Muesli Tuesday - Vanilla maple cherry berry muesli

I love muesli, actually scratch that I love good muesli and good muesli is very hard to find. Most brands that I have tried have been too oily, too dry, packed full of sugar and worst of all packed full of sultanas or raisons as fillers (which is my own special idea of hell)! Hmmm. Maybe I should start with a little context for my little muesli rant:


Last week my lovely Mum very generously took my sister-in-law, my brother's partner and I away to a swanky health retreat in the Hunter Valley. While the meals for lunch and dinner were difficult to appreciate (I like a little flavour in my food thankyouverymuch!) the mueslis at breakfast were delicious. So when I returned home suddenly my crappy commercial off-the-shelf muesli wasn't going to cut it anymore which means that I need to make my own.


In the past I have made my own granola which although delicious uses a very large amount of sugar to almost caramel coat the grains. Not good, especially with the amount of tasting I need to do for Sugar Egg Flour!

So as always, when faced with a culinary challenge, I turned to the internet looking for some good ideas on how to make muesli. With these basic guidelines in mind and an idea of what I like in a muesli this is what I came up with:


Vanilla maple cherry berry muesli
Makes: heaps!


Roast mix:
1kg rolled oats
500g rolled spelt
500g rolled barley
1C large coconut flakes
1/2C LSA (a ground up combination of linseed, sunflower seeds and almonds)
1/2C whole sunflower seeds
2C psyllium husk
400g raw macadamia halves
500g raw almonds (pulsed in food processor until broken into large chunks)
3/4C pure maple syrup
2T vanilla bean paste (or vanilla extract NOT vanilla essence)
1/3C canola or rice bran oil


Preheat oven to 140 degrees Celsius. Mix everything together in a really big bowl then spread on to baking sheets and bake for 20 minutes, mix, then bake for a further 20minutes until golden brown. Allow to cool slightly.


Fruit mix:
500g dried sour cherries
500g dried blueberries
500g dried cranberries
1/2C chia seeds


Add the fruit mix to the roasting mix and combine well. Store in airtight containers. 

Tadaa!

Raspberry Macarons

For a while now I have been playing around with different raspberry fillings for macarons. So far I have explored raspberry white chocolate ganache, raspberry mascarpone cream and a raspberry jam buttercream however none of them have truly hit the mark. 


Personally I found the raspberry white chocolate ganache far too sickly sweet especially when combined with the already sweet macaron shells. 


The raspberry mascarpone cream was delicious but just too wet for macarons as even overnight storage would turn the macarons into a texture similar to Wheet-Bix left to soak overnight so not really the nicest option.. 


To make the raspberry jam buttercream I combined raspberry jam with frozen raspberries until slightly reduced and thick then strained the mixture to remove the seeds. I chilled the raspberry then whipped it through the buttercream to create the filling. I think this mixture was close to what I'm looking however the raspberry mixture just didn't want to emulsify with the buttercream which created a strange ripple effect (and not in a pretty way!).


Tonight I made a batch of pretty green shells with the intention of filling them with a lime buttercream (I recently picked up some lime oil from The Essential Ingredient and I have been dying to use it) but when I piped them out the green didn't seem like the right shade for a lime filling so I decided to give another raspberry filling a go.

This time I used powdered freeze dried raspberries to flavour the buttercream and the result was fantastic. Velvety smooth,not too sweet and perfectly combined. I guess it also doesn't hurt that the raspberry buttercream looks so pretty against the green shells. Enjoy!

Chocolate peanut butter & chocolate hazelnut macaron

This weekend I decided to play around with some different flavours for my Monday orders. Well played around as much as I could because I think I would have a lynch mob after me if I didn't include salted caramel! 


So I thought I would play around with a chocolate & peanut butter ganache as my mum used to make us chocolate & peanut butter fudge when we were kids and it was amazing. I think it must be the American in me but I loooooove chocolate & peanut butter together. Mind you I did shudder a little sacrificing my beautiful 50% cocoa Lindt couverture to being combined with crunchy peanut butter however the result was magnificent. Chocolaty, sweet, peanutty with a hint of saltiness hit the spot perfectly. 


So please enjoy some photos of some of my orders for Monday (with my pretty new boxes!).

L-R Chocolate shells - chocolate hazelnut, chocolate & yellow shells - chocolate peanut butter, white shells & light filling - lemon mascarpone, yellow & white shells with brown filling - salted caramel

Love the new boxes

  

Can't resist the plug - I will be making some in time for Mother's Day wrapped with pretty ribbon next Sunday so if you would like to order some please let me know buy Wednesday evening. $20 per mixed dozen and at this stage it is Sydney orders only. Sorry!

Chocolate coated candied orange pieces

This Easter hubby went to my favourite chocolate place on the planet, Haigh's, for my Easter egg. When I worked in the CBD I would make pilgrimages to Haigh's just for their milk chocolate freckles and dark chocolate candied orange pieces. I'm not normally much of an orange/dark chocolate fan (I think my impressions of that flavour combination was ruined by Jaffas!) so I was surprised to be so taken with the candied orange pieces. Chewy candied orange on the inside and 70% cocoa chocolate on the outside. Heaven!


