that pesky bag of almond meal

ETA: Guess what I spent the morning doing! If you look along the top the page, just under the banner, I've added a tab "About BeyondBourkeStreet", which links to an 'About Me' page. Feel free to check it out, and hope you like the pictures! :D

In this post, I shall share two dessert recipes that I recently employed in order to use up my stash of almond meal. I'm sure this isn't a commonly-occurring problem for most people, since no one goes out of their way buying almond meal in bulk, especially considering how expensive the stuff is. Unless you had plans on making macarons until you developed carpal tunnel syndrome. Too bad I fell out of love with macarons after I'd bought the 1kg bag of almond meal. Something to do with eating so many over a limited period of time that my teeth hurt, my throat smoked, and my sinuses seized up from the overwhelming sweetness. I need to learn moderation.

Orange and poppyseed frangipane tart

The first of the recipes - the orange and poppyseed frangipane tart - is an innovation of my very own. Why orange and poppyseed? Well, why not? :D Haha, actually, it was because I had a bag of poppyseed that also needed to be used up. The flavour combination is such a classic one that I was quite confident it would turn out well in this form. Like for my pound cake, I utilised orange extract instead of orange juice and zest.  I would like to try this with the real stuff some day. Flavour extract notwithstanding, this tart turned out really well. As you can see from the photos, the top was crusty while the insides remained gooey and yielding. Kinda like a macaron, actually! 

All the frangipane tarts I came across on the Internet included some sort of fruity component, whether it be pears poached in white wine, sliced and layered on top, or apple pieces spiced with cinnamon, and the whole thing resembling a postmodernist take on the humble apple pie. Since I was to be taking this to a dinner party the next day, I wanted a recipe that didn't consist of easily-perishable ingredients. Gourmet Traveller to the rescue! The magazine had an online recipe for a Galician almond tart which I used as a reference point for ingredient ratios.  Had I substituted almond meal or some other kind of gluten-free flour for the shortcrust pastry dough, the whole tart would have been gluten-free.

The second recipe is one we're all familiar with: the Flourless Chocolate Cake. Again, a classic. You can't go wrong with classics. I also brought this along to the same dinner party, and the guests were absolutely enamoured with the cake. There were moans upon tasting. One taster commented: "This is the best chocolate cake I've ever eaten. Perfect balance of sweetness." No doubt this was largely due the use of my precious Callebaut bittersweet chocolate, with a 60% cocoa mass.

Flourless chocolate cake

There are literally thousands of recipes for flourless chocolate cakes, some using nut flours as a substitute for wheat flour, while others using only eggs for structural integrity. Since the whole point of this exercise (apart from getting chocolate cake out of it, of course) was to use up my almond meal, I went with the recipe from The Cake Mistress. And I am so glad I did, because this was the best chocolate cake I myself have ever tasted. 

Fudgy, incredibly moist and so intensely chocolatey, I may very well never experiment with another flourless chocolate cake recipe.

Recipe for Orange and Poppyseed Frangipane tart

Ingredients

For the shortcrust pastry:

200g plain flour

75g white, granulated sugar

100g cold butter, coarsely chopped

1 egg

1-2 tablespoons cold water

For the tart filling:

4 eggs

250g white, granulated sugar

250g almond meal

3 tablespoons poppyseeds

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

2 teaspoons orange extract

To serve: icing sugar

Method

1. To make the shortcrust pastry, combine flour, sugar and butter in a food processor and pulse until the mixture has the consistency of coarse breadcrumbs. Add the egg and 1-2 tablespoons of cold water and pulse until the pastry just comes together. Alternatively, if you don't have a food processor, you can combined everything by hand. Just put the flour, sugar and butter in a bowel and rub together with (clean) finger tips. Add the egg, and cold water if necessary, and rub some more. Don't knead the dough, otherwise the crust will turn out tough.

2. Press the pastry into a 25cm-diameter tart or flan tin, pushing the pastry up the edges. Don't worry about trimming overhanging dough at this point. Cover with cling wrap, and refrigerate for 30 minutes.

3. To make the filling, whisk eggs and sugar until pale and frothy (mixture reaching the 'ribbon stage'), and the mixture has doubled in volume. Fold in the almond meal, vanilla and orange extracts, and poppy seeds.

4. Preheat oven to 180 degrees Celsius (or 350 degrees Fahrenheit). Remove pastry from fridge, and trim the edges. Prick the base all over with a fork, and spoon the almond mixture into the tart tin lined with the pastry. Smooth top. Bake for 45 minutes or until top is golden, crusty, and hard to touch. Remove from oven, cool tart in pan. Once tart is completely cool, remove from pan and serve dusted with icing sugar.

