Engagement cupcakes

Made these for some dear friends' engagement party. The recipe is here. 

Ladurée (again)

I've blogged about Ladurée before. This visit was JUST AS GOOD. 

They make their own champagne: who knew. 

I blogged about having a rustic kouign amman in St Malo a few years ago.

My favourite every pastry: the palmier (front left). The thing in the middle is a Paris Brest. 

Kugelhopf

This is Dorie Greenspan's recipe for kugelhopf: I made the recipe as written here.

It's technically a kugelhopf made in the wrong pan. This is a rose-shaped bundt pan. A kugelhopf is traditionally supposed to be in a tall swirly turban-like shaped pan.

I found out a few things while planning this cake:

1. A bundt cake in modern parlance is an American term for anything baked in a bundt tin of whatever shape, typically some sort of pound cake or heavy cake in any flavour. You can get bizarro bastardised versions in sour cream and carrot, black forest, pecan caramel, etc.

2. A bundt cake in the traditional sense is a German chocolate-laden thing, still in the fancy shape but with cinnamon-coffee-mocha-type flavouring.

3. A kugelhopf is not a bundt cake. It is like a brioche, but not. It has raisins in it and runs on yeast, not self-raising flour. So it is like a half-bread, half-cake bakery mutant.

I also learned that flour can Do Things I Did Not Know It Could Do. When the dough was first mixed, it was super-sloppy, almost like pancake batter. I was all like "whatever, it's screwed, I put too much milk in it". Then Dorie was all like "beat it in the mixer until the end of time." I was like "whatever Dorie, that's never going to become a cake, or even remotely dough-like. Good luck, lady." But anyway, I did the eternal mixing, and slowly it came together and all the gluten strands stretched and stretched and eventually it was like smooth stretchy chewing gum. No joke. I was amazed. Then it had to rise and be knocked back about six times, then sit overnight, then rise again for hours. By the end of all that I was like "THIS BETTER BE WORTH IT". Anyway, it totally was.

This thing came out of the oven and it was light, richly flavoured (no doubt from maturing and rising and yeasting for so long) and the raisins were soft and juicy, and it was awesome. I also dusted it with cinnamon along with the sugar. It was delicious with coffee.  Perfect for afternoon tea. Or breakfast. Or dessert. Incredible.

My tip: if you use a bundt pan or a rose pan or anything with tons of ridges or moulded detail, butter it real good, butter it again and then lightly flour the tin as well. I hate it when things stick to pans.

Afternoon tea

Tokyo Milk

Tokyo Milk: my latest obsession. Magnolia at New Farm has a couple of the hand creams, but for the rest of the range I need to go online and order from the US. Such deep, dark temptation...

Lovely autumn lunch

My friend Emma made this lovely lunch for us. Out on the back deck, surrounded by tall trees, native birds and grumpy gardening husbands. Wonderful. Rocket leaves dressed with shaved parmesan and balsamic vinegar, warm savoury tart with chorizo, pumpkin and feta, and for dessert, little date bites with chocolate. All very beautiful.

Lady date

French Twist at the Barracks: coffee, tea and a beautifully mini apple crumble to share. Lovely chinaware, lovely company, lovely position.

Valentine's teddy cookies

Cream tea

Afternoon tea. David Herbert's scone recipe, St. Dalfour jams (raspberry, black cherry and fig), only because I couldn't find Bonne Maman... thick cream and strong Madura tea. Also some sliced strawberries, macerated in icing sugar and Cointreau. Lovely.

Chocolate glitter cupcakes

Plain sponge chocolate cupcakes, covered with a ganache made of dark chocolate and unsalted butter, and sprinkled with pink sugar glitter.

Raspberry marshmallow cupcakes

These look (and taste) so sweet. They're dead easy to make: the cuteness is all in the detail. Make some plain buttercake cupcakes, using fancy floral cupcake papers. I added a few drops of rosewater into the cake batter. Make sure the cake only comes about two-thirds of the way up the case.

Warm some raspberry jam and dollop a teaspoonful onto each cake. When the jam has cooled a bit, make some plain buttercream icing, adding pink food colouring and a few drops each of lemon juice and rosewater. Fit a piping bag with a medium-large star nozzle and swirl icing over the jam in a pyramid shape. Sprinkle mini-marshmallows to finish.