Hazelnut and Blueberry Cakes

Australian Gourmet Hazelnuts have stalls at the Eveleigh Markets and the Good Living Growers’ Markets. These nuts are from Mudgee, and that’s part of the attraction for me. Mudgee is a NSW town, only 4 hours from Sydney, so you could probably claim to be a locavore eating these. I have a personal connection to the Mudgee region too. My grandparents have a fabulous weekender there with plenty of natural bushland. The Male of the Species is from there too, so Alloronan has twice the connection to the area. With a love of Mudgee and a love of hazelnuts how could I resist buying these nuts?

I trotted home with my bag of ‘dry roasted hazelnut crumb’. For the uninitiated this is hazelnut meal which has been lightly toasted. I looked at the recipes I’d been given with my nuts and found that lots were savoury, which didn’t appeal particularly to my sweet tooth. There was an apple cake that sounded good, but it needed whole nuts as well as meal. Not quite sure what I’d do with my hazelnut meal I asked the Vegaquarian for ideas. I particularly wanted to know if toasted nut meal was interchangeable with the untoasted version in baking. She told me that if you’ve ever ground your own nuts then you would know that you toast them lightly first because otherwise you get peanut butter. She added that of course you can bake with them. After giving me this handy hint she also directed me to a recipe. I love recommendations, because you know the recipe will taste good. With the recipe in hand my hazelnut meal had a purpose at last.

The recipe she gave me was for Raspberry Hazelnut Muffins. I’ve adapted it somewhat so that it has become Blueberry Hazelnut Patty Cakes. They’re yummy and quite sweet. The recipe recommends that you fill them with rose marscapone. I found they tasted fine without it, but I decided to use it as an icing. The topping certainly dresses them up, because these little cakes tend to be quite flat on top, which isn’t as pretty as a well risen dome.

I made these for a work morning tea and I was pleased to see they all disappeared. I was not so pleased to come home and find that the ones I’d reserved had almost disappeared too. I suppose it’s hard to resist a hazelnut cake.

Hazelnut Blueberry Patty Cakes
125 g butter
1 cup caster sugar
3 eggs
3/4 cup gluten free plain flour
1/2 cup hazelnut meal
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 cup natural yoghurt (originally sour cream)
1 cup blueberries (this is one 415 g tin drained, or you can use frozen or fresh berries)

Rose Mascarpone Topping
250 g mascarpone
1/4 cup gluten free icing sugar mixture
1 tsp rosewater

Method
Preheat oven to 175 Celcius.
Beat butter and sugar until pale and creamy.
Add eggs one at a time beating well after each addition.
Add flour, hazelnut meal and baking powder. Combine.
Add yoghurt and stir.
Finally fold in berries.

Spoon the mixture into patty pans. I needed about 3 dozen. Bake for 15-20 mins.

Once the cakes have cooled, combine the ingredients for the mascapone topping. When you’re ready to serve them, spread the marscapone mix over the patty cakes.

Blackberry Jaffle-pie

So the Male of the Species and I went up to visit the Rural Artist this weekend, for a variety of reasons including the delivery of one mystery vegetable (as mentioned by Arwen). She swears it’s a butternut and that I don’t know what I’m talking about. We’ll see. She hasn’t opened it yet.

Anyway, while up there it occurred to me that, being February, it’s blackberry season. Like most rural properties there are quite a number of blackberry bushes scattered around the place, so the Male of the Species, Mo the dog and I went up the hill in the rain to pick blackberries. May I take this moment to say that, if it ever occurs to you to pick blackberries in the rain, don’t. Raincoat sleeves are too baggy for it and while they mean you don’t get scratched all that much, you do end up just a tiny bit tangled

Anyway, rain aside we picked a successful haul of blackberries. We split them half/half with the Rural Artist, ending up with roughly a kilo each, and an unsurprising number of blackberry thorns in our fingers. On the way home, the Male of the Species put his backpack on top of the bag containing them, which left them rather squished and aesthetically unfit for having with icecream and blackberry wine as I had planned. This left me with rather a lot of blackberries that needed using, but couldn’t really be used as a side with something, since most of the berries weren’t whole. At this point, you’re probably thinking blackberry pie, and so was I. However, this week I am at home alone, which means that a blackberry pie is a) too big to be consumed by me alone and b) far too much effort for me alone. So when lunchtime came around today I decided to have them for lunch in a jaffle-pie, the lazy man’s pie effort. I’ve done this a few times before with strawberries- for a while strawberries were a dollar a punnet in Sydney and I practically subsisted on them, so I thought I should give it a shot with blackberries instead.

