As the temperatures drop down into the single digits, there’s something comforting about walking into a house smelling of slow cooked ragu. As someone who has never had a white Christmas or seen snow, I maintain that the best part of winter is the food. And of course, the excuse to drink red wine. You’ll need about a half a bottle of red for this recipe, so go ahead and open up a bottle.

Like with most slow food, it’s better to use a cheap cut of meat like chuck or blade, though you can also use rump or pre-diced beef. I’ve always liked to use chuck for the fat that’s marbled through it, but that’s just personal preference.

Rather than worry about your stove, put the oven on and go out and do your thing – enjoy a pint at the pub and come home to a ready-cooked meal. If that’s not winning at life, I don’t know what is.

disclaimer: I accept no responsibility for you leaving your oven on unattended and heading to the pub. If you’ve been to the pub and forgotten how time flies, this is you. Who am I kidding, this is most of us – yeah, just put a timer on your phone okay?

Cheat’s Beef Ragu
serves 4-6
adapted from Jamie Oliver’s shin stew

3 tbsp oil
1kg chuck or blade steak, diced into 1″ cubes
2 tbsp flour
4 cloves garlic
2 red onions, peeled and roughly chopped
3 carrots, peeled and roughly chopped
2 sticks celery, roughly diced
350ml red wine, pref a Cab Sav
1 litre beef stock, or water + stock cube
2 x 400g tins diced tomato
2 bay leaves
1 tsp mixed herbs, or herbs of your choice
salt
freshly ground black pepper

pasta, rice or potatoes to serve

1. Preheat your oven to 170C, or 150C if you’re planning on leaving it for more than 4 hours.
2. In a heavy-bottomed ovenproof saucepan or non-stick roasting disk, heat the olive oil and gently fry the garlic, onions, carrots and celery until softened slightly.
3. Meanwhile, toss the pieces of beef in a little seasoned flour, shaking off any excess.
4. Add the meat to the pan and stir everything together, then add the wine, stock, tomatoes, bay leaf, herbs and salt and pepper. Add more liquid if necessary, just to cover the ingredients by 1cm. 
5. Gently bring to the boil, cover with a double-thickness piece of tinfoil (this is important!) and a lid and place in your preheated oven for 3 hours or until the beef is meltingly tender and can be broken up with a spoon. If the consistency is still too liquid, you may need to put the pan back on the stove over a medium heat to reduce the sauce. 
6. Taste and check the seasoning, remove the herbs and serve with pasta, rice or potatoes. 

I’m not quite sure why there is so much nervousness about making tart bases. I haven’t used store bought pie crust in as long as I can remember, so trust me when I tell you it’s not cause for trepidation. There’s really not much to it – you rub together butter and flour, add liquid, chill and roll out. You might chill it again then bake it and ta-dah – there’s your pie crust.

Here’s the deal though – all pie crusts are going to shrink. Some might shrink a tiny bit, some are going to shrink a lot. In my experience, the ones that are going to shrink more always taste better because they tend to have more butter and eggs.

I have a go to tart crust recipe from Damien Pignolet’s book French. It’s buttery, almost shortbready goodness, but to make tiny tartlets I needed a dough that was going to hold it’s shape so that I could fill it with a good amount of lemon curd. I turned to the food blogging queen, Deb at smitten kitchen and her Great Unshrinkable Sweet Tart Shell. There were varying reviews; some said it worked a treat, others said the tart shrunk.

So, is the great unshrinkable tart shell really unshrinkable? Not really. It shrinks, albeit a lot less than other dough. The trade off is that it tastes a bit, meh. The texture is too hard and it doesn’t taste buttery enough. Sure you don’t need to use pie weights, but I wouldn’t use it for a full size tart base. If you’re wondering (and you’re the type to like concrete measurements) I can tell you it shrunk on average between 1-3mm per tartlet case. 

