Chocolate crunch cheesecake.

Cheesecake does not need eggs! A while ago I found a fairly bland plain egg-free cheesecake recipe that tasted like an ordinary cheesecake. There was nothing particularly unusual about it. I guess eggs in a cheesecake are used for richness and flavour rather than as functional part of the mix. To test this theory I decided to try omitting the eggs from one of my favourite cheesecake recipes, and yes it worked perfectly.

Just a word of warning with the biscuit crumb base. It is not so easy to find a safe commercial biscuit. We ended up using McVities Digestives. These are completely egg and nut free (though always check the label in case this changes). The original recipe called for a chocolate ripple biscuit, so I've suggested adding some cocoa to compensate. Alternatively you could make a shortcrust base for the cheesecake, flavoured with a little cocoa.

Also for the chocolate coated honeycomb; if you are buying confectionery in Australia you are looking at either a Cadbury Crunchy or a Nestle's Violet Crumble. This means including an ingredient with traces of eggs and nuts. Hannah has had some problems with Cadbury's chocolate in the past (skin on her face becoming reddened and itchy) but was ok eating this. It is possible to make one's own honeycomb, something I remember doing when I was a kid with my mum. I attempted the recipe I had and ended up with a seething mass of burnt toffee. If any readers can advise on a successful recipe I'd be most interested.

And a word of warning: this is very rich - small slices at a time please!

125g biscuits, crushed
2 tbs cocoa (if the biscuits are not chocolate biscuits)
60g butter, melted
500g cream cheese
1/3 cup castor sugar
2 tsp grated lemon rind
1/3 cup cream
1 tbs flour
45g bar Chocolate coated Honeycomb, finely chopped

Caramel Filling:
30g butter
¼ cup brown sugar
2 tbs sweetened condensed milk
1 tbs golden syrup
2 tbs hot water

Topping:
150g chocolate, chopped
¼ cup cream

Combine crumbs and butter, and press into base of 20cm spring-form. Refrigerate for 30 minutes.

Beat cheese, sugar and rind until smooth. Add cream and flour, beat until smooth.

Place spring-form tin on oven tray, pour ½ the cheese mixture into tin, sprinkle with honeycomb. Spoon caramel filling over honeycomb, top with remaining cheese mixture. Bake in slow oven about 1 hour or until firm.

Spread topping over cheesecake, refrigerate until set, decorate with extra cream and berries.

Caramel filling:
Combine all ingredients in a pan, stir over heat without boiling until sugar is dissolved. Boil without stirring 4 minutes or until deep caramel colour, cool 10 minutes.

Topping: Melt chocolate with cream in a heatproof bowl over simmering water, cool to room temperature

Show on radio national about allergies

The other day Background Briefing on Radio National had a 50 minute program focused on allergies, including a look at the recent change in theory about avoiding early introduction of peanuts to small children. It is worth a listen. It can be listened to as streaming audio or down loaded as an MP3 for a few weeks, there is also a transcript which I think stays up a bit longer.

Marmalade Biscuits

We like marmalade in this house, Hannah and I, and have done for a since Hannah has been old enough to pinch my eat toast. A good tart Seville orange Marmalade please. (I recommend the recipe in Stephanie Alexanders 'The Cooks Companion' - though oddly it is not in the new edition). Recently we've started reading the Paddington Bear books and are learning about Paddington's obsession with marmalade - particularly marmalade sandwiches. Can't say that I like the idea of marmalade on untoasted bread, but we've just found out that marmalade does work in biscuits.

I've known for awhile of a beaut website by baker and writer Dan Lepard, where as well as forums open to questions and comments on the cookbooks he has written, he also republishes recipes that he has written for The Guardian newspaper. Of course many of the recipes aren't suitable for us, but a few are just perfect. These Marmalade Buttons are an example. They are essentially based on a shortbread mix (with 50/50 flour and ground rice), with the addition of mixed peel, marmalade and a delicious crusty edge coated with sugar. Lepard's recipe specifies demerara sugar, not having any I used brown sugar which made the most delicious crust. I biscuit I'd heartily recommend.

Gyoza

Last week was Chinese New Year. At Hannah's kinder the activities revolved around this. Lots of pretend dragons, lanterns and fire-crackers were made. She mentioned that they made Chinese dumplings. I quizzed her if they ate them, did they made real dumplings? It appears they did. She thought they were great and wanted more. I'd discovered gyoza a long time back and decided in lieu of knowing much about Chinese dumplings we'd try these together. It was a brilliant idea. Next time I'll know that I just have to measure the filling ingredients and leave my little cook to it.


250g ground pork
250g chopped, steamed cabbage
1 sping onion, finely chopped
1 clove garlic, crushed
1 tsp ginger, grated
2 tbs soy sauce
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp pepper
1/2 tsp sugar
1-2 tsp sesame oil (optional - we don't use it)
1 tsp sake (optional)
1 package of gyoza skins - from an Asian grocery

Mix together, put 1 teaspoon of filling in each gyoza skin. Wet the edge of the pastry and fold over the filling. Ideally one side is given little pleats, so that one side is flat, the other rounded - but this is detail can be omitted depending on the skill of the cook.

Fry a few gyoza at a time til browned, then add a few tablespoons of water, put lid on and steam for about 5 minutes.

Dipping Sauce
3 tbs soy sauce
1 tbs lemon juice

Alternative Vegetarian Filling
Substitute an equivalent amount of celery (diced finely) together with shitake mushrooms (sliced and steamed) for the pork mince.

