By linking Oh Happy Day I get to go into a draw to win a Paris trip…it would be simply lovely.

I’m almost entirely sure my first stop would be Ladurée.

I’m not even sure if people outside the US are eligible to enter, but a chance is a chance…right?!

Plus it means I get to post a pretty picture of macarons…lovely!

I must admit, this first attempt at Sticky Buns was from quite some time ago, but nevertheless I will share it with you.

My analysis of the Sticky Buns provided me with valuable information. They most certainly contained almonds, sultanas, apple, sweet spices (most importantly cinnamon) and they were also smothered in some kind of delicious caramel. The most perplexing part was the body of the bun. It definitely had a pastry quality as opposed to a bready quality (bready [bred-ee, adjective]: having bread like characteristics. Alternatively a tiny village in Northern Ireland). The problem was it wasn’t quite so flaky as croissant or danish pastry. But after further examination I determined that it was closest to danish pastry, the difference being a result of it being baked in caramel (yum…I know!).

And so I set about my first trial of Sticky Buns. Now I must confess a degree of carelessness with my method when it came to the pastry. In an eagerness to quickly complete the tedious job of making the danish/croissant pastry I hurried things along by not being overly careful in my rolling and folding (danish/croissant pastry involves a yeast dough folded repeatedly with lots of butter). And the requisite resting of the pastry (to help relax the gluten) was somewhat limited.

So for all my shortcuts it actually made the dough quite difficult to deal with (butter was everywhere, and it began proving too quickly because I didn’t let it rest much in the cool of the freezer). And I must say, my lack of care resulted in some very ugly looking unbaked pastry!

So after finishing the pasty, I rolled it out to a large rectangle like shape and covered it in brown sugar, apple sauce, sultanas, cinnamon and slivered almonds. Then I rolled it up into a very ugly long slug shape and cut it into pieces.

The pieces I placed in a tray on a bed of caramel (I made by caramelising sugar and adding a bit of butter and milk…I would have used cream, but I was rather unprepared so I settled for milk).

I then baked them off and they came out looking even prettier than before!

After removing them from their pan and turning them caramel side up (and sprinkling on slivered almonds), their overall all appearance was much improved (I was relieved to say the least).

And happily they actually tasted remarkably similar to their New Zealand cousins….I think I just have to exert more patience and caution with the pastry and I might get an even more pleasing result! (And they might be better looking too!).

So here they are…

Now after my first relatively successful attempt I was pretty content with the fact that I knew how the sticky buns were made (I should have just asked while I was in New Zealand). The flavours were right, and with some patience the body of the bun could be much improved. But then, while reading David Lebovitz’s blog I came across this post .

Looks like I might need to do a little more experimenting!

While some people go to New Zealand to participate in a great multitude of expensive adventure sports, I was more than happy spending the majority of my holiday funds on lovely food (I’m lucky enough to have gone with someone who was willing to accompany me around a great many food locations…thanks John!).

One of my favourite places to visit in Arrowtown New Zealand was Provisions. It was delightful for breakfast, morning tea or even just a random bagel (If anyone knows where to find great bagels in Melbourne please let me know). The best part about it….it was only a 5 minute walk from my sister’s house where we were staying (I call it fate).

Apart from having excellent breakfasts and amazing bagels, Provisions also had its specialty….the humble sticky bun.

Presenting….The Sticky Bun(s)

Thanks Bec for the photo!

After being saddened by the thought that once leaving New Zealand I would no longer have the sticky buns, I decided to pay close attention to them (taste, texture…and so on). So now it’s my mission to replicate them…or produce something that tastes a little bit like them….wish me luck!

…I’ll keep you updated.

Here’s the link for the recipe my mum made….I believe she added a touch of coconut that made it even more delicious!

http://www.taste.com.au/recipes/365/banana+and+raspberry+bread

And here is mine….

And the recipe is as follows:

Banana & Raspberry Bread (slightly adapted from the Wycliffe Cookbook)

Combine:

1/3 c. vegetable oil

1 c. sugar

1/4 c. water

Add:

2 beaten eggs

2-3 bananas mashed (the riper the better, a good way to use up overly ripe bananas)

Then Add:

2 c. flour

1/2 tsp. salt

1 tsp. baking soda (bi-carb)

1/2 tsp. cinnamon

1/4 tsp. ground cloves and/or nutmeg

1 tsp. vanilla

Combine and fold in:

1 c. raspberries (frozen or fresh)

Bake in a greased largish loaf pan and bake at 190 C for 45-60 minutes, till it’s golden and a knife comes out clean.

I’m just going to take a moment to say how much I love shallots…they’re cute, and lovely, and I think they have a slightly  more buttery flavour than onions.

So if you’re keen to try a new recipe try this one. As for vinegar, my favourite to use in it is Apple Cider vinegar.

Here’s the link to the recipe…

http://www.davidlebovitz.com/2010/03/roast-chicken-recipe-caramelized-s/

serve it with roast vegetables and away you go!

(Photo compliment of my lovely sister Bec)

I was asked to make the wedding cake which made me exceptionally happy!

I got to make a cute little fat cake with bunting…hooray!

Yay for Ana and Blake…and cake…

My friend Blair suggested I make white and orange macarons for our next book club in honour of the new titles. Now Blair likes macarons quite a lot, and I think her suggestion was not solely in honour of the new titles, rather a sneaky excuse to get more macarons, however it seemed like a rather good idea so I ran with it.

