Thursday is the day I get all my jobs done, by jobs I mean shopping. Charli goes to kinder and Sam and I head off to throw some money away (at the supermarket, my life is boring!). Sam and I have one main rule whilst shopping, No Touching the Things! Its fairly simple, you could say straight forward even? Before we walk into a store we repeat the rule and then just as quickly, it gets discarded. I must clarify that this rule is not discarded by me, but by the very angelic terror who shares my shopping time. The instant we go somewhere the hands go out and the fingers start twinkling, I've come to the conclusion Sam thinks that if his hand accidentally come in contact with something its not touching! Shopping time also seems to be Sam's visiting time with the toys he thinks he shares custody with, luckily its supervised visits. Target in particular has a very set routine, first we visit Elmo (the one with the singing and drums), the Dinosaurs (fingers get a great workout here) and finally Lightning McQueen, lets ignore the slight detour we sometimes (always) make to the recipe books. The problem with these visits is we can never move quickly through Target, every toy gets its special time of singing and dancing, Elmo in particular has to sing two or three times and god help me if we don't see him! Now it may seem like bad parenting on my behalf to allow this to happen, especially when I get annoyed with the tantrums... but, my rational is that we don't go home with any of the toys, we only visit them, plus it keeps my giant 2 year old (he is big for his age) from screaming the shop down. I cannot stand my children screaming and I find I can't discipline them the same way I would at home, while we are out and about (mixed signals much?). Nothing screams bad parenting more, than my loud threats to take his Baxter (very, VERY, loved soft toy) and throw him out the car window if he doesn't stop carrying on. So instead I pretend to be a good parent and confuse the little bugger by visiting toys he will probably never get to have (I'm not having stupid singing Elmo anywhere near my lounge room!) all the while avoiding tantrums and promising donuts.... Aren't you glad you come here for the recipes and not the parenting advise?
Recipe - Praline Custard Creams
150g Plain flour
90g almond meal
1 egg yolk
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 tbls icing sugar
Custard filling
75g caster sugar
2 egg yolks
250ml milk
125g butter, softened
1 tsp vanilla extract
80g icing sugar
Almond Praline
40g flaked almonds
110g caster sugar
2 tbls water
Custard Filling
Combine sugar and flour in a small saucepan; Gradually stir in combined yolks and milk until smooth. Cook, stirring, until mixture boils and thickens. Simmer, stirring, over low heat, 1 minute; remove from the heat. Cover surface of custard with plastic wrap, refrigerate until cold. Beat butter and extract until mixture is as white as possible, beat in the sifted icing sugar. Beat in the cooled custard in four batches, until smooth.
Almond Praline
Place nuts on a baking-paper lined oven tray. Combine sugar and the water in a small frying pan, stir over low heat until sugar is dissolved. Bring to a boil and boil, uncovered, without stirring until golden brown. Pour toffee over nuts and leave to set at room temperature. Crush praline finely in a food processor.
1. Make custard filling and almond praline.
2. Preheat oven to 160c/140c fan-forced. Grease oven trays, line with baking paper.
3. Process flour, meal and butter until crumbly. Add egg yolk and extract, pulse until combined.
4. Knead dough on a floured surface until smooth. Roll dough between sheets of baking paper until 3mm thick.
5. Using 3.5cm round cutter, cut 72 rounds from dough. Place about 2cm apart on oven trays and bake for about 12 minutes. Cool on trays.
6. Sandwich cookies with custard filling. Spread a little more custard filling around side of cookies. Roll cookies in praline then dust with sifted icing sugar.
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This is a very cute little book! Along with Cookies, you can also get Sweet, Chocolate, Cupcakes by Colour and Cheesecake, shockingly I have all of them. It has a fantastic range of cookies in this book, from basic Tropical Florentines and Chocolate Brownies to the truly awesome Rhubarb Custard Melting Moments and Double Choc Chip Chili Cookies. It really appeals to this snobby baking phase I'm going through,
"Why these are my hand-made Wholemeal Rosemary Butter Rounds Mrs Nesbit, surely you've heard of them?" <--- said in a very snobby voice with extremely rounded vowels! I have a stack of pink sticky notes, marking things I want to make from it, sticking out of the top.
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| No idea why I put these on a red plate?? |
The recipe itself has some great parts, the custard cream is a revelation (I'm going to use it to fill macaroons), the praline gives it a fantastic bitter bite and the biscuits aren't overly sweet. The down side is, they are fiddly to put together and they don't last long. When I say don't last long I don't mean eating wise. It makes 36 biscuits which is great if you're having 40 people for morning tea, but is kinda hard to polish off quickly, even for me. The reason speed is an issue is because as soon as you roll the cookies in praline it starts to soften, then melt. You can't store these, well you can but they look sloppy and kinda horrid after a day in the fridge. So while I like these cookies and they taste delicious, for the amount of farting around you have to do to make them, its kinda not worth it. What I would suggest, if you feel like having a go, is halve the recipe and make a more realistic amount. Alternatively get some profiteroles from the Vietnamese bakery and save yourself the hassle of stuffing around with cookies that no-one will realise how much work you have put into.... :)
Aren't you glad I'm here to take all these recipe bullets for you, I only have this many recipe books because I'm trying to be helpful :P
Thanks
Kate
xx
On a side note, Matty actually asked me to make the Mudcake Sandwiches, so I put aside my dislike of all things chocolate flavoured and knocked some out :)
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