A tahini caramel & chocolate tart with sesame brittle, all crisp buttery pastry, vanilla and tahini caramel and rich, smooth swirls of chocolate ganache.  Jump to Recipe 

As part of most medical school programs, the final year includes a short elective rotation where you can organise to go (almost) anywhere in the world – a chance to experience a different health system from your own. I’ve just landed back in London for mine – partially an excuse for 6 weeks of restaurant hopping, weekends abroad and catching up with friends from my stint in Oxford last year. (I am actually really looking forward to the elective itself too!). It’s only been three days, but they’ve included stopping off for coffee and flaky citrus morning buns at my new local, Brick House Bakery; oat milk flat whites at the Shoreditch Grind (first time trying Oatly, not entirely convinced but also not bad); early jet-lagged runs around misty, boggy Dulwich Park, all rugged up in layers; keep-cups of Monmouth coffee (the best) and purchases of smoked Maldon salt and Aleppo chilli flakes at the Borough Market; a hearty bowl of dahl with eggplant and flatbread at 26 Grains; and gazing in at the cake displays of my dreams at Ottolenghi Spitalfields – it already feels like I barely left. I also already feel like I underestimated my food budget… (budgeting is really not a strong point over here).

I have a couple of side trips planned so far: one to stay with a friend in Dublin, and one to Amsterdam, so any recommendations for either of those places would be very much appreciated – to eat or to see!

Now to the recipe: a tahini caramel chocolate tart with sesame brittle. I made it multiple times to get it right, and each time one component struggled – once with a shrinking, crumbly pastry, the second with a far too chewy caramel, a few more times for luck – thank goodness I had family, housemates and work colleagues to feed it too (and luckily they didn’t mind/notice the flaws as much as I did). It’s a quick short and sweet pastry, buttery and crisp, blind baked and topped with a silky tahini and vanilla scented salted caramel sauce. Swoops of creamy chocolate ganache and nutty shards of sesame brittle top it off. Yes, it’s rich and intense and a bit of a sugar rush, but it’s a proper dessert, and you can always serve small pieces – a little goes a long way (though some will want seconds – i.e. me). My dad told me it was possibly the best dessert I’ve made, so I’ll take that. (Admittedly, he does love rich chocolate and caramel, so if you’re a fruit person you probably won’t agree!).

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Christmas season has officially hit! Without the heavy coats, mugs of hot chocolate or the snow and fairy light dusted branches that I’ve been swiping past, here in Auckland it’s more muggy spring rain and barbecues. Pine needles are lining the footpath outside (thanks to the Christmas trees being sold by my brothers) and the Christmas mince tarts are rolling out the door – buckets of brandy and spice laden fruit spiked with dark chocolate, and tray after tray of buttery sweet pastry. Topped with a star and a light shower of icing sugar, they’re pretty festive – I’ll be hard pressed not to eat one a day until the 25th. Do let me know if you’re in New Zealand (Auckland in particular) and you’d like to order a dozen or two.

So if last week’s post was the anti-dote to all the sweet baking I’ve been doing, this post is one of those sweets. This week I’ve worked with Vitamix to create this Salted Peanut Caramel Slice. It’s the perfect recipe for any Christmas party, potluck, morning tea get-together, or simply to indulge in with coffee – it’s a hit in any situation, and I haven’t found someone that doesn’t like it. It starts with a slightly salty, buttery miso shortbread base, topped with a rich dark-roasted peanut caramel – like a regular caramel sauce but with the addition of homemade peanut butter and chopped peanuts stirred through for crunch. Normally when I make caramel slice I go for the classic condensed milk based caramel, but I think this is my new favourite – much less risk of sickly sweetness, and a bolder caramel flavour, matched with the slightly savoury peanut butter. It’s finished off with a layer of dark chocolate and a hint of sea salt. It’s addictive, sweet, sticky, salty, nutty and rich – everything I want in a slice!

The Vitamix Ascent with the new Blending Cups and Bowls makes this slice even easier: simply use the pulse function to blitz together the shortbread ingredients in the jug, and then use the new Blending Cup to make a quick, homemade dark roasted peanut butter for the caramel. I haven’t stopped using the Cups and Bowls with my Ascent since I received them – it means you can blend smaller quantities of ingredients that wouldn’t work so well in the full size container (like this small batch peanut butter, salad dressing, chopped nuts and individual smoothies) AND means less dishes. The Vitamix Ascent is my go-to blender and I use it almost daily – it blends the thickest acai bowls and icy sorbet, makes super smooth almond butter, you can make soup from scratch (it even heats it up!) and it comes in handy for the big batches of hummus I make regularly. Christmas present anyone?

