Miso grubs (truffles) two ways and a birthday tea

Before I had heard of truffles, rum balls, energy balls and bliss balls, we often ate grubs as kids!  I thought everyone called these balls of chocolate goodness "grubs".  I still do.  They were made from condensed milk, coconut, cocoa and marie biscuits.  This year I have had fun trying a couple of different versions of these childhood favourite with an unmami addition of white miso and different sorts of biscuits.  One was a dark version with black cocoa and chocolate ripple biscuits.  Another was a gluten free version for a birthday afternoon tea that had choc chip cookies, quinoa flakes and seeds.

Lately we haven't made lots of sweet baked or unbaked goods in our kitchen.  We love a sweet treat but our household is small and we don't go to as many events where we take a cake.  Occasionally I get the urge for some sweet comfort food and grubs are at the top of the list.  When I make something often I am familiar enough with the recipe to experiment.  Say, in the case of these grubs, I wondered how they would be with miso added.  The black cocoa and chocolate ripple biscuits were just serendipitous.

My original title for this post was "Black miso grubs for dark times".  It was earlier this year when I made these grubs for comfort.  I was delighted in how the dark mixture reflected the dark times ushered in by Trump returning to the presidency of the USA.  Together with the polarised attitudes on te Israel-Palestine war, immigration, global warming and diversity, it feels like we are inhabiting an impossible conundrum. 

At the time I heard an interview by David Marr on ABC Nightlight and jotted down some of the ideas that resonated with me: how can we show care for one another and have political debate, law and order wont fix the problem, we need brave conversations to navigate difficult questions, we need to sit with the discomfort of disagreement.  I would add to these that empathy is important in understanding behaviour and opinions we might not approve in others.

The black cocoa made an amazing difference in colour.  So dark!  It really begged for balls to be rolled in black cocoa for the ultimate darkness!  I was busy and tired.  There was no energy for even this small task.  Instead I sprinkled coconut onto the bottom of a small baking tin, evenly dolloped the mixture into the tin, pressed it down and smoothed it out, and then sprinkled more coconut on top.  It was in the fridge for some days where I would just cut a chunk or two when needed!  The result was my childhood comfort sweetness with the miso adding a welcome adult touch of umami.  

I liked these black miso grubs so much that I kept dreaming of making them again.  The opportunity arose when I wanted to take a plate of food to a family gathering.  I wanted to use the chocolate ripple biscuits again.  As we have celiacs in my family, I was excited to try the gluten free chocolate ripple biscuits that had excited my sister Susie.  It was disappointing to hear that Arnotts is no longer making them due to lack of sales.  Susie has told me that there is an uproar in the celiac community!

How disappointing!  I found a packet of Woolworths free from gluten choc chip biscuits.  It was only 160g compared to 250g in a packet of chocolate ripple biscuits.  (As a bonus they are also vegan.  This means if you use a vegan coconut condensed milk as well, you can have vegan gluten free grubs!)  They were easy to crumble with my hands.  I added some seeds and quinoa flakes to add the bulk lacking due to the smaller biscuit packet.  This worked really well.  I love a bit of texture.  But even Sylvia enjoyed them despite her wariness of bits!  

Alas I had used up my black cocoa.  So I could not claim that I had made dark and seedy grubs.  It sounds like a lowlife in film noir who might be shown in the shadows outside the halo of street life.  I was still happy to take them along to a birthday tea of find food!
 

My family were celebrating my twin nieces 21st birthday.  I have found memories of baking with Ella and Grace as little kids.  It is hard to believe these smiley cheeky cherubs are now grown women.  They were gorgeous as kids and continue to be so as adults.   It made me reflect on how 21st birthdays don't seem to be as momentous these days as they were when I was that age.  It seemed such a milestone in becoming an adult for my peers.  These days perhaps it is not seen as so important because we accept that it takes until well into the mid 20s for the brain to fully mature.

It was a lovely birthday tea.  My brother's girlfriend has amazing creative talents in food presentation.  She set out a gorgeous table of cheese, dips, chips, vegetables, popcorn, fruit, (and something for the carnivores), with even a jar of my sister's fantastic Frankly Raw peanut butter, with a flourish of charming flowers.  My mum made hedgehog and profiteroles.  Susie made a chocolate ripple cake with Coles Ultimate gluten free cookies with 40% triple chocolate chips.  (These biscuits worked beautifully.  Note though that they are not vegan like the Woolworths biscuits.)

