lemonopita

lemonopita

30 Jun 2024

A few years ago I stayed on the lovely island of Milos in the village of Plaka. I visited the local pastry shop most days, Paleos Pastry, and one day, on their recommendation I came home with a piece of orange cake, which in retrospect, I think may have Portokalopita. It was drenched with syrup, intensely orange flavoured, but I found it to be very, very sweet.

I've never made Portokalopita before but a few years ago I bookmarked a recipe and it was high on my list of things to make. Portokalopita is made with filo pastry not flour and after it comes out of the oven, it's doused with cold citrus flavoured syrup. I thought if I made a lemon flavoured version, Lemonopita, it might not be so sweet. I had half a packet of filo left over from a savoury pie I made a few weeks ago and as I always have lemons, olive oil and yoghurt on hand I decided to make a lemon version. Always one to gild the lily I candied a few lemon slices to decorate the cake once it had cooled down.

Here's the recipe for you, adapted from here, which makes a 17cm round or square cake. For all my recipes I use a 250ml cup and a 20 ml tablespoon although most of the ingredients in this recipe are weighed. My oven is a conventional gas oven so if your oven is fan forced you may need to reduce the oven temperature by 20°C. 

Lemonopita
Ingredients
190g fresh filo pastry
½ cup (110g) caster sugar
2 eggs
3 tsp finely grated lemon zest, from 1 medium lemon 

1 tsp vanilla bean paste or vanilla extraxt
1/2 cup (125ml) extra virgin olive oil
125g Greek yoghurt
1 tsp baking powder

Lemon syrup
1/2 cup (110g) caster sugar
150g granulated sugar
¾ cup water
¼ cup lemon juice
the peel of one lemon

To serve

candied lemon slices (optional)
1 cup (250 mls) cream, softly whipped 

Method
Preheat the oven to 100°C, conventional. Lay out the pastry and loosely scrunch up each sheet and place bunched next to each other on a baking tray. Dry in the oven for 1 hour. Carefully turn over the sheets and bake for a further 20 minutes or until completely dry. Break the shards of crisp pastry into small pieces into a bowl and set aside. You can also leave the pastry shards to dry out on the bench top.

Place the sugar and eggs in the bowl of a stand mixer with the whisk attachment and whisk for 7-9 minutes until pale and doubled in size. Add the zest, vanilla, olive oil, yoghurt and baking powder, and whisk until well combined. Fold through the broken pastry until well combined then rest the mixture for 30 minutes, stirring every so often to prevent the pastry from clumping. 

To prepare the syrup, place all the ingredients in a medium saucepan over high heat and stir until the sugar dissolves. Bring to the boil and cook for 5 minutes or until thickened slightly. Pass through a seive, then set aside to cool completely.

 

Preheat the oven to 180°C conventional. Lightly grease the base and side of a 17cm round springform cake pan and line the base with baking paper. Place the tin onto a large piece of foil and scrunch the foil around the tin to create a seal. Spoon mixture into the prepared pan. Bake on the centre rack of the preheated  oven for 45-50 minutes or until golden brown and a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean.

Remove the cake from the oven. Pierce holes into the cake with a skewer and pour over half the syrup. Set aside for 1 hour to absorb. Serve the cake with cream, the remaining syrup and a few candied lemon slice if desired.

I made this cake in stages. I dried out the filo sheets last weekend and stored them in an airtight container. I also made the lemon syrup in advance which I kept in the fridge until I was ready to make the cake. The cake came together very easily and topped with lemon syrup and cream, it was a delight to eat as well. It's cold, grey and wet in Sydney and despite that, I almost felt transported back to summer in Milos. One can dream

See you all again next week with some more baking from my kitchen.

Bye for now,

Jillian

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Cinnamon tea cake topped with pears and plums

Cinnamon tea cake topped with pears and plums

17 Jun 2024

As we're firmly in winter here in Sydney, think driving rain and frosty mornings, I'm hungry all the time. There is nothing like a slice of cake and a cup of tea when the hangries strike.

When I saw this Helen Goh recipe I knew I had to make it but I decided to change it up just a little. I had a few plums stashed in my freezer but not enough to cover the cake so I went for a pear/plum combination for the topping then browned the butter, because everything tastes better with browned butter.

Here's the recipe for you, adapted from here which makes a 17cm cake. For all my recipes I use a 250ml cup and a 20 ml tablespoon, unsalted butter and 60g eggs. My oven is a conventional gas oven so if your oven is fan forced you may need to reduce the oven temperature by 20°C. If you'd like to make a larger cake, refer to the original recipe.

