Belgian Tart

For our next trick, mum and I decided to tackle one that looked a little safer than the omelette that we attempted last week. It wasn't exactly clear what a Belgian Tart was supposed to be, but given the ingredients it had to be some kind of biscuity thing, right?

I was expecting that we'd be looking at some kind of shortbread, but never having made shortbread, even once we'd made the dough I had no idea if that was on the right track. There was nothing for it but hope that we'd got the mix right, divide the dough in half and slather it in jam. When a recipe calls for 'apricot or raspberry jam' it's going to take something really incredible to make me chose raspberry, and since we had a new jar of extremely promising looking apricot provided by a friend who'd purchased it from Balaclava High School the previous weekend there really wasn't any competition.

So far the recipes have been pretty good at giving us exact amounts, but here we had to take a bit of a guess at what Mrs. W. Broderick of Riverton considered a 'thick layer' of jam, and to skip ahead a little, I can report that our diners were in two minds as to whether or not we'd used enough here, with one commenting that they hadn't even realised that there was any jam at all until right near the end. It's definitely true that the dish was mostly about the pastry, but for my money this amount of jammy goodness was just about right. And it left plenty of jam in the jar to enjoy later, too.

The tart looked extremely satisfying coming out of the oven, though it was a little difficult to lever out of the tin, definitely a case of the cook getting a piece that looked a little more mangled than everybody else's. I really have to remember to utilise baking paper one of these weeks. The pastry smelt divine and turned out more like a crumbly pie crust than a biscuit, and fell apart in the mouth very nicely. It definitely benefited from being served hot from the oven (not least because hot slivered almonds are just *mwah*), and I suspect the whole thing might have been a little dry and bland if it had been left to cool. It was probably a little on the dry side anyway, but it wasn't anything that a little dob of cream couldn't counter.

All in all, a big winner, with four ticks of approval from the four diners, who all got a decent-sized slab of dessert and who would all happily eat it again some time soon. Definitely an example of something that I wouldn't define as a 'pudding', but October 31st gets a big 'yes please' from us. I've decided not to try and rank the puddings or anything so crass as all that, but this one is definitely right up there.

It seems like it might be fun to keep track of all the big-ticket items that we're using a lot of over the course of the progress through the calendar. I'm not going to bother with conversions unless they're easy, though, because I am terrible at them at the best of times. So, over the course of three puddings:

• Eggs: 9 (8 separated)
• Sugar: 2 cup, 2 tbsp
• Butter: 3 3/4 oz, 2 tbsp

Puffy Jam Omelet

For the second leg in our journey through the CWA Calendar of Puddings, we selected October 27th's Puffy Jam Omelet.

Looking back at it now, there were a few warning signs.

First there was the name: 'Puffy Jam Omelet' should have given us a moment's pause. Puffy is not generally a word associated with all things delicious. Jam, while an excellent foodstuff, isn't usually considered these days to be a good option for the primary flavour for things other than jam. And omelettes (however they're spelled) aren't the sort of food that I generally associate with dessert. We made an unspoken pact not to share the name of the pudding with our diners, in the hope of not poisoning them to the whole idea before we'd even started.

Then there was the instruction to fold stiffly beaten egg whites into the some sugary, vanillarised egg yolks. Folding is a delicate process that one has to get just right, or you'll end up with a mixture that is either stodgy or not all that mixed at all. I am infamously inept at judging this sort of thing, so naturally I was left in charge of the mixture. In my attempt to avoid the former I erred a little too far towards under-folding, more of a crumple, really, resulting in an omelette that was a little inconsistent. Next time I have to fold something I'll know better. It still looked pretty good in the pan, though.

After slathering it in a good serving of jam and folding it over on itself, we had a dish that looked pretty darn appetising, if I say so myself. Good enough to bait our diners into eating it, anyway. Unfortunately, after tasting it their reactions weren't all that positive, ranging from between "nope" to "well, it's a little like a pancake", and I have to say that I agree. While the texture and consistency were pleasant enough, the lingering egg-ness was a little distracting, and I found myself wishing for a little maple syrup to have with what was for all intents and purposes a milk-less pancake, not really the wow factor that you're aiming for when you've spent so much effort beating all those egg whites. It also just wasn't very much food once split four ways, which would have been a pity if anyone had particularly enjoyed the experience. I'd say this one is really only a recipe for two servings.

We're not totally convinced that we gave the dessert omelette concept a completely fair go given the imperfect folding, so we'll give it another go before we assign this one to the kitchen waste bin of history, though we've promised to do it some night when there's just the two of us so that we don't run the risk of putting anyone else through an ordeal. 

Heck, when there's 366 recipes in the book, they can't all be winners. Hopefully we'll have better luck next week.

The Calendar of Puddings

Well, it's been a little while between drinks here at the Leaflocker. Since the last post I've back in Australia for longer than three weeks for the first time in six years, and I'm also back to living in my parent's house for the first time in a decade. Despite our fears, I'm finding the whole thing rather pleasant, thanks in no small part to the fact that being back near my mother's house means being back near my mother's cooking on a regular basis.

I've always remembered my Mum's cooking as fabulous, and spending time in the kitchen with her over the last month or so has been a major highlight of returning home. She recently acquired this gem in a thrift store, the fabled South Australian Country Women's Association Calendar of Puddings (Brown's Well Community Library's loss is our gain). Every time I think about how absurd it is that anyone would need a pudding for every night of year, how many eggs would be consumed, how many pounds of butter, I get the giggles, so I was more than a little surprised when I met my mother's eye and we together resolved in all seriousness to give it a go.

Of course, we're not making sweets every night. That would be silly. No-one needs that much sugar in their system (it's not caffeine), and setting ourselves up to do something each and every day is just setting ourselves up for disappointment, but I reckon we can work something out.

The rules we've set ourselves are very complicated:

1) Pick one pudding from the options each week

2) Make and eat the pudding

With three weeks or so until the birth of my firstborn and her second grandchild, it's likely a terrible time to be starting a new, extremely long-term series on the old blog, but in a classic case of the bear in the woods, I've decided that there's no point making a regular pudding if we don't record our thoughts, so it's time to blow the dust of the Leaflocker once again.

My mother took the idea and ran with it last week before I'd even convinced myself that she was serious, preparing October 20th's Baked Lemon Delicious (Swiss), which is an old family favourite recipe, and a great place to start a project that promises to be a little experimental. Having done this one a number of times over the last few years, I was amused to find that apart from forming a satisfying looking top crust, her version also failed to solidify, something that has dogged my attempts at the recipe in the past. But it's a favourite recipe for a reason, largely because as the name promises, it makes for a delicious dessert even when it turns out to be more of a custard than a pudding. Served with a generous side of icecream, it tasted like sweet, sweet lemony sunshine.

Wait, wait wait... the end of the recipe says 'serve hot or cold'. That can't possibly be right. I can't imagine what this would be like cold and it certainly never survives long enough to get cold before it's consumed. It feels almost criminal to do something like that to a dessert which brings such joy by being dangerously hot, but 79 Country Women can't be wrong, can they? Note to self: Next time you make this, make two, so that you can throw one in the fridge, just to check.

I guess the Leaflocker is a cooking blog now?