Susie, the mother of the birthday girls, ordered a birthday cake each: a chocolate mud cake for Grace and a red velvet cake with cheesecake filling for Ella.  She present them with a lovely birthday speech.  Everyone enjoyed mingling and ate well with three dogs darting around us.  (My brother brought his dogs to play with Susie's dog.)

 

After the cake had been served, we spent a bit of time taking photos, as is the way with my family.  It was great to get together with my parents, siblings and niblings.  That is balm for the devastating politics and  polarised opinions of our time.

Unfortunately, Susie's dog was just a little enthusiastic about the celebrations and helped himself to the fabulous chocolate ripple cake.  So Susie and Grace spent the evening at an emergency vet clinic.  Fortunately Banjo recovered well and I am sure that he will be well monitored next time chocolate ripple cake is on offer to the humans.

I was struck with a great idea that I could substitute the stale bread crumbs from the freezer for the biscuit crumbs and tried it in a variation on the seedy grubs.  The bread crumbs did not give the heft and sweetness needed for the recipe   More crunble than trufflem grainy rubble than soft grub.

This does not diminish the success of my latest seedy version.  It is so much fun to play with my favourite recipe for grubs and so satisfying to find the seedy verson that suits me better in these days when I want more texture and less sweetness in my baking.  It ensures that this is still a recipe I love to turn to for a celebration or comfort and I hope will continue to be so.  

More chocolate and coconut "grubs" or bliss balls on Green Gourmet Giraffe blog:

Chocolate almond and coconut balls (gf, v)
Coconut almond-tahini balls (gf, v)
Chocolate tahini maca bliss balls (gf, v)  
Grubs (v, gf)
Grubs - with Tim Tams  

Miso Grubs - two ways 
Two original Green Gourmet Giraffe recipes based on a childhood recipe
These recipes each have different ingredients but the same methods! 

Gluten Free Seedy Miso Grubs 

160g packet of gf choc chip cookies (woolworths brand)
1 cup desiccated coconut
1/4 cup quinoa flakes
3 heaped dessertspoons cocoa
2 tbsp sesame seeds
1 tbsp chia seeds
1 tbsp poppy seeds
400g tin condensed milk
1 tbsp white miso
extra coconut for rolling (about 1/2 to 1 cup)

Black Miso Grubs 

250g packet of choc ripple biscuits
1 cup desiccated coconut
3 heaped tbsp black cocoa
400g tin condensed milk
2 tbsp white miso

Crush biscuits to the size of lentils with some larger chunks and some finely ground.  Mix with dry ingredients in a medium to large bowl.  Pour in condensed milk and drop in the spoonful of miso.  Mix the miso into the condensed milk with shallow strokes and then mix into dry ingredients until you had a thick sticky mixture.  

Shape mixture into walnut sized balls (I use my hands and like to have a glass of water by me that I regularly dip my hands in to dampen my hands every time the mixture starts to make them sticky and/or clings to them.)  Roll in a small bowl coconut until covered evenly and shake excess coconut back into the bowl.  (Alternately, if you prefer they can be rolled in dark cocoa to keep to the dark theme.)

I prefer them at room temperature - which makes them softer - and keep them on the bench in an airtight container for days but you can also keep them in the fridge.

NOTE: My seedy miso grubs were gluten free.  Both versions could be gluten free and vegan with coconut condensed milk and vegan and gluten free biscuits.

On the Stereo:
The Boatman's Call: Nick Cave 

In My Kitchen: September 2024

September has brought us longer days, gentle sunshine and spring rains.  It is hard to believe iwe are already well into spring.  Not so long ago it I was admiring autumn leaves glowing in the light of the early setting sun.  Now my bike rides pass trees sprouting lots of new green leaves, rabbits bounding with cute little bobtails and the evocative smell of spring flowers.  It has been a busy month with lots of delicious meals and interesting food shopping trips!  I will share more meals and outings in My Monthly Chronicles post (coming soon).

Above is a photo of what is our favourite salad of the moment: Lemon Cucumber Couscous Feta Salad.  I have renamed it from the Hungry Happens blog where we found it.  It is as simple as she says, though we are still unsure about the salad dressing.  It feels really healthy with all the greens (cucumber, rocket and we add edamame), substantial with pearl couscous and so tasty with feta stirred through.  We have already made it a few times and plan to make it often over summer.

