Apple caramel tart

Delish dinner party recipe - caramel and apple tart with a shortcrust pastry base. Oh my Lord, how absolutely wonderful! We had some friends over for dinner on the weekend and I served this up for dessert. Neither of our friends had ever eaten caramel or Dulce de Leche before, and the looks on their faces when they tasted this was priceless.

I picked up a very large jar of Dulce de Leche earlier in the day at a Mexican food store just up the street, so I had plenty of caramel to make this. If you have never tried Dulce de Leche, do yourself a favour and get some. It is so delicious and addictive. It is basically vanilla-flavoured caramel, just like the caramel you get from boiling condensed milk in the can for a few hours.

Donna Hay's dark chocolate and coconut cheesecakes

Donna Hay strikes again. Here are her dark chocolate and coconut cheesecakes from the April May 2013 magazine. Just slightly divine I must say. Visit Donna Hay's website for lots more beautiful recipes.

I made these cheesecakes in mini and medium size, using mini muffin and traditional muffin tins for the bases. The mini size were great for a quick bite, the medium-sized great as a special dessert for our family.

Salmon and potato cakes

Lunch, snack or dinner idea today. These salmon cakes were baked in the oven, basically because I was a bit pressed for time and didn't want the mess of crumbing. Although oven-baking the cakes doesn't give you the crispy coating that crumbing would, at a guess I'd say there would be much less fat as there is no shallow-frying in oil or butter.

Eggs Benedict

This recipe is for my friend - he who went to London recently, ate Eggs Benedict and fell in love with it, but cannot find a cafe that serves it in Vienna.

Cherry tomato and goat's cheese tart tatin

Aaawww, look that this little tomato tart. Isn't it so pretty! The colours are so vibrant. I enjoy food that looks good, as well as tastes great. I am definitely a person who eats with my eyes, as well as my mouth. If a meal doesn't look so good, or isn't presented well, then for me, it is not going to taste as good as it could.

Roasted pumpkin, eschalot and tomato tart

Dear someone. I am hungry; please cook this for me now. Love me.

Grilled chicken, haloumi and zucchini salad

I just uploaded this picture, and it makes me want to cook this dish right now and eat it. Maybe I'll make it for lunch.

I made this for the man-of-the-house and myself for our evening meal a few nights ago. Luckily I happened to have lots of yummy ingredients in the fridge and pantry that I was able to combine in this salad, such as haloumi cheese, olives and ripe avocado - three of my very favourite foods to eat. 

I think maybe I had a hankering to eat something green; sometimes that happens to me, I just need to sit and eat a large bowl of salad. Maybe it is my body's way of getting the vitamins and minerals I need. Either way, this salad hit to spot. I added in some fresh peppermint and basil and made a lemony dressing really add some 'zing' to the flavours. Very, very tasty indeed.

Lemon curd and raspberry brioche pudding

Ok, serious dessert business here people. An absolute delight to eat, and not too difficult to make. I whipped this up while I had guests sitting at the table. It took about 10 minutes to put together, then 30 minutes in the oven. I served the dish to the table and everyone helped themselves with a good splodge of mascarpone. There were seconds eaten....speaks for itself really!

Toasted waffles with custard berry cream pots

This is a complete cheat's dessert. Pick up a few ingredients from the shop and you can whip this up in about five minutes. The only 'cooking' required is the toasting of the waffles in the toaster. The rest is just 'placement' of the ingredients. But, it still looks very pretty and of course, tastes good.

You could easily make the custard berry cream pots a few hours before and store in the fridge until you are ready to serve. I think this would be a great dessert for a dinner party - it is visually stunning, but doesn't take too much effort. The perfect recipe for when you want to sit with your guests not be in the kitchen all evening.

Morrocan braised beef and pears

I picked up a jar of Moroccan spice mix at a shop recently. I had to go to another country to get it, but it was only an hour away - did I tell you how much I love living in Europe? 

Being in another country in an hour - how remarkable!

I was rather excited about this little jar of spices - paprika, rose petals, coriander seeds, garlic, chilli, pepper, mint, all beautiful spices. The smell alone takes me to a special place and evokes wonderful memories of a little Morrocan cafe we used to visit when we lived inner-city in Brisbane, Australia. A long time ago, before children even. Tagines, yoghurt, lamb dishes perfectly cooked with tasty fruit-based sauces. In my opinion, the Moroccans are responsible for some of the tastiest food on the planet. 

