Nougat

Yes, the Speeding Turtle lives.

She comes bearing gifts!  Here, have some sweetness - nougat.

Recipe Adapted From: The Fundamental Techniques of Classic Pastry Arts
A strong, standing electric mixer and a candy thermometer are required for this recipe.
Ingredients

640g nuts (suggested 280g almonds, 160g hazelnuts, 160g walnuts and 40g pistachios)
2 large eggs
280g honey
240g corn syrup
600g sugar
75mL cold water
Cornflour for dusting


Method
1. Toast the nuts.
If you are doing it in an oven, preheat the oven to 93 degrees C.  Combine nuts on a sheet pan.  Toast in the preheated oven for about 15 minutes, turning frequently, until the nuts are nicely coloured and aromatic.
Alternatively, toast the nuts using a frypan.  Combine nuts in the frypan and heat, mixing frequently.

I used hazelnuts, almonds and walnuts - all unblanched (they still had their brown skins on).

2. While the nuts are toasting, prepare the rest of the nougat.  If the nuts finish toasting before the base is done, keep them warm by either opening the oven door (if toasted in the oven) or re-warming the nuts a bit when you are whipping the egg whites.

Separate the two eggs and place the egg whites into the bowl of your mixer, fitted with the whisk attachment.  You don't need the yolks.

3. Set up two heavy based saucepans on your stove.

In one saucepan, combine the honey with 40g of the corn syrup in a small, heavy based saucepan over low heat.  Bring to a boil.

At the same time, combine the remaining corn syrup with the sugar and the cold water and bring to a boil.

4. As soon as the honey mixture comes to the boil, begin whipping the egg whites.  When the honey mixture reaches 130 degrees C (266 degrees F) on a candy thermometer, pour it over the whipping egg whites.

5. Continue whipping the egg whites.  When the sugar mixture has reached 139 degrees C (282 degrees F) on the candy thermometer, pour it over the whipping egg whites.

6. When the meringue begins to stiffen, stop the mixer.  Remove the whip attachment and replace with K beater/paddle attachment.  With the speed on low, add the nuts, beating until just blended.

7. Place a silicone liner on a flat work surface and dust it with corn flour.  Do this quickly, so you can roll the nougat out while it's still hot.

8. Pour the hot nougat out onto the liner and roughly spread it out a bit.

Dust the top of the nougat with corn flour and place another silicone liner on the top.  Using a rolling pin and your hands, flatten the nougat out.  

Now, the French pastry book said to roll it to a 1.3cm thickness, but dude, that's super thin.  So I made mine a bit thicker.

9. Allow the nougat to cool and then, using a sharp knife, cut the nougat into small squares.

Eat and enjoy!

Eve's Chocolate Cake

Or, in my mum's words, Chocolate Omelette.

Indeed, this cake is a chocolate omelette; and with only 4 ingredients, it is super (ahem) healthy.  Compared to some other things, at least.  The cake is made with chocolate, a dozen eggs, a little butter and a little sugar.  Most of the mousse-y batter is baked, but some is kept aside and spread lusciously on the top of the cake when it's done.  (Caution - raw eggs can cause salmonella, so it might be better to keep the raw batter to people you don't mind too much about making sick).
The cake itself is light and fluffy, but apparently it becomes denser when chilled.  I wouldn't know - my family polished it off the night it was made.  That's how good it was.

Recipe Adapted From: Citrus and Candy; recipe originally from France by Damien Pignolet
Ingredients (26 cm (10 inch) cake - half this recipe fits a 20 cm (8 inch) springform tin)
360g bittersweet chocolate, roughly chopped
50g unsalted butter, softened
12 extra large eggs, separated
30g caster sugar (for whipping with yolks)
20g caster sugar (for egg whites)
Chocolate and cocoa for decoration

Method
1. Preheat oven to 150 degrees C.  Grease and line a 26-28cm springform tin.  (Or a 20cm one, if you are making half a batch)

2. Melt the chocolate and mix in the butter.

3. In a separate bowl, whisk the egg yolks with 30g caster sugar until pale and thickened.

4. Combine the egg yolk mixture with the melted chocolate and butter.

5. In a large, clean and dry bowl, whisk egg whites until soft peaks (make sure you don't overbeat, because the whites will become dry). Add the 20g caster sugar and beat until stiff peaks.

6. With a spatula or spoon, mix a quarter of the egg whites into the chocolate mix to lighten it.  Add the chocolate mix to the rest of the egg whites and fold gently until combined.