 

I tried Serious Eat's Scallion Sourdough Pancakes and loved how simple and delicious they were.  They are not as robust as some crunchy pancakes I have had in Asian restaurants but are a great way to use up sourdough discard.  I ate mine with pumpkin soup.

The pumpkin soup was not great but when I added tahini and salt it made a it taste so much better.  Tahini is such a transforming ingredient!  I made the soup more substantial when I served it with Tomato orzo with chickpeas and mushrooms, leftover wholemeal spaghetti and green leaves.

Cauliflowers have been cheap so I made a cauliflower soup with potato and celery.  It was quite thin when blended but Sylvia is a big fan of cauliflower and enjoyed the soup with leftover vodka pasta.  I enjoyed mine with tofu bacon, peas and vodka pasta.

Sylvia has been adapting a favourite vegan banana and coconut cake recipe into a banana and choc chip cake.  I find it hard to believe she omits the desiccated coconut but somehow she is convinced this is better.  The chop chips are an excellent addition.

If the banana cake recipe is Sylvia's current favourite sweet recipe, her favourite savoury recipe is cheese and parsley muffins.  She made a variation with fresh corn (3 cobs), jalapeno (about 1/4 cup) and haloumi (sprinkled on top of the muffins.  She was not so keen on the texture when she added uncooked tofu bacon and plans to fry it next time.  These muffins were a big hit with me and excellent as a portable snack when we went to the Royal Melbourne Show.

The muffins were also great with grilled sausages an a chickpea salad.  Sylvia used 3 tins of chickpeas in her salad and winged it with the other ingredients but decided more tomato and more cucumber would be good next time.  I was really pleased to have leftovers to take into work for lunch.  We still had plenty of salad leftover to serve with tofu nuggets the next night.

We made a batch of oven baked tacos with refried beans from a can.   While I liked them, I prefer more texture than pureed beans, even with some spring onion and corn added.  When we made them a second time I made these with rapid refried beans which I have made often.  The beans are a rough mash with vegies rather than a puree.  The ingredients didn't hold together quite as well.  We love the idea and want to experiment more.   Sylvia made an avocado crema both times that went well with them.

We had leftovers to use up after the oven baked tacos.  I made quesadillas for lunch out of some remaining tortillas.  The filling was refried beans, rocket, cheese, tofu bacon, tomato slices.  They were excellent.  Crispier on the stovetop with my cast iron fry pan, but more demanding than arranging 6 in a roasting tin and turning once or twice.

Another easy leftover lunch were muffins topped with zucchini slice, grated cheese and fried tofu bacon.  I put them under the grill until the cheese was melty and then tried to wait long enough to eat so it wasn't so steaming hot that I burnt my tongue!

My sister had a peanut butter stall at the Carlton Farmers Market (which is in the North Carlton Primary School on Canning Street these days - the last time I went it was in the Rathdowne Street opposite the museum).  I enjoyed riding my bike there, catching up with my sister and wandering around the stalls.  I was delighted to buy some Good Brew kombucha, purple sprouting broccoli, Frankly Raw peanut butter, and bakes from Back Alley Bakes (capsicum stuffed muff and a kimchi and cheese scroll).  I loved having a vegan nacho pie for lunch from the Pie Thief.

We had a gardening afternoon where we cut back a lot of the rosemary and salvia out the front.  Sylvia also had taken out the woody old thyme that a friend planted for me in 2007 and planted supple young thyme.  So we have had lots of thyme and rosemary about the house and a few extra bay leaves from the garden.  Sylvia has previously dried some rosemary and catnip and has brought these to the kitchen.  We also have rhubarb and lime from my mum's garden.  Not seen is also blood oranges from Yav and lemons from Kerin.  Friends and family's citrus are appreciated while my lemon and lime trees have not yielded much fruit lately in our back yard.

These are some purchase from the supermarket that have sparked joy: Charcoal and sesame crackers, Parmesan, truffle and pepper crackers, red leicester cheese, goats cheese with dill, non alcoholic Peach bellinis and Passionfruit martinis.  Isn't it odd that kids are expected to drink sugary sweet drinks and adults expect to drink less sweet alcoholic drinks (with alcopops the bridging drink).  I like that there is more non-alcoholic drinks now that have less sugariness about them in the style of alcoholic drinks.

