Friday, August 26, 2011

Breakfast tart

This breakfast tart took next to no time to make! I actually make this tonight for tomorrow morning, but decided it looked too good to leave so I ended up eating most of it.

It's actually ridiculously simple, and I followed no particular recipe, just things I threw together.


I made the pastry by mixing some flour with some cold water (I didn't measure how much) until it formed a nice dough. Then I kneaded it a little and rolled it out and shaped it in muffin tins already greased with a little bit of baking spray.
I then put in some pumpkin (pre-steamed), some basil pesto, a couple of pieces of pineapple (tasted so refreshing in there), some bacon and cracked an egg on top! Sprinkle some cracked pepper and salt to taste and you're good to go. I baked these babies at ~210degC for about 15 minutes until the pastry looked done since all the other ingredients in there were precooked.




Breakfast tart ingredients


Flour (however much you think you need to form a dough)
Cold water (a few tbsps depending on how much flour)

Pumpkin (pre-steamed)
Basil pesto
Eggs (depending on how many pastry cups you have)
Bacon (pre-cooked)
Pineapple pieces (fresh pineapples are sweeter and juicier)

Saturday, August 20, 2011

Profiteroles

Straight from the pages of the "things I never thought I could make but turn out to be incredibly easy" book come profiteroles!


above: pre-filling
below: yes, I realise they are in a pie dish


These ones have been stuffed with caramel ice-cream.

I have learnt two important lessons from my profiterole-making experiences that I feel I should share with you all:

number one: only put teaspoon-sized drops of profiterole mix onto your baking tray - any larger and you'll end up with profiteroles that are either brown or soggy;
number two: ice-cream (and whipped cream for that matter) melts, let your profiteroles cool before filling.

Recipe (makes 20+ profiteroles):
1 cup water
75g butter
150g flour
1 Tbsp white sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla essence
3 large eggs

To make the profiteroles:

Preheat the oven to 200°C.

Bring the butter and water to the boil in a saucepan. Add the flour all at once and beat until the mixture leaves the side of the pan (if all the water has evaporate and your flour is going to burn, then remove from heat immediately).

Remove from the heat and add the sugar and vanilla. Beat in the eggs, one at a time.
Place teaspoonfuls onto the oven trays. Bake for 15-20 minutes, until puffed and golden. Cool.

To assemble, cut profiteroles in half. Fill the profiterole halves as desired. Drizzle with chocolate sauce.


Tuesday, August 16, 2011

Mini lemon meringue tarts


I used a mini muffin tray to make the tartlets. The tartlets use a (reasonably easy) shortcrust pastry recipe supplied to me by Meili, and then I baked it and filled it with home-made lemon curd and put a dollop of meringue on top! Super cute. You can gobble it up in two bites!

These need to be eaten within 1-2 days otherwise they will get sort of soggy though.

If you have left-over lemon curd, spread it on a toasted bagel with cream cheese! Yum!

Hello saucyteaspoons

Lick.