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.

Tags: food design, Joseph Seresin, mash up, PikPikZoo, secret, the Loft, underground

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).

Tags: cherry, cookies, oats, Teatime

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.

Tags: anti-valentine, bling bling, fashion, hip hop, singles, valentines

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.

Tags: Christmas

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.

Keep reading…

Tags: Cantucci, Christmas, gifts