Back to the food. My first outing with the newly-acquired spice jar was the following recipe. A lovely braised beef dish with pears and Moroccan spices. Now, beef with pears might sound a bit strange, but I wanted the dish to be a little sweet and I had some rather sad looking pears in the fruit bowl that had been bashed about in my shopping trolley. They were ripe, sweet and perfectly edible, but had a few brown spots, so the children were a bit turned off. So into the cooking pot they went. Of course the pears disintegrated to make a lovely sauce, but the lovely sweet flavour permeated the beef and made from the usual tomato-based sauces that sometimes I get a bit bored with.

This is a dish for a cool Autumn weekend afternoon. You'll need at least three hours for the cooking time so that the beef is melt-in-the-mouth. And your neighbours will be jealous as you will  have some delicious aromas coming from your house.

I suggest you open a bottle of red wine  to help you pass the time - just for the pure please of it.

Pumpkin and feta strudel

Living in Austria, of course strudel is on many restaurant menus - the traditional apple, the less common berry and sometimes 'topfen' which is like a local cottage cheese. Even though the strudel originated next door in Hungary, the Austrians have adopted this as the national food. Certainly if you come to Vienna, you must try one, with lots of fresh cream and maybe even a rum hot chocolate in the winter.

I made this vegetable version of a strudel, using in-season pumpkin and feta cheese. This was a tasty side dish for our grilled steaks. The leftovers kept well for lunch the next day.

Zucchini, carrot and pine nut salad with a tangy dressing

I've met quite a few people who have a pathological aversion
to zucchini/courgette - the man of the house being one of these. Usually this is because their mothers or grandmothers served it up as a boiled, over-cooked mush when they were young.

Boiled zucchini is not an appetising dish, no matter how you might flavour it.

If you want your family to eat zucchini, try this recipe out. It is fresh, crunchy and tastes really good. Serve as an accompaniment to grilled meat, fish or as a side dish with pasta.

Bill Granger's braised pork meatballs

This recipe comes from Bill Granger's latest book 'Bill's Italian Food' published by HarperCollins. It also featured in the August 2013 edition of delicious magazine.

I like Bill Granger, or rather his cooking; relatively simple food that tastes and looks great. And he seems to have a wonderful life of travelling around to different countries, immersing himself with the local cuisine and writing cooking books about his (and his family's) experiences. How cool would that be? My dream job I think.

I have spoken before of my love of meatballs. They are high on my list of easy comfort food, popular with big and little people, tasty and relatively healthy. I would cook some sort of meatball at least once a week. I like Italian style with a tomato-based sauce, or chicken meatballs in an Asian-style soup, or Turkish-style lamb meatballs with yogurt and lots of herbs. The possibilities are endless really.

Baked, stuffed mushrooms

Inspiration struck when I saw these beautiful grilling mushrooms at my local fruit and vegetable shop. I had to have them! Mushroom desire perhaps? Clearly I needed some protein, or perhaps it was just that I really like mushrooms.

Anyway, into the basket they went along with some feta cheese, prosciutto and some fresh herbs.

We had these as a starter and I served the leftover filling mixture on the side, so not to waste it. It was a very tasty little morsel.

You could also make these for a dinner party or as party food, although you may need to let them cool a bit before serving to your guests as finger food.

Super-easy, cheesy sausage rolls

Three ingredient snack food recipe coming up.

Gather ready-made puff pastry, sausages and some grated cheese from your nearest grocery store and turn it into these sausage rolls.

Five minutes preparation time, 15 minutes cooking time and you have a 'homemade', filling and tasty snack or lunch if served with salad or vegetables.

These sausage rolls are totally kid-friendly and could be served at a party or as 'in front of the TV' snacks during the football.

Flourless orange cake

I'm thinking of the best way to describe this cake. 'Moist' is probably the first adjective that comes to mind, 'citrussy' is another, and perhaps 'morish'. This is a really lovely cake to add to your repertoire. It is easy to make, is gluten-free, tastes so wonderful, and is superb to take along as a contribution to morning or afternoon tea.

It is a little extra time and effort to make the syrup that accompanies this cake, but it is worth it. It gives the cake that extra dimension and turns it into something really special.

Serve warm with some mascarpone and a drizzle of the syrup and a hot cup of coffee for a wonderful treat.

