Lemon cloud tea cookies

With October and the Sydney Food Festival just days away, we're on the cusp of a whole month of eating. But for early starters, there were at least two festivals this weekend to eat one's way through:

First up was Oktoberfest. Due to trackwork, the usual 10 minute train ride from Central turned into a 70 minute (!) two-bus commute to Tempe and the Concordia German Club. The beautiful weather and the historical re-enactments, complete with musketfire, almost made up for it.



And of course there was the obligatory schnitzel, sauerkraut, strudel, and schnapps. If you've never been to the Concordia club, I do recommend it. As their souvenir steiner suggests, it's where beer and kangaroos meet.



On Sunday it was time for the Malaysia Festival in Tumbalong Park at Darling Harbour. Lots of colourful costumes and performances, and some equally colourful food. (Full disclosure: this pink rose-flavoured drink was horrid, but it LOOKED great. Like something Hello Kitty would drink!)



For the less sweet-toothed, there was also plenty of curry, laksa, roti and rojak; and at least five different stalls selling their own versions of nasi lemak. Om nom!



My favourite, however, was both brightly coloured and sweet - dadar pandan, or pandan crepes filled with coconut and palm sugar, mmm...




Okay so the recipe below has nothing to do with this weekend of festival eating, except timing. Note I went back to my old fave, Technicolor Kitchen, for the recipe - I make no apologies.

This was a quick, easy recipe. I followed the instructions faithfully but overall I thought it could've been a bit more punchy in flavour, a little richer. As is they are a light biscuit best had with tea or coffee.


Lemon cloud tea cookies

1 1/2 cups (210g) all purpose flour
3/4 cup cornstarch
4 teaspoons baking powder
1/8 teaspoon salt
113g (8 tablespoons/1 stick) unsalted butter, softened
1 cup (140g) confectioners’ sugar
2 large eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 teaspoon lemon juice
1 teaspoon finely grated lemon zest


Preheat oven to 160°C (325°F) and line two large baking sheets with baking paper.

Sift the flour, cornstarch, baking powder and salt in a bowl. Set aside.

Combine the butter and confectioners' sugar until light.

Beat in the eggs one at a time. Batter may look broken and curdled. Beat in the juice and zest. Beat in the flour mixture.

Arrange rounded teaspoons of the dough on prepared pans. Space the balls about 5cm apart. Flour a fork and press a crisscross design into the top of each mound of dough.

Bake the cookies until they spread and become golden, about 20 minutes. Slide the parchment paper off the pan to cool completely.

Makes 48 tiny cookies - I made over 50.

From Technicolor Kitchen

Peanut Butter Cream Pie

"I can actually feel my heart beating faster from all the sugar in this," I confessed as I finished my first slice. So, fair warning, this one is even less healthy than the things which usually appear on this blog!

I made this pie at the suggestion of Michelle, a fellow peanut butter fiend, who saw a similar pie on Man v. Food. After looking at a few different variations, I cobbled the recipe below from a couple of different blogs. It seemed like such a simple recipe, albeit with a lot of different elements...

Little did I know that just about everything that could go pear-shaped in the process did. For instance -

a) I didn't make enough crust for my plate, so had to quickly make some more dough and paste it around the edges. Elegant.

b) Some of my custard burnt and had to be discarded.

c) And I still had twice as much as I needed anyway.

d) The meringue turned out beautiful! But then I put foil over the top and, uh, it wasn't so pretty after that.

e) Apparently you should eat these as soon as you make them. Instead of, say, storing it overnight in the fridge so that the sugar dissolves and becomes a gooey syrupy mess.

For all that, it wasn't a total failure! The layering in particular did turn out kinda nice-looking, and the taste was very rich and nutty. Now that I know where I went wrong, I am optimistic that I can conquer the problems on the second attempt. Provided my heart holds out long enough for me to give it another go, of course.




Peanut Butter Cream Pie

Crust
The Homesick Texan says this is enough to make 2 crusts, so I halved the recipe... and didn't have enough to cover my 24cm pie plate. So I'd suggest, um, making this at 3/4 of the ratio below?

2 cups of flour
1 tsp salt
1/2 cup oil (corn, canola or vegetable)
1/4 cup milk


Mix flour and salt. Mix oil and milk. Pour oil and milk into flour and salt and stir until combined into a dough. If it's too dry, add more milk.

Depending on how much you made, you can reserve some for later or use the whole.

Use a rolling pin to roll out between two sheets of wax paper, then line a buttered pie pan with the rolled-out crust.

Bake at 180C (350F) until lightly golden. Mine took about 20 minutes.


Crumb Mixture

1 cup powdered sugar
1/2 cup crunchy peanut butter
2 tsp cocoa powder

Mix powdered sugar, cocoa, and peanut butter until small crumbs form. Linnea's Blog suggests using a mixer; I found a fork was more than sufficient. For the peanut butter, I used Kraft.


Pudding (custard)
Using Linnea's Blog proportions, I made twice as much pudding as I needed - so I'd suggest halving the amounts below.

1 cup cold milk
1 cup cornstarch
1 tsp salt
1 tsp vanilla
3 egg yolks
3 cups milk
3 tsp butter
3/4 cup sugar

Mix corn starch, salt, 1 cup milk, egg yolks and vanilla with a wire whisk and set aside.

Heat 3 cups milk, butter and sugar until scalding, stirring constantly.

Add cornstarch mixture to hot milk while stirring with whisk. Cook until thickened. Remove from heat before it boils.

Place pudding in refridgerator to chill. Stir every 10 minutes.


Meringue
2 egg whites
1/8 teaspoon of salt
4 tablespoons of sugar

Beat your egg whites with salt and when they start to get fluffy add the sugar.


Assembly

Layer as follows: Start with half the crumbs in the pie shell. Then spoon the pudding on top of the crumbs. Place the remaining crumbs on top of pudding.

Finally layer the meringue on top. Bake pie until peaks on the meringue are lightly browned, about 10 minutes at 180C (350F).

Serve immediately.


Adapted from Linnea's Blog and Homesick Texan