Coconut, Almond and Nut Butter Bars (No Bake, Paleo)

It's almost the end of term two and my immune system has not been very kind. I've been sick in bed with a burning sore throat and no voice for three days, it's no fun! As a teacher your voice is your most important professional tool, without it, the job becomes very difficult. Whilst being held up in bed, I've had some time to edit some photos of a gorgeous little slice from a few weeks ago. Now it wouldn't be a Master Chefette post if I didn't write a bit of an anecdote that has little or no relation to the recipe in question, so here goes. 

Last week I was at an author event at a local bookshop. Books are my absolute weakness as a shopper (in addition to shoes and bags and everything really) and I knew this event would be dangerous given that is was in a bookstore. I am an absolute sucker for picture story books that I can use in the classroom and professional literature. The author I went to go see was renowned and celebrated Australian author; Glenda Millard. If you have children, are a teacher, actually if you just love beautiful literature, she's freaking amazing and also one of the loveliest people, so go check out her gorgeous books.

After being on a 'book high' and armed with all of my fabulous Glenda Millard books, I had to take one last look around the store, enter my other weakness; cookbooks. I have mountains of cookbooks, which is quite funny given most of my favourite recipes come from the blogosphere. None the less, I spent some time perusing the cookbooks especially the Paleo section. Now I am not here to spark debate regarding the Paleo Pete Evans lifestyle, but when I was a Paleoist (is that even a word?) Paleo eater, I felt good and I really loved some of the Paleo recipes on offer. Enter this little piece of healthy heaven. After doing lots of flicking and thinking, I decided I wanted to come up with a snack type bar, for morning tea to replace the muesli bar which was full of goodness. So here's my paleo slice, bar which is a definite crowd pleaser, it's full of all those buzz words, organic, paleo, wheat-free, gluten-free and sugar-free but loaded with de-lish!

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Paleo Coconut, Almond and Nut Butter Bars (No Bake)

by Master Chefette June-11-2015

A healthy, quick and easy lunch box treat for adults and kids!

Ingredients

• 300g Almond Meal
• 90g Shredded or Dessicated Coconut
• 130g Nut Butter (I used organic peanut, but you could use cashew, hazelnut etc)
• 4-5 tablespoons (I went with 5, I'm a sweet tooth) Maple Syrup
• 100g Coconut Oil (Melted)
• 1 Vanilla Bean (scraped)
• 1 tbls Coconut Flour
• 150g Dark Chocolate (for topping, optional)
• For decoration Cashews and Goji Berries

Instructions

1. Place all ingredients (except for chocolate) into food processor and whiz until well combined.2. Line a slice tray with baking paper.3. Pour mixture into tin and press down firmly with a spatula.4. Set aside and melt chocolate. The kind of chocolate you use depends on how much sugar you like the higher the cocoa % the less sugar. I used a lovely Lindt 75% . Spread melted chocolate on top. 5. I pressed in some goji berries and cashews for good measure. Refrigerate and cut once set.

Details

Prep time: 15 mins Cook time: Total time: 15 mins Yield: 12-18 bars

Sugo Al Ragu - Slow Cooked Oxtail Ragu Pasta Sauce

Ragu seems to be the 'flavour of the month' so to speak. It's all over Masterchef, My Kitchen Rules and what all the celebrity chefs are talking about. As an Italian (Sicilian) we never actually called this simple pasta sauce a ragu, to us as the children, the Aussiefied version was just chunky meat sauce. We had this discussion around the dinner table not too long ago about all the trendy terminology that has been picked up and is now in everyday vernacular. If I had a dollar for everytime my Nonna said that a 'latte' literally translates into milk and how absurd it would be to order a large milk from Gloria Jeans, I'd be a rich lady! So is similar with ragu... "what's this ragu?" she says, you would have never seen that on a menu 30 years ago. Well I'm certainly glad things have changed and we are seeing this delightful dish more and more.

This particular dish brings me back to some of my earliest memories. My Dad has always taken great pleasure in watching the infants in our family suck on a big juicy bone (like a puppy) and get a lovely big sauce moustache after having pasta with sugo al ragu.

Like a lot of Italian cooking, it's very hard to place quantities on ingredients and such, since Italians are BAD with recipes, everything is by look and feel, which is kind of beautiful too. Although this forever means that nothing is ever as good as Nonna's!

With this recipe anything goes really, so if you have pork use that, if you have lamb use that, spice it up and use a combo if that's what takes your fancy, whatever your taste buds desire will be perfect!

Watch the tutorial...