You start with a sheet of puff pastry- I suppose you could also do it with shortcrust or filo, but I’ve never tried it and puff is what I had on hand. You don’t need to thaw it, since your jaffle maker should be preheated anyway. Lie it so that half of it is over the bread spaces, then press it down gently just a little into the dishy bits. Then throw in a couple of spoonfuls of blackberries (or other berries), and 1 rounded dessert spoon of sugar on each side. Yes, I know it sounds like a lot, but really blackberries just aren’t that sweet. You’d have to vary the sugar amount with other berries, strawberries need less than that. You want to do the filling bit fast, since at this point the bottom of the pastry is already cooking. Then you just fold the other half over on top of it and close the lid. I didn’t grease the jaffle maker at all, and it didn’t stick for me at all, but that may not be the case for other machines. Leave it in there until the pastry has puffed up a bit and is golden brown- it should only take a few minutes. If you’re not feeling impatient, you can turn the jaffle maker off at this point and let it go a bit toffee/jam-ish in there, it’s extremely awesome that way, but I’m usually too hungry to wait.  There is a downside to using blackberries though, I discovered.

They’re a lot juicier than strawberries. This was about half way through the cooking process, and there was a puddle as big on the other side. It was bigger by the time I was done. At this point I will admit to sticking in a finger and tasting it, and it was delicious Anyway, if you’re using a juicy berries just be careful that it’s not too near anything that juice will get on.

This was the final result. It’s absolutely divine with icecream too, and it only takes about 10 minutes to do if you have the ingredients on hand. A really awesome snack for a wintery rainy day.

Mulberry Smoothie

So, I had my darling sister Arwen over for dinner who is, of course, a coeliac. Me having a savoury tooth, I had a fabulous dinner planned, but kind of forgot about the whole dessert side of things. This meant that when the moment came I simply had to grab what was on hand and invent something that was also gluten free.  Luckily I had a mulberry tree on hand. A fruiting one, no less! We’d spent some of the afternoon picking mulberries for the purpose of stewing and freezing and pie making and other delightful culinary pursuits, so it swiftly came to mind. I decided on a smoothie, since it was a hot night and they’re easy to whip up quickly with not many ingredients.

Mulberries

Mulberries are better known for their role in providing food for silkworms, but as a fruit they are quite delicious and easy to grow. The fruit look some what like black berries, but are much sweeter, and they have the massive advantage of NOT growing in the middle of a bramble bush imitating an incompetent acupuncturist. The trees can get quite big and are heavy fruiting, but you will lose a significant portion of the crop to birds and other back yard denizens. None the less, you should get a fair amount of fruit as long as you remember to pick them. They fruit seasonally and in bulk but the fruit handles freezing pretty well.  The tree seems to be reasonably drought tolerant once established (ours is anyway).

The ingredients

I kept it simple, only using 4 ingredients. The big problem is that when I usually make smoothies I put in a hefty spoonful or two of malt. Malt is in practically everything sweet and is part of what makes things tasty. Unfortunately it is also derived from barley which means it isn’t coeliac friendly, so I needed something else. I decided to try using maple syrup, since it has a distinctive flavour that I thought would complement the mulberries. So I started by throwing some mulberries (about 3 handfuls) and a hefty slosh of maple syrup (2 or so tablesppoons) in the blender. I gave it a quick whizz until the berries where smoothish, and then I sloshed in a bit of milk (mostly for lubrication) and then four or five scoops of icecream. Once it was blended smooth, I slopped it out into glasses. After tasting, I put in a few whole mulberries which added a bit more bite. It came out smooth and sweet, and the mulberry and maple syrup did work quite well. The whole mulberries in it were a nice addition, both because they looked good before they sank and they added texture and bursts of tartness. I don’t think Arwen minded that I hadn’t planned dessert.

The Smoothies