After a long and involved working week, I was feeling a little hysterical from exhaustion and had promptly sworn off any type of kitchen activity during my mid-week weekend. Afterall, there was also that long-standing To Do list to consider as well : Get a haircut, buy wood chips for smoking chocolate, treat myself to some Winter shopping, reread Laurie Colwin, watch The Wire.

However, once I had a good sleep, I was itching the next day to get stuck into fulfilling my promise to cook some freezer meals for B. For the rest of the week, he now has chicken curry, mushroom and barley risotto and chunky pumpkin, chorizo and tomato stew options, all arranged tetris-like in our tiny freezer.

I never did get round to buying wood chips though, so that’s one thing I can’t scratch off the To Do list. Not only that, but my favourite hairdresser is still overseas touring Europe with his brother, and as for shopping? Well, these days, my piglet toes tend to squeal in anything more involved than work clogs or sneakers. A sad prospect, for the fancy heels I have long coveted and a sad future, for the ones I have acquired, now left dwindling in shoe boxes and cloth bags, during what should be the prime of their partying life (and don’t get me started on my collection of handbags!). I didn’t even manage to find The Wire amongst our collection to watch, but I did get started on Laurie Colwin, which made me want to cook even more.

Back into the kitchen I went, to play around with an idea that had been simmering around in my mind. It was originally about chocolate and peanuts, but I couldn’t resist throwing a bunch of organic bananas into the mix as well. What resulted was : milk chocolate and peanut butter mousse, banana custard wafers, peanut cookies, peanut powder and peanut milk.

The banana custard wafer had some cocoa spots on it, in an attempt to mimic the look of banana skin (it probably didn’t really convince, but hey, it’s my kitchen, I’ll do what I want! – Can you just imagine Eric Cartman saying that if he ever became a Chef?). I shaped the peanut cookies to look like the halved peanuts that I also used as a garnish. The cookies are an adaptation of Alice Medrich’s Sesame Coins. If you love the flavour of sesame and tahini paste, you absolutely must try her recipe. Like their sesame counterparts, the peanut cookies were incredibly tender and so melt-in-your-mouth it was like putting a teaspoon of pure peanut butter in your mouth (without that overly cloying feeling).

The end result was by no means a perfect dish. It could do with a little more tweaking, admittedly, but unfortunately I have already mentally moved on from it, so it will have to stay in the back burner for the time being.

Since the above dessert was a one-plate wonder, I gathered the leftover ingredients and made a batch of sticky banana and chocolate puddings to have with warm custard this evening. Baking puddings are a cinch. Anyone should try their hand at them, especially now the chill has descended upon us and nothing will really do after dinner except for a hot cup of tea and a bowl of pudding. Even when you are the type who usually has nothing but a bottle of white wine and a bar of chocolate in your fridge (to paraphrase Laurie Colwin), the bottle doubles as a handy rolling pin substitute (for pastry puddings) and the chocolate can be consumed when the frustration of baking gets too much to handle.

This is a boldly moist pudding that should be served with any of the following pudding weapons, which are guaranteed to conquer even the most outrageously sized puddings : custard, cream, ice-cream or toffee sauce. It is for all those occasions when life is too short for anything but.

Anyone else in the southern hemisphere feel like having pudding these past days? I urge you to whip out your dariole moulds, and trusty recipes. To serve, unmould the warm pudding, and top with your weapon of choice.

Given my obsessions for all things ice-creamy and biscuitty, I’m surprised that it’s taken me this long to catch on to the whole business about ice-cream sandwiches. Then again, it did take me just about as long to make the transition from cassette tapes to CDs. My first ever CD purchase was Radiohead’s The Bends, but prior to that, I had a little tape collection that was very dear to me (the first tape I ever owned was NKOTB’s Hangin’ Tough, but you really didn’t need to know that, did you!).