Lemon Meringue Tartlets
makes 40 pcs

‘great unshrinkable sweet tart shell’ from smitten kitchen
1 ½ cups all-purpose flour
½ cup confectioner’s sugar
¼ teaspoon salt
125 g cold butter, cut into pieces
1 large egg

lemon curd*
finely grated zest of one lemon
120ml freshly squeezed lemon juice
120g caster sugar
2 free range eggs
2 free range egg yolks
120g cold unsalted butter, cut into very small pieces
pinch of salt

*makes just enough for 40 tartlets. if you want an extra jar, see the full recipe. 

meringue topping
4 egg whites 
150g caster sugar*

*I hardly ever specify to use caster sugar but if you don’t want grainy meringue, it’s worth getting for this

1. If possible, make the lemon curd a day in advance to allow the flavours to develop.
   1. Bring a medium saucepan half filled with water to a gentle simmer. Place the lemon zest, lemon juice, eggs, salt, sugar and 20g of butter in a metal mixing bowl – make sure to choose one that will fit comfortably over the saucepan without falling in. Whisk briefly to combine ingredients – the mixture will have a bubbly or frothy consistency on the top.
   2. Place the bowl over the gently simmering water while stirring continuously with a whisk. The curd will slowly start to thicken – be patient and don’t turn up the water from a gentle simmer – you want to gently cook the custard and not end up with scrambled eggs.
   3. As the curd starts to cook, the frothy part of the mixture will start to disappear and you’ll get a velvety custard. Dip a wooden spoon in it, coat the back of the spoon and use your finger to draw a path through the mixture – it should leave a clear path. Remember, the consistency will firm up as it cools.
   4. Remove the curd from the heat and quickly whisk the cold butter into the curd until it’s completely dissolved leaving the curd rich, creamy and glossy. Reserve until ready to use.
2. To make the tart base - 
   1. Pulse the flour, sugar and salt together in the bowl of a food processor. Scatter the pieces of butter over the dry ingredients and pulse until the butter is cut in.
   2. Add the egg, pulsing after each addition. When the egg is in, process in long pulses–about 10 seconds each–until the dough, which will look granular soon after the egg is added, forms clumps and curds. Turn the dough out onto a work surface and, very lightly and sparingly, knead the dough just to incorporate any dry ingredients that might have escaped mixing.
   3. If you are making mini tart cases, don’t bother chilling before shaping the dough. After a lot of testing, I found the best way to make these was to weigh balls of dough and place each into a cupcake tin (I used 15g each for a 24 piece mini cupcake pan), then use the end of a rolling pin to hollow out the centre. Remember, the dough will shrink a tiny bit so make them a bit higher than the cupcake tin. Freeze for at least 40 minutes, then bake at 180C until lightly golden brown. 
3. To make the meringue – place egg  whites into a clean mixing bowl and whip to soft peaks. Gradually add the sugar and whip to firm peaks. Reserve.
4. To assemble, spoon lemon curd into tart shells, then using a round tip pipe meringue over the lemon curd. If you have a blowtorch, use it to quickly brown the meringue.

Just like spice jars, which are seemingly impossible to get in reasonable quantities, it seems that jam jars suffer from the same issues too. I know, I looked. For months. I’m going to rant a little, but bear with me because I have some free downloadable lemon curd labels, like on the bottles above for you at the end.

Of the two big jar wholesalers, Plasdene only do minimum orders of $120, and Cospak will do smaller orders with a surcharge of $22 and delivery is minimum of $33 to the ACT. There was Silverlock, but they too had a minimum order of $50; Redback Trading only sold the American branded versions; Jam Jar Shop  had only four types of jars and of course there was always eBay but it didn’t offer the amount of choice I wanted. I wanted to choose the shapes of my jars and I only wanted a dozen – was that too much to ask?

I know, I know, why didn’t I just use op shop jars… I just like matching things, ok. I wanted to give them as gifts and I dreaded having the residual smells of whatever else had been in there previously. Plus, having clean jars is just one less thing to worry about during the sterilisation process.

Anyway, to end my rant which must be tremendously boring for those of you who just want to get to the recipe part, thankfully I found a small Australian online store called Pack My Product who sell jars with no minimum quantity and a $15 delivery fee. I’m mentioning all of this because they aren’t currently showing up in the search results for jam jars – and I’m sure there’s a few of you out there who are looking (I’ve seen this question asked a dozen times in forums). While I was ordering, I couldn’t resist some apothecary jars, though I have no idea what I’ll be using them for… The lovely people at Pack My Product very kindly rushed my order through and when I told them how glad I was to have found their site, they sent me a whole bunch of free samples.

