Various Easter Loose Ends

I suppose you all wouldn't believe me if I said I got kidnapped by the Easter Bunny and had until today been held in his lair forced to paint eggs and hide baskets full of chocolate and that is why I'm late in sharing photos of bunnies made out of marzipan and frosting? 

No? 

Didn't think so. 

Easter, due to circumstances unforeseen and really far too boring to explain, ended up being noneventful to the point of "just another weekend." Which, technically . . . without getting into a massive theological argument . . . let's just put it this way: we here at Beetle HQ celebrate the arrival of spring, and bunnies, and carrots. And that's kind of where it stops. 

The point is that the menu I had planned had to be scaled down in favour of just the two of us, and one of us is lactarded. Thus: 

HOT CROSS TOAST

Regardless of your religious proclivities, it just wouldn't be Easter with hot cross buns, would it? No. I had planned on a glorious panful of gooey buns hot from the oven smothered in icing and devoured by a table of hungry people all of whom have spectacular appetites. I did not get this. Now, Mum is good, but she's not capable of housing an entire pan of buns before they go stale, and if she did, then we'd be in the ER. But I still had to make them. WHAT TO DO. 

What I ended up doing was taking an idea out of a back issue of Donna Hay and, instead of dividing the dough into individual buns, I shoved it all into a loaf pan and made hot cross bun BREAD. Which . . . AWESOME. The thing about hot cross buns is that it's just a simple sweet dough, so you can do almost anything with it. I wasn't sure on the cook time, because of course it would take longer than buns, so I let it go for 25 minutes at 425 and then dialed the oven down to 350 and let it bake for another 15 or so. And it cooked through really well, no burny bottom, no doughy inside. The finished bread was dense but not heavy, slightly sweet, chewy, and perfect for the toaster (after which it could of course be iced or buttered or jammed or what have you). It also lasted up until the heel end of the loaf without going dry. 

I did make a note to mark an X in the top of the loaf for next time (or, ahem, a CROSS) if you will, since the rising process in the oven did produce a pretty spectacular craggy pinnacle mountain of dough situation, as you can see. 

But Hot Cross Toast is now A THING. So. That happened. 

THINGS THAT ARE NOT TOAST AND CAKES SHAPED LIKE BUNNIES

or

PANFRIED LIMA BEANS AND ONIONS

and

DILL ROASTED CARROTS

Again, working with a scaled back menu and needing something that would keep as leftovers, and also be great for adding to salads a day or two after, these ended up being the main courses for dinner on Sunday. I have no Beetle Notes apart from saying they were delicious and seasonally appropriate. Oh I guess one, if you can manage to crisp the sides of the Lima Beans in cooking, ABSOLUTELY DO. It makes all the difference. Also, regarding carrots, enough with this "maple glazed" nonsense. DILL, PEOPLE. ALL YOU NEED IS DILL. Cover them in dill, shove 'em in the oven, and sit back and relax. Maple Syrup. No wonder the whole world has diabetes. Maple syrup. I ASK YOU. 

Ahem. 

But Beetle, I can hear you saying, that's all well and good but what we're really here for is not a lecture on the breakdown of starches into sugars and their effect on the human bloodstream but, obviously, CAKE. 

Sorry, dear reader, where are my manners? I present. 

BUNNY CAKE FACE OFF 2014

MARZIPAN BUNNY CAKE FOR THE LOVELY LIBRARIANS

This recipe is one that I've had a bookmark in for a really long time. It's Nigella Lawson's "Easy Almond Cake" which for the purposes of Easter I'm renaming "Marzipan Bunny Cake."

Nigella is totally correct in calling this EASY because it really is. One mixing bowl, in the pan, in the oven, done. 

The most time consuming part, gotta say, (and this is totally something I brought upon myself, THERE IS NO ONE TO BLAME BUT BEETLE HERE) was gluing cotton ball tails onto construction paper rabbits and then affixing them to toothpicks and then folding more construction paper into grass stalks and positioning them along with construction paper carrots in the center of the cake stuffed with tissue paper so they wouldn't fall down and then trying to fit that entire thing into a cake tray with lid and then attempting to instruct Mum on precisely HOW to hold the tray so the entire thing wouldn't die between our house and the library and precisely HOW to remove the lid once she got to the library so that in removal the lid would not decapitate said construction paper bunnies and ruin the entire effect of bunnies sitting contentedly in the grass surrounded by carrots and marzipan and having a lovely afternoon. 

Believe me, compared to that, Marzipan Cake is . . . well . . .  a piece of cake. 

Oh come one. You would have gone there too. 

