The last couple of months I’ve been working on the dessert menu for a restaurant, La Coccinella within the VW complex Autostadt in Germany. The concept of the restaurant is in house made fresh pasta with delicious cakes baked fresh every day.  It’s been a change from the Christmas pâtisserie concept I’ve worked on for the last four years (although that’s coming up very soon).

I arrived two weeks ago with my Pâtisserie kit and my chef whites packed. The only thing we were going to produce was going to be dust cake as everything was still a building site. It was an around the clock work job with everyone on board to get everything working. A couple of days practice and the restaurant was open to the public. The cuisine team churn out tonnes of delicious fresh pasta everyday while in the pâtisserie sweet treats are made daily to tastilize everyones tastebuds. The pasta menu changes daily. And a new dessert menu will be helping you pile on the pounds every month

Homemade special brew - Ask first © 2010 R Khooks. Rachel Khoo. All rights reserved.

Once upon a time there were two Brit girls who met in Paris over muffin making at an adorable cookbook store. They soon found out that they had many things in common: a pâtisserie diplome from Le Cordon Bleu, the love for food and lots of fun.

They had many adventures in Paris and beyond. But the day came when Frankie departed to a far away land called Australia. Rachel was very sad that her fun loving foodie partner in crime was leaving but was determined that no matter how many thousands of miles away Frankie was, she would make sure they would continue to have more edible adventures.

So Frankie left for the land of Oz in September. On a cold wet Autumn night in Paris Rachel discovered her golden ticket (in form of a special Malaysian Airline deal) away from the greyness of Paris. Very excited about going to the land of kangaroos and barbecues she sent Frankie an electronic mail and that’s how they both decided to tell an edible  immigration tale in Sydney.

Many Australian history and culinary books, skype calls, emails and photos later Rachel arrived in Sydney. And this is the tale they told:

Edible immigration menu

1. Shaken and shipped to shore
Hibiscus and ginger Bundaberg rum cocktail.

2. First encounter with native grub
Goat’s curd and macadamia nut grubs on dehydrated date leaves.

3. A fling with fish before flame
Kingfish tartare served with finger limes.

4. Desperately seeking sea cucumber, serving sotong satay instead
Coconut and lemongrass rice and spicy Asian peanut caramel cake with baby octopus satay and cucumber.

5. Cuppa tea with dundee
Homemade special brew served with marinated crocodile sticks.

6. Bushbride’s ration pudding with Granny Smith’s pickle
Duck pudding with granny smith puree and pickles accompanied with damper bread.

7. Easy as peasy pie
Downunder puff pastry base with slow cooked vegemite lamb, pea purée, mushroom caramel and warrigal greens.

8. Fosters-free lager and lemon sorbet

9. The great dessert debate
Pavlova with fresh cream, strawberry jelly , lemon curd and passionfruit.

10. Freshly spun edible wool
Coffee candy floss.

Each of the dishes were based on facts that they had discovered while doing research. Here are some:

1. Rum was the number one drink with the 1st settlers and convicts.  It was even used as a currency.
2. Similar in taste to almonds, the witchetty grub was originally eaten either raw or cooked in hot ashes by aboriginies.
3. Despite being one of the richest fishing grounds in the world, meat was still favoured by the first European settlers due to it’s association with the high life back home.
4. As early as the 16th century indigenous North Western Australians traded sea cucumber with Chinese traders making it Australia’s first export item.
5. The first settlers clung to their British roots becoming the world’s heaviest tea drinkers.
6.1. One of the world’s most successful apple varieties was thanks to Granny Smith who arrived in New South Wales in 1838. She tipped some rotten crab apples into her orchard and from there the variety we know today blossomed.
6.2. Not until the Second World War or perhaps a little earlier was the pie mentioned as a national dish. Vegemite, another national favourite, was first advertised as nourishing for the whole family. Except for one irony, the spread that epitomised `family goodness`was made from brewery waste.
7. In 1864 the cookery book “Australian Aristologist” quotes a medical opinion on the “Danger of the meat pie”. Not leaving a hole in the crust traps the poisonous gases.
8. It was Baron Liebig in 1842 who discovered that Bavarian brewed beers did not turn sour on contact with air like other Australian beers. The German name was “Lager -bier” (the German word lager means to store) hence the name of Australia’s most popular alcoholic drink.
9. The pavlova is said to have been invented in Perth’s Esplanade Hotel in 1935 after the famous Russian ballet dancer. However the New Zealanders claim that a chef in a hotel in Wellington, created the dish when Pavlova visited there in 1926 on her world tour
10. With 1 million sheep recorded in 1830 (jumped from 100,000 in 1820) the wool industry was Australia’s biggest export, worth roughly 2 million dollars.