With thanks to our friends the Hofmanns for providing the beautiful lake setting for afternoon tea.

Jam Drops

I like a good bikkie on occasion, especially with a cup of tea. A bikkie with a good dollop of sweet jam in the middle rates right up there.

I made these jam drops to take to a BBQ we were invited to. It was something a bit different than turning up with a cake or a bottle of wine. And the day of the BBQ was extremely hot, so bikkies went down a treat.

Luckily for me, I was given six jars of homemade jam recently. So I was able to use this jam in the middle of my jam drops - thanks Melanie for the jam. I put it to good use.

Layered Rainbow Cake

This pretty creation was my daughter's birthday party cake from this year. Isn't it so beautiful!

She saw this cake on the front of the April edition of BBC Good Food Magazine and wanted me to make it for our Easter celebration cake, but I wimped out and make a chocolate cake instead. 

But I couldn't deny her request for this year's birthday.

Yes, it is a bit of a fiddle and yes, it took me a whole day to complete, but the gasps of delight of my daughter and her friends (and me) when we cut it open at the party made it well worth while.

I went with a pastel colour scheme for the cake. Some other examples of this type of cake I've seen are almost 'radioactive' looking the colours are so bright. I wanted something a bit more subtle, with less colouring and I think it turned out really well.

The mascarpone icing was wonderful. It was lovely, thick and sweet and complemented the squidgy cake wonderfully.

I followed the recipe from BBC Good Food to the letter. It was easy and the sponges were moist and springy. As this was not my original recipe, I will not reproduce it here. If you'd like to make this cake, click here for the recipe.

Chocolate caramel coconut slice

Behold this morsel of sweet goodness!

It contains some of my favourite ingredients - chocolate, caramel and coconut. Combined together, these ingredients make this divine little slice.

My lovely daughter requested a batch of this slice as a birthday treat. She also helped with the making and baking, which was fun, as we were able to lick our sweet, sticky fingers afterwards.

Word of warning - this slice is very sweet, so you only need a very small square to satisfy. A 2cm square is plenty, and will ensure that the slice stretches far.

Banana, raspberry and coconut bread

Quick recipe for banana, raspberry and coconut bread.

Desserts and cakes using banana are rare here is Austria. Most probably because the banana is a tropical fruit and there weren't many around when the traditional cake recipes were devised.

I sometimes get an interesting reaction from people when I bring banana muffins or a banana cake to morning tea. As was the case when I handed over this banana, raspberry and coconut bread to my host for as my contribution to afternoon tea by the lake.

But it went down a treat with all the hungry swimmers and I had to leave the leftovers there so the host could eat it for breakfast the next day! 
So it must have been alright.
Great with a cup of tea or coffee, or have it for breakfast - you could even toast it! The bread had the tang of the raspberries and the moistness of the coconut and banana. I also added cinnamon and nutmeg for a subtle hint of spiciness. Add some cold butter for a nice treat.

Scotch eggs

I've never made scotch eggs before, but I have always wanted to try. I think these crumbed balls, with the bright yellow yolks in the middle look so pretty. Just like a little surprise package.

We were recently invited for a swim at a friend's house and I offered to bring the an antipasti platter for the evening meal. I made these eggs as a part of the platter. I made extra so we could also try them at home, served with a simple green salad for a light dinner in the hot weather. The little people thought they were really great and even helped me making them, which was a nice activity for us all.

You have to invest a little bit of time to make these eggs, as there are a few steps, and chilling in between, but I think it was worth the effort.

These would be an excellent addition to your next picnic. The eggs would travel well in a sealed container and would be great with some cheese and a little chutney. Yum!

Meatloaf

This is a 'feed a crowd' dish. And there's not too much effort involved. The oven does most of the work for you. 

I think you could make this meatloaf after work and have on the table in an hour. Or make it the night before and heat slowly in the oven the next night. Or make a double batch and freeze one uncooked meatloaf for cooking later. 

In our house it is definitely a crowd pleaser, for the young and the not-so-young.

I served the meatloaf with warmed sauerkraut. If you don't like sauerkraut, a simple mashed potato compliments the meatloaf just as well.

No bake caramel tart

This picture is fairly self-explanatory. This is heaven on a plate - that is all!

Ok, maybe a bit more explanation is needed is you'd like to sample the above bit of heaven.