THE OFFICIAL BEETLE BUNNY CAKE

Official Bunny Cake is one of those things that you make every year because you can't remember a year when it WASN'T made and you sort of fear in the back of your mind that if you don't make it then the locusts and frogs and riders and everything else that signals the apocalypse will shortly follow and also why in heaven's name WOULDN'T you make it because it's a buttery white cake covered in the most delicious concoction known to human kind aka Boiled Frosting and it's also IN THE SHAPE OF AN ENORMOUS RABBIT and how could that NOT be a good project for a Saturday afternoon? 

Back in the day [insert sepia toned nostalgia montage here] when my grandmother and I made this in her kitchen every year, Bunny Cake was actually the size of a small child, and had pipe cleaner whiskers, and Brachs jelly beans for the eyes and mouth, and I made myself sick licking the beaters clean of boiled frosting, and it was the greatest thing ever. 

I'd like to think that Bunny Cake has maintained its "greatest thing ever" status, but that he's been updated for the modern era. Streamlined, minimalist, chic. 

I do realise I'm talking about a cake here. A cake in the shape of a rabbit. And that the only thing "streamlined" about him is the way the frosting is stretched over his rather large and rather poufy posterior. 

This year was the year of the THREE DIMENSIONAL BUNNY. Wherein I cut a circle out of the excess cake and stuck it on with frosting, then covered it in MORE frosting and voila. 

Streamlined? Debatable. Awesome? 

 YOU TELL ME.

Because I had so much fun with this one and the photos came out nicely, I think I'm going to do a BUNNY CAKE CONSTRUCTION post with more photos, perhaps tomorrow or Wednesday. But I wanted to make sure you guys all got the jist.

Bunny Cake 2.0

A New Generation of Bunny Cake

The Bunny Cake S5

Eh. We'll get there in the end. 

Pre-Easter-Butter-Is-Awesome-Overload

You can imagine my joy, dear reader, when Mark Bittman published his now million-times-shared-and-retweeted-and-emailed article entitled "Butter is Back" in the Times last week.

In response to this article I have only one question to ask:

HOW AM I DOING, BITTMAN?

LEMON SHORTBREAD

Ok, so this is ostensibly still part of my aforementioned Donna Hay kick, and credit goes to her for the recipe. However, being me, I totally changed it. Her version was for shortbread circles, which I didn't want. I wanted shortbread fingers, which I always think look nice and organised. And I also knew that it would be significantly easier and less messy if I just manhandled the dough into a baking tin and cut it into rectangles rather than rolling it out and cutting it into circles. So. Yeah.

Scrappy Shortbread Shortcut!

The recipe below is the one I used aka invented on the fly based on kitchen contents and oven times and desired shortbread results. See the BEETLE NOTES for what and why it made sense to me at the time.

LEMON SHORTBREAD

INGREDIENTS

• 1 1/2 sticks butter, soft
• 1 cup confectioner's sugar
• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 tbs lemon zest (or lemon extract) 

Beat butter and confectioner's sugar in your mixmaster until pale and fluffy. Add the vanilla and lemon and mix again. Add the flour in batches, beating after each addition until the dough comes together. 

Press the dough into a non stick baking pan (I used my 9 x 13 brownie pan here), aiming for about one centimetre thickness all over (what I think of as the standard shortbread finger thickness but honestly what the hell do I know). 

If, like me, you have excess dough after that, you can absolutely pull out a springform pan and press the dough into the bottom, with the express intent of cutting it into petticoat tails. Or you can make thicker shortbread fingers. Or you can freeze the dough and make more later. 

All roads lead to shortbread, is what I'm saying.

Score the dough BEFORE you put it in the oven. With a paring knife, lightly draw the lines where you want the cookie breaks to be, and use a fork to pierce the top of each piece a few times.

Fingers 

Petticoat Tails

Bake at 350 degrees for about 60 minutes. You will have to keep checking because the cooking time will vary depending on the thickness of your dough in the pan. It's done when the top is a nice deep golden brown. 

You'll probably have to rescore the dough at least once if not twice during cooking. And you definitely want to do this. Because shortbread is so crumbly, trying to cut it once it's cooked and cooled will just result in total destruction, and you will be presenting people will broken bits of cookie and explaining that they were SUPPOSED to be rectangles and triangles. Scoring and rescoring just ensure that they break evenly and cleanly and it makes everyone's lives so much easier and more enjoyable in the long run. 

Let it cool in the pan completely before finishing off the breaks and removing. 

BEETLE NOTES

So Donna Hay had these cut into 4mm thick circles (???) and a resulting baking time of 8-10 minutes. Mine did take almost an hour (which is the standard shortbread baking time I've come across) because they were significantly thicker and also done in a baking pan as opposed to alone on a baking sheet. 