I tried making this Cheesey tex mex rice from the Kitchn.  It is fried for a while and mine had the smoky caramelised flavour but did not have as many crispy bits as I expected.  I used black beans instead of olives.  Sylvia did not like it much so I had a lot of it.  I had it at work lunches and for leftovers.  I made a pizza with some of it as well as tomato sauce, mushrooms and cheese.  It was really good.  On th same night I had my first go of thinly mandolinned zucchini and seasoned cream cheese with cheese on top.  It was excellent.

I used my favourite fast track sourdough pizza dough again a week later and had another go at the zucchini pizza.  After it was mandolinned thinly (with a bleeding finger tip as collateral damage), Sylvia suggested salting the zucchini which helped it be well seasoned and soften slightly.  After it stood for about 15 minutes I squeezed out the liquid and arranged it on the pizza in alternating rows with lightly steamed and chopped purple sprouting broccoli.  It was delicious hot out of the oven but also great for a cold work lunch the next day.

When Sylvia told me about the weird pairing of coke and Oreos in both the fizzy coke drink and the Oreo biscuits (cookies).  So we bought both and found that the coke didn't taste very like oreos, perhaps a bit of a vanilla scent.  The Oreos had an unnervingly accurate but chemical aroma of coke.  Sylvia could not stand the smell. I quite liked it in a weird way that was ok for a packet of biscuits but left me with no desire to buy again.

We went to the Royal Melbourne Show last week.  We came home with four showbags.  The one above is from the Craft and Cookery building.  I really loved the tote bag it came in. 

This is the contents of the showbag were a mixed bag.  I am most impressed with the hazelnut chocolate spread.  Sylvia will have a go at the Caffe Frother and is very pleased to be able to try the green tea with mango and lychee.  The dinosaur pasta will be used and so will the tapioca flour.  The cookbooks has too many photos of the hunter with his guns for me to be comfortable with it.  I cannot see us using the cream stabiliser but maybe I can give it away.  The craft supplies are something I hope we will have some fun with: wool, envelopes, invitations, glue, modelling clay, cupcake cutouts and collage pieces.

Sylvia bought a Chupa Chups showbag and a Smiths Showbag.  They were quite small and cheap (about $6-10 each).  Too many lolly pops for my liking but I am sure she will make them last.  And there was fairy floss too.  I am told that the combination of fairyfloss and salt and vinegar chips is wonderful but was not too interested in trying it!

My preference was the Old Style Liquorice showbag.  IT has a good selection of liquorice and bullets  (I took the photo after I used the liquorice allsorts in the footy platter below).  Unfortunately I bought it before I saw the Uncle John's showbag.  They do such good liquorice.  If I had waited I might have bought this one instead.

I made some cottage cheese fritters based on this recipe.  I had one for dinner with tomato relish, roast pumpkin and green leaves in a sandwich.  Since then I have enjoyed the fritters with salads and with roast pumpkin for lunches and dinners.

Last weekend was the AFL Grand Final.  We made some purchases for a platter.  I checked the ingredients of the Thins Sausage Sangas crisps and happy to find no meat  products.  .  It smelled and tasted uncannily like when we eat vegetarian sausages with sauce.  The Truffle arancini is a favourite of Sylvia's.  I loved the cheesey cauliflower pies,  My mum gave me the Chickpea Crackers which were alright but a bit stale.  The popcorn is the one that rated best in this rather amusing Guardian taste test.  And who doesn't love some berries on a platter! 

Our Grand Final platter was fairly straightforward to put together.  I had planned making our fave vegetarian sausage rolls but was too tired from the previous day's visit to the Show.  So I headed up some arancini and cauliflower cheese pies.  I chopped up some celery, carrot, capsicum.  Everything else was just a matter of arranging the charcoal crackers, chickpea crackers, Oreos, sausage sanga chps: sweet and salty popcorn, hummus, tomato sauce, sliced green apple, blood orange wedges, coke coke oreos, liquorice allsorts

I am sending this post to Sherry of Sherry's Pickings for the In My Kitchen event. If you would like to join in, send your post to Sherry by 13th of the month.  Or just head over to her blog to visit more kitchens and her gorgeous hand drawn header.

