The Best Chocolate Ice-cream is the one you make yourself

I just spent 4 days in what is my heaven on earth and a lot of that time was spent making and consuming good food. But out of everything we made, I know that what will stay with us is this simple chocolate ice-cream that we made and churned out. 

This is not my recipe at all - it's the recipe that comes with the Cuisinart Ice-cream maker, it might be the salty wind in my face, or the steam from the hot tub, but I swear this is the best ice-cream - creamy, rich, but not too sweet. 

Ingredients
1 cup unsweetened cocoa powder (Dutch process preferred)
2/3 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup firmly packed brown sugar
1-1/2 cups whole milk
3-1/4 cups heavy cream
1 tablespoon pure vanilla extract

Instructions
Place the cocoa and sugars in a medium bowl; stir to combine. Add the whole milk and use a hand mixer on low speed or whisk to combine until the cocoa and sugars are dissolved, about 1 to 2 minutes. Stir in the heavy cream and vanilla. If not freezing immediately, cover and refrigerate until ready to use.

Turn machine on; pour mixture into freezer bowl, and let mix until thickened, about 25 to 35 minutes. The ice cream will have a soft, creamy texture. If a firmer consistency is desired, transfer the ice cream to an airtight container and place in freezer for about 2 hours. Remove from freezer about 15 minutes before serving.
 

Cured Salmon

It started with a MasterChef service challenge. To say I watch a lot of MasterChef Australia would be an understatement. #shamelessplug You should be too because it has been the best series we've had, in my opinion, anywhere in the world. 

Anyway, there was a service challenge about two weeks ago which featured a salt and citrus cured salmon and I have not been able to stop thinking about it. It wasn’t dish of the day or anything, but I have been captivated since by this alluring image in my head of one of the contestants carrying a tray filled with a beautiful salt, sugar, citrus and herb mix. I had to do it. 

The below recipe is a creative mixture of various online resources and how-to’s with this good ol’ Martha Stewart recipe forming the backbone. 

Cured Salmon

Depending on the size of your fillets, you will need a varying amount of mixture, but it should follow the ratio of 2 parts salt to 1 part sugar. Below is the recipe for about 2 hand-sized skin-on fillets. 

Skin-on, boneless Salmon fillets

2 cups salt (I've now tried it with fancy Maldon and semi-fancy Sea salt combo, and the cheapest 60c cooking salt, makes no difference to be honest) 
1 cup sugar
Zest of One large lemon (and more to serve) 
Zest of One lime
2 tbs of dill tips 

Creme Fraiche & Crackers to serve 

Add all the ingredients into a bowl. Mix well. When I'm making a big batch I cheat and use a KitchenAid to mix it really really well. 

Lay out a long piece of foil on a bench top, pour in 1/3 of your mixture in the middle, spread evenly around the size of your fillets side by side. Dry off your fillet, and lay it skin-side down. Now top it off with the rest of the mixture, burying it deep and surrounding it on all sides. Now wrap your foil packet tight, scrunching up the sides so that everything is squished together. 

Put it on a baking sheet and the key is to weigh it down with something else. So I actually use two loaf pans (because they nest in each other), put my salmon in one, lay the other loaf pan on top, and put a bottle of white wine in it.. and in 24 hours you have perfectly cured salmon and a chilled bottle of wine ;) 

I've opened it up in 8, 12 and 24 hours. The flavour just gets more intense the longer it's in the mix (duh). To serve, grate some lemon zest into creme fraiche to infuse a bit of citrus into it. Rince the mix off your salmon, dry it off, and slice it however thick or thin you want it. Lay your salmon on a cracker, drizzle it with creme fraiche, and top with lemon zest and dill. 

It's Friends, but with an A

One day several weeks ago, I ambled over to my colleague H's desk, and saw an oval shaped, light-brown cake on her desk. She told me it was some kind of a Hazelnut cake from Two Fratelli - our friendly neighborhood cafe, where the proprietor, Dave, was always inventing some new baked good or other (I swear he has the best savoury short crust). Curious, I took a bite and immediately fell in love with this crunchy-edged, crumbly, nutty, not-too-sweet, beautiful little cake. 

I had seen a recipe for something that looked like it in the Bourke Street Bakery cookbook called a Financier and jubilantly asked Dave the next morning if this was what it was. He proceeded to helpfully correct me by telling me that in Australia, it was actually called a Friand - Friend with an A. 