I had a hankering for something sweet last night. The above is what I came up with after looking through the panty and the fridge. There are three ingredients used here - oat biscuits, mascarpone and dulce de leche caramel. No baking or cooking, just a bit of spooning and layering! I think it turned out rather well.

As a bit of background, my Mum makes the most amazing caramel tart. She always uses boiled canned condensed milk as her caramel, which for me is almost the most delicious thing in the world. It's a bit of a fiddle to boil the condensed milk, so, a few weeks ago when I walked past a Mexican grocery shop and saw they had 'dulce de leche' caramel in the window, I got a little excited. So in I popped and grabbed a few jars.

If you've never had dulce de leche, you need to try it. It is divine - a thick, sweet, vanilla-flavoured, proper caramel. I give a warning here - it is edible from the spoon. And I think it is nothing like that awful product sold in supermarkets that claims to be caramel - yuk. 

So, this little dessert was made up in 5 minutes and devoured by me soon after that. I loved the crunch of the biscuits, the sweetness of the caramel and the luscious cream. For me, it was the perfect combination and it really sorted out my sweet craving.

You can't make this in advance, it is assemble and eat immediately. Enjoy in moderation!

Eggplant and goat's cheese stack

Yes, I have a thing for eggplant. And yes, I have a real thing for goat's cheese. Combine them and I'm happy as a pig in you-know-what.

Look at this little stack of eggplant and goat's cheese. Isn't it pretty!

I used a variegated eggplant (white and purple stripes) so there was a little bit of extra colour, but the flavour was the same as a 'normal' purple eggplant. I made a tomato chilli jam to go onto the top, which was a little spicy, but really jazzed up the flavours of the other ingredients.

We had this with a grilled chicken breast and some salad. It was tasty and filling.

You could make this for a dinner party entree. I think it could be a real show-stopper when you bring it to the table. You could pre-grill the eggplant and keep it warm and also make the chilli jam beforehand, so this would be easy to quickly assemble.

Donna Hay's sweet potato wrapped in speck

Look at these little beauties. When I saw this recipe in the latest Donna Hay magazine (pp 123 Jun/July 2013 issue)  I knew I had to make it straight away. What a simple idea, but really wonderful.

If you can't buy speck (a type of prosciutto made from pork shoulder) use prosciutto.

Once cooked, the sweet potato becomes squishy and sweet, while the speck becomes crispy and imparts its salty flavour into the potato.

Great as a side dish served with chicken, beef or lamb. Or you could just make up a huge tray of these for a bbq or yummy finger food.

Braised pork with potatoes and fennel

When I was small, the smell of fresh fennel was highly disagreeable to me.

Actually, I still find the smell of the green, ferny bits of the fennel very overpowering. I think it must be the aniseed smell, not my favourite at all.

However, I always looked at recipes that used fennel and thought that it must be alright as people seem to eat it and like it.

I have had a conversion to fennel in the last few years. You may say I have seen the 'fennel light'. I now really like the fresh, crunchy, almost sweet flavour of this vegetable. I have been known to make a huge bowl of finely sliced fennel with a lemon dressing and gobble this up for lunch!

I have not done much 'cooking' with fennel, preferring to have it raw in salads etc, but in the colder weather of a few weeks back, I threw some fennel into the baking dish when I made this roasted pork shoulder. The result was lovely. The roast fennel became quite sweet, and the texture was lovely and soft, similar to roasted celery. And the juices from the fennel permeated the potatoes and the jus for the meat.

The little people ate it, which I was pleased about, although one asked, "Mum, what is this?"
To which I replied," It's fennel and it's great, eat it up." Can argue with that, can you!

Fresh peach, rocket and goat's cheese salad

It's high season for stone fruit at the moment. Peaches, plums, nectarines and cherries are in abundance.

It is a novelty for me to have these fruits in the middle of the year. In Australia, the stone fruit season is at Christmas time. When the first plums and cherries hit the shelves of the supermarket, you know that Christmas is not far away.

Walking into a fruit shop in summer in Australia, you are hit with the wonderful smell of ripe stone fruits and mangoes. And a Christmas lunch table in our house usually has a large bowl of yummy ripe stone fruit.

But in Austria, stone fruit heralds the start of the warmer weather; although this year it did take a little longer than usual for things to warm up.