In My Kitchen February 2024 and making fresh pasta

When this post is published, I expect to be in Rome.  I wasn't sure what to do about the February  edition of In My Kitchen until I had some dishes I wanted to share.  The above dish is not just a home made vodka pasta sauce but also home made pasta. I wanted a few notes on my first foray into pasta making. 

I am writing this mid-January before I leave for my trip.  The weeks after Christmas always feel a bit of time to relax, potter around the house and refresh for the year ahead.  The kids are on holidays, many businesses close and the sun shines.  I've got some home organisation done - dropped off stuff at the op shop, given some unused stationery to the Operation Backpack program that distributes it to local children, given Sylvia smashed ipad to the Apple store for recycling, dug out my digital camera for Sylvia to use, Sylvia's baby towels and other worn-out clothes to H&M, taken a ream of old bills and papers to Officeworks to shred and cleaned the house more than I have for a few years. 

I went to visit a friend in Mulgrave and took some Condensed milk choc chip cookies.  When thinking about baking something to take to afternoon tea, I fixated on a can on Ube purple condensed milk and decided to try it in a favourite choc chip cookie recipe.  The result was purple but not overly so.  My friend's son loved them but thought they were chocolate and I wasn't sure if he would have liked to hear they had purple ube in them so I just smiled at his enthusiasm.  

Having a long drive alone was a good opportunity to listen to ABC RN.  I heard about Julian of Norwich (fascinating for her 30 years sealed in a room on the side of a church and her book being the earliest existing English-language book by a woman), a discussion on Forever (a documentary about Judy Blume and her fantastic books for teens), and a inspiring interview with Sinéad Burke, Irish fashion blogger and disability activist.

I have tried to avoid buying too much food for our kitchen.  As I write we are trying to use up what is in the fridge and pantry.  It has taken self control with all the post-Christmas sales but I did give in to temptation when I saw these Chocolate Rocky Road Tarts for sale.  They had a very pleasing fudgy chocolate filling topped with marshmallows, raspberry jelly lollies and shredded coconut.  All in a chocolate pastry shell, which was almost unnecessary!  The biggest surprise when I got home was that there were only 5 tarts: one was missing.  This was a little disturbing but I really just wanted a taste of them and could live with one less than I thought I purchased.

This photo is one where it just does not give justice to the food.  It is a walnut, mushroom and cauliflower minced meat substitute.  I was impressed that this was just a matter of finely chopping in the food processor, mixing with oil and salt and then roasting until dried and smelling amazingly good (like a baked potato, Sylvia said).  Sylvia took it from this vegan ragu recipe for the below soup.

Sylvia's vegan minced meat starred in this Lasagna soup.  I asked her for her recipe source and she said she just looked at different recipes and used them as inspiration.  It was quite thick like a traditional lasagna with bolognaise sauce.  It was quite thick and reminded me of a lasagna that is hot out of the oven and will not hold its shape.  Sylvia liked this because she made the bolognaise sauce and broke up lasagna sheets to cook in it rather than doing the layering.  She topped it with basil and spoonfuls of ricotta that had been mixed with parmesan, salt and pepper.  The soup with ricotta mixed through tasted great.  There was grated cheese in the soup but it was not so noticeable.  I loved it, though it was quite rich.  Sylvia would have liked more lasagna sheets in it.

Sylvia went out with her grandfather and father to Galleon in Carlisle Street, St Kilda.  This is her leftover that she brought home.  She also brought a pumpkin, basil and parmesan scone for me.  It was more like a muffin but was amazing: fresh, flavourful and soft.  Sylvia was delighted that the Drunken Sailor big breakfast gave the option of substituting bacon for avocado.  So hers was Two eggs on buttered sourdough multigrain toast with avocado, mushrooms, tomato and spinach, plus she had a sweet potato and feta hash on the side.  Of course it was too much and she brought home quite a bit of it.  Her dad had Banana, pistachio Praline, vanilla bean ricotta and maple syrup.  E could not eat it all so there was some of that in a tub.  It was rich and delicious.

I bought a pasta machine so many years ago that it seems like I have had it at the back of the cupboards in a box forever.  Every now and again I say I will make fresh pasta but get distracted.  Then about a week before I wrote this, I said I would made it and I did.  Yes, I was surprised.  And pleased and proud! 