Calabrese-style Meatballs

I've suddenly found myself working full time for a short while in order to complete an important project - normally I only work three days in the week. It has left me a little panicky at the loss of all that lovely lazy time I've got used to having with my small girl, noodling around the museum or the zoo, or making things for the fairies in the garden (for real - there are five of them!) and so on. But it is just divine to come home starving, and my wonderful spouse has dinner ready. Tonight we had these meatballs. They are incredibly good, totally egg-free and because they are cooked by simmering in a tomato sauce - they are soft and gentle and very comforting.

The original recipe has the juice of 1 lemon and it's zest which we're not keen on, we prefer just a little zest. The recipe makes enough for 6 but don't reduce it - it freezes fantastically.

Meatballs
3 thick slices of bread, white or wholemeal
1/2 cup of milk
2 tbs olive oil
2 cloves garlic, peeled
2 tsp salt
500g pork mince
1/2 tsp lemon zest
1 cup finely grated Parmesan cheese
1/4 cup coarsely chopped parsley
black pepper

Remove crusts from the bread, break into pieces and mix with the milk and oil. Rest for 15 minutes then mash with a fork until it is all smooth. Place the garlic and salt in a mortar and pestle and grind to a paste.

Mix together with hands all ingredients in a large bowl until well combined. Shape tablespoons of mixture into balls (really you can make them any size you like - I'm quite partial to tiny ones).

The recipe at this point suggest refrigerating the meatballs for 20 minutes - I put them straight into the sauce to no ill affect.

Tomato sauce
1 tbs olive oil
1 small onion, chopped finely
750ml tomato passata (bottled tomato sauce - or the equivalent in tinned tomatoes mushed up with the potato masher)

1 1/2 cups of water
salt and pepper to taste
2 small chilies (optional)

Heat oil in a large frying pan and cook onion until softened but not coloured. Add remaining sauce ingredients and cook uncovered over a medium heat for 20 minutes, stirring occasionally. (Can I confess to another short cut here - if I'm short on time (often) I don't add any water and just bring the sauce to a simmer before proceeding...).

With the sauce at simmering point (a rolling boil will lead to meatball disintegration) add the meatballs to the sauce, cook uncovered for about 12 minutes, or until cooked through. They may need some gentle turning.

Serve with pasta and more grated Parmesan cheese.

"stained glass" star biscuits

Um.. a slightly late Christmas biscuit posting. These use the recipe for Laura's shortbread, with the addition of crushed boiled lollies.


They can be any shape, of course, limited only by what biscuit cutters you have access to. In previous years I've made them heart-shaped with a circular cut-out (using the end of a large icing tube to make the circle). The biscuits are best placed on non-stick baking paper before doing the 'cut-out' (as above) as they become very fragile.


The boiled lollies are crushed in a mortar and pestle, though really the pieces just need to be small enough to fit in the cut-out. Our lollies are ground into a fine powder as biscuit making is now a mother and daughter activity, and the assistant cook delights in smashing ingredients to a powder. This can be a little messy (fragments of lolly flying everywhere so it gets done outside, allowing the ants to get a treat.

As a side note, I found it very productive to give Hannah about a quarter of the dough to make her own biscuits - . Her's were Christmas trees decorated as traffic lights (three circular cut-outs). This keeps both of us happy (my desire for the perfect biscuit and her need for creativity).

cranberry cornmeal biscuits

It's that time of year again when there is a good excuse to make time consuming fancy biscuits. I've pretty much stopped feeling sad about no longer making gorgeous European style biscuits with nut meal and masses of egg white. The shortbread style biscuit can be stretched in a number of interesting directions, and this one has become a favourite. The dried cranberries (or Craisins as they are sold as in the supermarket) are cooked with morello cherry jam and them pureed to form the fruit filling, which is tangy and deliciously chewy.

The origin of this biscuit is on the Martha Stewart site, where it is called Striped Icebox Cookie. Not a very prepossessing name, and I don't claim to have improved it much. It is fairly time consuming to make, but has the virtue that if you double the quantity you get twice as many biscuits for the same amount of work. My changes include removing the egg and substituting dried cranberries for dried sour cherries.

Filling
3/4 cup dried cranberries (I used Craisins)
1/3 cup morello cherry jam
2 tbs water

Place ingredients in a small saucepan and gentle simmer for about 5 minutes. Allow to cool then coarsely puree.

Biscuit
1 1/4 cups plain flour
1/2 cup yellow cornmeal
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
125g unsalted butter
1 cup castor sugar
2 tbs milk
1 tsp vanilla essence

Cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add milk and vanilla and mix in. Add remaining ingredients and mix by hand until a ball of dough forms. Divide the dough into 4 pieces (I did this with the scales and each piece was about 140g).

Roll each piece of dough into a rectangle 9cm x 23cm. I'd recommend drawing a rectangle on a piece of paper, then placing a piece of baking paper over this and rolled each piece out using the rectangle underneath as a guide. When the first piece of dough is rolled, lift it onto a tray with the baking paper underneath it and refrigerate while you roll the next piece of dough on another piece of baking paper. When the second piece of dough is the right shape put it in the fridge and pull the first piece out of the fridge, spread it with one third of the fruit filling. The second piece of dough can be put in place on top of the filling when it is firm enough to handle, carefully peeling away the layer of baking paper. Continue with the remaining dough and filling - the refrigeration makes it possible to spread the fairly stiff filling on what would otherwise be quite a soft dough.

Refrigerate for an hour, then trim the sides and cut the dough into two lengthwise (so that you have two pieces approximately4.5cm x 23cm. Slice into approximately 5mm thick rectangles, and place on non-stick baking paper covered trays, leaving about 20mm between each biscuit.

Bake in a 180 degrees C oven until they just start to change colour, about12-15 minutes. Store in an airtight container.