Gooey Chocolate Brownies

My cat Piaf likes fillet steak.  It is entirely my fault this situation has arisen.

It happened after I gave her a few trimmings of some fillet steak I was preparing.  Now every time I give her minced beef, she looks up at me with a "what the hell is this?" expression on her face, and no longer eats it with the same gusto she used to.  It is the same with chocolate.  Once you've had the good stuff, it's really hard to go back to milk chocolate. 

When cooking with chocolate, it is important to use a good quality dark chocolate.  And by that, I mean chocolate which has a high percentage of cocoa (cocoa butter and cocoa solids).  There is a lot of choice available now, and my supermarket sells chocolate with percentages up to 85 percent.  The percentage you choose to bake with depends on whether you want a bittersweet, semi-sweet or really sweet result.  Chocolate with a high percentage of cocoa is like a blank canvas.  It has less sugar so provides a rich, deep chocolate flavour, and allows you to play around with the amount of sugar required. Chocolate with a lower percentage has more additives like sugar, vanilla and lecithin (an emulsifier), so you are already dealing with a sweet ingredient, and may need to alter the sugar quantities in the recipe to get the balance right.  Basically, if you want a really sweet result, use dark chocolate with a lower cocoa content.

One chocolate recipe that needs a lot of sweetness is the good, old fashioned brownie. If you like a brownie with a high goo factor, this recipe is for you.  It uses dark chocolate with 50% cocoa, to which a lot of brown sugar is added.   The end result is rich, sweet, fudgy brownie, which I can highly recommend.

Gooey Chocolate Brownies

150g unsalted butter, chopped
440g dark chocolate, with 50% cocoa
1 1/2 cups light brown sugar
3 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
3/4 cup plain flour
1/2 cup sour cream
3/4 cup walnuts

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees celcius.  Grease and line a brownie tin.  I always use a 24 x 24 cm deep square tin. 

Chop 300g of the chocolate roughly, put in a bowl and melt over a saucepan of gently simmering water.  Add the butter and take the saucepan off the heat.  Stir the butter with the chocolate until smooth. 

Chop the remaining chocolate into small pieces. 

Add the brown sugar, eggs, vanilla extract, flour, and, sour cream to the melted chocolate and stir until smooth.  Add the chocolate pieces and the walnuts and stir until evenly distributed. 

Pour the mixture into the tin, and spread evenly.

Bake for 40 minutes initally, cover with foil and then bake for another 20 minutes.  Leave to cool in the pan.  Turn out and cut into evenly sized portions.

Custard Tart

My Mum was a big believer in the after-school snack.  When my brother and I got home from school, there was always something tasty waiting for us, either homemade or otherwise.  The otherwise usually came from the deli at the end of our street, which stocked iced buns, custard tarts, vanilla slices and 'dutch' cakes (spiced ginger cake on a pastry base decorated with pink icing).  I think my Mum was one of their best customers.

Even though I consumed quite a lot of custard tarts as a child, I have never had one as an adult.  I've certainly had versions of the custard tart, such as lemon and lime brulee tart, but its been decades since I've tasted a pure, unadulterated baked custard tart with nutmeg sprinkled on top.  I'm about to right that wrong. 

As I don't have a tried and true recipe, I did some research and discovered there are several different approaches to making a custard tart.  Some recipes use cream, others use milk, and some use half cream and half milk, and sometimes the milk/cream is heated beforehand.  The quantity of sugar varies, as do cooking times and oven temperatures. What to do, what to do?  I decided to use a sweet pastry recipe I know well for the tart base, and was inspired by a number of other recipes for the filling. 

Custard Tart

Sweet Pastry

100g caster sugar
200g unsalted butter
300g plain flour
1 egg

Filling

3 eggs
600ml whipping cream
2 tbsp caster sugar
1 tsp vanilla essence
nutmeg for sprinkling

To make the pastry, ensure the butter and egg are at room temperature before you start.  Cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. 

Add the egg, and mix until well combined.  Add the flour and mix gently until just combined.  Tip the dough onto a floured surface and bring the mixture together gently until smooth.  It is important not to overwork the dough at any stage during the process otherwise it will lose its delicacy. 

Pat the dough into a disc shape (so that it is easier to roll out afterwards), wrap in cling film and refrigerate until firm.  I like to make my dough the night before so it is very well chilled before use. 

Roll out the dough on a floured surface and then press it into a deep pie tin.  I used a 24cm fluted tin, which was probably a bit too big as there ended up being too much of a gap between the custard filling and the top of the tart.  However, if there is too much 'edge', this can be trimmed off before serving.

Refrigerate the tart shell until firm.  There will be some dough leftover.  Keep this, as you can use it to plug any cracks in the pastry shell after it comes out of the oven.

Meanwhile, pre-heat the oven to 200 degrees celcius.  Blind-bake the pastry for 10 minutes.  Remove the pastry weights and bake for another 10 minutes until the pastry is golden. 

Reduce the oven temperature to 170 degrees celcius.

In a bowl, whisk the eggs, sugar and vanilla essence until combined and without making too much froth otherwise this will create lots of bubbles on the surface of the custard.  Pour in the heated cream and whisk gently. Strain the liquid to ensure there are no eggy bits and pour into the tart shell.  Bake in the oven for 15 minutes, then remove it and sprinkle the surface evenly with nutmeg. 

Put the tart back in the oven and bake for another 15 minutes.  As you can see I am using a pastry edge protector so the edges don't get too brown during the cooking process.

The centre of the tart will be wobbly when you take it out of the oven but, don't panic, as it will set as it cools.  Leave to cool at room temperature for about an hour and then refrigerate until ready to serve. 

Serve with berries or stewed rhubarb.

Father's Day gift wrapping

Another family celebration, another pavlova.  The men in my family have a sweet tooth, and any 'male' related celebration involves a pavlova (see 14 August 2011 post for the recipe).  Today is Father's Day in Australia.  My Dad, who is against any sort of commercialised celebration, wasn't keen on marking the day.  I said to him, "Father's Day isn't all about you", and mentioned the possibility of pavlova.  That sealed the deal.   Notwithstanding my Dad's anti-Father's day stance, I bought him a present, "Wall and Piece" by Banksy. 

Wrapping presents for men is challenging at the best of times, and even more challenging when you are trying to make the gift look low key and non-commercial.  It is particularly difficult for me, as I do love a flourish, and have to fight all of my natural instincts.  Initially I thought of using brown paper decorated with a Banksy-esque stencil and a comment on the state of the nation, but then I remembered that I don't know how to draw.  Instead I decided to go au natural with brown paper, woven millinery straw (sinamay) and hemp string.  As the overall colour palate is so similar, nothing stands out and screams commercialism.

After wrapping the book in brown paper, I cut a piece of woven straw to go around the middle and stuck it to the back. 

I then taped one end of the hemp string to the back of the present and wound it around the middle five times, taping the end.  Simple.

But I couldn't resist one little subtle flourish.  A small wooden heart stuck in the middle. Dad can't possibly argue with that.