Coconut Caramel Brioche French Toast with Grilled Peaches and a coconut caramel sauce – golden, coconut-crusted toast with a rich custard-like interior.  Jump to Recipe 

Baking sets us up for failures. Not every time – but every baker, whether of the home enjoyment variety or a professional, seems armed with stories of overflowing batter, overbaked cookies or cakes that collapse like deflated balloons when removed from the oven. Worse yet are the kind that all outward appearances would suggest were successful, but are cut into at dinner parties only to discover a runny, uncooked centre or a missing ingredient. A story frequently retold in our house involves my grandmother, a skilled cook herself, accidentally replacing sugar in a cake recipe with salt – I can only imagine the faces of those at the table at their first mouthful of the inedible chocolate creation.

Precise measurements, raising agents, the unpredictable nature of yeast (and its many variations), oven temperatures – the number of opportunities to mess up seem never ending. My most recent experience at work is not one I will forget in a hurry.

Charged with slicing up 16 loaves of biscotti and baking them off to dry them out, I was using a different oven to usual and set the temperature to 120°C. At least, what I thought was 120°C. Still a little unsure as I couldn’t see a little arrow on the temperature dial, I took the step of rechecking with the girl in charge of that section, who confirmed it was all okay. Six big trays of fig, coffee and walnut biscotti were loaded into the commercial oven. Though the baking time was up to  20 minutes, being a worrier I checked after 10.

Swinging open the door of the oven, the huge waft of black smoke and acrid smell pouring out forced me backward along with a sense of crushing disappointment and slight shocked humiliation. Completely and utterly blackened biscotti greeted me. Burnt to a crisp. Charred. Toasted. Customers in the cafe peered curiously through the window, thinking there must be a fire as the hazy smoke traveled outside and down the street, while we frantically opened all possible windows and carried out the trays to the rubbish area. Honestly, if they had been left for the full 20 minutes, I think the oven might have been flaming (and probably destroyed). 

The dial on the oven temperature had rubbed off, and I managed to turn it around the opposite way – so although it looked like 120°C, it was actually set to about 280°C. Commercial ovens also tend to seal in all the smoke, so while at home you would have noticed the burning smell much earlier, nobody realised until it all poured out on opening the door. I guess it makes a good story now (and I will hopefully be able to laugh about it at some point), but I was SO embarrassed (and annoyed at myself for not being more careful!).  

When the next week another baker managed to char-grill sixty chocolate-raspberry bread and butter puddings, a new arrow was penned in on the oven dial to avoid the same mistake occuring again.

Along with the freezer episode, I feel like I have had a few kitchen fails lately – so I needed an uncomplicated recipe. Something that couldn’t fail to rise or set (or burn), and is suitable for summer holidays and the imprecise measurements and old equipment of baches and holiday rentals. Along came this french toast: an enriched brioche loaf, soaked in a coconut milk mixture, coated in shredded coconut and transformed in a fry-pan into a golden, crusty edged toast with a rich custard-like interior. Topped with sweet grilled peaches and a decadent coconut caramel, it is a summery dessert for breakfast (or brunch) option that is hard to get wrong.

In saying this, I had to make it harder for myself (of course!) by making my own brioche loaves – but if bread-making does not sound like fun, a time-saving option to reduce error would just be to buy it. I used this brioche recipe which worked out perfectly. The caramel is the only other tricky thing – the traditional butter and cream is replaced by coconut cream for a healthier option and a strong hit of coconut flavour- but if this is not your thing either, just replace it with maple syrup and a drizzle of coconut cream.

Tips & tricks:

• All the measurements for the peaches and french toast are very flexible, and are very easy to increase or decrease quantities to serve different numbers of people.
• Coconut caramel: I would advise making it the night before and keeping it in the fridge for the morning. Watch the sugar carefully as it caramelises to ensure it doesn’t burn. To avoid the sugar seizing as you add the coconut cream, warm up the cream in a separate pot first, and then whisk constantly as you slowly add it. On the off-chance that it still occurs, just keep it over a low heat and whisk to remelt the sugar. Unless the sugar is burnt, it will be salvageable! I
• You could also cook the french toast itself on the barbecue along with the peaches – just keep it over a low heat and I would probably use a flat plate rather than the grill bars.
• If you want to make your own brioche loaves, this recipe from A Cookie Named Desire worked really well for me.

