Hay Hay it's Apple Pancakes

I love breakfast food. I would happily subsist on Bircher Muesli, eggs and hash browns, and I can't imagine life without pancakes and maple syrup. I always knew I could top them with interesting things, but it wasn't until I went away on holiday that I realised you could actually add fruit to the batter. I fell in love with banana pancakes.
For HHDD #22, I wanted to try something a little different. This morning I made apple pancakes for the first time. I was really impressed! Wholemeal Apple Pancakes
1/2 cup plain flour
1/2 cup plain wholemeal flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder, sifted
3 Tbsp caster sugar
1 eggs
1 cup (375 ml) milk
75 g butter, melted
pinch of salt
One apple, cored and grated.
Mix together the dry ingredients, add the rest, add the milk, eggs and butter and whisk until smooth. You may have to add more milk to get a pouring consistency. Stir in the grated apple. Melt some butter in a frying pan over medium heat. Pour 1/2 cups of the mixture into the pan, flipping when bubbles rise to the surface. Serve with maple syrup.

Hay Hay it's Tiramisu!

This post could be an ode to disorganization. The first mistake was left over caramel sauce and cream - don't worry, I thought, this will be great in a Tiramisu for Hay Hay it's Donna Day.
The next mistake was not noting the quantities of sponge biscuits, marscapone and cream I needed before I went shopping. I ended up with the right amount of marscapone, but not enough biscuits or cream. Or the right sort of cream. Oh well, I thought, I'll just improvise.
Third mistake, not organizing a dinner party. Who was going to eat ALL SEVEN SERVINGS?? I managed to find some volunteers.
But the biggest mistake of all?
I missed the deadline for Hay Hay it's Donna Day by almost a week.
I suck.
Luckily the tiramisu was awesome, so I'm going to post it anyway. And you can go check out the round up to see everybody else's more timely desserts.Caramel Tiramisu
1/2 Cup strong espresso coffee
1/2 Cup coffee liqueur
14 sponge finger biscuits
cocoa for dusting
Filling:
375g Marscapone cheese
3/4 Cup caramel sauce
1/2 Cup thickened cream
Find 7 small bowls or 7 large glasses. Combine the coffee and liqueur. Cut half the biscuits into quarters, dip them in the coffee mixture and make llayer in the bottom of each bowl.
Whip together the filling ingredients, until a thick custardy consistency is reached. Top the biscuits with half the mixture. Cut and dip the remaining biscuits and place on top of the cream. Spoon over the remaining filling, and dust with cocoa.

Sweet Potato Gnocchi for Donna Hay

I love Donna Hay recipes for the simplicity and the beautiful photos. I don't think gnocchi is either simple or particularly photogenic, but I love eating it. So when Linnylu chose gnocchi as the theme for Hay, Hay, it's Donna Day #14, I knew I was going to have a go.

I'd like to say I came up with a completely new and original recipe, but this stuff is difficult! I've had gnocchi disasters before. (Hint: If you're going to freeze 'raw' gnocchi for later, you probably want to flash freeze it. Or eat a lot of potato cakes.) I found a recipe for Sweet Potato Gnocchi with Brown Butter and Sage on epicurious, and proceeded to make an enourmous mess. I also made some cute little gnocchi's, that maybe aren't so ugly after all. The colour was great, but the best thing was the sage butter. Unfortunately I can't add the aroma to the photo for you!

Experiments in green cheese

I'd been wanting to make a cheesecake ever since I saw Peabody's Donna Hay event. Ryan had made some green tea muffins for St Patrick's day, and the two ideas converged - Green Tea Cheesecake!

The green tea muffins were OK, but not as green as we wanted. If we could have put our hands on some Matcha Powder, they would have been greener. Instead, we ground up some normal green tea as a substitute. We had more than enough left over for the cheese cake.

Green tea is a great flavouring because it's mild but pervasive. Teamed with something stronger, and more easily identifiable (like lemon) it gives a nice herby undertone, without being too savoury. Matcha powder, used for tea ceremonies in Japan, is finely ground green sencha tea leaves. It's a really lurid colour. Our ground tea leaves were fairly grey, so not nearly as picturesque.

To make the cheese cake, we followed the recipe posted by Peabody. I left out the lemon zest, and brewed the green tea powder in the lemon juice (which I heated in the microwave).

I don't think the picture proves anything, except that I need more practice making cheesecake - it sunk a little, and stuck to the sides a lot. The colour, not particularly green. But not offputtingly brown either. It tasted really good though - the ricotta lightens the texture from your normal baked cheesecake and the tea added some subtle herby undertones. I will probably make this again, but I'll wait until I can find some matcha!