Raspberry Cream Powder Puffs

I’ve really been wanting to make jam tarts. I gave it a go earlier this year with pretty average results. Now on that particular occasion I should have taken it as an omen as I made them for a picnic at the moonlight cinema where on the night we went we got drenched by rain.

Given the failure with my first go at baking jam tarts it’s taken me a while to get up the courage again, but when I saw the theme for this month’s Sweet Adventures blog hop was high tea I thought yes, I small conquer jam tarts. But alas it was not meant to be, as while I was flicking through cookbooks looking for recipes I came across a recipe for mulberry cream powder puffs (or are they sponge kisses?), Mulberries are in season at the moment and dotted all round my neighbourhood are mulberry bushes hanging over front fences laden with fruit. I’ll admit I’ve sampled some of the mulberries hanging over fences but in this case didn’t actually have any. While it crossed my mind to go mulberry picking I thought I might look a bit odd wandering around the neighbourhood stealthy picking mulberries. So I decided to make these powder puffs with raspberries instead as I had some in the freezer.

They were amazing, very high tea worthy, light, delicate, pretty and delicious.

Raspberry Cream Powder Puffs –  recipe adapted from the Australian Women’s Weekly Baking Day

2 eggs

1/2 cup sugar

2 tbls cornflour

2 tbls plain flour

2 tbls self raising flour

1/2 cup cream

1 tbls icing sugar

1/2 cup of raspberries (or berries of choice)

Preheat oven to 180 degrees. Grease two 12 hole shallow patty pans

Beat eggs and sugar until thick pale and creamy.

Triple sift flours then add the egg mixture. Carefully fold in flour. Don’t be to gung ho or else you’ll knock the air out of the mixture.

Drop tablespoons of mixture on to patty pan holes.

Bake 12 mins. Once done turn onto cooling rack.

If like me you only had 1 shallow patty tin you’ll need to wash it, dry it re grease it and bake the second batch.

Once the powder puffs are cool, whip the cream and icing sugar together until soft peaks form. Gently fold in raspberries. If using frozen berries which you have defrosted be really gently otherwise they’ll fall apart if you are too rough mixing them in.

Sandwich 2 powder puffs together with raspberry cream, repeat with other. Dust with icing sugar.

Make a cup of tea to go with them, hide form children and enjoy

Part of the Sweet Adventures Blog Hop – High Tea host by Le Delicieux

Biscuits – roll them out, cut them up into shapes kind

Right it’s the second week of school holidays here.

I’ve been lucky enough to have had time off from work these holidays so I’ve been with the kids every day of the holidays. It’s been lovely to spend time with the kids, but when you’re peppered by chorus of I’m bored, what can I do, plus add one autistic child thrown out of routine into the mix and the 2 weeks can seem long time.

So in order to combat the boredom these holidays we’ve been making the most of this lovely spring bordering on summer weather and doing lots of outside stuff. We’ve been hiking to see waterfalls and as a bonus saw koalas, been on waterslides, been to the beach, gardened together, had picnics, visited play grounds. But we’ve also had some indoor time too doing arts and crafts and cooking in the kitchen. We’ve made butter from scratch, baked cakes and made biscuits. I made these at the kids request as they wanted a biscuit they could write their names with. So I pulled out my stock standard rollout and cut up shapes biscuit recipe and out came our newly acquired alphabet biscuit cutters and we made biscuits.

I love the smell of butter and vanilla and all the ingrediants created a very tasty dough.

Roll out, cut out biscuits – recipe adapted from Nigella Lawson How to be a Domestic Goddess

175g butter at room temp

200g caster sugar

2 large eggs

1 tsp vanilla extract

400g flour

1 tsp baking powder

Cream butter and sugar together until pale and creamy.

Beat in eggs one at a time then beat in vanilla

Mix together flour and baking powder and add into wet ingredients. Mix until dough starts to form. I usually tip it out onto a kitchen bench while it’s almost a bit crumbly and then shape into 2 discs. wraps each disc in cling wrap and place in fridge for at least 1 hour.

Preheat oven to 180 degrees

Once chilled its ready to roll out. I roll mine out between 2 lightly floured pieces of baking paper and roll till about 1/2 cm thick. cut out into desired shapes using biscuit cutters. left over dough can be reworked together and rolled out again.

Place shapes on baking paper lined tray and bake for approx 10-15 mins, or until lightly browned. leave to cool on trays for about 5 mins before moving to a cooling rack.