Spring here brings the beautiful blooms of the soon-to-be fruit. It's almost as if the trees burst with happiness after the long, cold winter and say, 'soon you'll be warm and able to eat fresh fruit again!" The white and pale pink blossoms are one of my favourite things about spring here. Where we live in Australia we don't really have spring, so it is nice to experience it here.

Here is a simple salad recipe using ripe peaches, although nectarines would work equally well. A word of warning though, don't use really-ripe or over-ripe peaches for this recipe, as they will turn to mush when you try to remove the seed. Use fruit that is just soft.

Haloumi, avocado and lemon salad

Quite a few salads have been made in my kitchen lately.

Perhaps I am trying to encourage the weather to turn more 'summer-like' as we've had a lot of rain, wind and generally depressing 'Autumn-like' conditions for the past month.

This Haloumi salad is packed with lots of texture and strongly-flavoured ingredients. Instead of just squeezing some lemon juice over the top, I peeled the lemon, removed the seeds, sliced finely and then added this as an ingredient to the salad. If you think this may be too strong for you, just juice the lemon instead of using the flesh. And because the lemon flesh is in the salad, I only dressed this salad with olive oil and some salt and pepper. That's it.

Again, there's lots of texture here; the chewy and crunchy Haloumi, the squishy avocado, the tart lemon flesh and the fragrant fresh mint. I really liked this combination. And it is so 'summery' and pretty to look at too.

Serve as a side dish to roast chicken or seafood.

Falafel, lentil and celery salad

Quick and crunchy salad - chock full of texture and taste. This took 10 minutes to throw together. We had it with some simply-grilled pork steaks.

I love crunch and texture in food, especially in salads. The celery in this salad is super-crunchy, then there's the chewy falafel and the squishy lentils and ripe tomatoes.



I made a dressing with red wine vinegar, just because I really like it, but I think it really brings out the flavours of other ingredients. If you don't like the tartness of this type of vinegar, use plain white vinegar or cider vinegar, or add a little water to the dressing to reduce the tartness. Some lemon juice and olive oil would be good as a dressing too. This salad would also be great with some fresh parsley tossed through.

One pot Asian-poached chicken

I cooked this tasty poached chicken dish in one pot. No really, just one pot. 

I made the poaching liquid for the chicken, and as it was so tasty, I thought I'd throw the noodles into the pot to cook as well. Instead of being cooked in plain boiling water, the noodles took on the delicious flavour of the chicken and other poaching ingredients. The broccoli, I placed on the top of the chicken to steam towards the end of the cooking process. 

And there you have it, my one-pot poached chicken. I have written previously about the wonderful texture of poached chicken. I won't go on about it again, but if you've never tried to cook a chicken breast like this, give it a try.

Asian noodle salad

This Asian-flavoured noodle salad is perfect for a bbq or for when friends come over.        

You can make it in advance, even the night before, and it will stay fresh, and then it's just a bit of dressing at the end to finish it.

I like the slippery noodles and the other crunchy ingredients and of course the salty, sweet dressing. Yum!

I served this salad with some oven-baked pork belly pieces. The salad was a nice contrast of fresh flavours to the strongly-flavoured meat.

You could shred some cooked chicken or duck breast into this or even some cooked prawns, which I think would be really good. Or just serve it by itself if you prefer, but definitely with a cold beer.

Pork, scallop and asparagus stirfry

Thanks to my father-in-law, I've discovered a new ingredient - mung bean noodles. Also called cellophane noodles, mung bean threads or glass noodles, these noodles maintain their shape once cooked, are chewy and don't go mushy like rice noodles.

These noodles don't have any real flavour, so it's best to serve them with something tasty like this pork, scallop and asparagus stirfry.

Mung bean noodles take about 10 minutes to cook and are gluten free, if gluten is a problem for you. Use them in place of rice or pasta.

Pulled pork with oven-baked sauerkraut

I'm looking at this photo thinking 'it doesn't look like a very appetizing dish.' It might not look like much, but this was so tasty and satisfying.

This recipe is one for a chilly night, when you want some comfort-type food to warm you up.

The pork was juicy and the oven-baked sauerkraut, for me was almost heavenly. It was soft and delicious as it had absorbed all the juices from the pork, as well as the wine and stock.

This is my kind of comfort food!

Serve with some steamed broccoli or French beans.

Chicken and vegetable tray bake

This simple one-tray bake is a quick and easy family meal. It takes about 50 minutes to prepare and cook.
And you only use one tray for the cooking, so it also saves on the washing-up.