Special thank you to Howard Trang from eatshowandtell for the photos.

Check out a great write up on SBS.com and  here.

There were no sausages on this menu which explored the East/West divide in Germany. Fellow foodie Caroline Hobkinson and I got cooking in her amazing Berlin kitchen. Dishing up two different menus (one East, one West). Each representing their relevant culinary history. Guests on arrival were assigned their sides for the nights. They bartered, they smuggled and some sneekily stole from the opposite side to get a taster of the forbidden food.

500 biscuits to make for The School of life Sunday sermon on Good Design held by Alice Rawsthorn, Design critic for the International Herald Tribune . They weren’t just any old biscuits which had everyone at the Conway Hall, London on the 28th June 2009 munching.

Specially designed “digestives” or better “designtives” were mixed, kneaded, rolled out and baked by hand. Yes, all 500 of them.

Digestive biscuits were invented in 1892 by McVities and in the UK we now consume 52 chocolate digestives per second. They originally claimed to “aide” digestion but this has been proven untrue. In the States it’s still illegal to sell the biscuits under the name. Rachel Khoo has improved on the design of the digestive but giving it added “digestion” properties.

Read more here on how they were ‘designed’ and the recipe.

If you are on a picture and you want it to be removed, please send me an email.

Photos from event taken by Bronia Stewart.

My whole flat has become a test kitchen. I practically live in the kitchen with cake tins, ingredients, pots and pans spilling over into the living area (the only cooking free area is the bathroom). I’m gearing up for two big events in London next week . One of them being my Mash up dinner. The other an event for  the School of life Sunday sermon on Good Design held by Alice Rawsthorn, Design critic for the International Herald Tribune. I’ve been busy making or better said ‘designing’ THE biscuit. It took a lot of testing to get to the final product, at least a dozen tries.

The brief was to make a biscuit or cake that was delicious, traditional but not flamboyant. My initial research led me to Britain’s most popular biscuit, the chocolate digestive. 52 are consumed per second in Uk. That’s a lot of biscuits!

When McVitie’s first made the digestive in 1892, they claimed it aided your digestion, hence the name. This has since been scientifically proven to be untrue and that is when a light bulb lit up in my head.

Good design is not only about aethetics but function and now a days it’s great if it’s eco-friendly aswell. So why not make a digestive which actually incorporates ingredients that stimulate your digestion?

I first started looking into spices: aniseed, fennel and cumin, using them in a classic digestive recipe. But the taste was just too different. I then stumbled on linseed and oats which seemed perfect as they added a great nutty taste. However when I added them whole the biscuit was way too rustic. The ground version worked much better, mix in a little malt barley syrup for some malty taste and a couple of chunks of chocolate. And hey presto, I had a chocolate digestive with ‘digestive aiding’ ingredients.

After carefully balancing and mixing together the ingredients to create a delicious (of course it has to taste good, too!) biscuit.  I had to work on the shape and name. Keeping it to the classic round shape I just added a little slit, so you can clip it onto your cup of tea. I tried to be as eco-friendly as possible using organic, local/national or fairtrade produced ingredients where possible.  And being a true Brit the biscuit stands up to multiple tea dunking ! And that folks is how the Designtive was born.

If you fancy tasting them for yourself, come to the Good design sermon next Sunday the 28th. Hope to see you there!

Designtives
© 2009 Rachel Khoo. All rights reserved.
Makes 25

170g wholemeal flour (+ handful extra)
50g ground linseed
50g ground oats
85g golden caster sugar
50g barley malt syrup
115g salted butter, cubed
13 squares of chocolate, cute in half
1 egg

Mix together the flour, linseed, oats and sugar followed by the cubed butter. Create a crumbly/sandy mixture by rubbing the ingredients with your fingers and thumb. Once achieved, add the rest of the ingredients, mix together and form a ball. Flatten, put into a plastic freezer bag and refridgerate for at least 1 hour.

