Tuesdays with Dorie: Quick Berry Tart

What's quicker than a Quick Classic Berry Tart? These even quicker Itty-Bitty-Puff-Berry-Tartlets! As much as I love Dorie's sweet tart dough I wasn't in the mood for making pastry this week, especially since I only wanted to make minis.

Why? We're still working our way through the fabulous Banoffee Tart my lovely hubby made for dinner on Mothers' Day, along with this delicious rack of lamb with roast veges.

So for this week's TWD I chose the cheat's option and grabbed a sheet of puff pastry from the freezer and cut out little circles. The pastry cream takes only minutes to make and I topped each one with 3 perfect blueberries (frozen ones because they are always in season).

I will definitely make the original Classic Berry Tart sometime as I adore fruit tarts. My apologies to Cristine of Cooking with Cristine for not making the exact recipe which you can find on her blog. But I hope you enjoy my version!

Tuesdays with Dorie: Burnt Sugar Ice Cream

This week Becky of Project Domestication chose a recipe I have long been drooling over ... Burnt Sugar Ice Cream! This is pretty much caramel ice cream on steroids.

I had no real problems making this apart from letting my custard cook a little long. See I was at the crucial 'stir until it thickens' stage when I realised I hadn't converted the 180 degrees F into celsius and so had no idea what temperature I was waiting for. By the time I yelled for husband to google it my custard had reached 92.5 degrees C, a smidgen too hot, but at least there can be no complaints about raw eggs!

My only other issue was trying to take a photo without someone sticking his little fingers into it!

I topped mine with crumbled anzac biscuits for an extra sugar hit and some texture.

Thanks for a great pick Becky! You can find the recipe on Becky's blog or for much better photos than mine, check out the TWD blogroll.

In other news today is our 2nd wedding anniversary! While we're not doing anything special today (other than eating burnt sugar ice cream of course) we had a lovely night away on Sunday while Oscar stayed home with his nanna. It was our first baby-free night! Did miss the little monkey though :-)

Tuesdays with Dorie: Sweet Cream Biscuits

This week's pick has done absolutely nothing to clear up my confusion about the difference between biscuits and scones. The recipe for these Sweet Cream Biscuits is all but identical to the cream scones I have made since I was little.

Still, whatever you call them they are certainly tasty and one of my favourite things to eat. Whenever I go out for coffee, while the others have a big piece of cake, I always get a sultana scone with jam and cream. Yum!

As usual (I really don't have 'the touch') my biscuits were pretty flat and crumbly but they had a lovely flavour. Perfect with a smear of butter and a big dollop of strawberry jam.

Thanks to Melissa of Love at First Bite for this week's pick. They were easy, tasty and inexpensive. And will definitely be made again :-)

(Yep this post is even shorter than usual but I'm worn out after a big weekend. Check out Oscar's 1st birthday celebrations here!)

Oscar's 1st Birthday Roundup

Hard to believe but my baby is 1 today! The past 12 months have been amazing but it's all gone by so quickly. He's going to be starting school before I know it.

To celebrate we had a party on Sunday down at the waterfront at Manly. We thought the weather was going to spoil it but it turned into a gorgeous day.

38 adults, 7 kids, 1 dog and a ton of food. Sounds like a party to me!

Where's Oscar? Nath worked hard to blow up all these balloons but they didn't last long in the wind

Not too sure about the hat!

Yay, cake!

Hmmm, do I like icing?

Fingerprints in the icing

Who cares about presents when there's bark to play with!

Mummy and Oscar looking a little worse for wear

The car's loaded up with presents. Time for a nap

After spending most of the weekend cooking and baking I didn't even get a photo of the food!

We decided to keep it simple and just have a sausage sizzle, potato salad, pasta salad, green salad, bread and cake.

What you didn't see in the photos are the 48 cupcakes I made. This is one of the 3 leftover that we took home:

I used Nigella's basic cupcake recipe which always works for me. You can find the recipe here. I made a test batch a few weeks ago so felt really confident making 4 doz for the party. But this time I used foil cupcake wrappers and they seemed to cook a lot faster than normal. Mine were done in 13 minutes, not the 15-20 Nigella suggests in the recipe.

I also made a very simple buttercream icing and decorated each one with a freckle.

Buttercream Icing

125g soft butter (I always use salted butter)
3 cups icing sugar, sifted
2 ts vanilla extra

Using the paddle attachment in your mixer, beat the butter until smooth. Turn the speed to low and add the icing sugar in one go. Beat until combined. Add the vanilla then turn up the speed and beat for about 3 minutes. The icing will be thick, white and shiny. Yum!

Oscar's cake was a giant cupcake made using the Wilton pan. I bought this probably 8 months ago and always planned to use it for his first birthday. I was a little worried how it would turn out (there are lots of horror stories of it sticking etc online). I used a packet cake mix for this, figuring it would be easier. I had just 1/2 cup mixture left from 2 boxes. The tin was greased and floured well, the cake baked for 45 minutes and after a 10 minute rest, out popped 2 perfect cupcake halves. Success!

All in all it was a wonderful day and totally worth all the hard work. A big thanks to Nath's mum Di for her help babysitting and cooking on Saturday :-)

Tuesdays with Dorie: Swedish Visiting Cake

I was so happy Nancy of The Dogs Eat The Crumbs chose the Swedish Visiting Cake! This recipe has been on my to-do list since I first opened Baking.

There's a lovely story in the book about the origins of this cake and that appeals to me as much as the recipe does. It is so quick to make you could probably have this ready in 5 minutes for those last minute guests.

I made a half recipe in a 6 inch pan and ended up with a really flat little cake. The texture was a little strange but I'm sure that was because of the substitutions I made. I'd run out of sliced almonds (and I detest almond essence) so I used some ground almonds in with the flour.

I checked it after 20 minutes and it seemed cooked - crackled on top but firm. Maybe it could have used another 5 minutes though?

The taste test ...

I loved this! Really frangrant with almond, lemon and vanilla. The texture reminded me of a lemon delicious pudding. I'm sure it was the ground almonds which gave it the dense, slightly chewy texture. It was very buttery though and VERY sweet. I think next time I would cut back on both butter and sugar and it would still be fantastic.

Thanks for a great pick Nancy! I will definitely be making this again. You can find the recipe on Nancy's blog.

On another note we are now on the countdown to Oscar's birthday. Yep, my baby turns 1 next week! We are having a bbq/party for him on the weekend with around 40 guests (insansity!) and I will post a full round-up of the day and the food on Monday.