She also says to swap out 1/2 cup of the all-purpose flour with rice flour. This I am sure is interesting. I would imagine it makes everything a bit lighter, and possibly a teensy bit sweeter. However, I had no rice flour, so it was all all-purpose for me. 

Same reasoning behind the lemon zest actually. It was a Wednesday, I'd used up my lemons with fish on Sunday night, I only had lemon extract. Subbing it for the same amount seemed to work, the dough smelt nice and lemony, and my most excellent tasters reported that the taste absolutely came through, but was not overpowering or too tart.

I have to pause here and say that this winter especially I've had such good luck with using extracts in place of zests. I know it's not the same thing, and definitely much less "farm to table" but at the same time it means I can buy a bottle that keeps almost indefinitely and then when I need it it's there, as opposed to buying a lemon which I then have to throw away if I don't use it pretty soon. It's also proved itself a really neat and fun way to add flavour to things, thereby helping me perform my insane Beetle culinary experiments. 

These went down a TREAT with Mum and my LL's. I ended up giving Mum the pan of petticoat tails, and the pan of fingers to the LL's. They reported back that the Lemon Shortbread fulfilled their two basic criteria, namely that a) lemony and b) buttery. They approved. Huzzah. 

I also had the additional approbation of aunt and uncle who visited last weekend. I put them plus Lemon Thumbprints on a cookie plate and sent it out to the library after dinner. Ten minutes later when I was just putting the tea things together, my aunt came back with the cookie plate, upon which only the shortbread were present.

Me: Do you need more Thumbprints? 

Aunt: No. 

Me: What's up?

Aunt: [handing me the plate] These need to stay out here. Away from me. 

So there you have it, Bittman. Butter is back, it tastes like lemon, and it is so good. 

Blackberry + Plum + Ginger + Almond = Yay

First off,  dear reader, I am sorry to have neglected you for the last week and a half. There were SCHOOL VISITS and INTERVIEW MARATHONS that had to happen, and as much as I would prefer otherwise, those kind of do take precedence. Imagine what my future employment prospects would look like if I responded to an overnight interview request with "Yeah, I have these jam bars to make, so Monday's not really going to work for me . . . "

*brief pause where I urge the collected readership of this blog, all 14 of you lovelies, to cross your fingers and toes and eyes and anything else crossable. TOGETHER WE CAN MAKE THIS HAPPEN, PEOPLE.*

HOWEVER. I am back at the farm, back in my day-to-day attire of oversized leggings and ancient sweater vests (for real, I didn't even REMEMBER I owned the one I'm currently sporting but it's awesome so there), and back to KITCHEN ADVENTURES. 

To whit:

Let's also state for the record that I have ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA what day it is anymore, because on Wednesday morning I pulled out mixing bowls and measuring cups and started getting ingredients together for Easter Cake, and Mum, ever pleasant and accommodating, said, "Oh, are you doing a trial bake of that?" and I was all "No, what are you talking about don't be ridiculous it's EASTER ON SUNDAY, DUH" and she was all "Um, DUH YOURSELF, look at the calendar" and then I was all "Ohhhhh" and put the marzipan and powdered sugar back in the cupboard. 

I've been on a Donna Hay magazine kick recently. Sometimes it's just fun / depressing to flip through and pretend that I am a glamourous Australian 30-something spending a posh glamping weekend with my equally glamourous friends, and we're nostalgically indulging in salted caramel popcorn and homemade chocolate swirl marshmallows and later on we're all going to go ice skating before returning my floor-to-ceiling-windowed-high-rise-with-24-hour-amenities-and-walk-in-closets-and-state-of-the-art-applianced apartment and roasting an entire grass-fed pig with root vegetables and herbs whilst lounging in front of my fireplace and reveling in how beautiful and successful and carefree we all are. 

And sometimes during these little imaginations I think "maybe if I make the Blackberry Ginger Bar recipe that's featured in this spread I'll get a job and move to Australia and get prettier and more fashionable and my life will become like that. 

And then I go WORTH A TRY, BEETLE. WORTH A TRY. 

It's been 2 days. 

Nothing yet. 

BLACKBERRY PLUM GINGER BARS

Note the addition of "Plum" to the title of this recipe. I needed to make up some jam volume, and I'd cleaned out the Blackberry and was gazing in blind culinary panic at the jam section of the cupboard, and lo and behold a jar of Damson Plum came to my rescue, and . . . long story short . . . these became Blackberry PLUM bars.

The "ginger" of the name refers to the dough itself rather than the filling, which is vaguely different and fun. This is SERIOUS dough, you guys. SERIOUSLY AWESOME. More than just flour and butter and ginger, it's got cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, cardamom, and almonds. 