Preheat the oven to 180°c. Dust your work surface with a little flour and roll out the dough to about 5mm thickness. Cut out the biscuits, press half a square of chocolate into the biscuit and place onto a tray with parchment paper. Reform, roll out the leftover dough and cut out more biscuits until you have used the dough up. Refridgerate the biscuits for 30mins before baking them at 180°c for 15-20mins or until golden around the edges and bottom.

After ‘khooking’ up a storm for the past several years in Paris I went back to my London roots with a mouth-watering “mash up” meal on

The unique dinner showcased a range of tasty ideas using food, music and the arts as forms of expression. For this scrumptious supper, I combined far Eastern flavours from PikPikZoo, Hong Kong based illustrators with a hint of more local flavour in the form of a musical mash up by Joseph Seresin.

Of course, I added my own creative touch to the 6-course dinner (paired with wine). Click here for menu.

The festive feast took place at the private dinner club The Loft.

The Loft is a private supper club and personal test kitchen of Nuno Mendes, one of London’s innovative & revolutionary chefs (El Bulli trained & previous head chef of Bacchus, London). He will be opening his next restaurant, Viajante at the Bethnal Green Town Hall in 2010.

Joseph Seresin runs by day a bespoke creative studio whose ethos is to provide a tailored solution to your project with a range of creative services encompassing anything from brand identity through to one-off illustrated pieces. At night however he is known to put his creative talents to spinning tasty tunes in hip places from London to Ibiza.

PikPik Zoo are Hong Kong based design duo Zoe Lydia and Miss Kate. Touring the world (New York, London, Paris, Stockholm & Hong Kong) with their PikPik Panda character they’ve been spreading their philosophy of we care, we share.

If you are on a picture and you want it to be removed, please send me an email.

Photos from event taken by Bronia Stewart.

I whipped these little delights for a girlie teatime. Chewy, buttery  with sweet confit cherries and crunchy almonds. They went down a treat. The recipe is the one I used when baking industrial quantities at Autostadt last December, although they were made chocolate chips. Similar to Anzac biscuits but using a brown/white sugar combination instead of golden syrup. It was the only sweet thing I felt like eating. Straight out of the oven with a cup of tea or a glass of milk. Super yum!

Confit cherry & almond cookies

125g caster sugar
125g brown sugar
250g butter
325g oats
100g flour
1 tbsp baking powder
2 eggs
100g blanched almonds, chopped
100g confit/glacé cherries, chopped
1 tsp vanilla essence

Preheat the oven 170°c. Cream the sugars, vanilla essence and butter together. In a second bowl mix together oats, baking powder and flour together. Add the chopped almonds and cherries and mix. Combine the two mixtures together and add the eggs. Mix together until you have a cookie dough. Drop a generous tablespoon of dough on a greased or baking paper lined tray. Leaving at least a good couple centimentres space between cookies. Bake for 20 minutes (maybe a little longer if the cookies are bigger). Leave to cool for 5 minutes before serving.

Alternatively you can just bake a couple and then keep the cookie dough in the fridge. Use within the next couple of days. Or you form the dough into cookies. Freeze and then bake when you want to (baking time will be longer however).

It’s coming up to that dreaded time of the year, no not Friday 13th (although I won’t be walking under any ladders tomorrow) February 14th. Red roses, boxed chocolate, sickly sweet cards, restaurants putting on a special “valentines menu”…Makes me want to do that teenagery fingers in throat gesture. Unlike the past years where I’ve made something for you romantic folk out there this year I thought it was time to BIG UP all those singles. Why shouldn’t all the bachelors and bachelorettes celebrate too? So I came up with some tastelicious Blingscuits. The idea is to make a super-crazy-sweet-packed-Gangsta-stylee medallion (think Run dmc) and show off to the world (the idea is not to be subtle here) that you’re fablicious! Alternatively if you are with the classic folk and you need a valentine’s idea, you can write a sweet (or naughty one too) message on the blingscuit. The biscuits contain fresh ginger which is known to be an aphrodisiac and a whole ton of sugar which will make any sleepy head turn into a raving casanova.