This post was created in collaboration with Vitamix, and I received the high-performance blender as a gift. As always, all opinions expressed are my own, including my appreciation of this versatile blender! Thank you so much for supporting the companies that support this blog.

Baker’s Notes:

•  The homemade small batch peanut butter works extremely well in the Vitamix Blending Cup. It means you know exactly what is in it and can roast your own peanuts – it tastes better than any store-bought nut butter I’ve tried. If you MUST, you can use a dark roasted store-bought peanut butter, but make sure it is a smooth nut butter that is just peanuts (± a little bit of oil and salt). If you use a peanut butter with lots of extra fats, additives and sugar it will affect your end result.
• Make sure the base and caramel are cool and set before you add the next layer on top. Pro tip if you are short on time – place the tin in the freezer. The base will chill super fast, and the caramel will set within an hour or two.
• Keep the slice in an airtight container in the fridge and bring out just before serving. If kept at room temperature, the caramel layer gets too soft. It’ll last at least a week.

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Has anyone else been devouring the new season of Chef’s Table: pastry edition? I’m not sure I’ve ever delighted over a documentary quite as much as the first episode detailing the rise of Christina Tosi of Momofuku Milk Bar. Partially due to her story and personality, and partially due to the personal memories and nostalgia evoked. I must admit that although other episodes have been interesting, the theatre and artistry of fine dining restaurants tend to come across as rather remote.

Of course, she was always going to be much more relatable because I’ve actually cooked and eaten her food. The unique unfrosted layer cake is signature Tosi – why on earth go to the effort of frosting a cake to perfection, when you could spend that time much more effectively by creating extra-delicious components to stack up inside? The german chocolate cake I posted a slight riff on a few years ago is a prime example. Not limited to chocolate cake and frosting, it builds up a caramel ‘crack’ coconut filling, pecan crunch, a chocolate cake soak for extra moisture and espresso chocolate frosting. Layered up with an acetate sheet lined tin for extra height and frozen overnight, it’s fiddly and time-consuming but unquestionably worth it. (That worth combines the wonderful riot of textures, flavours and visual appeal, the satisfaction of pulling it off, and the reactions you get from those you serve it to, in case you were wondering).

I think I overloaded on sugar partially due to Milk Bar during the week I had in NYC. Cereal milk soft serve eaten on a sun-drenched day in the West Village – a creation using the flavoured milk produced by soaking cornflakes in it; slices of crack pie on a park bench in Williamsburg – borderline sickly with sugar but with addictive buttery, nutty qualities you can’t quite put your finger on (milk powder and freeze dried corn are key); tucking a few compost cookies into my suitcase for the rest of my family to devour 30 hours later back home (compost meaning everything from coffee grinds to pretzels, potato chips and graham cracker crust). Souvenirs were a bottle of freeze dried corn powder (quite a different thing to cornflour, by the way) and a few bags of very American caramel chips – I have no idea what customs thought. 

Her style is incredibly innovative, slightly eccentric, very American and totally joyful – as she puts it, a sweet treat has a way of giving you “a moment where the weight of the world is just a little bit lighter on your shoulders”. Crack pie, the unfrosted layer cake, cereal milk soft serve and compost cookies have become instantly recognisable, even iconic, desserts. They’re precise, impeccably researched, trialed, tested and detailed, and draw on Tosi’s background as a pastry chef – but they also stem from her familiarity with all-American home baking, and for that reason they remain accessible. They’re not quite out of our reach. Maybe I’m not sure how I feel about the prepackaged cookies churned out, and the rapid expansions of Milk bar as a chain (I’m more on the ‘keep it exclusive rather than risk quality decline’ side of the fence), but it doesn’t take away from my admiration of the business and the woman behind it all. 