Cinnamon tea cake topped with pears and plums
Ingredients
90g unsalted butter
135g caster sugar
finely grated rind of 1 large lemon
2 large eggs, at room temperature
70g sunflower (or other flavourless) oil
75ml milk
2 tsp vanilla extract
75g almond meal 
120g plain flour
1¼ tsp baking powder
pinch fine sea salt
freshly whipped cream, to serve

Topping
1 medium ripe pear, peeled and halved
1 plum, halved, pitted then thinly sliced
½ tsp ground cinnamon
2 tsp caster sugar

Method
Put the butter into a small pan and cook over a low heat until the butter becomes brown and smells nutty. Immediately transfer the browned butter from the pan to a heatproof bowl then set aside to cool until tepid. You should have 75g of butter. If you don’t, then add a little cold water until it weighs 75g. 

Preheat the oven to 190°C conventional and line the base and sides of a 17cm cake tin (preferably with removable base) with baking paper.

Combine the sugar and lemon zest in a large mixing bowl and rub together firmly between your thumb and fingers until the sugar is very fragrant and tinged yellow. Add the eggs and whisk together until combined, then add the oil. Whisk until smooth, then add the milk and vanilla, whisking until combined. Add the almond meal and sift the flour, baking powder and salt into the mix. Stir gently with the whisk until just incorporated into the batter, then dribble in the butter around the perimeter of the bowl, stirring gently. Scrape the batter into the lined cake tin.

Prepare the topping
Remove the core and stem from the pear with a small metal spoon or paring knife, then slice the pear halves into 0.5cm pieces, keeping them together. Now fan out the pieces so that they’re slightly overlapping and, using a small spatula, lift portions of the overlapping pear slices and place them gently on top of the cake batter. Do the same with the plum slices and continue until all the slices have been used and the top of the cake is entirely covered. Combine the cinnamon and sugar in a small bowl and sprinkle evenly over the fruit.

Place the cake in a preheated oven and bake for 60-70 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the middle of the cake comes out clean. Remove the cake from the oven and allow it to cool on a wire rack for 30 minutes before removing it from the tin. Serve with freshly whipped cream.

This is a very lovely cake and as it's a melt and mix number, is very easy to make as well. I can see I'll be making any number of fruit topped versions of this cake in my future.

See you all again next week with some more baking from my kitchen.

Bye for now,

Jillian

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lemon moon cake

lemon moon cake

12 Jun 2024

Whilst looking through a back copy of Delicious Magazine I spied a Scandinavian baking feature. Everything looked delicious but when I saw a photo of the Lemon Moon Cake I knew I had to make it.

I looked online and found many recipes for Lemon Moon Cake and in the end cobbled together two recipes to come up with a recipe that I think captured the lemony essence of the cake. Marzipan is a key ingredient in this cake, but it's hard to find in Sydney, so instead I deconstructed the marzipan into its constituent elements (almond meal, sugar and water or in this case lemon juice) so you won't need to track it down. 

Here's the recipe for you, adapted from here and here which makes a 17cm cake. For all my recipes I use a 250ml cup and a 20 ml tablespoon, unsalted butter and 60g eggs. My oven is a conventional gas oven so if your oven is fan forced you may need to reduce the oven temperature by 20°C. If you'd like to make a larger cake, refer to the original recipe.

Lemon Moon Cake
115g caster sugar
Grated rind of one lemon
100g room temperature unsalted butter
1 tsp vanilla extract
3 eggs
100g plain flour
¾ tsp baking powder
Pinch salt
55g almond meal
50g lemon marmalade (pureed)
1-2 tsp lemon juice, if needed

Icing
100g icing sugar, sifted
½ tsp vanilla paste
½ lemon, juiced

To decorate
Shredded zest of ½ lemon (I used some candied lemon rind)
Toasted chopped blanched almonds

Method
Grease, flour and line the base of a 17cm diameter spring-form pan with baking paper. Preheat the oven to 170°C, conventional.

In the bowl of a stand mixer combine the caster sugar with the lemon zest and rub together with your fingers until the sugar is fragrant. Add the butter and vanilla and using the paddle, cream the butter and sugar together until pale and fluffy, about 5 minutes. Add the eggs, one at a time, ensuring you incorporate fully between each addition and scraping down the sides of the bowl if necessary.

Sift the flour, baking powder and salt together into a small bowl and stir through the almond meal. Stir the flour mixture into the cake mixture and fold with a spatula until combined. Add the pureed lemon marmalade and if needed, a tsp or so of lemon juice.

Pour the mixture into the prepared pan, level the top of the cake and bake on the centre rack at 170°C, conventional for 40-45 minutes or until golden brown and a skewer inserted into the middle comes out clean. If the top of the cake is browning too quickly, cover the top of the cake with some foil. Let the cake cool in the tin for ten minutes before turning the cake out onto a wire rack. Leave to cool completely before decorating.