7. Spoon out a quarter of the completed batter into a bowl, cover and refrigerate.

8. Pour the rest of the batter into the prepared cake tin and bake for 30 minutes.  It should still be moist in the centre - to test, lightly press your finger into the middle of the cake.  The indentation should remain when you take your finger away.

9. Turn the cake out directly onto a serving plate.  Remove the springform ring and base, let cool. The cake should collapse a bit, leaving a crater in the centre.  Mine didn't really collapse - perhaps I baked it a bit too long, or maybe I shouldn't have flipped it.  Oh well.  It was yummy anyway.

10. Remember that leftover batter in the fridge?  Scrape it out onto the top of the cake and spread around to the edges.

Sprinkle with chocolate curls or shaved chocolate, and dust with cocoa.  We sprinkled ours with Haigh's drinking chocolate.

Serve.

Happy baking!

Marshmallows & Rocky Road

What is fluffy, soft and rolled in coconut?  What is fluffy, soft, coconutty and chocolatey too, with nuts optional?
Marshmallows and rocky road, of course; super easy to make and super tasty to boot.


However; to make marshmallows, you do require an electric mixer that isn't too old.  Before we got our KitchenAid, Mum was making marshmallows with her old (really old) handheld mixer.  While beating the mixture, the mixer motor emitted a puff of smoke and died with a pffling noise.  So be careful if your mixer is super old.


Recipe Adapted From: The Cooks Book of Uncommon Recipes
Ingredients
2 cups white sugar
3 envelopes unflavoured gelatin
1/4 tsp salt
1 cup cold water
1 tsp vanilla extract


Method - Topping (for marshmallow)
Here in the Speeding Turtle's kitchen, we usually cover our marshmallows in toasted coconut.  Before you get started making the marshmallow, toast about 1 cup of coconut in a frypan while stirring.

Line a 22 x 35cm baking tin or equivalent with baking paper and sprinkle some of the coconut on the bottom to roughly coat it.  

Then make the marshmallow...you will need to toast some more, fresh coconut later.

Method - Marshmallow
1. Combine sugar, gelatin and salt in a saucepan.

2. Stir in the cold water and allow to rest for 5 minutes (so the gelatin can soften.)


3. Place the saucepan over a low heat.  Stir constantly until the sugar has dissolved.  The mixture should not boil!  When the sugar has dissolved, remove from heat.

4. Stir in the vanilla extract.  Pour the mixture into a large bowl while still hot and, using an electric mixer, beat at high speed until it is thickened and will stand in soft peaks.  It should take about 10 - 15 minutes.

5. Spread the marshmallow into the prepared pan immediately, making it smooth and even.

6. Let the marshmallow stand for a while to set.


7. Using a sharp knife, cut the marshmallows into even cubes/rectangular prisms and roll in some more toasted coconut.

8. Store in an air-tight container.  Or, alternatively, just eat 'em.


Ingredients - Rocky Road [per batch of marshmallow]
350g dark chocolate
1 cup coconut (toasted)
Nuts if desired


1. Melt the chocolate and stir in the toasted coconut.  Stir in nuts at this point if you are using them.

2. Roughly chop your tray of marshmallow, it is nice if they are different sized and a bit 'rocky'.  Drop the marshmallow chunks into the chocolate mixture 3 or 4 at a time, mixing between additions (more and they get stuck together when you mix).


3. Spread the rocky road mixture into a baking paper lined tin (22 x 35cm or equivalent).

4. Leave the rocky road in a cool place to set.  Don't put it in the fridge, however, because the chocolate may 'bloom' and get a whole pile of whitish dots on it.


5. When the chocolate has hardened, take the rocky road out of the baking tin and cut up into whatever size you want.

6. Search through the chunks of rocky road to find one with lots of chocolate.  Eat.

Tips and Tricks
 - For marshmallows with a bite of coffee, substitute the water (in step 2 of the marshmallow method) for weak coffee.  It's nice.

Sachertorte

Hello, Internet!

It's the Speeding Turtle here, back from a trip in another country.  I had a lot of fun, and ate heaps of delicious food.

My Grandmother was having a dinner with some friends, and she was in charge of bringing desserts.  The dinner was an 'Operatic' theme, so she asked if I could do some biscuits and a Sachertorte.  I agreed, knowing I had a Sachertorte recipe stashed away in my French Pastry book, and made her some macarons for the biscuits.


