The 84th Bake: Mary’s Lemon and Raspberry Eclairs
I haven’t been baking for a week as I had to sew dresses for my market stall on Saturday. And then it rained!!! So today I baked, and choux pastry was the order of the day. I saw choux being made on the Australian Bake Off recently and apparently when it falls off the spoon in a triangle shape it is the right consistency. I was watching Food TV while I baked these eclairs. Jaime Oliver was “unlocking the secrets of the world’s healthiest diets.” He was in Icaria in Greece whose population live longer than most, the key being homegrown fruit and veges and daily physical activity. Walnuts too were one of their secret ingredients to provide energy to keep going all day, a source of copper which helps the immune system and folic acid and magnesium to reduce tiredness. Didn’t know that. And even better, a handful of nuts a day is said to increase life expectancy by two years. His savoury muffins full of sweet potato and cheese looked like the perfect solution for my daughter’s vegetarian dish for dinner so I made them. They turned out fabulous. I will post that recipe next. The choux pastry was quite easy to whip up. To make it I (more…)
This is a fantastic recipe for this time of year when you have to take a plate to Christmas functions or as a starter for your next BBQ, get together. It’s super easy and uses everyday ingredients to create a show stopper.
These look good and easy, she laughs behind her hand. Well, I have never made macarons so we will see. I had 4 egg whites left over from my last bake so I needed a recipe to use them up. It was going to be Mary’s Neopolitan Baked Alaska which looked scary and daunting so luckily I found these instead. They are made with ground pecans giving them a “wonderful flavour that becomes more intense as the macarons age” Well we may never find that one out the rate my daughter is eating them! I went to the opening of a Kombucha bar on Saturday. “NewLeaf” very chic, selling only kombucha, very original. And it’s so good for you. Very interesting tea flavours of macha, gunpowder green tea and Sri Lankan Black tea to name a few, all on tap. Go try it at their taproom 
I happened to be watching The Great Australia Bake-Off and they were making Lamb Bourguignon Pie. What a coincidence, as I was about to make this Boeuf Bourguignon version. All those luscious Boeuf Bourguignon ingredients of mushrooms, beef, red wine and lardons to make the classic French stew covered by puff pastry. The hardest thing about it was how to spell it actually! Coincidences tend to pop up out of nowhere and can be fun and even helpful. Not like other things that pop up too often these days. For example, I picked up the phone one day and was struck by a quite aggressive man who after citing the microsoft Licence ID Number of my computer, and the date and place of purchase, proceeded to tell me that “in 20 minutes my computer would be deactivated from the Microsoft server and no-one in the whole world would be able to fix it.” !! Okay?! Such an invasion in your own home, not to mention the emails that inundate our inboxes full of “answer a simple question for a free gift” so we are tempted to click on the link or worse, “you’ve been hacked.” Nothing is sacred anymore, least of all our privacy! Be careful out there!!!!
It’s the start of November and I have made it to 80 bakes, 2/3 the way there to complete my 120 bakes, amazing. Can’t believe how fast these bakes have gone, but it has involved pedal to the metal that’s for sure. Fun though. Always good to be trying something new. I will miss this when it’s done, though I can’t see myself ever giving up trying new bakes!! Hope not anyway. This bake, was snuck in around dinner time, seems to be a theme lately. Dinner was done, salad and tortilla wraps with re-fried beans, stir-fried chicken, caramelized onion and mushrooms, so I had time to bake. 🙂 I was surprised at the amount of grated root ginger in the recipe giving them a delicious ginger taste. The treacle syrup added even more flavour. They turned out tasting like ginger nuts, though chewy. Mmmmmmm. I mixed together 
With the whole family coming for dinner, I figured it was a good time to dip into the sweet pastry section, which scares me and always takes a long time, but I was struck by this tart. Rhubarb is not something I am familiar with, though I feel I should be. I have only cooked it once in my life. I set about making the pastry, with ground almonds and rosemary – interesting ingredients. As I was whizzing the ingredients to bind them together, my nephew arrived, so I had to contend with his chatter as I baked. But it was funny, he was so helpful, offering to take photos, fascinated by baking and talking about the time he made meringues and macaroons. 
He’s 9 years old. I offered him my meringue recipe from this book, 
I went to Scarecrow the other day, an amazing cafe on 33 Victoria St East just below Albert Park. They have divine cakes and slices including a Rhubarb & Fangipane Tart as well as an amazing selection of beautiful products to buy, from Fine & Dandy Green Tea with Rose Petals, to Orange & Ylangylang Swirl Blue Earth Soap. Check it out. 🙂 
I’m about to head off to the gym, but will quickly blog about this amazing bread. It looked fascinating in the recipe book and just as amazing when it was baked. It took a while, though not really as long as you’d expect, but it was the interesting and different way that the dough was assembled which gave it its Je ne sais quoi. Last time I was at the gym I was sitting with the weights resting beside me between sets and a guy came past and said, “Don’t think about it, just do it.” I liked that. Sometimes, we do need to just do it. As one of the teachers said during a prize-giving speech recently, “Feel the fear and do it anyway, let it motivate you to do better.” Whether it be fear of the unknown, change, a challenge, a new opportunity, it does add spice to our lives and that guy was right, sometimes its best to not think about it, but just do it. This bread was different and well worth just doing it!! The bake required