It’s been 9 months since my last post. I know this because my last post was a Yuzu citrus recipe and Yuzu season has come back around again. I’m not worried that I don’t post here often. This space was always just for me really. I never wanted to monetize Chew Town nor did I want the pressure to continue posting here if I didn’t have capacity.

So I suppose I should fill you in on where I’ve been. A number of years ago I started a food photography business and it has grown exponentially until I have had no capacity for anything else. A year ago I moved into a commercial food photography studio here in Sydney and things really exploded. To keep up with demand and grow the business further I recently created Let’s Make Stuff to build on the success of my food photography business. Let’s Make Stuff is really me and a bunch of very talented mates who specialise in food. Together we are a content creation business offering recipe development, recipe testing, food photography, copywriting, social media management, food videography and food website development.

Oh, and I expanded into craft photography, videography and project creation (you can find my craft creations here) offering the same photography service to a range of craft clients.

So, it’s been busy and something had to give… and it was Chew Town.

But, it IS yuzu season and yuzu is my favourite fruit. So here is a delicious recipe for a Yuzu take on a Citron Tart (A citron tart is a French lemon tart). It consists of a chocolate pastry base and a just set yuzu curd filling. I used the discontinued Carême chocolate pastry here which is no longer being made (I have a very special stash of it in my studio freezer thanks to Carême) but their incredible Vanilla Bean shortcrust would work perfectly here too.

The fresh yuzu are from Mountain Yuzu and while this recipe could easily be made with lemons the yuzu version yields a heady fragrant citrus scent that only Yuzu can provide.

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If you’ve been following along with the recipes lately, then you know I recently found myself with a stash of some incredible fresh yuzu fruit grown right here in Australia by Mountain Yuzu. If you want to know a little more about the citrus fruit that is yuzu head to my previous post here.

The three yuzu recipes I shared in the last post culminates in this incredible yuzu sponge cake. It uses the yuzu curd as a filling along with whipped double cream, and is topped with candied and dried yuzu. The yuzu flavour is all riding on the base of an Italian pan di spagna (sponge cake) which is one of the most incredible sponges to make because it is made without butter, milk or baking powder/soda. Also, it isn’t anywhere near as sweet as its sponge cake counterparts so leaves space for the sharp yuzu flavour to shine through.

I made this as a 15cm cake because it just seemed perfect in that size – also baby cakes are the cutest. This cake is a flavour punch in the face, so the quantity is perfect for a gathering of 6 and won’t leave you with half a cake as leftovers to make you feel guilty about eating over the next few days.

The use of double cream was entirely intentional but you can use whipped thickened cream instead if you can’t easily find double cream. It’s not often you see whipped double cream in a recipe, but with the pan di spagna being not overly sweet and the yuzu being beautifully sharp, the extra fat content of the double cream added an unctuousness that paired with the sharp yuzu perfectly.

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When I realised that we had a yuzu grower here in Australia, I got next level excited. Yuzu is one of my all time favourite citrus and I had never had the opportunity to try cooking with fresh yuzu, so I got in touch with Mountain Yuzu and they let me buy a batch of 15 fresh yuzu. When they arrived I popped them in the fridge for a few days while I decided exactly what to make with them.

A little about yuzu to start. Firstly, yuzu isn’t actually a lemon it is an entirely different citrus. A sour and highly fragrant citrus, it certainly references a lemon but has mandarin like qualities (certainly in shape) and is almost herbal in fragrance. Most commonly linked to Japan, yuzu originated in East Asia and is also found in Chinese and Korean cuisine.

When the yuzu arrived they were so precious to me that I wanted to make sure that I used every skerrick of the fruit that I could. This led me to create the following three staples that preserved the fruit long term to ensure I could keep eating it for the next few months. I didn’t get too creative or adventurous in the first instance, I opted for dried yuzu slices (any self respecting cocktail lover would have made this choice too), candied yuzu peel and yuzu curd.