Below is the recipe and procedure for Sachertorte.  I made a small Sachertorte for the dinner, and a whole pile of mini Sachers to keep at home for consumption.


Sachertorte is a dense chocolate and apricot cake with a smooth chocolate covering.  It takes its name from Vienna's Sacher Hotel.  Austrian law specifies that a Sachertorte must be made with butter (not margarine or shortening), fresh eggs, apricot jam and real chocolate (not cocoa powder).  I abandoned my margarine for this one.


The recipe actually uses chocolate poured fondant for the icing, but poured fondant and I have a strained relationship after the petit four incidents; so I used a handy, and delicious Glacage au Chocolat instead which still gives a beautiful flat finish.

Recipe Source: The Fundamental Techniques of Classic Pastry Arts

Ingredients - Cake

100g dark chocolate

100g unsalted butter, room temperature

55g icing sugar

6 eggs

110g flour

100g white sugar

Ingredients - Glacage au Chocolat (Chocolate Glaze)

455g dark chocolate

330g unsalted butter, room temperature

30mL (2 tbsp) glucose syrup

Ingredients - Assembly

500g apricot jam

30mL rum (optional)
Extra chocolate (dark) for piping

Method - Cake
1. Gather all your ingredients for the cake (I don't usually do this, but hey, I think it made the whole process a lot easier!)  Separate the eggs into two separate bowls, you need both the yolks and the whites.

2. Preheat oven to 177 degrees C.  Butter and flour two 6 inch/15cm cake tins.


3. Melt the chocolate for the cake, set aside to cool.


4. Place egg whites in a bowl and beat on low to aerate (until bubbles appear).

5. Add the white sugar and whip until soft peaks form.

6. Fit a mixer with the paddle/K attachment and beat the butter on low to soften it.

7. Add the icing sugar and beat on medium for about 4 minutes, or until light and fluffy.

8. Add the egg yolks, one at a time, beating well and scraping down the sides of the bowl between additions.

9. Grab the melted chocolate that you prepared earlier.  With the mixer on low, pour in the chocolate all at once to keep it from setting before it's incorporated into the batter.  Keep beating until the chocolate is completely incorporated.

10. Using a spatula, fold the egg white mixture into the chocolate mixture gently.  Don't completely combine the two batters, it will all come together in the next step.

11. Fold the flour into the streaky batter until everything is incorporated.

12. Pour half the mixture into each cake tin and flatten.

I put half my mixture into muffin moulds.  However, if you want mini Sachers, I suggest you make the two large cakes and then cut little circles out of the cakes.  The muffin mould cakes didn't turn out looking pretty.

13. Bake the cakes for about 30 minutes, or until a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean.

Method - Glacage au Chocolat (Chocolate Glaze)

1. Combine chocolate, butter and glucose syrup in a microwave-safe bowl.

2. Microwave until the chocolate is partially melted.

3. Stir until the glaze is perfectly blended, with no lumps or evidence of separation.

4. Set aside to cool to body temperature.

Method - Assembly

1. Invert the cakes onto a wire rack, remove the tin and let cool.

2. Use a serrated knife to trim the top of the cakes.  Your aim is to make every surface as flat as possible so that the smooth chocolate glaze will go on nicely.  After trimming, cut each cake in half crosswise.

My cupcake Sachers turned out a bit deformed, so I trimmed the tops and cut them out into nice circles with a cookie cutter.

Delicious 'wastage'.

3. Warm apricot jam until very hot (but not boiling) either in the microwave or in a saucepan.  If using rum, warm the jam and rum together.  If the jam is lumpy or has bits in it, press through a fine-mesh sieve into a bowl.  I used a smooth jam, so I skipped this step.

4. Using a pastry brush, brush the two cut sides of each cake with jam and sandwich them together.

You should now have two cakes, each with jam in the middle.

5. Brush the outsides of the cakes with jam.  Set aside to let the jam cool and set.

6. Pour the glacage over one cake at a time.  

Using a flat spatula or knife, smooth the glacage out so it runs over the edges of the cake.  Make sure all surfaces of the cake are covered.  Allow the glacage to set.

7. Once the glacage is set (it will go a matte colour), melt some more chocolate.  Transfer it into a baking paper piping bag (or a Ziploc back with a hole cut in the corner).  Pipe the word Sacher in the middle of the top of each cake.

8. Eat.