I feel so much better now that my jams and lemon curd are in matching jars. So, here’s the recipe. There’s only two rules, use fresh lemon juice (not that awful bottle stuff) and don’t overcook the curd – heat it on low and whisk continuously.

Serve with scones, on toast or wait for my recipe for lemon meringue tartlets.

I’ve created a pdf of these jam jar labels for you to use with your lemon curd – enjoy!

Lemon Curd
makes enough to fill exactly 3 x 270ml jars, I used these
adapted from British Larder

finely grated zest of one lemon
180ml freshly squeezed lemon juice
180g caster sugar
3 free range eggs
3 free range egg yolks
180g cold unsalted butter, cut into very small pieces
pinch of salt

1. Sterilise your jars – I did it in my pressure cooker which halved the time. If you don’t have one, you can use a large pot and your oven, instructions here.
2. Bring a medium saucepan half filled with water to a gentle simmer. Place the lemon zest, lemon juice, eggs, salt, sugar and 30g of butter in a metal mixing bowl – make sure to choose one that will fit comfortably over the saucepan without falling in.
3. Whisk briefly to combine ingredients – the mixture will have a bubbly or frothy consistency on the top.
4. Place the bowl over the gently simmering water while stirring continuously with a whisk. The curd will slowly start to thicken – be patient and don’t turn up the water from a gentle simmer – you want to gently cook the custard and not end up with scrambled eggs.
5. As the curd starts to cook, the frothy part of the mixture will start to disappear and you’ll get a velvety custard. Dip a wooden spoon in it, coat the back of the spoon and use your finger to draw a path through the mixture – it should leave a clear path. Remember, the consistency will firm up as it cools.

6. Remove the curd from the heat and quickly whisk the cold butter into the curd until it’s completely dissolved leaving the curd rich, creamy and glossy.

7. Immediately place into sterilised jars.

   Jam jar labels are available to download here.
   Just print on Avery self-adhesive 63.5mm x 38.1mm (21 per page) labels.
   *artwork derived from justsomethingimade.com

   Conditions of use
   All photos and artwork are copyright. Artwork in the downloadable PDF is free strictly for personal use, not for commercial use. Sharing these photos on Pinterest is welcome as long as you source and link back to akitchencat.com.au. If you’d like to blog about this post, feel free to post a couple of photos as long as you credit and link back to this post and/or akitchencat.com.au. As a courtesy, please do not distribute my downloadable PDFs from your site nor link directly to the PDF on my site. Instead, please link back to this page.

What do you do when you have people coming over to watch the footy in just under an hour and you happen to have bought a little pack of mince beef from Costco, 3.4 kilos to be exact – well, when a warehouse club gives you industrial serves of mince beef, you make meatballs.

Perfect on a cold, foggy day and much more delicious than traditional mystery meat pies I’m sure these will become a winter staple in your house. The secret is a good hit of paprika and smoky barbecue sauce – trust me, they taste better than they look in the picture.

On, and in case you were wondering, Adelaide won by a point.

Sunday Afternoon Meatballs
makes about 60 meatballs

for the meatballs
1.2 kg beef mince
1 large white onion, peeled
4 cloves garlic, peeled
handful of fresh basil leaves, about 15
2 eggs
100g grated parmesan
½ tsp chilli powder
½ tsp hot or smoky paprika
2 tbsp mixed herbs
pinch of nutmeg
salt and pepper to taste
2 tbsp vegetable oil

for the sauce
2 tbsp oil
1 large white onion, peeled
1 cup dry white wine
2 tins (400g each) diced tomatoes
1 tbsp sugar
3 tbsp smoky barbecue sauce
½ tsp ground cumin
1 tsp paprika
basil leaves, for garnish
grated cheddar, for garnish
creme fraiche or sour cream (optional)

serve with sourdough, pasta or rice

to make the meatballs

1. Chuck the onion, garlic and basil into a food processor and pulse until the ingredients are almost a fine dice.
2. Place the beef mince into a large mixing bowl (I used my KitchenAid with the paddle attachment) and the ground onion mixture, eggs, parmesan and spices. Mix until well combined.
3. Shape mixture into approx 2″ meatballs.
4. In a large frying pan over medium heat, heat oil and add meatballs to the pan in a single layer. Cook for about 2 minutes per side or until browned, then turn them so that they cook on the other side – don’t worry if they’re not cooked through at this stage, they’ll be simmered in tomato sauce later. Set aside.