So now that I’m firmly entrenched in the ice-cream sandwich fanclub, I’ve been exploring different sandwich materials, such as macarons, shortbread biscuits, and now brownies. From Michael Recchiuti’s book, Chocolate Obsession, I discovered a chocolate brownie sandwich recipe which involved spreading the brownie batter thinly onto baking trays. Once baked, ice-cream (Michael suggests roasted banana ice-cream, which sounds divine) is spread across the thin slabs of brownie and sandwiched. These are frozen until firm then sliced into squares. A delightfully schmaltzy and sweet snack.. which reminds me of the second ever tape I owned, but I don’t think I’ll embarrass myself further by telling you what it was!

As I didn’t have enough ice-cream to make a full slab, I made a half slab and filled the other sheet of brownie with a chocolate salted caramel mixture, sprinkled with Fleur de Sel de Guérande. Once cut (as pictured above), these became a little present for B and his workmates, who by default have become my some-time pastry guinea pigs. 🙂

(But wait, there’s more..)

I wish I hadn’t eaten so many of those ice-cream sandwiches, because I had only one left to play with by the time I got inspired to try something different. This meant that I didn’t really manage to get a photo of the dish that I was completely happy with, but oh well. I recently saw a recipe for ‘ice powder galaktoboureko’ in the Press Club cookbook and wanted to try it out, but with coconut instead of normal milk. This got me thinking about lamingtons and with my remaining ice-cream sandwich that sort of looks like an inverse lamington, I thought I could make something involving the flavours of lamington : chocolate, coconut, vanilla.

The coconut ice powder, is really a granita of sorts. It has a hint of custardy-ness to it, because the coconut milk is cooked like an anglaise before being frozen and scraped. On this dish, I also included young coconut flesh and chocolate coconut sauce. In hindsight, I could have also rolled the ice-cream sandwiches in dessicated coconut so that they looked more like lamingtons. Maybe next time!

Also, when I next have some free time, I hope to try my hand at smoking some chocolate (hmm.. I wonder if my exhaust fan will be able to handle this..) and cobbling together a dish involving peanut : mousse, milk and powder. See you then!

Debbie Brown was enthralling us with the details of her itinerary for the next two weeks which sounded extremely jam-packed, not to mention her trip to Las Vegas after leaving Sydney, to conduct a class at Cake Camp (I want to go to Cake Camp!). Do you ever take a break, someone asked? Debbie smiled and replied, Well, no, I guess I’m pretty lucky, because I love what I do.

To the uninitiated, Debbie Brown is the legendary UK cake decorator and also the author of a whopping 14 books on cake decorating (my favourite is her whimsical and delightful Enchanted Cake book). When I heard she was going to be a guest instructor at Planet Cake, I excitedly signed up for her Bewitching Mermaids class.

To think, this was the cake that almost never was. I’d been trying to sell my place at this cake class, a few months after signing up for it, due to work commitments. As I couldn’t find any takers, I ended up attending the class. How glad I was, that I did.

Last Saturday morning, I walked into the Mermaids class feeling a little bleary eyed and weary from work. My mood immediately lifted upon being greeted by Paris herself, and then by the wonderfully effervescent Handi, who was acting as assistant for that class. It’s the reason why I keep coming back to Planet Cake to attend their courses. These classes are like a sanctuary of calm and sugary delight. A group of strangers come together, talk cake, enthuse over each other’s creations and at the end of the day, learn a new skill and walk away with their very own amazingly decorated cake that makes the whole experience worth every single cent.

This has been by far the easiest Planet Cake class I’ve participated in. Once the cakes were covered with fondant (which didn’t take long at all, since they were meant to represent an irregularly shaped pile of rocks), the fun began, decorating the cakes with mermaids and sea creatures. In my opinion, the beauty about this cake is that it’s potential to be taken into different directions, is limitless. The simple pile of rocks can be transformed into almost any location whatsoever – a jungle, a garden scene, ski slopes.. Or if you wanted to stick to the water theme, there are a myriad other oceanic creatures that could inhabit your cake (seahorses and mini nemos, come to mind).

So thank you once again to everyone at Planet Cake for holding these great classes and a special thank you to Debbie Brown for coming to Sydney!

(My Mermaids cake went to Erin, who celebrated her 10th birthday on Sunday. Happy Birthday Erin!)

Planet Cake
106 Beattie Street
Balmain 2041.