Yoghurt & Pistachio Cake

150g flour
pinch salt
¾ tsp Bi-Carb
¼ tsp Baking Powder

 6 eggs separated (room temp)
1 cup of castor sugar
½ cup of oil

¾ cup of fresh Greek plain yoghurt
100g chopped shelled Pistachios
½ tsp of cream of tartar

 

• Mix Flour, salt, Bi-Carb, Baking Powder together in a small bowl and put aside.
• Mix (with an electric mixer) the egg yolks, slowly add ½ the sugar, and then slowly drizzle the oil through (as though you were making mayonnaise) Until it is pale and thick.
• Fold through the Greek yoghurt and Pistachios.
• Fold Through the Dry Mix of Flour etc.
• Beat the Egg Whites with Cream of Tartar, whilst slowly adding the other ½ cup of Sugar till you have soft shiny Peaks (also fold that through).
• Then pop this guy in the oven until it springs back at you. I made mine into cupcakes but works super as a cake too, It's just really hard to cut becasue of the toffeed almonds.
• For the icing I just made a white chocolate ganache; (if available I prefer to use white couverture, but Coles only have just white buttons, which do work fine.)
  which is just thickened cream brought to the boil and stir through the white chocolate. (3 parts chocolate to 1 part cream).
• You will need Flaked almonds which you should put in the oven to roast. And then make a toffee and coat the roasted almonds in toffee.

Don’t ask me the best way to do this, (I freaking suck at toffee) I tried to do it from memory by just heating up about 2 cups of sugar in a pan and waiting for it to dissolve, but I kept moving it too much and making it crystallize.

Tony (my housemate and co-chef), gave the suggestion to add water, so I did.

All was going well until eventually all the water cooked away and it was back to sugar again, but it ended up melting and going back to a toffee type form, still a few crystals but I bashed them out and mixed through the almonds fine.

But if you have an alternative way to make a hard toffee go for it. Because my way sucks.

Chicken and Vegtable Pies

2 Chicken breasts

Thickened cream

Frozen vegtable mix (peas, corn & carrot)

Short crust pastry

Puff pastry

White wine

1 Egg

1 Garlic clove

Tarragon

Arrowroot

Sesame seeds or Nigella

S&P

• Make sure you grab your pastries out to defrost a little so you can cut it easily.
• Dice the chicken into small cubes, then cook the chicken in white wine and garlic for about 2 minutes.
• Add some cream and let it simmer, add some salt, pepper, tarragon (fresh is always good but if that isn't available then the dried tarragon is fine). Also mix through the frozen vegies.
• Then add your arrowroot (if you're not sure how to make up arrowroot just add about 2 teaspoons of arrowroot to cup and mix through a small amount of water and mix it, it will feel thick and almost solid when you stop stirring but when you start mixing it will go liquid again). Bring it to the boil, but also make sure you do not over cook the chicken as you will be baking it in the oven.
• Spray a cupcake/muffin tin heavily with cooking spray, then cut out the amount of bases you need from the short crust with a large cup or bowl that is about 1 inch large in diameter than the size of the moulds. (double check that it fits please! I don't know your tin size, just have a mess around until you find the size that fits). Gently push all of those into the pan moulds.

• Fill your cases with the mixture.

• Cut out lids for your pies and push them all onto the top of your pies, try and create a seal between the lid and base. Beat your egg and brush the egg mixture on top of the pies. Poke a few holes in the pies and sprinkle your sesame seeds/nigella on top of the pies so they look nice.

• Shove them in the oven until they look crunchy and golden brown. Now I need to emphasize this... get the pies out whilst the tray is hot otherwise you're going to have fun getting them out afterwards, and when that happens you're on your own.