to make the sauce

1. Using the food processor again, pulse the onion until it’s a fine dice and set aside.
2. Blend the diced tomatoes.
3. Heat oil in another saucepan over medium heat. 
4. Add the onion and saute until cooked, then add the white wine to deglaze. Add the blended tomatoes, sugar, barbecue sauce, spices and simmer for five minutes until slightly thickened. Season with salt and pepper to taste. 
5. Add the meatballs to the sauce and simmer covered, on low for another 5 minutes.
6. Top with basil leaves, grated cheese and/or creme fraiche on the side. Serve with pasta, sourdough or whatever else takes your fancy.

I’ve been travelling a lot lately, and to make the best of it I try to visit good cocktail bars. And when I visit a good cocktail bar, I have a couple of cocktails – you know, just to be sure I’m getting into the feel of the bar. In the name of research and all that. I decide on my favourite cocktail, then… then, I play the Canberra card.

“So, do you think you would mind showing me how to make that?” <careful pause> “because I’m from Canberra, and there aren’t any good cocktail bars in Canberra.”*

Which is how I got this recipe for a damn near perfect autumn cocktail from the lovely bartender at Go Go Bar in Melbourne. Actually, it is perfect and we’ve been drinking them every week since I’ve been back from Melbourne. And in case you were wondering, yes I do think it is better than the traditional pisco sour.

Now, most people I know don’t have Pisco or Amaro in their bar, so it will likely cost you $80 worth of alcohol upfront, but dare I say it – it is totally worth it. This drink has been a staple since we discovered it, right up there with G&Ts and negronis. Like all good cocktails, it’s only bad side is that it is a little too easy to drink.

The Sour of Monte Pisco

30ml Amaro Montegro
30ml Pisco Control
20-25ml sugar syrup (pref cinnamon infused)
30ml fresh lemon juice
dash of bitters
½ egg white
ground cinnamon, for garnish

1. Combine all ingredients in a cocktail shaker and shake vigorously; you want the egg white to froth up.
   
2. Add ice to the shaker and shake again, to chill.
3. Pour into a glass (with the ice) and here’s where it gets fancy – if you have a blow torch, turn it on full blast and position it just over the glass, then sprinkle a dusting of ground cinnamon through the flame. This quickly toasts the spice so that you get the smell of cinnamon every time you take a sip. Don’t worry if you don’t have one though, just dust with ground cinnamon.

*this is a factually true statement

I am dreading the cold weather, but there’s something to be said for the therapeutic qualities of winter food. There’s the time-efficiency of the chop it up and chuck it in a pot methodology, and of course, the comforting smell of impending deliciousness wafting through the house.

This soup is a great all-rounder – serve it as an entree, take it as a packed lunch or make it a gourmet dinner with some good bread and a splash of good-quality infused olive oil. There’s only one thing to to know, and that is sweating vegetables to make a good base for a soup takes longer than you think.

There’s a big difference between sweating and frying an onion. For a good soup base, what you are looking for is a gently cooked onion – cooked for a while over low heat and enough oil to prevent sticking. It should be soft enough to disintegrate when pressed and sweet and mellow in flavour. In the recipe below, you cook the vegetables for 10 minutes, but I should point out that 15 minutes is better.

Simmering a soup for hours doesn’t necessarily make it better, so don’t cook this for longer than necessary. Enjoy!