Candied yuzu peel can be eaten directly from the jar (trust me on this one), or eaten with the ends dipped in chocolate and set. Anywhere you would use any sort of candied peel you can use the yuzu peel – on top of a milk chocolate ganache tart, in an Italian cannoli, in biscuit or shortbread dough, or on top of a pavlova.

For the curd, a yuzu meringue tart comes to mind straight away, or as a layer in parfait, as a layer cake filling, in icecream, wrapped up in a crêpe or wherever you would use a lemon curd.

If you are wondering what I used these 3 variations for stay tuned because next week I’ll share my recipe for a layered yuzu sponge cake which uses the curd, candied peel and dried slices!

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Let’s talk ragù. Ragù is the term used in Italy for a pasta sauce that is made using meat. The meat is traditionally slow cooked over time to fall-apart tender stage after which it distributes beautifully through the sauce and adds a depth of flavour to a traditional tomato based pasta sauce that can’t be beat.

My top tip for a ragù is to use a combination or stewing meat and a meat with bones. You want the stewing meat so you have enough meat in the ragu when it pulls apart, but the bones are integral to adding a depth of flavour to a ragù.

Slow cooking meat into a pasta sauce over several hours sounds labour intensive, but it is very much a set and forget recipe so the lengthy cooking time really is passive and just means more time sitting around reading a book and drinking wine on the weekends. Then, you just boil up some fresh pappardelle, stir it through, add Parmigiano-Regganio cheese and its a killer meal.

If you want to cut the cooking time of the ragù down, I cannot recommend enough a new multicooker that I recently had the pleasure of creating recipes for – the Remoska Tria. This cooker is quite amazing. At it’s core, it is a non stick pot, but it’s not just a pot! It comes with three separate cooking lids so you can choose exactly how you want to cook with it.

With the glass cooking lid, the Tria behaves just like a regular cooking pot and can be used on the stovetop or in the oven. The soft pressure lid is perfect for long cooks on the stovetop and cuts the time it takes to slow cook meats, casseroles and sauces in half without any of the stress of a traditional pressure cooker. The roasting lid which has truly revolutionised the way that I cook in the kitchen. The roasting lid plugs into a socket and turns the Remoska, when placed onto its trivet, into a small oven right on my benchtop. I am shocked by how succulent and tender chicken, fish and meat becomes when cooked under the roasting lid while still achieving that wonderful golden roasted hue. This means you can use it anywhere you can find a plug!

If you would like to find out more about the Remoska Tria, head to their website and use code “ChewTown” for a 25% discount and free shipping in Australia.

Don’t worry you don’t need a Remoska, you can cook this recipe in a cast iron pot in the oven and it will just take little longer to cook to pull apart stage.

Chew Town was gifted a Remoska Tria for the purposes of creating recipes for the brand as paid work through Amanda’s job as a Food Photographer. 

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Like most people who’s day revolves around food, when on holidays we usually plan all our activities and sightseeing around our meal times. Pre-kid we would plan all of our meals out at cafes and restaurants, but with a 3.5 year old, we usually have to stay home for holiday evening meals so that our little one can go to bed at a reasonable time.

So, that means that as well as trying the local foodie favourite restaurants for brunch and lunch, dinner on holidays becomes a sampling of the best local produce the area has to offer while cooking up a storm.

One of our favourite areas in NSW is the south coast and as well as getting married down there, just before our little one was born we bought a block of land. 4 years on and we are finally getting around to planning what a house might look like down there, but whenever we can we have holidays in the area to fully immerse ourself in the community.

One of the best parts of the NSW south coast is the seafood, and whenever we get the chance, we head to Lucky’s Seafood (our favourite seafood shop) and buy whatever looks the best. The last time we were there we couldn’t resist the rock lobster and instantly decided lobster rolls were in order. It was locally caught that day and already cooked so we didn’t need to stress about that part of it.