The post Dairy-Free Coconut Caramel Brioche French Toast with Grilled Peaches appeared first on The Brick Kitchen.

Lemon, Coconut & Berry Layer Cake with tangy lemon curd, vanilla cream cheese buttercream and dollops of torched Italian meringue – inspired by Andy Bowdy.  Jump to Recipe 

A belated birthday cake for my 19th year!

The actual date was last week in the hours prior to a major exam – it didn’t give me much of chance to celebrate. More hectic days of exams, packing up my life from where it had scattered over the little square box of my college room, saying goodbyes for the summer, and heading home to Auckland followed. The first priority (okay, maybe not quite the first..but up there!) was to solidify my status as one of those people that make their own birthday cake. Is it sad? I would argue that I love the process of creating it so much, thinking of possible flavour combinations, colours, decorations – that it is like a gift in itself, an excuse to break out as much butter and sugar as I can handle and construct something really out-there, epically over the top.

I have been following Sydney’s Andy Bowdy on instagram for the past year or so, and love his style of cake decorating – the flavours he dreams up, the dolloped meringue spilling dramatically over the side, and the mounds of colour and texture adorning the top. It was only a matter of time before I tried it for myself, and my birthday was the perfect opportunity.

The three layers of cake have a lemon base, moist and textured with desiccated coconut and folded through with berries. Between each layer is a tangy cream cheese buttercream and swirls of rich lemon curd, while torched Italian meringue as a topping adds another dimension. Fresh berries and spare drips of lemon curd finish it off.

(just be prepared for a whole load of photos…I had great difficulty deciding which I like best!)

It wasn’t without its trials, however – I had few cream cheese buttercream issues along the way. WAY too runny the first time, and I couldn’t get it to thicken, even in the fridge. I attempted in vain to stack the cake together, but the layers slid over each other, buttercream spurted out the sides, and the whole thing threatened to collapse. I did read that extra sugar can just make it even more runny because of the cream cheese forming water with it – can anyone shed some light on that for me? I ended up rushing to the supermarket (literally took me 10 minutes door to door) and making another batch – a different recipe this time, where I used equal parts butter and cream cheese. It ended up much thicker and more stable, so once I scraped the former batch off the cakes and started it again it all held together. If anyone has any cream cheese buttercream tips though, I would love to hear them – I couldn’t figure out whether you should beat it until fluffy after adding the icing sugar, or whether that would just make it runny and you should just stir the sugar in gently. So many conflicting accounts!

Apart from the buttercream struggles, the cake really it isn’t as hard as it might look – I started the cakes around 10am, finished the lemon curd as they baked, made the cream cheese icing before construction, stacked the cakes and chilled them to set the icing for an hour while making the meringue, then put it all together. If you didn’t have the day, you could easily make the cakes and lemon curd the day before (just store the cakes tightly wrapped in gladwrap in an airtight container and the curd in the fridge). And it doesn’t matter if it gets a bit messy – rustic and well-loved is what we are going for here.

The tiredness has finally caught up to me in the last few days – heavy with fatigue, my eyes seem to want to drift shut every time I sit down in the afternoon, and the screen is starting to blur – so I will sign off here. But if you need an over-the-top, impressive layer cake for any occasion (especially if someone isn’t a chocolate fan!), or are just seized with the desire to construct one, here is your answer.

The post Lemon, Coconut & Berry Layer Cake with Lemon Curd and Torched Meringue appeared first on The Brick Kitchen.

Flaky, buttery, crusty-edged lemon & blueberry scones with sweet-tart lemon curd and tangy buttermilk whipped cream.  Jump to Recipe 

Stop whatever you are doing (well, okay, maybe you can’t – but you should) – and make these scones. These Lemon & Blueberry Scones with Lemon Curd and Buttermilk Whipped Cream. At least make them this afternoon, or tomorrow morning, or on the weekend – but no later. Seriously, they are that good.