Lentil, red pepper and cumin soup
from Skye Gyngell’s ‘A year in my kitchen’
serves 4

2 tbsp olive oil
1 red onion, finely diced
1 leek, washed and cut into a quarters, then thinly sliced
2 celery sticks, diced
2 carrots, peeled and diced
2 red peppers (capsicum), halved, deseeded and diced
3 garlic cloves, finely diced
1 tsp ground cumin
2 bay leaves
3 sprigs thyme
200 Puy lentils
1.5 litres vegetable stock

salt and pepper, to serve
coriander or parsley, for garnish

1. Heat olive oil in a large saucepan over medium-low heat. Add the onion, leek, celery and carrots and sweat gently for 10 minutes, stirring frequently.
2. Add the diced capsicum, garlic, cumin, bay leaves and thyme and continue to sweat for another 10 minutes. The onions, leek and celery should now be translucent.
3. Add the lentils, pour in the stock and bring to a simmer. Reduce the heat to low and cook, uncovered for 20 minutes or until the lentils are tender.
4. Discard the herbs and taste for seasoning.
5. Serve with chopped parsley or coriander and a drizzle or olive oil.

It’s somewhat of a tradition here in Canberra, and an unspoken convention that heaters are not to be turned on before Anzac Day. I’m not sure how many people stick to this rule really, as it got down to 0°C a few nights before, but so compelling is this unspoken rule (and the pressure to fit into Canberran society) that even if you do turn on your heater, you’d be hard pressed to admit it. After all, you wouldn’t want your friends to think of you as un-Canberran, would you?

Just in time for the colder nights, here’s a recipe for boeuf bourguignon, a Burnett speciality tweaked with reference to Francois at FXcuisine.

Once considered a peasant dish, it’s now comfort food at it’s finest – after all, it’s hard to argue with beef slow cooked in red wine. Pop it on the stove on a lazy Sunday afternoon, it makes for good leftovers as long as it’s not frozen.

Boeuf Bourguignon
serves 6-8

1.5kg beef – chuck or blade steak
2 large white onions, diced
1 carrot, diced
2 cloves garlic, finely diced
bouquet garni – bay leaf, parsley, sage, thyme
1 bottle red wine, yes the whole bottle – and, if you wouldn’t drink it, don’t cook with it*

500ml beef stock
1 tbsp tomato paste
100g speck, cut into 3mm pieces
200g small button mushrooms
12 pickling onions, peeled

2 tbsp butter
2 tbsp flour
salt and freshly ground pepper, to taste

green beans
rice, baby potatoes or mashed potato to serve

1. Dice your beef into large, approx 3cm cubes. Alternatively, you can buy already diced beef. Chuck steak is usually more fatty and blade is lean – use whichever you prefer.
   
2. Place the beef into a large non-reactive (glass or stainless steel) bowl and add diced onions, carrot, garlic, bouquet garni and all the wine. Leave to marinade overnight.
3. The next day, remove the beef pieces from the pan (they should’ve turned a darker colour) and pat dry. Don’t take shortcuts here, really pat it dry so that you get the Maillard reaction and that lovely caramelised flavour when you brown the meat in the pan.
4. Using a heavy based pot and a splash of oil, sear the pieces of meat in small batches making sure to turn them so that they brown evenly on all sides.
5. Drain the wine and save the bouquet garni and reserve it for later.
6. On a low heat, sweat the onions, garlic and carrots from the marinade – about 10 minutes.
7. Add beef back into the pan along with the wine, beef stock, tomato paste and bouquet garni. Cook covered on low heat for 2 hours.
8. In a separate pan, cook the speck. Using the fat (add extra butter if needed), fry off the pickling onions and mushrooms and pickling onions. Add these to the main pot, making sure they are submerged.
9. Make a roux to thicken the stew using 2 tbsp butter and flour. Add this to the main pot and stir. Cook for a further 30 minutes, or until the onions are cooked through. Taste and add salt and pepper as needed.
10. Serve hot with a side of green beans and your choice of rice or boiled baby potatoes, or if you’re feeling decadent, mashed potatoes.

*good advice from Peter, Nick’s dad and resident wine expert, though I must confess I tend to use on average about a $12 bottle of wine for this.

I’ve since substituted treacle for golden syrup to give it a slightly bitter undertone, and shredded coconut for dessicated so that it tastes more coconutty and has added texture.