The traditional friand uses almond meal, but since I had fallen in love with the Hazelnut variety, it called for some research and improvising off of Dave's one-line instruction - "just use hazelnuts instead". 

After almost daily baking the last 7 days, I finally gave this a shot tonight, and I think we have a true winner -

Blueberry Hazelnut Friands with Coconut (adapted from this Taste.com.au recipe) 

1/2 cup caster sugar
1/2 cup SR Flour
1/2 cup shredded coconut
1/4 cup ground hazelnuts
4 egg whites
125g melted salted butter
About a cup of blueberries

Preheat oven to 200°C. Grease a 12-muffin pan. Combine dry ingredients, then mix in the eggwhites and melted butter.  Spoon the mixture into the pan, and press a couple (5-7) blueberries on the top. Bake for 15 minutes till a skewer comes out clean. Let rest, then turn out to cool on a wire rack. Eat warm. Try not to eat all of them in one seating.

Crumble

You just have to take my word for it that it was a pretty amazing crumble - even though we ate it on plastic spoons and paper plates in a harshly lit corporate kitchen :) As part of the recipe testing baking frenzy I've been going through, this crumble is certainly putting in a mean fight for the best thing I've made so far. The best part of this recipe is sharing the finished product with a group of colleagues you love :), the worst part is having no leftovers. Bahaha. 

Here goes: Apple & Mixed Berries Crumble

6 granny smith apples (the green kind)
1 tbs Lemon Juice
2 tbs Caster Sugar
1 cup frozen mixed berries (defrost)
1/2 cup Brown Sugar
1/2 cup Rolled Oats
150g Plain Flour
100g chilled & diced Butter
My additions: Cinnamon, Nutmeg, Lemon Zest, Double Creme
 

Preheat oven to 200C. Peel, core and thinly slice your apples (took me 20 mins, but I'm slow); Place apples, sugar, lemon juice, 2 tbs of water into a sauce pan, cook it for 10 minutes on medium, stir sometimes. Mix in the berries, mush 'em in well, add my additions - Cinnamon, Nutmeg and finish with a good zesting of lemon rind on top to your taste. 

Combine brown sugar, baking powder, rolled oats and flour. Rub the diced butter in with your fingers until the whole mixture resembles coarse breadcrumbs - so no large lumps of butter anywhere. 

Pour the fruit mix into a square or small rectangular pan (I just eye-balled it), or alternatively into separate single-serve dishes. Top with crumble. Bake for 20 minutes till the crumble is golden brown and you can see the fruit mixture bubbling through.

Most important step: SERVE WITH DOUBLE CREME. The expensive kind. It makes the crumble. 

Orange Cake

I'm helping test out a couple of recipes for my lovely friend, R, who is helping organize a bake shop at a school fair (or this is my understanding of what's happening). This is giving me an opportunity to throw together some classics, starting with this orange cake.

Aside from sustaining a small cut from my cherished microplane, this recipe is foolproof. It made my house smell so good I made two batches back to back. Also, note: the "cake" is a tad sweeter than what I consider the threshold to be appropriate breakfast food. But I may have eaten it for breakfast anyway. Oh well. Tough life. 

Here goes - 

125 grams Butter 
3/4 cup Caster Sugar
Finely grated rind of 1 orange, and another half to finish off the top
2 eggs
1 1/2 cups Self-raising Flour
1/4 cup fresh Orange juice
1/4 cup Milk

For the Icing:
28 grams Butter (or 2 tablespoons)
1 1/2 cup sifted icing sugar (I mentioned this wasn't the healthiest cake, right?)
2 tablespoons Orange Juice
1/2 teaspoon finely grated Orange rind

Grease a loaf tin. Cream the butter, sugar, orange rind until light and fluffy. Add eggs, one at a time, making sure each has been mixed well. Fold through the flour, then the OJ and the milk. Pour into tin and bake at 180 C for 40 minutes,  or until the skewer comes out clean. (Which, incidentally, is the only reason why I own skewers). Turn it out onto the cooling rack. Be patient and let the cake cool completely. 

While cake is baking, cream the butter and sugar, then add the OJ and zest to make the icing. 

When cake is cooled, slather icing generously on top, and finish with a good grating of orange rind.