I’ve been neglecting my blog of late, not because I haven’t been buried in food…oh no, far from that! It’s taken me this long to climb out of the mountain of food that I’ve been blissfully buried in. Unfortunately, the long climb out has also made my memory a bit hazy, so I can only put in a couple of entries – Christmas Day, New Years Eve and New Years Night…there were Yum Chas, Thai Dinners with homemade soufflés, Pork belly dinners with crème brulee, ramen at Ajisen – I might actually write about that one, and more I can’t even remember now. So let’s start with Christmas.
Every Christmas, my sisters (and next year my brother) take turns hosting Christmas (in my family, it’s all about being fair). This year, Christmas would be hosted by my sister ELLE and we all bring a couple of dishes and we all dig in.
This is the menu:
Chips and dip (a tomato one and a basil and cashew nut one)
Crackers with King Island double cream brie
2kg of Prawns
Triple smoked ham with mustard marmalade glaze (best ham ever)
Rosemary and lamb sausages
Herbed pork sausages
Roasted Peppers
Roasted Pumpkins
Roasted Potatoes
Duck roast potatoes with truffle salt
Cauliflower puree
Creamy potato salad
Chicken Caesar salad
Marinated chicken wings
Lamb chops
Fruit platter – rockmelons, mangoes, strawberries, lycees, kiwi fruit, cherries, plums, peaches
Sticky toffee pudding with butterscotch sauce and almond praline
berry and white chocolate cheesecake
Needless to say, we all pretty much had a nap after lunch…actually, I don’t know about anybody else, but I was certainly snoring.
I was in charge of desserts, so here are the recipe for the sticky toffee pudding.
Sticky toffee pudding with butterscotch sauce and almond praline
My sticky toffee pudding actually came from two recipes, I like doing that…looking at heaps of different recipes, and then choosing my favourite bits from each recipe and combining them. So far, it has worked beautifully. When I make the butterscotch sauce, I never really follow the recipe, I just haphazardly had stuff as I ‘look’ at the sauce and I like to had fresh grinding of salt into the sauce because I like the little salt crystal bursts in amongst the sweetness.
Pudding:
200g of pitted dates, finely chopped
250 ml of water
2 tsp of bi-carb soda
75g of unsalted butter
125g of brown sugar
2 eggs
2 tablepoons of golden syrup
1 tablespoon of vanilla extract
200g plain flour, sifted
Sauce:
200g brown sugar
60g of salted butter
150ml of cream
2 tbls of golden syrup
1 tsp of vanilla
grinding of salt (optional)
Praline:
1/4 cup of toasted slivered almonds
1/2 cup of caster sugar
For the cake:
Preheat the oven to 170 C and line an 8 inch cake tin.
Bring the dates and the water to boil and then simmer over low heat for about 5 minutes. Remove from heat and stir in the bicarb soda, it will froth up.
Cream butter sugar together in a mixer until creamy, add eggs in one at a time and mix. Add in syrup, vanilla and sifted flour and mix. Beat in the frothy date mixture in two lots and pour it into your pan.
Bake for about 45 minutes, until a skewer comes out clean.
For the sauce:
Melt everything (except for cream and salt) together on medium heat. Once melted and it’s starting to bubble, add the cream, it’ll bubble lots. Once you take it off the heat, add the grinding of salt.
For the praline:
Line a baking tray with non-stick paper and sprinkle over with the toasted almonds. Combine the sugar and two tbls of water in a saucepan. Cook over medium heat and swilr around until the sugar has dissolved. Don’t stir this, just swirl. This takes a bit of time, but remove once it’s a deep golden colour, if it’s too light, it won’t set properly. Pour over the almonds to cool until set, and then break to serve on the cake.
To serve:
I poured the sauce over the pudding, and the pralines on top and had a jug of the sauce for those who want more sauce (everybody does).
Bury Me In Food 