Update: further research (and a tip off from a friend) has led me to a recipe from the Department of Veteran’s Affairs which suggests treacle is A-OK! You’ll find their recipe here. Interestingly enough, culinary historian Allie Reynolds says that modern-day Anzac biscuits bear little resemblance to the sturdy, long-lasting biscuits which were shipped to Diggers.

These Anzac biscuits are crunchy on the outer edges and chewy in the middle. If that’s your preference, bake them to colour as shown in the picture above, if you prefer yours crunchy throughout, which is probably how they were eaten back in the day, to reduce spoilage, bake them a few minutes longer.

So call it what you will, and despite my research, it may not even qualify as an Anzac biscuit to you without golden syrup, but here’s my version of the Australian (and New Zealand) classic. This is my second batch, I should add, because N felt the need to bribe his work colleagues with cookies with all of the first batch.

Did everyone get a cookie? I asked. No, he said, there weren’t enough cookies to go around. He did admit to eating the first five or so.

“If they want cookies, they have to come to me,” he said, beaming. He’s really getting delirious on his cookie powers.

Anzac biscuits
makes 30

155g butter
2 tbsp (30ml) treacle syrup
150g plain flour
150g white sugar
100g rolled oats
50g shredded coconut
2 tbsp (30ml) boiling water
1½ tsp bicarb soda

1. Preheat oven to 150C.
2. Melt butter and treacle in a medium saucepan. 
3. Combine flour, sugar, rolled oats and coconut in a large mixing bowl and toss with your hands to combine.
4. In a small cup, add the boiling water to the bicarb soda, and stir to combine. Then quickly tip this mixture into the warm butter mixture – be careful, it will bubble up.
5. Pour over the dry ingredients and mix well ensuring that all the dry ingredients are coated.
6. Place tablespoons of the mixture onto lightly greased baking trays, ensuring that you leave lots of room for the biscuits to expand.
7. Bake for 12 minutes for the perfect crunchy-chewy texture, or closer to 15 for a crunchy Anzac.

It’s been a while since my last post, I’ve been back home in Malaysia which means that I’ve been pottering around in Grandma’s kitchen with my camera and notebook and generally getting in her way.

“How much spices did you put in, Gramma?”
“This much,” says Grandma, gesturing with her thumb across her fingers.
“How much is that in teaspoons though?”
“I don’t know,” she says, shaking her head, “I don’t use teaspoons and all that, all my cooking is by hand (feel).” Grandma gets a teaspoon out of the drawer, pours the spices into her hand, then back into the teaspoon. “Ah, half a teaspoon is enough, ” she says, nodding her head.

She’s almost hunched over double now, due to her bad back, yet she insists on cooking everyday. And cleaning. She doesn’t do well with sitting still, my Gramma. She wants to know why I need to take pictures of her for the blog when it’s about the recipe and always grins when she catches me taking pictures of her. This is her recipe for mushroom paretal which we always have as a side to dahl. A paretal (pronounced pare-reh-tel) is a style of curry where the liquid is slowly cooked out, so you end up with an intensely flavoured dry curry.

Grandma’s Mushroom Dry Curry (Mushroom Peratal)
serves 4-6, as one of many dishes

500g oyster mushrooms
2 tbsp canola or vegetable oil
3 dried red chillies, cut in half lengthwise and seeds removed
¼ tsp fennel seeds
¼ tsp cumin
½ tsp black mustard seeds
¼ tsp fenugreek seeds (optional)
2 small red onions, cut into medium dice
3 cloves of garlic, finely diced
3 slices ginger, cut into 0.5cm dice
1½ tbsp fish curry powder* (Grandma only uses Baba’s brand – it’s available at Indian grocers)
¼ tsp chilli powder
pinch of salt, to taste
¼ tsp vegetable stock powder
10-15 curry leaves (optional)