Speaking of home cooking, a couple of articles on this caught my attention. One posted on The Kitchn blog, the other by Nigella Lawson (who I have previously written about on a similar note back here). The former was aggrieved by the way in which Tosi was portrayed as someone with roots in home baking, and thought this was reinforcing the stereotype of women in the kitchen at home and men receiving awards as restaurant chefs. Though maybe Netflix could have put more emphasis on her pastry chef years and awards for Milk Bar (and on a separate note, could do with more diversity), my initial reaction was that this was a bit harsh – surely home cooking is no longer just the domain of 50s housewives? Nigella’s article “Home Cooking is a Feminist Act” lends another perspective – though she is more talking about how she prefers the title of home cook to chef, whereas clearly Tosi has faultless pastry chef credentials, some of her points still stand. As she puts it, “yet I have always felt that to disparage an activity because it has been traditionally female is itself anti-feminist.” The creativity and independence enabled by home cooking is not inferior to the theatrical land of professional kitchens. 

Anyway, a la Tosi, I attempt to push my limits at least a little with baking. I want my recipes to be approachable and managable, but at least the majority of the time seek out flavours and combinations that aren’t already detailed in every other recipe book. These espresso brownies with caramelised white chocolate ganache are a prime example. I’m not the biggest fan of white chocolate (to be honest, I actively avoid it). But the silky golden hues of the caramelised version had been taunting me for a while – trying it myself was inevitable. Clearly, as this post attests, it was worth it. Roasting the chocolate adds a rich, caramelised note to something that is ordinarily sickly, and it whips up to a gloriously fluffy and addictive frosting. The brownie itself is so dark and espresso filled it almost has a bitter edge, that meshes perfectly with a sweet frosting. They have an intensity that makes a small piece all you need, and could just as easily be served as a dinner party dessert as for an afternoon tea party. Yes, caramelised white chocolate is a bit of a labour of love, but sometimes it’s worth it (just make sure you read the trouble-shooting section first). 

Trouble shooting and tips & tricks: 

• Allow yourself enough time! Almost all caramelised white chocolate problems are fixable with a bit of time. 
• Try to use a white chocolate brand with >30% cocoa solids if you can get it, as it will be easier to make a ganache with. Most supermarket brands are <30% and tend to seize and crumble as you caramelise them – however, mine did this and it still worked very well. Just don’t freak out when it crumbles as you cook it – it will remelt when you add the hot cream. Have a look at the photographs below for the colour I took my chocolate too. 
• To turn your white chocolate ganache into a whipped frosting, it has to cool to room temperature or slightly cooler. If it is still warm, it won’t lighten and thicken. If you have this problem, just put the bowl in the fridge for 10 minutes or so and try again. 
• If you feel like your ganache is splitting (getting oily, or separating), place it in the fridge for 10 minutes and then beat again until it emulsifies. 
• Other guides with more pictures: see Food52 and David Lebovitz.
• Below are some pictures of the caramelised white chocolate process for me:

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A pillowy overnight brioche dough wrapped around sticky salted caramel with hints of coffee, buttery macadamias and gooey white chocolate.  Jump to Recipe

If I had to pick one baked good that for me means family, it would be brioche. Partly because I’ve been making them for as long as I remember – Christmas morning always features these giant sticky cinnamon, date & walnut versions, and partly because their decadence and relatively time-consuming nature means I only ever make them for a crowd (and yes, the endless appetites of my three brothers constitutes a crowd – they’ll easily polish off a few each).  Brioche is intrinsically linked with family and friends, holidays, long weekends and abundant coffee and laughter.  I make brioche loaves to cut slabs for weekend french toast feasts (this coconut peach version was a favourite) and to soak in custard and transform into dinner party-worthy dessert- at least this rhubarb & dark chocolate bread & butter pudding, anyway. It even emerges in a savoury context for summer barbecues – fluffy, slightly buttery brioche buns make your burgers 1000x better.

It also usually means I have time to spare, so is completely dissociated from studying and medicine. Essentially the opposite of my rushed morning porridge!

This particular batch of salted coffee caramel, macadamia & white chocolate brioche scrolls were constructed on Easter weekend back home. I roped my brother into helping me with construction, then convinced a friend to be my hand model once they were out of the oven – hence why there are three different sets of hands in these photos (bribery was definitely involved, at least for the former). The scrolls were even better than I’d hoped – they manage to be sweet but not TOO sweet, balanced by the salt-flakes and hint of coffee throughout the caramel with the nutty crunch of macadamia. The sort of good where you can’t stop eating until they’re removed from your line of sight…and then you just go hunting for the rest anyway (to be honest, I doubt you’ll have any leftovers).

