White chocolate and lime cookies

Sugar, salt and fat. The unholy food trinity gets a lot of bad press. I think the real question is, when did it become normal to have a sweet treat every day?

Sweet, salty and buttery. The lime saves it all from becoming sickening.

Living with someone (anyone!) usually means my feeding tendencies emerge with a vengeance! My friend Loulou is moving back to Sydney and will be staying with me for a little while. She has a sweet tooth too so that would normally spells double doom. So I’m going to try to keep the baked goods to a minimum. I usually give most of it away but everyone is trying to turn over a new leaf in January so I’m kind of running out of willing recipients.

Spiced cherry and almond cookies

Are you planning edible gifts for Christmas this year? These spicy cherry cookies are a worthy addition to any hamper. The dough is spiced to the hilt, with dried cherries, orange zest and almonds mixed through. These all combine to make your home smell as if I accidentally killed Santa and baked him to hide the evidence.

Use dried cranberries or currants if cherries are hard to track down. They’re not the easiest dried fruit to find in Australia, although I do see it more often closer to Christmas. Resting a day or so before baking produces a superior cookie in flavour and texture. So patience my friend, is required. It helps that I’m never tempted to eat raw biscuit dough. I’m still on a baking break at the moment but figured that you might have plans to bake for the silly season and this recipe is just too good not to share!

Three cheese and spinach tart

Oh yes. A parmesan shortcrust.

I’ve had a bit of a baking overload and need a break. This year I’ve made enough brownies, pies, cookies, boreks, tarts and cakes to make me turn hostile.

This savoury tart is worth making again sometime when I get over this non-baking phase. With parmesan in the shortcrust base and ricotta and feta in the spinach and pinenut filling, it’s a bit of a cheesefest. Nutmeg scents the entire tart, bringing the best out of the cheese and the spinach. To add crunch, I threw in a handful of toasted pinenuts too.

Still need to add the pinenuts and lemon zest

If you don’t have a tart case, don’t worry! Just do it galette style by rolling out the pastry into a large circle on a piece of baking paper. Transfer to a baking sheet to finish the preparation. Pour the filling into the centre, leaving a generous inch of pastry on the edge. Fold up the edges with a wide pleat to overlap part of the filling and then bake as directed. It will probably look more beautiful and rustic. Never feel compelled to buy more kitchenware unless you’ll use it often.

Blood orange curd

Blood oranges are in season here at the moment. I bought these beautiful specimens from my local fruit and vegetable shop. The store closed for good last weekend after operating as a family business for 38 years. It makes me very sad as the Italian owners were quirky and loud and it took less than 10 minutes to walk there via the back streets of my neighourhood.

Blood oranges vary so much in colour and how ‘bloody’ they are.

They stocked some more obscure items too like chestnut puree, dried cod (bacalhau) and chickpea flour as well as your usual fruit and vegetables. Business was too slow in the last 6 months and the owners said they “never ever want to own a fruit and vegetable store again”. Local murmurings are that the space will be renovated to reopen in two months as a cafe/deli.

Pistachio cardamom tart

Ready for the oven, the filling is still very green.

I designated last Saturday as the inaugural Pie Day. The original plan was to bake three kinds of savoury pastries and two sweet varieties. Including myself, there were going to be about eight people hanging out for my pie themed lunch.

But sometimes the gods take pity on me and my overambitious ideas. One by one in the days beforehand, five people pulled out, citing sickness or other sudden commitments. This turned out to be a blessing in disguise so I ended up only making chicken and chestnut pie and served it with mash.

Flourless hazelnut brownies

I seem to know many people that can’t eat dairy or are lactose intolerant. These rich hazelnut brownies have the benefit of being gluten and dairy free but none of the drawbacks with texture and taste.

I challenge anyone to try these and tell me that they’re not as good as ordinary brownies. They’re better.

Lavender shortbread

Recently I was reminded of how fun Transformers are. The toys, not the live action films.

Last Saturday I had lunch with my friends Liz and Treens at a cafe near a park. Afterwards, we sat in Treens’ courtyard and wiled away the hours in the afternoon sun with some beer. Her five year old son Sam jumped around us, showing off his Lego helicopter and Optimus Prime in robot form. Fiddling around trying to shift Optimus Prime back into a truck, I failed miserably.

My brother had the most amazing Transformers collection when we were kids. Make no mistake, it was his collection and not ours. Back then, my dad seemed to buy my brother a new Transformers toy every fortnight. Or at least it felt like that to jealous ol’ me. I couldn’t understand why he kept getting presents for no reason.

My dad’s a bit of a collector; someone who doesn’t like throwing things out, much to my mother’s continuing despair. In hindsight, he was just creating another collection and living vicariously through my brother. I can still recall the look of absolute glee on my dad’s face when he had a new addition for my brother’s collection.

I returned home Saturday evening clutching sprigs of lavender from Treens’ garden. This was combined with grapefruit zest to flavour shortbread. Buttery and crumbly, it’s everything shortbread should be. I was cautious about the lavender but next time would add in up to almost 2 tablespoons. Use only a scant tablespoon if you have dried lavender (making sure it’s pesticide free).

Feeds: 20 people
Start cooking: About 1 hour before eating

Lavender shortbread

• 1 1/2 cups x plain flour
• 220 grams x unsalted butter, softened
• 1/2 cup x golden caster sugar
• 1/2 cup x cornflour (or rice flour)
• 1-2 tablespoons x fresh lavender flowers, picked and lightly chopped
• 2 tablespoons x grapefruit zest (optional)
• Additional caster sugar to sprinkle before baking (optional)

1. Sift the plain flour and cornflour into a bowl.
2. In a separate bowl, cream the butter and sugar together until pale.
3. Stir the lavender and grapefruit zest into the creamed mixture .
4. Then fold through flour mixture. Gently knead the dough on a clean surface until smooth.
5. Separate the dough in half.
6. Shape each half into a log about 5cm (2 inches) in diameter. Wrap each log in baking paper, twisting the ends. Chill in the fridge for 30 minutes.
7. Preheat the oven to 160 C (320 F) and prepare two baking trays with silicon baking mats or baking paper.
8. Unwrap the logs, slice into 1/2 cm rounds and place on the prepared trays. Roll the logs in sugar prior to slicing or just sprinkle the cut rounds with extra caster sugar for additional sweetness and crunch if desired.
9. Bake for 12 minutes or until still pale but just cooked.
10. Rest for 2 minutes before moving to cooling racks.

The grapefruit was a little distracting and it might have been better to keep the flavours separate but it was received well by my work colleagues. They’re getting used to regular batches of baked goodies. It’s too dangerous to keep these things in the house.