Food porn

There’s something in females’ DNA that gets us really, really excited about cake, pudding and all manner of sweet stuff. Some women pretend not to give a fig, as it were, but they’re either lying, unhealthily obsessed with the size of their thighs, or are coming down with something.

Men are different. Although some probably spend quite a bit of time obsessing about thighs – usually someone else’s – many men genuinely don’t care for cakes and desserts. No strategic eating at restaurants for them; they simply flick straight past the dessert menu and head for (horrors of horrors) – the cheeseboard or – worse still – opt for nothing to round off the meal.

So, guys, you might want to go and get your kicks somewhere else on the Internet today because this blog is graphically and gratuitously all about cake and dessert.

Yum.

I won’t, however, be regaling you with accounts of sweet treats I’ve whipped up out of the Edmonds cookbook. Nope, every offering involves something I've invented.

My profiteroles dinner party dessert offering looked like mutants, but they tasted great. I experimented
with using freeze-dried plum powder when making the filling. The plum crème patisserie filling was tasty
but a little gluggy. Plum powder folded into sweetened whipped cream worked best.

I made two different versions of this spice cake, one that used the traditional all spice,
cinnamon and nutmeg spice mix, and one that used five-spice instead. Both versions of
the cake were lovely. Do you like freeze dried lychee nod to the East on the five-spice version?
A bit over the top maybe, but then again, I reckon 'more is more' when it comes to food.

Readers of my Horror Food blog may recall the sauced duck tongue surprise I took to our
friends’ dinner party, and write me off as the dinner guest from hell. At the risk of ruining my
reputation, here’s the dessert creation I took to offset the duck tongues.
(See the end of this post for the recipe.)

I could go on, but I’m worried all that sugary, creamy excitement might prove too much for my female readers. So let’s plummet back to Earth with a bump.

Domestic goddess I may be, but even goddesses have their off days as I discovered when I attempted to make a sponge cake using a liberal measure of freeze-dried passion fruit powder in the batter.



L-R: Dish sponge, my sponge...or was that, my sponge, dish sponge?



Not even lashings of whipped cream could
redeem this sad puppy. 
PS: The right hand photo above was the dish sponge.

Anna’s cardamon scented roasted apple custard tart

Roasted apples

1.7 kg Granny Smith apple slices (peeled and cut into quarters or eighths)
½ c soft brown sugar
32 g butter

Toss apple slices in butter and sugar and roast until golden.  Leave until completely cool before using.

Sweet short pastry

170 g softened butter
85 g sugar
1 small egg
4 drops vanilla essence
260 g standard plain flour

Lightly cream butter and sugar. Add egg and vanilla and beat until just combined. Add flour and mix until the pastry comes away from the sides of the bowl. Be careful not to over mix. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 1 hour before using (overnight is fine).

Custard

5 eggs
6 tbsp sugar
2 tsp ground cardamom
1 tsp vanilla
2 c lukewarm milk
1 c lukewarm cream

Beat eggs, sugar, cardamon and vanilla together.  Pour in warmed milk and cream while beating, and mix until combined with egg mix but not foamy.

Method

Roll out the pastry to about 3 mm thickness and line a greased 28 cm, deep flan dish. You can brush some lightly beaten egg white over the pastry to help prevent leakage.

Place roasted apples over the pastry case then gently pour in custard mixture. Bake at 180 degrees C for 50 minutes or until the custard sets.