Tina’s Foodie Blog

It seemed like the weather for pie. I remembered my mum’s pumpkin pie from when I was little and thought how nice it would be to make a non-vegan version. Mum’s recipe was vegan and was delicious; so how much more delicious with eggs and cream!!

The recipe I used was from joy of baking.com and I took the advice of making it more delicious by pressing crushed gingernut biscuits into the unbaked pastry for extra flavour. I think this pie is best cold, though I couldn’t resist eating some warm. It just tastes more eggy while warm. The crust is crisp and the filling is moist and beautifully spiced.

As pumpkin pie is not nearly as popular in Australia as the USA it’s rare to come across one in a Sydney cafe or cake shop. So make your own and enjoy!

A hazelnut raspberry cake with white chocolate ganache and white chocolate panels.

I believe there may end up being many posts with a similar title, but for my friends who requested the recipe for the Chocolate Buttermilk Cake enjoyed on a Friday night a few weeks ago, here it is. Thought we should also take a pic before it is all demolished.

This is a really easy recipe, similar in method to making brownies and the buttermilk adds such a lovely flavour to the cake that makes it moist and moreish and not at all sickly.

Just type in Chocolate Buttermilk Cake, at the Australian Women’s Weekly Website: http://aww.ninemsn.com.au/

Notes:

1. I used my grandma’s old springform tin which is 23cm (so a little bigger than the recommended 22cm)  and I checked the cake along the way but didn’t put a skewer in until 7 minutes before the end of the cooking time and it was definitely cooked by then. It was still moist, but I like my cakes on the cooked but gooey side. So next time I will pull it out after 1 hour, instead of the recommended 1 hour 15. My new oven is a strong beast and I am still getting used to it!

2. As you are using so much chocolate in the recipe it has a tendency to go black on top if you are not careful. Burnt chocolate is not nice. A few tips: one is when you line the base and sides of the tin with baking paper make the baking paper wider so it sits an inch or two above the pan so that it provides a little extra protection from over browning, or you can also keep an eye on it and towards the last 20-30 minutes put a piece of foil or baking paper on top to stop the browning process. This is easier if you are not using fan-forced as it will blow around a bit!

Icing

The Chocolate Ganache icing was made based on a recipe from Stephanie Alexander’s Cooks Companion and I used Lindt Intense Orange chocolate  (a pantry staple, well there is always some chocolate, it just happened to be this one yesterday) which gave the icing a Jaffa flavour, yum.

Buttermilk

Link below for those wanting a bit more info on buttermilk. It is also nice in muffins or pancakes.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buttermilk

Thomas Walter and Malini Christine Ganesan celebrated their wedding in February this year at the delicious Sardinian restaurant Pilu at Freshwater in Sydney. I was lucky enough to be asked if I could make the cake…

The layers are (from top to bottom)

Fruit Cake 6″

Chocolate Buttermilk Cake 9″

Hazelnut Raspberry Cake 12″

All layers are covered in Chocolate Ganache and have a dark chocolate collar, fresh strawberries, blueberries and cherries.

The guests ate the bottom two layers at the wedding, and they finished both layers! That was after dessert…

Hazelnut Raspberry Cake

Made again for Thomas’ 40th birthday party in June. We enjoyed it with an espresso or two, made on a machine borrowed from their good friend Peter.

*Recipe from the Australian Women’s Weekly Website.

Fruitcake

The top layer of fruit cake travelled back to Ulm in Germany and was not touched until my visit in June. What a surprise they had waited. It was perfect for eating by then.

*Recipe from Belinda Jeffery’s luscious book ‘Mix and Bake’.