The juices of the ingredients combine to make to make a tasty sauce that you can spoon over the dish. And you can easily substitute your favourite vegetables or whatever veges are in the fridge into this dish too. For example, throw in some baby carrots, olives, capsicum, chunks of sweet potato or parsnip.

The trick to this dish is to place the ingredients that take longest to cook - such as the chicken and potatoes -  in first, so they have the longest cooking time. And then add the ingredients that take less time as you go along - such as the mushrooms and tomatoes. That way, all your ingredients will be perfectly cooked and ready to serve at the end of the cooking time.

Moroccan-spiced chickpeas, carrots and apricots

Here is a lovely, spicy dish or chickpeas, carrots and apricots. You could eat this dish by itself with some rice or fresh pita bread. Or serve it as a side dish with pork or chicken. Either way, the sweet, slightly tart apricots break down a little once cooked, and combined with the tomatoes, coat the other ingredients and make a wonderful, tasty sauce. The carrot pieces hold their shape, as do the chickpeas. And the pine nuts provide a nice crunch.  

This dish is spicy. If you don't like spicy food, or you are cooking for children, leave out the chilli.

Baked Cherry Ripe chocolate cheesecake

As the saying goes, you don't miss something (or someone) until it's gone. In my case, what I miss is Cadbury's Cherry Ripe chocolate bars, which are not sold in Austria. Cherry Ripes are my favourite ever chocolate bars. The combination of dark chocolate, cherries and coconut is so, so good. 

I have been relying on family and friends to 'import' these chocolate bars in their suitcases for my husband and I or to send them via post, which is ridiculously expensive.  

My father-in-law arrived a few weeks ago for a holiday and he bought a WHOLE box of Cherry Ripes - 40 or so bars of choc-cherry heaven! In honour of this event, I decided to splash out and make something featuring Cherry Ripes. And so the baked Cherry Ripe chocolate cheesecake was born.

This cheesecake is rather amazing, if I do say so myself. My desire was to have a cake with a strong Cherry Ripe flavour and texture, so I didn't melt the bars, I just chopped them roughly. When eating this cake, you really get to taste the delicious chocolate bars. 

Naturally, this is a very rich cake; you only need a very small slice, so it will go a very long way if you make it for a crowd. I'd estimate that you could slice this into 16 pieces.

Enough waffling on from me, here's the recipe. Make it, it's wonderful.

Eggplant parmigiana bake

For my family, this was a lovely spring meal, even for the non-eggplant liking person among us (no names will be mentioned!). 

Once cooked, the eggplant becomes so soft and squishy. And the juices, combined with the tomato sauce and bechamel sauce is very tasty. For something different, I sprinkled the top with cheese combined with hazelnut meal, instead of breadcrumbs. The taste of the hazelnuts gave a bit of nutty sweetness to the dish, which I really liked. I grilled the top a little to make the cheese/hazelnut mix crunchy.

This dish would freeze very well, either cooked or uncooked. You could make a double batch, and freeze one for later. 

I think this eggplant parmigiana  makes a lovely, tasty meal. Serve it with a fresh garden salad and some crusty bread to mop us the lovely sauce.

Sticky lemongrass and lime chicken

This chicken and its marinade are a little addictive. The sticky, salty and spicy ingredients taste so fantastic together. Don't waste any of the marinade. Reduce it over low heat in a small saucepan to make a heavenly sauce for your chicken at the table.

How to use up your Easter chocolate

Chocolate, chocolate everywhere!

If your house is anything like mine, you'll have lots of chocolate floating around in cupboards, the fridge, bags, boxes and at the back of the pantry at the moment.

The mind boggles at how it all gets eaten every year!

I think some people just throw it away as they cannot think what useful thing could be done with it all. Or it sits in the door of the fridge and goes all hard, white and awful. What a waste!

My solution - cook with it! I've got loads of recipes that use chocolate.

You can use Easter egg chocolate to cook with, just melt it down as you would regular cooking chocolate.

So, if you'd like to use up all that chocolate laying around your house, try some of the following recipes.