Recipe for Flourless Chocolate Cake

Adapted from The Cake Mistress

Ingredients

200g good quality bittersweet chocolate, chopped

125g unsalted butter, chopped

225g brown sugar

100g almond meal

5 large eggs, separated

1 pinch of cream of tartar

To serve: 1 tablespoon cocoa powder.

Method

1. Preheat oven to 180 degrees Celsius (or 360 degrees Fahrenheit). Line the base and sides of a 20cm-diameter cake tin with non-stick baking paper.

2. Combine the chocolate and butter in a microwave-safe bowl and melt in microwave by heating in 10-second bursts for the first two times, then 5-second bursts subsequently. Stir in between heating. Be careful not to burn the chocolate! Alternatively, you can melt the chocolate and butter over a double-boiler. Bring a large saucepan of water to the boil. Combine chocolate and butter in a heatproof bowl and place that bowl over the saucepan of boiling water. Stir while ingredients melt.

3. Once butter and chocolate have completely melted, stir in the brown sugar and almond meal until the mixture is smooth. Allow the mixture to cool slightly, then add the egg yolks one by one, stirring after each addition.

4. In a dry, clean bowl, combine the egg whites and cream of tartar. Beat with a hand-held mixture until frothy, then gradually add the white, granulated sugar. Continue beating until firm peaks form. 

5. Fold one-third of the beaten egg whites into the cooled chocolate mixture. Mix well to make the chocolate mixture more liquid-y. Pour the chocolate mixture into the remaining two-thirds of the beaten egg whites, and fold together carefully with a rubber spatula, being careful not to deflate the mixture. Fold until the mixtures are just incorporated.

6. Pour into the lined cake tin, and bake for 45-50 minutes until a firm crusts forms on top. Remove from oven, and allow cake to cool in tin completely before removing. Once cake is completely cool, sift cocoa powder over the top.

So, recently...(the Reader's Digest version)

Salutations! As much as I would love to sit down and type out a long and detailed recount of all my fabulous eats over the past few weeks, I still have two huge exams to get through before the holidays. Despite being basically house-bound in the weeks leading up to my first exam, I did manage to squeeze in some nice yummies. I find eating to be quite a good coping mechanism (not to mention procrastination device xD). It's like: oh, stuff it all, who cares about [insert complex scientific concept], I'm gonna get me a big ol' slice of CHOCOLATE MUDCAKE.

Chocolate mudcake from Pasticceria Papa



And another one -

Chocolate mudcake from Pasticceria Sulfaro

Believe it or not, I actually acquired both of these on the same day, to be eaten on the same day. Let's just say I was in a very self-destructive state of mind at the time; blame it on all those disease flowcharts I had to cram into my limited brain space!

While we're on the topic of chocolate, I developed an addiction to Lindt Excellence 85% Cocoa last week. I admit to having a weird obsessive-compulsive personality where I get fixated on one kind of food for a period of time, where I would keep eating it day-in, day-out, until I get sick of the taste. Don't be shocked by this next picture - they were on sale at Woolworths! In the week leading up to my second exam, I (no joke) ate a whole bar every. single. day. It was very liberating...

Note: only the 85% bars were on special; I bought the 99% ones from the Lindt cafe in Martin Place. They're half the size and double the price of the regular bars, so I couldn't afford to develop an addiction to them!

Being a good big sister, I somehow managed to bake and ice 165 cupcakes for my sister to take to her grade at school as part of her birthday celebration. There I was, smothering vanilla cupcakes with thick, buttery icing in semi-darkness, with only my iPad screen (showing my study notes) as the only source of illumination. Good times.

Ahem, yes, I was inspired for the design of these from a well-known cupcakery in Surry Hills...

What else, what else? Ooh, that's right - I turned 21 years old! I celebrated it with a dinner out with friends and family. My birthday cake was a whole ricotta cheesecake from Pasticceria Papa (my goodness, do I love that place or what?)

More recently, I went and had brunch at 2042 Deli & Cafe in Newtown with an old friend who happened to be in Sydney (she studies interstate). It was a delicious affair, and the joy of her company made the food taste all the better.

Perfectly poached eggs in 2042 Deli & Cafe's Eggs Benedict.

Okay, I can no longer stand the voice in my head screaming at me to "GO STUDY", so this is where I will end the entry. Will write in more detail once these exams are over! (soon...soon...)