I started off following the Kitchn's guide on how to make fresh pasta.  I followed their recipe of 2 and 2/3 cups of flour, 4 eggs and 3/4 teaspoon of salt.  My dough was really tough.  I guessed it was because they use an American cup measure (240ml) and I used an Australia measuring cup (250ml). I gradually added water to the dough but I was worried it was not quite right.  So I made another dough with 2 eggs, 1 cup of flour and less salt.  This one was really soft and needed some extra flour.  The pictures above show the two doughs.  The yellow one on the right is the second soft dough.  If I stuck a finger in it, I could easily push through to the table.  The paler stiffer dough on the left was tough to knead and if I pushed my finger into it it seemed a bit of an effort to make a deep dint and I did get as far in as the table.  I want to try dough again and will do 4 eggs, 2 and 1/3 cups of flour and 3/4 tsp salt.

Once the dough was made I had to work out my Imperia pasta machine.  There was only one piece I could not fit on it but it wasn't necessary.  I used a piece of the drier dough to give the machine a quite clean of any grime, as suggested in one website.  I watched a few videos on the machine.  Then I fed the pasta through the machine on ever decreasing thickness (2-3 goes on each thickness) until it was a good consistency and made some fettucine and spaghetti.  So far so good.  I even wondered if I should have gone as far as making a second dough.  The first seemed fine.

So I then made lots of fettuccine, given I had two batches of pasta.  I actually left some in the fridge a covered bowl overnight because there was so much.  Once I made the fettuccine I hung it over a chair, feeling like an Italian nonna.  Some of it I cooked fresh and it cooked really quickly - about as long as it took to bring the water back to the boil when I added it.  The rest I let dry and we ate it over a few days.  The vodka tomato pasta in the top photo is one of these.  I cooked it too quickly and found it was not quite soft enough.  There is still work to be done in getting a good feel for making and cooking the pasta.

The fresh pasta I cooked to mix with Sylvia's alfredo sauce (based on this recipe).  It was amazing.  Sylvia is very into creamy pasta sauces and was very excited for an opportunity to try something new.  Creamy sauces are not really my thing but this fettuccine alfredo with crispy Tofu bacon and parsley was so so good.

Previously I had made pasta with a friend about 30 years ago.  So I am happy with my first solo fresh pasta making.  It needs some work but I hope to try it again.  We are planning to try ravioli.  I just hope it does not take me so long to get to my second go at pasta making.

I was inspired by Lorraine at Not Quite Nigella to try her Sardinian Minestrone.  Once I realised it did not have sardines in it, it sounded healthy and delicious.  I made lots of changes: not many carrots, no potato, no fresh garlic and added garlic granules, sweet potato, capsicum, cherry tomatoes, capsicum, zucchini and more barley.  It was so good and there was so much.  I ate it for meals on a couple of days and then to my horror realised I should have put it in the fridge.  After two days it had soured and had to be thrown out, along with my plans for meals this week.  What a shame job!  Thank goodness for the Council's composting scheme.  I have made another stew for the rest of the week and promised myself to be more careful in future.

 My mum's green thumb has produced lots of apricots and yellow zucchinis.  The apricots were unripe so I left them on the bench.  Within a few days they were really lovely despite still looking quite green on the outside.  I had to put some into the freezer to avoid them feeding the compost like my minestrone.  It is well known that home grown apricots are far superior in flavour to those in the supermarket.  These were juicy and delicious.  I ate some standing up at the table and some with my muesli and yoghurt.  They reminded me of the apricots off my nan's tree that we loved as a kid even though the juice would dribble down our chins.  The zucchinis went into my ill-fated minestrone which was good until it wasn't.

We haven't been out as much as expected.  Sylvia and I had a trip around St Kilda that included a walk along Kerford Pier and pizza at Rococo.  I met a friend to see One Life at the cinema.  It was an excellent film about rescuing refugees from Prague on the eve of war in 1938-9.  The story is very relevance today.  I heard recently that there are now the most refugees since World War II.  We've been down Lygon Street with my parents and to a few cafes with friends. The photo is of chocolate fudge and 100s and 1000s doughnuts at Juanita Peaches where we had a burrito and an eggplant burger with chips.

Sylvia made this simple meal where she fried oil, parsley and garlic, added a bit of hot water, sauted the tomatoes and mix in some angel hair pasta.  Served with lots of parmesan.  It was a change from her creamy sauces, which I call a heart attack in a bowl..  Simple but very good.