So while up the coast this weekend when hubby presented me with my Easter "egg" (freckles and candied orange pieces) not only was I rapt but the cogs in my head started turning. How hard is it to candy something? Naturally this started some frenzied internet research in to the different ways and means of candying orange (I must also admit that I was suffering from baking withdrawal as I had neglected to take away with me my Kitchenaid mixer, piping bags & macaron stencil which was driving me a little batty) until I found the common candying themes.


I must admit that now I've mastered them I'm almost a little sad that I have ruined for myself the mystique of one of my favourite treats as they are disappointingly easy to make. Especially when they cost $90 a kilo at Haigh's!


Chocolate coated candied orange pieces


2C water
3 1/2C sugar
4 seedless oranges
300g dark chocolate (make sure this is good quality! I used Lindt 50% cocoa)


Cut the oranges in half  lengthwise and then half again. Cut the orange in to 1/2cm slices so they look like this:

Combine the water and sugar in a large saute/frying pan over a medium heat and bring to a simmering boil. Add the orange slices and simmer, occasionally dunking the floating orange slices with a slotted spoon (but please don't stir or else the orange will break down!). After an hour remove the pan from the heat and allow to cool completely before removing the candied orange with tongs.

Place the candied orange on a wire rack over some baking paper and allow to dry overnight (I cheated and put them on the racks of an oven with a dish below on 100 celsius for 3 hours until they were dry).

Melt the chocolate and dip the orange pieces, allow to set in the fridge before eating. They should keep in an airtight container for a couple of weeks and are perfect with coffee.

Enjoy!

Orders, orders, orders

This weekend I was kept relatively busy filling orders for Monday morning. I'm still playing around a little with fillings and have stumbled across a few of crackers. First amazing combination is a lemon mascarpone filling which is just beautifully light and creamy with a definite lemon zing to it. The second one which I tested out only about half an hour ago is a passionfruit mascarpone, I never would have thought it would taste so good but I think I'm now firmly on the passionfruit in baked goods bandwagon! 


So without further ado please enjoy some pics of the flavours in my mixed dozen:

(L-R) passionfruit mascarpone, fairy bread, lemon mascarpone, choc peppermint & salted caramel

Macaron Madness

My apologies for neglecting the blog this week, I have been spending way too much time in the kitchen making things to even think of getting on the computer to write it! Let me just say that I'm in love with the Macaron and the Macaron bug has well and truly bit me. I think the most appealing thing about Macarons is that in terms of flavour the sky is the limit. 


My mind is just buzzing with the possible flavours and textures that I can play with and I can't wait to make them all. At this point I think it's only fair that I say a big thank you to my flavour Guinea Pigs (family, long suffering colleagues & husband's colleagues) who have devoured more than their fair share of Macarons this week without complaint. 


My Macaron breakthrough occurred on Tuesday evening when I decided to give a different shell recipe a go and for some reason everything fell in to place, suddenly making these seemed like the most simple, natural thing in the world. Making Tant Pour Tant (or TPT as it is known which is simply a mix of equal parts icing sugar and almond meal) which is then mixed with a fresh egg white, heating a sugar syrup to 115 Celsius, whisking egg whites to soft peaks, slowly adding the hot sugar syrup to the egg whites, then beating the meringue until it is impossibly thick and glossy, folding the meringue through the TPT paste, piping the shells out, leaving them to rest, baking and matching them up. 


Then comes the fun part where you get to play around with the flavour and texture of the filling. This week I've played around with making caramels, ganache & buttercreams, experiencing their different feel in the mouth, level of sweetness and adaptability. Personally I think that the salted caramel I made on Sunday was an absolute winner and very hard to beat in terms of flavour. White cholocate ganache is a little too sweet for me especially when combined with the already sweet Macaron shells but others seemed to love it. I believe the overall winner in terms of a brilliant vessel for other flavours would be the buttercream mainly because there is the ability to mediate the level of sweetness relative to the other flavours in the Macaron. Having said that I'm keen to explore the use of flavour infused marscapone, citrus curds & fruit jams. 


So without further ado please enjoy a few shots of what I have made so far this week.

White Chocolate & Raspberry Macarons

Tasty but the white chocolate made the ganache a little too sweet for me. But they do look perfect!

Fairy Bread Macarons

The idea for these actually came from a colleague of my brother's girlfriend and I have to say that they are very appealing to me, who doesn't secretly still love fairy bread?!

The little ones resting and forming their crust, I was a little concerned that the colour of the 100's & 1000's would bleed on to the mixture.

But luckily it didn't! I just love how whimsical they look.

Filled with a vanilla buttercream with more 100's & 1000's mixed through.

Yum, nuff said.

Sugar Egg Flour's Belgian triple chocolate fudge brownies

Our signature brownies are dense and fudgy with generous chunks of Belgian Callebaut dark, milk and white chocolate. 

mmmmm... brownie

Now that's just being cruel. Sorry!

Bright Ideas

It just occurred to me that you could substitute the dates for dried figs which would be divine... Or make it with white chocolate, dried cranberries & pistachios... Or just dark chocolate & cashews... Or anything else at all you can think of! Just make sure that the ratios stay the same and you should be fine.