After making orange and white ones, I decided I needed to make them even more penguin-ish, so I painted on names of some of the new books (short titles only) and some cute little penguins (I used black food dye mixed with alcohol so it dried quickly).

Here’s what I came up with… (Oh yeah, they were lightly spiced shells with vanilla and orange filling)

P.S. I must say, I was quite excited when I found out Popular Penguins had linked a photo of my macarons on twitter…horray!

‘macaroons & biscuits’

While on the front cover it has a lovely looking bowl of ‘macrons’. This troubled me, but it is a lovely book so on my own copy I added ‘& macarons’. I considered crossing one ‘o’ out, however the book does contain recipes for ‘macaroons’ as well as ‘macarons’ (‘macaroons’ are generally a chewy coconut biscuit, similar in ingredients to ‘macarons’, but really quite different). They seemingly differentiate between ‘macaroons’ and ‘macarons’ by calling ‘macarons’ ‘almond macaroons’….but having said that, they don’t consistently do so for all the recipes of ‘macarons’. Oh dear. But I’ll stop my rant and carry on with the post, but not before showing you this…

One day I’m going to go through the entire book and alter the spelling wherever the incorrect use occurs!

Moving on from ‘macaroons’ and ‘macarons’, I decided to make Monte Carlo Biscuits from a recipe given in the book….the picture was just so appealing, and they always were one of the best Arnott’s biscuit flavours (for those of you who’ve never had them, they’re a honey-coconut biscuit filled with vanilla cream and raspberry jam).

This is the picture from the Women’s Weekly cookbook…yup, very appealing!

So I made them. After making the mix I wondered why it was so extremely dry…I was suppose to roll it into ovals, and yet it was crumbling everywhere. Assuming there must be something wrong with the recipe (rather than my own culinary skills), I just added a bit of water to make the dough come together, and then I began to roll them…

Halfway through rolling the mixture (after the first tray was already in the oven) I decided to read the recipe to check the cooking time, and it was then that I realised that I’d forgotten the egg…opps! At least that solved the mystery of the crumbly mix…even if it did humble me just a little bit!

The biscuits in the oven looked like they were cooking just fine, but to ensure I didn’t stuff up the whole lot I added half and egg to the rest of the mix. When they were all finally cooked I couldn’t actually tell a great deal of difference between the two, apart from the ones with the egg were slightly better shaped (it was so much easier to roll the mix!). So in the end my inattention to the details of the recipe wasn’t too much of a problem, but it did remind me of something…READ THE RECIPE (most particularly if the mixture doesn’t look right).

Here are the two different mixes cooked to biscuits…

Without egg

With egg

After the biscuits were cooked and cooled, I filled them with a vanilla buttercream and a delicious raspberry jam (it was Rose’s raspberry conserve, particularly lovely).

The result…lovely! (and even better the next day when the filling set a little more)

P.S. When my mum tried them she enthusiastically told me they tasted like the ‘REAL’ biscuits…I laughed and said that they were more the real biscuits than the Arnott’s ones, but then, after looking up a bit about Monte Carlo biscuits I discovered this: They were created by Arnott’s in 1926 and were named after the city of Monte Carlo…and so in the end my mum was right. However I’d like to think these biscuits taste a bit better than the packet ones.

Let me introduce you to Blair…isn’t she pretty! (this is one of my favourite photos of her….I didn’t take…I think she may have)

To claim that I designed this cake (or rather cupcakes) would be rather a large lie, I found a picture of the same cake on a google image search (I’m slightly in love with google image searches…particularly after I stubbled across one of my own macaron photos on there – it made me feel proud). I still don’t know who’s original design it is, but this is the photo I looked at.

I made a carrot cake base for the cupcakes and used a dollop of cream cheese icing to secure the fondant icing character toppers (that took an age to make!).

And here are some photos….I was rather pleased with the results!

(The following photos are compliments of my lovely friend Marita).

If anyone could be so kind as to identify the character on the left next to Darth Vadar it would be most appreciated. I made the cake and knew who everyone was except that one!

It was fun harvesting the fruit, but I may have gotten a little carried away, as I ended up with a gigantic bag full of oranges.

So now I’ve been pondering ways to use them.

So far I’ve made freshly squeezed orange juice and chocolate-orange macarons.

The macarons went something like this….

I started by weighing up the dry ingredients

And then I attempted to flavour the chocolate shells with orange zest by mixing zest in with the sugar to whip into the whites. I discovered this was a bad idea when my whites (or yellows with the zest) went super runny with the addition of zest….so I binned this step and started the whites again, this time with no zest.

Note the difference in textures below (the only difference being that zest was added to one). It’s amazing how a easily a meringue can be ruined!

After my second meringue was ready I mixed in the dry ingredients and then piped my batter onto a tray.

Then I proceeded to bake my macarons and was pretty happy with the over all result, however I overcooked the second tray quite a bit, which resulted in very chewy macaron shells.

I wanted to make them chocolate and orange, and since I was unsuccessful in adding orange flavour to the shells, I had to make the filling quite definite in flavour.

So I made orange curd (with Bec’s oranges), using both the zest and the juice of an orange. I added some cointreau from a tiny bottle we’ve had sitting in our pantry forever. And finally I melted in some dark chocolate….the resulting mixture was rather hard to stop myself from eating.

And there you have it….chocolate orange macarons.

*I used the chocolate macaron recipe from the very clever Mr David Lebovitz