There has been lots of preparation for our trip to Europe: collating tickets, writing an itinerary, researching things like an e-sim and money options, purchasing portable chargers, packing suitcases, planning to see people, and online research.  I've got my suitcase lock stuck with packing in it (but Sylvia worked out the combination after trying hundreds of combos).  I have found a lost passport when looking for my current one (and I looked a lot for it before getting another). Shadow was very interested in my case.

I am sending this post to Sherry of Sherry's Pickings for the In My Kitchen event. If you would like to join in, send your post to Sherry by 13th of the month.  Or just head over to her blog to visit more kitchens and her gorgeous hand drawn header.

Chocolate cheesecake with Easter nest for my blogiversary

Today to mark my 16th blogiversary, I am sharing a celebration cheesecake full of chocolate and colour and just a little gratuitous caramel.  It was actually our Easter dessert at home on Easter Sunday as I saw my extended family on Easter Saturday.  Sylvia and I had great fun decorating it with a clutch of Easter eggs in a chokito nest.  The cheesecake is amazing without the added chocolate decorations but we enjoyed going the extra mile.

I mentioned to my mum that I was planning to make an unbaked cheesecake with cream cheese and condensed milk at Easter and she asked if it had lemon juice.  She has made many of these in my childhood.  No doubt a little nostalgia made the recipe jump out.  When I told my mum there was no lemon juice but it had whipped cream and 400g of chocolate she was a bit surprised but agreed it would help to hold its shape.  It was an intense filling but so creamy and chocolatey and good.  Being egg-free was even better.

 

We made the cheesecake the night before to give it plenty of time to set.  The Best Recipes website, where I found the recipe, had one person comment that they chop up mars bars to fold through the cheesecake mixture.  We loved the idea.  But we decided to fold through chopped chokito instead.  I loved the chewy caramel of the chokito, and would love the mars bars too.  There was a lot of mixture - you can see in the above collage that it just fitted in the 20cm loose based tin.

We planned to chop oreos to make the nest for the easter eggs but found that 2 oreo packets were equivalent to about one Arnotts biscuit packets, such as Marie biscuits, Arrowroot biscuits or Chocolate Ripple biscuits, that we often use for cheesecake bases in Australia.  Instead I chopped up one of my Chokito chocolate bars.  It worked!  

However my vision had been of a more raised nest,  I tried a bit of cream to help hold the crumbly mixture but it wasn't terribly effective.  I think to build it up you would need to bind the crumbs which would make the nests more smooth than I intended and/or a lot more work, such as these. For those who are curious, the cheesecake mixture does stick to the foil egg wrappers a bit.  The cheesecake is just as good at any time of year without a nest of Easter eggs but it is fun to jazz it up for a celebration.

As you can see in the above photo, the cheesecake holds its shape very well, even after it has been out of the fridge for an hour or so.  I liked the chewy caramel chunks that resulted from folding chopped chokito through the mixture.  But it is not necessary.  The cheesecake was rich and dense.  Sylvia described it as being like chocolate mousse. 

This cheesecake is an excellent combination of an old fashioned cheesecake and a modern ganache based dessert.  It feels like a fine way to mark 16 years of blogging.  The way I blog now is slower and quieter than when I started.  You might say this about my life today compared to 16 years ago but it goes in cycles and there is still much to be savoured.  Over that time I have shared lots of good food with wonderful people both In Real Life and on my blog.  Long may this continue!

Quicklinks
And as it is my blogiversary, I will share some of my favourite links of late:

'Scientists create 'flu trap' that 'protects against virus' in The Independent on 21 March 2016.  I was fascinated after dreaming about a flu trap to look it up online and find that scientists had actually found a flu trap.  I wonder if anyone is working on the Covid trap!

'Unattractive people are MORE likely to keep wearing face masks in post-Covid era, study suggests. Attractive people are less likely to keep wearing face masks in the post-Covid era, a study suggests' in The Daily Mail on 3 February 2023.  This was one of the silliest articles I have seen lately (thought there was a was a challenge for silliest by the below UK Sun article.) Actually in the research, it was the participants who judged if they believed they were attractive.  The article suggests mask-wearing has shifted from being about self protection to self preservation.  A lot of interesting judgements here!