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Sugo Al Ragu - Slow Cooked Oxtail Ragu Pasta Sauce

by Dee @ Master Chefette April-29-2015

A delcious, full-bodied, melt in the mouth pasta sauce. Perfect comfort food!

Ingredients

• 2kg Oxtail
• 1 Diced Onion
• 2 cloves Garlic
• 1/2 cup Red Wine
• 400g tin Diced Tomatoes
• 2 x 700g bottles Passata
• 2+ litres Water
• 2 Bay Leaf
• 1 stick Celery
• 1 Carrot
• 500g Tomato Paste
• Salt, Pepper, Herb Seasoning
• 1 tblsp Sugar
• 1 knob Butter
• Dash Milk

Instructions

1. Heat a large pot on the stove covering base with olive oil. Once warm add onion and garlic.2. Add oxtail or preferable meat to the pot and seal until lightly caramelised.3. Add in red wine.4. Add passata, tomato paste and diced tomatoes to the pot followed by the water. At this point the sauce should be quite thin and liquidy (see video).5. Throw in celery stick, whole carrot, bay leaves and seasoning followed by milk, butter and sugar.6. Allow sauce to simmer on a medium heat for 3-4 hours stirring constantly. Keep tasting to see whether more seasoning or water is needed.7. Nonna says when you start to see the dark oil on top of the sauce, it's ready. So once ready, serve on top of your favourite pasta.

Details

Prep time: 15 mins Cook time: 3 hour Total time: 3 hour 15 mins Yield:

French Vanilla Sour Cream Cake with Swiss Meringue Buttercream

A few weeks ago I was catching up on all the latest entertainment gossip, as one does and I was reading about the wedding of Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds and I found out they had a French Vanilla Sour Cream cake, which sounded amazing! So from then I was recipe possessed and I had to make THE perfect cake! The first time I attempted baking one, it was disgusting, but I tried again and I am happy to say I have found my staple vanilla cake recipe. It is moist and had the perfect density and leaves no crumbs when cut. Give this a try it is super-duper easy and you're bound to have most of the ingredients at home! Now I did make two variations of this cake in the same weekend for two birthdays, one with Lemon Swiss Meringue Buttercream and one with Raspberry Swiss Meringue Buttercream. If you do prefer your cake sweeter, sticking with a traditional buttercream is always a winner!

French Vanilla Sour Cream Cake

190 grams butter

270 grams caster sugar

3 eggs

270 grams plain flour (sifted)

2 teaspoons of vanilla bean paste/ vanilla extract

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon bi-carb soda

pinch salt

250 mls sour cream

Method

1. Preheat oven to 170C and grease and line cake tin/s. Cream butter and sugar until pale and fluffy

2. Add eggs gradually whilst electric mixer is still on.

3. Turn mixer to a lower setting and over three additions add a third of the sour cream followed by a third of the flour until all gone.

4. Increase speed to medium and add remaining ingredients and leave to mix for around 4-6 minutes.

5. I divided my mixture into three and baked each cake in a 9inch tin for 20 minutes or until skewer comes back clean or cake springs back.

Now I confess I didn't take photos of the cake making process this time, because I was worried it wouldn't work out again, BUT, I did take photos of the SMB (Swiss Meringue Buttercream) in action since it was much more difficult than the cake. This is maybe a simplified version of the SMB found on Sweetapolita.

Swiss Meringue Buttercream

250 grams unsalted butter (room temperature)

120 grams caster sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla bean paste / vanilla extract

2 egg whites

1. Add caster sugar and egg whites to a heatproof bowl over simmering water.

2. Whisk until sugar has dissolved into the egg and the mixture has been warmed to an approximate temperature of 60C or 140F.

3. Transfer mixture to electric mixing bowl and fit with the whisk attachment and beat for around 3-4 minutes. The mixture should be bright white in colour and quite stiff.

4. Ensure the bowl has cooled down enough before proceeding. Divide the butter into 8 small blocks and ensure mixer is on medium speed.

5. Gradually add the butter, one block at a time, ensure each block has been thoroughly mixed through before adding the next.

6. NOTE, mixture will begin to look curdled and that is completely normal by around block number 5 of butter.

7. Once all the butter has been included, add the vanilla (or desired flavouring) and leave to mix for 4-6 minutes. The buttercream will gradually go from curdled and chunky, to glossy and smooth, just keep mixing!

8. Once complete add desired colourings and flavours, for my first cake, I added some fresh rapsberries and for the other, the juice of one lemon and some yellow food colouring.

9. SMB is a great frosting to pipe with and smooth and I used it in between the layers of the cake for a subtle creamy flavour.

(Please note SMB is best served at room temperature and not refrigerated)

Looking curdled

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