Icing
Place the icing sugar in a bowl. Add the vanilla paste and sufficient lemon juice until you have a mixture with the consistency of runny honey. If it's a bit thick add a little boiling water. Spoon the icing over the top of the cake and allow to set before decorating the top of the cake with the chopped almonds and the lemon zest.

The cake proved to be a pretty popular one and was devoured by my workmates in record time.

See you all again next week with some more baking from my kitchen.

Bye for now,

Jillian

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swedish chocolate cinnamon buns

swedish chocolate cinnamon buns

4 Jun 2024

I don't know what came over me but with incessant rain last Saturday and inspired by a recipe in an old Delicious magazine, I suddenly decided that I needed to make a batch of chocolate cinnamon buns. They're supposed to be Swedish chocolate cardamom buns, but I do not like cardamom at all, so all traces of cardamom were removed from the recipe.

As I'm more than happy with my own sweet bun recipe, I used the filling recipe and the glaze from the magazine article then set to work. Consistency of shaping the buns is not my forte and I will never be employed in a Swedish bakery but wonky as they are, they were delicious.

Here's the recipe for you, inspired from here, which makes 9 buns. For all my recipes I use a 250ml cup and a 20 ml tablespoon, unsalted butter and 60g eggs. My oven is a conventional gas oven so if your oven is fan forced you may need to reduce the oven temperature by 20°C.

Swedish chocolate cinnamon buns – makes 9
Dough
1¼ tsp yeast
150 mls lukewarm milk
30g brown sugar
1 room temperature egg 
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 cups (300g) plain flour 
½ tsp salt
60g room temperature unsalted butter, cut into small piece

To coat

1-2 tbs cream or melted butter

Filling
85g unsalted butter, softened
85g brown sugar
2 tsp ground cinnamon
½ tsp vanilla extract
17g Dutch process cocoa
Pinch salt 

Glaze
70g (1/3 cup) brown sugar
40 mls (2 tbs) water
Pearl sugar, (from specialty stores, optional), to sprinkle

Dough

Grease a large plastic container and set to one side. Combine the yeast, milk and brown sugar in a large liquid measuring cup and rest for 5 minutes or until foamy then stir in the egg and the vanilla. In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with a dough hook, mix the flour and salt and stir on low to combine. Add the egg mixture and mix on low to combine. With the mixer on low, add the butter, one piece at a time. When all the butter has been incorporated (about 10 minutes) increase the speed to medium and beat the butter into the dough, until all the little butter pieces are incorporated, and the dough comes away from the side of the bowl. 

Transfer the dough to the prepared container. Cover the container with a lid or with plastic wrap and let rise for 30 minutes. Place your fingers or a spatula underneath the dough and gently pull the dough up and fold it back over itself. Turn the container and repeat this folding again. Continue 6 to 8 more times, until all the dough has been folded over on itself. Re-cover the container and let rise for 30 minutes. Repeat this series of folding 3 more times, for a rise time of 2 hours and a total of 4 foldings. Replace the lid or tightly cover the bowl with plastic wrap and refrigerate overnight or up to 72 hours.

Filling
Place all ingredients in a medium bowl and mix to combine. Set aside.

Shape the dough
Flour a work surface and knead the dough 10 to 12 times to activate the gluten. Shape the dough into a ball, cover the top lightly with flour, and cover with a tea towel and let come to room temperature. 

Grease and line a 26cm pan with baking paper and set to one side. Roll the dough out to a 30cm x 40 cm rectangle on a lightly floured bench. Spread chocolate filling over the dough, then fold in half to form a 15cm x 40cm rectangle. Gently roll the dough out to a 20cm x 40cm rectangle (this will help enclose the filling). Cut into 9 strips. Gently twist the strip, then wrap the dough around itself into a knot, tucking the ends underneath. Place on prepared trays and repeat with remaining dough. Brush each bun with some cream or melted butter, then cover the buns loosely with plastic wrap and set aside in a warm place for an hour or until risen by half.

Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 180°C, conventional. Once the buns have risen, remove the plastic wrap and bake for 20-25 minutes, swapping the trays around halfway, until golden and cooked through.

The glaze

While the buns are baking, place the brown sugar and the water in a small saucepan over low heat, stirring until the sugar has dissolved. Bring to a simmer and cook for 2-3 minutes until slightly syrupy. Brush over the warm buns, and sprinkle with pearl sugar, if using. Place the buns on a cooling rack and allow to cool a little before serving. The buns are best served on the day they're baked but freeze well.

I shared these with the neighbours, and they went down a treat. 

See you all again next week with some more baking from my kitchen.

Bye for now,

Jillian

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