• Nigella's Easter Egg Nest cake
• Donna Hay's baked chocolate custards
• Torta Caprese al Limone (white chocolate)
• Hazelnut, raspberry and dark chocolate muffins
• Chocolate mousse
• Dark chocolate, walnut and cranberry brownies
• Italian chocolate mousse cake
• Toblerone and coffee semifreddo
• Chocolate-layered celebration cake

Nigella's Easter Egg Nest Cake

Nigella's Easter Egg Nest Cake. One word - awesome! 

I made this cake as our dessert to have on Easter Sunday with friends. It was easy to make, fun to decorate and I think you'll agree, it looks wonderful.

The cake has three parts, the bottom layer of cake, the chocolate cream filling, and the 'nest' decorations. In her recipe, Nigella says that it's OK if the cake 'falls apart' on the sides, as it's meant to look like a nest, so not perfect. My kind of cake definitely. My cake stayed together quite well, but the sides were crunchy and crumbly, which I think is how it was supposed to be.

This is a flourless cake too, so great for all those eating gluten free. It was very moist, and kept well for three days afterwards (God know's know?) in an airtight container.

Serve with some double cream and a hot cup of espresso. Happy Easter.

Here is Nigella's recipe and method.

Hot Cross Buns

Easter goodies - I'm a bit late I know.

Hot Cross Buns aren't sold in Austria, so if I want to eat them, I've got to make my own. No bother there. They are not too difficult, just a little time consuming with all the rising time. But you can do other things while you wait for the dough to rise.

And, I think there is nothing like the smell of freshly-baked anything in the house.

Most recipes for hot cross buns call for mixed spice to be used. Mixed spice is not sold here either. So I made my own, using cinnamon, chilli powder and black pepper. Sounds weird I know, but it tasted really great and smelled wonderful. There was just a tiny bit of spice and my children ate them without a problem.

If you've never baked hot cross buns, give it a go. But I'd say definitely eat them the day of baking, as they are fresh and soft. If you leave them for a few days, they do become a bit heavy. You can reheat them but there is nothing like fresh baked.

Slather on some butter and eat hot from the oven - bliss!

Creamy leek pastry

I made up the recipe for this pastry rather quickly. Sometimes, dinner time comes and I stand in front of the fridge in a daze with the door open, thinking 'what am I going to cook?'

I needed something as a side dish for a family meal . I had some pastry in the fridge and a leek - not the most inspiring of ingredients. 

I came up with this creamy, leek-filled pastry square, with a little thyme and tomato on top. It was so yummy and received a 'thumbs-up' from the family.

You could add some sliced ham into the leek mixture for some more flavour. 

Or you could half the size of the pastry and make these smaller for a great finger food recipe for a party.

What you'll need

Made four pastry squares, as a side dish to a main meal.

1 piece of puff pastry (40cm x 40cm), cut into four squares (10cm x 10cm)

1 leek, cleaned and white part finely sliced

1 onion, peeled and finely sliced

2 cups milk

1/4 cup plain flour

1 tablespoon butter

Salt and pepper

1 teaspoon dried thyme

2 roma tomatoes, quartered

What to do

Heat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius. Place the pastry squares onto a lined baking tray and into the oven.

Cooked until the squares are puffed up and brown, about 10 minutes. Remove from the oven. While the squares are still puffy, using a spoon, hollow out a hole in the middle of the pastry (use the back of the spoon and just push down).

Now make the filling. Heat a medium saucepan over medium heat. Add the butter. Once melted and bubbling, add the onion and leek. Cook until the leek and onion are soft and translucent. 

Now sprinkle in the flour slowly and stir well until you have a paste. Reduce the heat to low. Slowly add the milk and using a wooden spoon, stir constantly until the sauce starts to thicken. Once the thickening process starts, remove from the heat and keep stirring for a minute or two. Season well. 

Spoon the leek sauce into the middle of the pastry squares until it reaches the top of the pastry. Top with the tomato pieces and sprinkle with a little dried thyme.

Serve immediately. Makes a lovely side dish to grilled meats or lunch with a salad.

Donna Hay's baked chocolate custard

These baked chocolate raspberry custards were luscious and a nice end to a lovely dinner.

The recipe is from Donna Hay. You'll find it here or in her book 'simple dinners.' I think I overcooked my custards a little; the texture was a little more 'cake' than 'custard', but they still tasted wonderful, especially with the tangy raspberries.

Give this recipe a try for dinner parties or for a family dinner. You can make them beforehand, then store in the fridge until needed. You could serve them warm from the oven, or have them cold from the fridge as I did.