1. Tear the oyster mushrooms into smaller pieces of about 1-2cm each, so that when you cook the dry curry you’ll have a good spice to mushroom ratio.
2. Place the oyster mushrooms in a bowl and pour boiling water over just to cover. Leave for 5 minutes, then drain. I suppose you could skip this part if you wanted, but Grandma says it takes away the earthy mushroom smell.
3. To cook the curry, heat the oil in a small pan over a medium heat. It’s best to use a nonstick pan as the later steps of making the paretal requires you to cook out the liquid, a process which is tricky in a normal saucepan as the ingredients can catch and burn on the bottom.
4. Add the red chillies, fennel seeds, cumin, black mustard seeds, fenugreek seeds (if using) and fry for about 10 seconds until you can smell the spices. Don’t fry them for too long – you don’t want the chillies to get too dark.
5. Add onions, garlic and ginger to the pan all at once. Stir over medium heat until the onions have turned brown at the edges.
6. Remove from heat and add the fish curry powder and chilli powder – this ensures that the finely ground spices will not burn and turn bitter.
7. Return the pan to the heat, and add 50ml of water so that the mixture forms into a paste. Add the mushrooms to the pan, along with the salt and vegetable stock powder and stir so the spice mix coats the mushrooms. Add the curry leaves, then lower the heat and cook for a further 3 minutes.
8. Carefully add another 100ml of water and partially cover the pan with a lid – you want the mushrooms to slowly cook in the spices. Cook over a low heat until the liquid has absorbed and you have a dry curry.*fish curry powder doesn’t have fish in it – it’s just the curry powder mix used specifically to cook fish

My Scottish friend drinks beer unlike anyone else I have ever seen. He can drink beer quicker than most people can drink water and seems to have an uncanny ability to wear its effects.

So when his birthday was the day after St Patrick’s day, I couldn’t resist making a recipe that combined beer (well stout, specifically) and chocolate. I was after a more dense cake than my usual chocolate cupcake recipe, and while searching for the perfect recipe, stumbled upon the unusual combination of stout and chocolate.

The reviews were great (over 400 of them) but I was skeptical. I dislike even the smell of beer, so I wondered how the cupcakes would turn out and what the stout would lend to the mix. Turns out that I needn’t have worried. These cupcakes were rich, a good level of dense and you couldn’t taste the stout at all – it just lent the cake depth of flavour.

I must admit I totally winged it on the icing, so I will make a mental note to write a proper recipe and post it later. At this point all I can tell you is that I whisked cream cheese until smooth then added a bit of cream, cocoa powder, icing sugar and melted dark chocolate.

Chocolate Stout Cupcakes
makes 26 cupcakes
from Epicurious

for the cupcakes
1 cup stout
225g butter
¾ cup cocoa powder
2 cups flour
2 cups sugar (it sounds like a lot, but trust me)
½ tbsp baking powder
½ tsp salt
2 eggs
⅔ cup sour cream

for the icing*
*recipe to come

honeycomb
180g sugar 
70g glucose (available at supermarkets)
60ml water
½ tsp bicarb soda

1. Preheat oven to 170C. 
2. Heat stout and butter in a saucepan over medium heat until butter is melted. Add cocoa powder and whisk until mixture is smooth. Allow to cool slightly.
3. Whisk eggs and sour cream in an electric mixer until smooth.
4. Add stout-chocolate mixture and mix to combine.
5. Add flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt to the batter and beat on low speed until just combined.
6. Using an ice cream scoop, place mixture into cupcake liners and fill until about two thirds full. 
7. Bake until tester inserted into center of cakes comes out clean, about 17 minutes.
   
8. For the honeycomb, put sugar, glucose and water into a small saucepan and place the pan over high heat until the sugar dissolves and the mixture takes on a faint golden tinge – do not go past light golden or  you will have ashy, burnt, honeycomb. Remove pan from the heat and wait for the mixture to cool down for about 20-30 seconds – there should still be small bubbles in the sugar syrup. Add the bicarb all at once, and stir through with a spatula – just enough so that it’s all combined. Spoon out into the prepared lined flat dish, and leave to set for about 45 minutes. Break into pieces, and store in an airtight container. 
9. To assemble, use a large star tip to pipe icing onto cooled cupcakes, top with honeycomb then drizzle with melted dark chocolate. Honeycomb goes soft when exposed to air, so consume quickly.