Because they prove overnight in the fridge, they’re also perfect for maximising your sleep in – priorities, am I right?! The next morning, it will only take an hour until you are pulling them hot from the oven: all you need to do is roll them, spread with caramel and leave to prove for 20 minutes and bake.

They were inspired by the amazing Magnolia Kitchen – a bakery in Auckland whose Snapchat, run by owner Bets, you should be following (warning – it’ll make you seriously hungry in the morning). I STILL haven’t managed to get there but in the meantime couldn’t hold off trying the caramel/white chocolate / macadamia combination. It’s epic.

In other news, I’m busy sorting my life out before I fly to London this weekend! It’s the only break from university placement until fourth year medicine exams hit in November so it’s going to be a complete study-free zone. My google maps are covered in pins (hit me up if you have more recommendations!), airbnbs are booked, and my suitcase is hiding somewhere in the cupboard, ready to be pulled out a few hours before I leave (typical). There are so many things to be excited for my head feels like it might explode, but highlights include tickets to Harry Potter and the Cursed Child (!! – I grew up with Harry Potter, and it remains my favourite series of all time), a weekend in Paris with ALL the patisseries from Du Pain et Des Idees, visiting Ottolenghi in London (probably multiple times, let’s be honest) and exploring Prague and Berlin. To follow my adventures, updates will mostly be over here on Instagram stories.

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Chocolate, Hazelnut & Espresso Caramel Slice – rich chocolate shortbread topped with gooey espresso caramel & finished with a layer of dark chocolate.  Jump to Recipe 

Last night was my first back in the emergency department for the semester – and the hectic environment that I had largely forgotten came rushing right back. It was a busy Monday evening following an even busier weekend: the doctors and nurses were completely overstretched, there weren’t enough beds, and out in the waiting room, people were sitting on the floor as the line stretched out into the night. The hospital where I’m placed is small, almost rural, even – yet services an area with a rapidly growing urban population. We don’t have the resources to have an intensive care or surgeons on standby, so any major trauma or severe emergency gets rushed directly to larger tertiary centres. However, there are still many, many very sick people that need time and care.

It’s frustrating and stressful for the doctors and nurses to be trying to provide the best care possible from the triage bay or the fast track chairs because there are no beds to spare. It’s chaotic, and situations can deteriorate quickly – the doctor I was with had to juggle a child in severe respiratory distress alongside a number of other patients that also needed attention. It makes it even more challenging when there are also many not-so-sick people that should really take panadol and visit the 24 hour superclinic down the road, or their GP in the morning – but in Australia, unlike the UK, nobody can be turned away from emergency. Communication becomes difficult, with exhausted, slightly cynical doctors and distressed patients aggravated at having to wait hours for care. The current situation seems unsustainable – but I don’t know the answer to it. It’s impossible to reduce patient numbers, but to build a larger emergency department is hardly an instantaneous process. In the meantime, hospital staff try to be as organised and efficient as possible, prioritizing based on level of urgency is key, and I’ll be there as a student to listen and  help in any way possible – and try not to get in the way.

Even if the only way I can help is bringing in a decadent slice like this – it could make almost anyone feel better.

It’s a chocolate, hazelnut & espresso caramel slice. The humble caramel slice is a New Zealand and Australian classic, usually made up of a simple shortbread base, often with added desiccated coconut, condensed milk caramel topping, and a thin layer of chocolate to finish it off. A favourite of most cafe and bakery cabinets, you’d find it at birthday parties, in kids lunch boxes, and on the back of sweetened condensed milk tins. This version is even more indulgent – and a little more grown-up – than the original. A deep, dark chocolate shortbread base is topped with a rich espresso caramel, studded with the nutty crunch of roast hazelnuts. Sea salt adorns the intense dark chocolate topping, which along with the hint of bitter espresso, serves to balance the sweetness of the caramel. It’s a worthy indulgence – all or nothing, right?

You do need golden syrup for that caramel layer – it’s easily found in supermarkets over here, but other parts of the world might require a little more searching. It’s like a light treacle, but using maple syrup, molasses or corn syrup would give a completely different flavour.

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