june: kerri’s flourless chocolate cake with chestnut marsala cream

Over the past year and a bit living in Hong Kong, I’ve been surprised at how much HK-ers love their western sweets. I’ve always been told that Asians are lactose intolerant (and was always thankful that seemed to skip me) but since moving here, I beg to differ! There are countless cake / dessert / ice cream / fro-yo shops, cafes and patisseries with mostly dairy based sweet temptations (mousses, cheesecakes, tarts). Italian and French cake and chocolate cafes are in abundance and yes, they are always packed full of sweet toothed customers!

So to my delight, of course I’ve had to ‘investigate’ the sweet side of HK. Something I discovered was the popularity of chestnut desserts, something I haven’t seen much growing up in Australia. Every cake shop seems to have a variety of chestnut something. So when ‘nuts’ came up as our theme for this month, I thought I would take influence from this city I’m living in.

Before this, my only experience with sweet chestnuts was with a brandy chestnut dessert my mum used to make when I was young – and aside from anything chocolate – it was my favourite. I actually haven’t had it for at least 20 years, always meaning to make it but always making something else. All this time I thought she had passed me the recipe but no, it seems it was lost. So I had to recreate it from memory and taste!

I wasn’t sure whether my guests liked chestnut desserts, so I decided to play it safe and pair it with chocolate. In keeping with the nut theme, I made an ‘almost flourless’ chocolate cake. The original recipe uses whole nuts, processed to a texture, but I decided to use ground almonds and some plain flour instead. I should have known better – thinking it would lighten the cake but instead it did the opposite. I have posted the original (one of my all time favourite+simple+100%flourless choc cake recipes) for this post – it is lighter, moister, has more texture and would just add that bit more to make this dessert perfect. Otherwise, it was still pretty good.

The chestnut cream was an easy mix of canned chestnut puree, whipped cream, sugar and marsala (in place of brandy). And it tasted just like Mum’s. Yum.

Each serve was quite a hefty portion (for lack of smaller tart tins), so most of us couldn’t finish it in one sitting. The beauty of serving it at my place meant I could save my leftovers and eat them the next day. Perfect.

You can find the recipe here.

june: anna’s special project

My friends recently tied the knot in a small ceremony with only their immediate families present. Not ones to miss the opportunity for a party, they had another gathering over the weekend to celebrate. The idea of making a surprise wedding cake came up over dinner one night with some friends who live in the neighborhood. They are both fashion designers, so it worked out very well, as they were in charge of design and I was in charge of baking!

We threw around a few ideas but decided on a gaming / xbox theme for the cake. We created their xbox avatars out of colored fondant and made some “Words With Friends” tiles to spell out their names.

To tie in with the June nuts theme, the cake was hazelnut banana, and I made my own hazelnut praline paste for the frosting (the leftovers are great on toast – tastes like a melted ferrero rocher!). I also made a passionfruit curd to sandwich between the layers.

I didn’t know whether the newlyweds would want me to post a picture of the cake online (it ended up that they were ok with it), so I also made a cupcake version for the blog. I hollowed out the cupcake, filled it with the passionfruit curd, topped it with the hazelnut praline frosting, and finished it off with some crumbled hazelnut praline and a slice of caramelized banana. The passionfruit curd and hazelnut praline frosting were my favorite components. They were really tasty and not your usual frosting flavors!! The texture from the hazelnut praline and caramelized banana was also a great touch.

The cake was a big hit and a really nice surprise for the wedding couple! They even froze the last piece for their one year anniversary! Thanks to the creative team for the amazing design! And congrats and best wishes to S + J!!

june: jasmine’s florentine biscuits

The first time I had a Florentine was in Sydney when a friend brought some over for an afternoon tea that I was hosting. I have to admit, I had never heard of Florentines before then. I had seen them in cafes, but had never looked twice at them because (to be honest) I am not a huge fan of nuts and dried fruits. I thought that they were a variant of a muesli bar lol!

Long story short, after having tried the Florentine  – I found a new favorite snack!

When I was doing my research on recipes for Florentine this month, I found that there is some debate on the web about the origination of the Florentine. I had assumed that it originated from Italy (also noted in Wikipedia), however, there appears to be evidence that the Florentine originated from France……thought that was an interesting bit of dessert trivia.

My recipe is a variation of the classic Florentine. I used toasted, flaked almonds, cranberries and glace cherries over a shortbread biscuit. The result is a light, buttery, caramel almond biscuit. It is a bit more substantial than the Florentines that I have had from the cafes, but I like the biscuit combination. The shortbread recipe is one that my mother used when we were growing up.

                                                                                                                                          A combination of other nuts and dried fruits can be used in place of the almonds, cranberries or glace cherries. Because of the multi-colored glace cherries I used in this recipe – the result is a sort of Christmas-y biscuit. Christmas in June anyone?

june: lisa’s peanut crack pie

This month, I have decided to use the humble peanut as the theme ingredient in my creation. With everyone looking to save a dollar here and there, I thought I would share a creation that is so simple, and so economical, and yet so tasty, you’ll wonder why you’ve never tried them before!

Do not grind your peanuts into a fine powder. A little texture will work better.

The idea came from memories of my childhood – the base recipe for the pie crust comes from a traditional family recipe for peanut cookies. These are popular around Chinese New Year, and I remember getting together with the family to make these to celebrate the new Lunar year. Being kids, we were usually assigned the job of rolling the dough, or imprinting the tops with a pen lid before the cookies were baked in the oven.

I remember the cookies being so good, and so melt-in-your-mouth that there was no way you could stop at one.

The other half of my creation came from something I tasted on my last trip to New York. As I’m travelling there again next week, inspiration struck me when recalling my trip there and some of the goodies that I tasted there. One of the sweets that really stuck in my mind was the Crack Pie from Momofuku’s Milk Bar, so named because it tastes so good, makes you feel good, and leaves you wanting more.

Combining this smooth, sweet filling with the crunchy, slightly salty peanut crust is a match made in heaven.

Use the leftover crust dough to make little bite sized cookies, and you’ll have a little snack without feeling over-indulgent.

Enjoy, but be warned, both the cookies and the peanut crack pie are very addictive!

june: nuts!

Lisa is sending us nuts this month! With so many varieties and recipes to choose from, we really may go nuts trying to choose which one to use!

And you can go nuts with us too – just take a photo of your creation, put it on facebook and tag Butter Sweet Symphony!

Happy creating!