May 4, 2009: Cheatin' pepperoni

Rather shamefully, it's taken Cindy and I about three months to make our way to Radical Grocery on Sydney Road. Cindy was there for the pre-opening potluck, but since then we've somehow avoided Sydney Road for months at a time. The shop is everything other bloggers say - loaded up with exotic vegan and fair-trade goodies, run by the super-friendly and enthusiastic Anikee and remarkably reasonable prices. We loaded ourselves up with chocolate, mock-meats, coffee and tea, and wandered out with a vow to return sooner next time.

The most interesting of our new purchases (at least to me) was a packet of meat-free Cheatin' pepperoni. I've missed heavily processed salamis and such since going veg - especially on pizzas (which is why I was so excited about Eat Pizza), so there was only one place these little slices were going.


These were pretty basic pizzas - pre-bought bases from Piedemontes, a bit of tomato paste, some mushrooms and roasted capsicum strips, mozzarella and our 'salami'. Fake salami is never quite going to recapture the crispy spiciness of the real thing, but the Redwood brand loads theirs up with some kick, giving the pizza the zing I was hoping for. It's probably not an essential fake-meat product, but Cheatin' pepperoni will at least partly fill the spicy void on your pizzas. We'll definitely be going back for seconds.

Coming soon: Budda's Day & Multicultural Festival

We're rolling 'round to mid-May and that means it's time for Buddha's Day and Multicultural Festival! Michael and I haven't yet been but we're looking forward to attending this year's celebration, which is happening in Melbourne in Federation Square next weekend.

The food stalls promise to be amazing - check out what Buttons and Kristy gobbled down last year, and what Mellie and EG sampled two years ago. There's also Vegi-licious, a series of vegetarian cooking demonstrations featuring lots of Melbourne chefs and running across both days.

Thanks to Jacinta (one of the festival organisers) and regular reader William for giving us a heads-up a few weeks early.

May 1-2, 2009: Red velvet cupcakes

Brownies weren't my only contribution to the tea party. This party's premise was the 30th birthday of a rather smashing lady, and I felt compelled to scroll through my Dessert bookmarks for more inspiration. Red velvet cupcakes caught my eye. This version comes from Simply Recipes and is written by cupcake creative Garrett McCord - I'm a regular and admiring reader of his other food blog, Vanilla Garlic.

The 'red' in 'red velvet' doesn't come from raspberries, beetroot or any other produce; it's the biggest dose of red food colouring you might ever ingest in a sitting. The cake also includes a little cocoa but doesn't have a strong chocolate flavour at all. These proved to be pleasant and mild; it's their looks that are more memorable.

But, oh - the icing! Red velvet cake is iced not with traditional buttercream but with a cream cheese-based version. And it was the lightest, smoothest spoonful of heaven I may ever have tasted. It seems likely that I will never bother with buttercream again (though ganache will probably still get a guernsey at other times and places). Not one for piping, I slathered it onto the cupcakes with a teaspoon and rather liked the effect.

Garrett's recipe is a fabulous rendition of a southern U.S. favourite. The cake has a lovely texture, but I reckon it's the icing that's the absolute keeper - I'm looking forward to teaming it with other flavours.

Red velvet cupcakes with cream cheese icing
(a halved, metric-fied, and Aussie-spelled version of Garrett McCord's recipe at Simply Recipes)

cake:
3/4 cup sugar
60g butter, softened
1 egg
1 1/6 cups plain flour
1 tablespoon cocoa
1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup buttermilk
3/4 tablespoon red food colouring
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon white vinegar

icing:
60g butter, softened
120g cream cheese, softened
1 - 1 1/2 cups icing sugar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

Preheat the oven to 180°C. Set 10-12 cupcake papers into a cupcake baking tray.

Cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. (I had real trouble with this! Most likely because my butter hadn't softened enough.) Beat in the egg thoroughly.

In a large bowl, sift together the flour, cocoa, bicarb soda, baking powder and salt. In a second smaller bowl, whisk together the buttermilk, vinegar, vanilla and red food colouring.

Gradually and alternately beat the flour and buttermilk mixtures into the sugar/butter/egg mixture, until the cake batter is smooth and homogeneous.

Spoon the batter into the lined cupcake tray, filling each cup about two-thirds full. Bake for 18-22 minutes, checking them with a skewer. Allow the cakes to cool before icing them.

For the icing, cream together the butter and cheese, then beat in the vanilla. Gradually beat in the icing sugar until the sweetness is to your taste (I found that 1 cup of icing sugar was just right). Slather the icing onto the cupcakes.

May 2, 2009: Ray III

With all of the new breakfast options popping up around the place, it's been a long time since we made it up to Brunswick to visit our old favourite Ray. Not much has changed in the intervening months - same laid back, slightly disorganised staff, same Middle-Eastern inspired breakfast menu and the same divine coffee.

We both decided to try something new - Cindy went with the French toast with sweet labna and maple syrup ($8 - see above). The Turkish bread makes a particularly good French toast, and the combination of labna and pistachios works nicely. It was probably a bit heavy on the maple syrup, and could have used a bit of fruit to mix things up a little. Still, at $8, this is an oustandingly good value sweet brekkie.

As much as I love the poached eggs at Ray, I decided to branch out and try the Baharat baked beans with chilli, labna and toasted pide ($8.50).

This was a rich savoury delight, heavy on the chilli and loaded up with a wide variety of beany goodness. Again, the bread was top notch, and the whole meal really hit the spot - by the end I wasn't even regretting the lack of eggs.

It's nice to see that Ray is keeping things steady - great breakfasts, amazing prices and delicious coffee. You can read about our previous trips to Ray here and here.

April 29-May 2, 2009: White chocolate brownies

Over April and May, Robyn pulled a little trick in the calendar she made for me. Choosing a recipe too long to fit on one page, she revealed the tantalising list of ingredients for white chocolate brownies in April, leaving me hanging until May to actually see the preparation method! This actually worked out well - I baked the brownies late in April for a tea party held on the first weekend in May.

As you can see from the photo, this brownie isn't without cocoa solids. In fact, there's almost half a kilo of three different kinds of chocolate in the smallish tray I baked. The batter, which contains some of this chocolate, serves as little more than a binder for the chocolate chunks. As a consequence this is one of the firmest and least fudgy brownies I've sampled. That didn't affect its popularity, though - the 24 modest pieces that I cut this into had completely disappeared before I left the party.

A quirk of the original recipe was the inclusion of 125g plain flour and 40g self-raising flour. I don't keep self-raising flour in my pantry since it can be substituted with a combination of plain flour and baking powder. By my scrawled estimations, this recipe is requesting 164g plain flour and just a gram of baking powder (give or take, uh, a gram). I humoured my batter with that pinch of baking powder, but given that our favourite brownie recipe doesn't include any leavening, I suspect these can safely be baked without it.

White chocolate brownies

125g butter
150g milk chocolate
50g dark chocolate
1/2 cup castor sugar
2 large eggs, lightly beaten
165g plain flour
125g white chocolate, chopped
125g milk chocolate, chopped

Preheat over to 170°C. Grease and line a 20cm square cake tin with paper.

In a medium-sized saucepan over low heat, melt the butter, first 150g milk chocolate and the dark chocolate. Remove the saucepan from the heat and allow it to cool for about 10 minutes.

Whisk the sugar and eggs into the melted chocolate butter. Thoroughly stir through the flour, then fold through the chopped chocolate. Pour the brownie batter into the cake tin, smoothing over the top. Bake for about 30 minutes, testing with a skewer.