INGREDIENTS

• 2 sticks plus 2 tbs butter, at room temperature
• 1/2 cup brown sugar
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 2 eggs
• 2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 3 cups almond meal
• 1 tbs ground ginger
• 1 tsp mixed spice
• Blackberry Jam
• confectioner's sugar (for optional dusting purposes. I straight up FORGOT to to this until right now and it's too late because the librarians have already eaten them all so sorry, guys)

Beat the butter, brown sugar, and sugar together. Add the eggs one at a time, beat everything together until it's pale and fluffy. Add the flour, baking powder, almond meal, ginger, and mixed spice and beat again. 

Divide the dough in half, wrap each piece in clingfilm, and refrigerate for at least half an hour. 

When it's ready, roll out one of the halves so it fits the bottom of a 9 x 12 inch or similar baking tin. (Mine is 9 x 13 for example.) Spread the jam over the base as evenly as you can. Roll out the remaining dough, slightly larger this time, and lay over the jam, squishing it at the edges. 

Bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes until the top is browning and the jam is bubbling. When it's cool, slice it up, and if you remember to dust it with confectioner's sugar so much the better but I don't think it's a dealbreaker. 

BEETLE NOTES

Obviously, I could never just make the recipe. Psh. That would be sensible and practical, and why would I bother being either of those things, huh? BORING. 

The big switch out happened because the recipe calls for 3 cups of almond meal. 

Ahem. 

1. THAT'S A LOT OF ALMOND MEAL

2. I only had HAZELNUT meal (I mean, what kind of person does that make me?)

3. I toyed with the idea of using hazelnut, but somehow with the ginger and spice and blackberry (this was before the plum) I didn't feel it would be a perfect combination. I don't know, hazelnut has a whole different personality than almond, and a straight substitution was making me all nervous and twitchy. 

In the end, I used straight flour for the whole thing (3 extra cups) plus 2 teaspoons of almond extract plus a few tablespoons of milk for the added moistness that nut meals have. And it didn't ruin them. It gave them an almond-y-ness that was delightfully aromatic and that made me glad I didn't opt for hazelnuts or get rid of the "nut" idea completely. 

The "mixed spice" phenomenon is something you only encounter with British or Australian recipes. It's technically I think just a mix of "the baking spices" so I did the incredibly accurate and easily repeatable method of "pull out cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, and cardamom and give each on a hearty couple of shakes over the mixing bowl." Again, didn't ruin them.

As previously discussed, I threw half a jar of Damson Plum Jam in there because the Blackberry on its own was looking so woeful and anemic and sad and my theory is that if you're going to bother making Jam Bars, MAKE THEM JAMMY. And plums and blackberries are quite friendly with each other, especially when almonds and spice are involved.

I love how in the recipe Donna is all "roll out the dough to 3mm thick and place in a baking tray then roll out another rectangle and place over the jam filling" AS IF IT WERE AS EASY AS THAT. I am here to tell you, dear reader. IT IS NOT  AS EASY AS THAT. It might have been because of my tweaks, it might have been because I almost never chill it for the required time because I'm too impatient and always want to get the show on the road already, it might have been because, unlike Donna Hay and everyone in her magazine, I am not perfect and my dough ALWAYS sticks to the rolling pin, tears, squishes, and generally behaves like a recalcitrant sticky mess.

For the base layer, I rolled it out to something generally resembling a large rectangle, then used my fingers and my palms to shove it into the required shape and tried to make it even all over. For the top . . . well . . . funny you should mention that . . . hilarious, actually. You'll notice in the photos that the top of this is . . . how shall I put it . . . patchworked? That is because I rolled out a BEAUTIFUL rectangle of lightly-spiced-almond-scented dough, picked it up at the edges, and watched it immediately rip and fall and crumple and generally commit dough suicide on my pastry mat. This happened the second time I did it. And the third.

I gave up after that and rolled out three small rectangles and laid them end to end. Then patched the holes where the jam was showing through. It wasn't the most beautiful thing in the world. In fact I think my glamourous 30-something Australian counterparts would have taken one look at them and gone to the apartment next door where they know how to do things RIGHT. But. I figured out that if you slice the bars along the line of the secret dough overlap, it doesn't show. SO THERE. TAKE THAT. ARMCHAIR KARATE CHOP OF TRIUMPH.

Once they were cooled, ugly or not they sliced up really well with only minimal crumbling at the bottom. And some of them actually were quite pretty and not deformed in appearance. See below.

This is the part of the post where I am thankful to have a mother who is happy eating the visual rejects.

She's cool like that.

Next up, Lemon Shortbread from last week. As soon as I go put on another sweater vest.