It has taken a while, but I have FINALLY mastered the scone. After years and years of not really understanding all the fuss about scones, or really understanding why any sane person would choose to make them (like, why would you not just make brownie instead?!), I get it. My childhood scone experience consisted of those plain, dry raisin scones you make a kindergarten and primary school, and the date scones from Bakers Delight – neither of which were particularly earth shattering. But I started to notice scone recipe after scone recipe in blogs and cookbooks – endless variations of blueberry, raspberry, chocolate, date & orange, cream cheese & apricot, you name it – and decided I needed to figure them out. Like being able to whip up scones on a moments notice is a skill a baker should have. Well, it took a while.

The huge quantities of cream and butter in so many recipes was a little off-putting for a while, as a thick, stodgy scone was not what I was after. However, I soon came across the recipe of San Francisco’s Tartine Bakery – and after a bit of trial and error, a bit of practice, and a few adaptations, I had it. My ultimate scone.

Flaky and not too sweet with a sugar crusted exterior, these scones are lightly lemon scented and generously studded with blueberries, with the texture lightened and given a slight tang by the addition of buttermilk. When paired with smooth, sweet yet sharp, golden lemon curd and tangy buttermilk whipped cream, they are elevated to new heights – bursts of blueberry set against warm crunchy-edged scone, silky rich curd and dollops of cream. It doesn’t get much better.

And you know what the next best thing is? The scones take about 10 minutes to whip up, with another 20 minutes or so in the oven. The curd makes a lot – so if you had some stashed in the fridge, you could be half-an-hour away on a lazy morning or afternoon with unexpected visitors from the glorious kitchen smells of these lemon & blueberry scones.

They are so easy that I have managed to successfully make them a couple of times in our tiny, completely under-resourced kitchen in the apartment we are staying in this week. I wasn’t quite aware of how much I relied on my kenwood stand mixer, my good-quality knives, pots and pans, the barbecue, and even just the space of our kitchen at home. Making dinner here for the six of us is quite a challenge, to say the least. Even not having a food-processor has me stumbling – I wanted to make pesto, hummus, whole lemon bars, almond butter, a marinade.. but haven’t quite figured out how. Does anyone have any tips for making those sorts of things without a food processor or blender? Surely it is possible? Maybe?

Anyway – at least these scones were very manageable, and I am LOVING having the week off university for mid-semester break. Just having a few extra moments to sit on the deck and read a book over breakfast (actually just finished All The Light We Cannot See, and thought it was one of the best books I have ever read – would highly recommend), to wander down to the beach with no time-schedule at all, to go for runs in the national park, and just sit here typing out this blog post without the urgency of getting back to study. Time just seems to pass a little slower, a little more lazily, than it does normally – though these last three days have rushed by in a whirlwind of not doing much at all. Hopefully this brief reprieve will carry me through the next few weeks of learning and exams, the final push to the end of semester and my last pre-clinical years.

But seriously. Make these scones. 

The post Lemon & Blueberry Scones with Lemon Curd & Buttermilk Whipped Cream appeared first on The Brick Kitchen.

I love summer. Not only for the beach weather and holiday time, but the New Zealand produce it brings. In winter, the only stone fruit or berries available are either frozen or eye-wateringly expensive and unripe imports, so the arrival of fresh apricots, nectarines, peaches, and strawberries on the shelves is always celebrated. This cake is one of my favourite summer cakes: a simple vanilla batter bursting with juicy sweet apricots, blueberries, and raspberries – the focus is definitely on the fruit. I must admit that I did use frozen berries in this instance however… with raspberries costing $7 a punnet (100g), I would rather eat them fresh than bake them!

The end of summer always heralds the return of school and homework, the arrival of cooler temperatures and greyer days, and the end of this particular cake. It always seems far away at the time of making it, but I now have just two weeks left of my three month summer before I head back to Melbourne – something I both can’t wait for and want to be slightly further away! I will be making the most of my time in Auckland over the next two weeks, trying to cook as much as possible to get me through the kitchen-deprivation of college and give myself material to continue posting here (although a warning to friends with houses – I may invade!).

The perfect dessert to bring along to your next barbecue, this summer fruit cake takes less than half an hour to whip up and is always enjoyed. I tend to arrange the two layers of fruit in concentric circles, dotting the berries wherever they fit, but it is completely up to you how you decorate! Any stonefruit or berry combination you have on hand could easily be used. It is adapted from Julie Le Clerc’s Favourite Cakes cookbook.

The post Summer Fruit Cake appeared first on The Brick Kitchen.