Special thanks to my lovely model Frankie. Just definetly knows how to strike some gangsta poses

Blingscuits

125g unsalted butter
20g brown sugar
4 tbsp golden syrup
4 tbsp treacle
325g plain flour
300g wholemeal flour
1 tsp baking powder
30g fresh grated ginger
1 tsp mixed ground spice
Writing Icing (optional) or icing sugar & food colouring
Selection of different sweets

Chain (I buy mine at the hardware store)
Binder rings
Ribbon

Preheat the oven to 170°c. Line baking trays with baking parchment. Melt the butter, sugar and syrup in a medium saucepan, stirring occasionally, then remove from the heat.

Sieve the flour, baking powder and ginger into a bowl and stir the melted ingredients into the dry ingredients to make a stiff dough.

Turn out onto a lightly floured surface and roll to a thickness of about 5mm. Use a small plate as a template and run a knife around the edge. Cut out a hole at the top for threading the chain/ribbon through. Bake for 30 minutes.

Remove from the oven. When completely cool, decorate with the icing and sweets. Use a thick icing to stick the sweets on. Leave for at least 4 hours to dry. The gingerbread biscuits can be stored in an airtight container for up to two weeks.

I’m away, so I’ve dug out some previous Christmas posts to get people into the spirit

So Christmas is only a week a way and everybody is frantically doing their Christmas shopping. Well I was baking like a maniac. Maybe not as much as my aunts in Austria. It’s a Christmas tradition to bake lots of biscuits for the holiday season and they bake tons, yes I’m really not exaggerating. My studio resembled a mini biscuit factory.
An all time classic for Christmas is ‘Spitzbuben’. You won’t find a biscuit tin in Austria without them. Simple vanilla biscuit with strawberry or raspberry jam.

Spitzbuben

For 100 pieces :

500g plain flour
250g caster sugar
250g soft butter
3 eggs
2 packets of vanilla sugar
300g strawberry/raspberry jam
Icing sugar for dusting

Biscuit cutter and a piping nozzle to cut out the holes in the tops.

Make the dough by putting flour, sugar, butter and eggs all in mixer. Knead until it’s a smooth. Flatten into a round disc, wrap and chill for 1 hour.
Preheat oven to 200°c. Roll out dough to about knife edge thickness. Stamp out an even amount of biscuits with holes (for the top) and ones without holes. Bake for 10 minutes or until golden brown around the edges. Cool. Stir jam to get rid of lumps. If you have a plastic piping bag, pour jam into bag and pipe a blob of jam on each bottom biscuit. Place the ‘hole biscuit’ on top. Dust with icing sugar. EAT.

Here’s another christmassy biscuit…

This time last year my tiny studio turned into a mini biscuit factory. Like my aunts in Austria who bake tons of Christmas biscuits every year I like to carry on the tradition (maybe not as well and in smaller quantities). Unfortunately this year I just haven’t had the time to bake as much (slightly due to the fact that I’ve been baking about 500 biscuits a week at La Cocotte recently) so I came up with this easy but just as delicious recipe.

If you’re having problems finding a gift (or you fancy treating yourself) why not buy some Menu for Hope raffle tickets…you could be in for a chance of winning some once in a life time prizes. And at the same time you’ld be doing something great for the people in Lesotho.

I just want to say THANK YOU to all my readers. Your visits and comments are greatly appreciated (to say the least). I hope you all have a lovely Christmas and munch through lots of delicious dishes. I’ll be tucking into some mince pies and no doubt plenty of other scrummy English things when I get back to the UK.

Chocolate & cinnamon cantucci

240g flour
30g cocoa powder
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
165g sugar
100g dark chocolate, chopped in large chunks
100g hazelnuts
3 eggs
1 1/2 tsp cinnamon

Preheat the oven to 160°c. Sieve together flour, cocoa, baking powder and cinnamon. Whisk together eggs and sugar until foamy, add nuts and chopped chocolate followed by flour mixture. Combine, at the end you may need to knead the ingredients together. Divide dough into two parts. Roll each into a log shape. Bake for 35 minutes. Leave to cool and then cut into 5mm slices. Bake again at 160°c for about 15 minutes or until crispy.