'Posh Yobs Vol-au-Vent Meet: Hummus Plot to Spoil Sport: FA Cup and Wimbo at risk' in the UK Sun on 23 April 2023.  Such a wonderfully ridiculous headline that I was disappointed I could find a link to the article but not the headline online.  You can still read about "infiltrating" eco zealot meetings and where they go on holidays and what advice they get from their lawyers.

'"We thought they were going to be massacred": 80 years since forced First Fleet enactment.' in ABC News on 25 January 2018.  This is a very disturbing and sad story of Aboriginal men being coerced to be part of a re-enactment of the First Fleet arriving.  The conniving of the colonising authorities and the terrible effect upon these men is hard to read but part of the truthtelling of Indigenous history of our nation.

'Men named Ken share how they feel about all those Barbie memes' in Huffington Post on 28 April 2023.  The movie is not out yet, but social media is already entranced and using Barbie to amuse us.  One of the people interviewed noted it was a good time to have an ex-named Ken.

'Why we swim: A brief history of swimming from the Neanderthals to slavery to your local pool' in ABC News on 17 February 2023.  Swimming reflects many of the issues of our world; it has been influenced by climate, wealth and race.

'What are the long term health risks of having your tonsils out' in the Pursuit, University of Melbourne on 28 June 2018.  "The research shows that both tonsillectomies and an adenoidectomies are associated with higher levels of allergic, respiratory and infectious diseases later in life."

Other chocolate cheesecake recipes online:

• Baked chocolate cherry cheesecake - Where's the Beef
• Baked triple chocolate cheesecake - Not Quite Nigella
  
• Brownie mosaic cheesecake - Smitten Kitchen
  
• GF chocolate cheesecake - Gluten Free Alchemist 
• No-bake toblerone cheesecake - The Annoyed Thyroid

Easter Chocolate Cheesecake
Adapted from Best Recipes

250g Oreos (about 2 x 133g packets)
1/4 cup (50g) g butter melted - 1/4 cup

250g cream cheese, room temperature

395g tin of condensed milk

1 cup thickened cream

200g good milk chocolate, chopped

200g good 70% cocoa dark chocolate, chopped

2 chocolate bars, such as mars bar or chokito, chopped  (optional)

 

Easter Nest Topping (optional):

1 chocolate bar such as chokito, flake, twix or kit kat (or chocolate biscuits)

Easter eggs

Extra cream or melted chocolate

Use a food processor to make oreos into crumbs.  Pour in butter while motor running and and process until mixed thoroughly.

Press the oreo/biscuit mixture into the base of a 20cm diameter round loose bottomed cake tin.   (I did not grease or line and it was fine.)    Place in fridge to firm up - about 30 minutes.

Break up chocolate.  Melt dark chocolate in microwave for 30 seconds, add milk chocolate and microwave another 30-60 seconds, stirring after each 30 seconds to check if a good stir will melt the chocolate.  Set aside to cool slightly.

Using electric beaters, beat the cream cheese and condensed milk until mixed.  Add cream and, while beating on high, drizzle in melted chocolate.  Beat until well combined and stiff peaks form.  If using, very gently fold in chopped chocolate bars.

Scrap the cream cheese mixture into the cake tin on the base.  Refrigerate for at least 4-6 hours, preferably overnight. 

To decorate, finely chop chocolate bar or biscuits to crumbs and sprinkle around the edges, using a bit of cream or extra melted chocolate to help it stick.  Arrange easter eggs in the middle of the crumbs to look like they are sitting in a nest.

NOTES:

If you wish to use chocolate biscuits like Chocolate Ripple Biscuits instead of Oreos, use 100g butter rather than 50g butter.  I found the sweet vanilla cream in Oreos gave more sweetness to the crust than I am used to.  I was tempted to try Tim Tams and might do another time.

To help the cheesecake set, make sure to use full fat cream cheese in a block - no light cream cheese and no softened cream cheese in a tub.

The Best Recipes recipe had 1/4 cup of run added at the end.  I ignored this as I wanted it child friendly, and I am not a huge fan of rum.  I would prefer to add Baileys Irish Cream.  Or you could add other spirits or juice.  My cheesecake mixture was pretty thick so I am sure 1/4 cup of liquid would be fine and it would still hold its shape.

On the Stereo:

Fearless: Taylor Swift