Brandied Cumquat Chocolate Truffles

The brandied cumquats from my blog post several months ago (August I think) are now coming into their own. The other day I made some truffles for Christmas using the brandy and some cumquat rind to flavour dark couverture chocolate and cream. I thought I had better get a photo of them before they all get eaten....they are so delicious. This container was full last night! The second flavour was a mix of Frangelico liqueur, chocolate and cream - still delicious but not such a strong flavour. I think I might just have to stock up on some more couverture chocolate when I drive past Anvers Chocolate Factory at Latrobe next week.

Time for Tea and Jam

Despite the unusually wet weather, some fruits are starting to ripen in the garden. In fact that is where I should be right now instead of writing this.

There are more loganberries to pick and this is what happened to the ones I picked on Sunday afternoon. Perfect for Christmas presents for friends. Better grab my bucket and go and enjoy the last of the day's sunlight.

Wensleydale cheese

On Saturday as it was raining yet again, decided to make a new cheese. Wensleydale hails from the Yorkshire Dales and I found this recipe of Greening of Gavin’s blog site. It was fairly easy although involved a bit of stirring every 15 minutes which meant I had to find other things to do in the kitchen. Stay tuned





 The recipe suggested a layer of sterilised sage leaves in the middle of the curds prior to pressing which sounded rather delicious.






 After pressing overnight, it looked like a proper cheese and dried out very nicely during the day.






 I think it will be ready for some wax tonight and it is meant to be ready to eat in about 3 weeks at the earliest

Four Cheeses in One Day

Yesterday was a mammoth cheesemaking day - 4 different types in one day. I decided I might have just enough time to mature a camembert in time for Christmas- well I have no idea really but I will give it a go. I thought I needed an ingredient which I didn't have, namely the white mould culture however a friend who has recently done a camembert workshop informed me otherwise. According to her teacher, you can just scrape a very thin sliver of the white mould off the outside of a bought camembert and it does the same job. Well, the proof will be in the pudding. The recipe was relatively straight forward other than my timer kept going off and reminding me to do the next step. It has been so humid here for the past couple of days though that the cheese is still quite wet so it hasn't made it to the cheese "cave" yet. Speaking of which, the two parmesan  are getting be quite smelly now and every time my son sits at the computer next to the cheeses, he thinks his feet are really smelly and then realises it is the cheeses!
In between doing the steps of the camembert recipe, I made a batch of halloumi as well. A slightly different method this time which didn't involve pressing but one that I think is more authentic Cypriot and which I adapted from the way I saw it made on Will Studd's "Cheese Slices" program earlier this year.

I also made some Anari from the left over whey, also Cypriot style, right down to the panty hose used to drain it! It seems to be almost identical to ricotta really- of which I made a batch using the whey from the camembert.

And if that wasn't enough to do for the day, I also decided to make some Panettone (yeast version this time) and biscotti and sourdough bread and yoghurt as well. No wonder I was feeling a little weary by the end of the day...and had no desire to spend the day in the kitchen today!