Scott got to work breaking down the lobster as I gathered together the other ingredients. With lobster as good as this, you don’t really need to do much but get the balance right. So along with the lobster, we added a good quality egg mayonnaise (ours was chilli and lime but a plain good quality one will do perfectly), spring onions, celery, dill, chives and lemon. Mix it with the lobster and toss it in some heavily buttered and grilled soft rolls. Plate it up with a side of shoestring fries and you are good to go. Perfect for lunch or dinner. Quick, simple, delicious and yet very very fancy.

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In Italy, biscuits are king. Sure, there are desserts like Tiramisu which everyone knows and loves. But for a country fuelled on the back of 3-4 espressos per day per person, the biscuit is the king of all things sweet. Now, when talking about biscuits, there are two main types. There are the ones perfect for dunking in your coffee. They are neither too sweet, nor too flavourful and while on their own they don’t amount to much, when combined with coffee they are a perfect match. Then there are the celebration biscuits. These are the biscuits that are not just coffee biscuits. They hold their own both with and without coffee.

Whenever I visit my family back home in Western Australia, my mother and I always pick a couple of things to make together so that her family recipes might live on in my family (and on this websitre). So when my little one and I travelled to Perth earlier this year because she hadn’t seen them in a year and a half, I knew the moment I arrived what I wanted to make.

Mum’s involtini biscuits are the most heavenly biscuits I know. My mother only makes them once a year because they are so rich that one just can’t have these on hand willy nilly. They are made with very short and delicious dough that combines flour, butter, sugar and whipping cream and then they are rolled up like tiny little biscuit croissants filled with any sort of jam you have on hand. They are then tossed in icing sugar to add another layer of rich decadence (you see why they are only made once a year?) and consumed by the handful, because once you start eating them… you just. can’t. stop.

I have always loved my mother’s involtini and given she hadn’t made them in a while she was more than happy to make them with us. I grew up with my mother spending many hours in the kitchen cooking so I love being able to have my daughter, my mother and I cook together whenever we get the chance. The recipe will make a lot of them but the good news is that they can be frozen prior to tossing in icing sugar and then pulled out and brought to room temperature whenever you need them. Hot tip, most Italian biscuits can actually be frozen. My mother and aunties often cook big batches of biscuits together and then share them and freeze them until guests show up for coffee.

We used a homemade raspberry jam because that’s what mum had in the cupboard but any sort of jam would work here. A citrus jam would be especially good to cut through all the cream, sugar and butter. I hope you get a chance to make these because while they are a little effort to make, the pay off is better than you could have hoped for.

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Sometimes the recipes that you aren’t planning to make end up being the best recipes that need their moment to shine! This is one of those recipes. These Caramilk Ganache Easter Tartlets were created using ingredients that were left after the wrap up of all my client Easter work this year. The Easter projects came flying at me this year and all up I shot 15 recipes for clients in a few weeks. I loved making and shooting things like these Easter Churro Bunny Cupcakes & Hot Cross Cinnamon Scrolls for Queen Fine Foods, or this Top Deck Mousse Tart or Maple Pumpkin Walnut Tart for Careme Pastry, but at the end of it I had a surplus of mini Easter eggs and my all time favourite pastry, the Carême Dark Chocolate Shortcrust Pastry.

Just a quick aside about this pastry – when defrosted it smells just like a block of dark chocolate and is one of the easiest and most delicious pastry sheets to work with.  Careme had a hiatus from making this pastry for a little while but they resumed production of late last year after people kept requesting it (me included!).

I decided pretty quickly that I wanted to make ganache tartlets with the left over pastry and choccy eggs so with chocolate stores depleted in my studio, I headed to the supermarket. I went in for dark chocolate but was fearing that the little chocolate eggs would get lost amongst the dark chocolate pastry and chocolate ganache. But then, I spied a Cadburys Caramilk chocolate block and realised it was exactly what the tarts needed! If you aren’t familiar with Caramilk chocolate its basically caramelised white chocolate which was discontinued in Australia a little while ago but was brought back in 2019, much to everyone’s delight.

I seriously cannot express in words how incredible the crisp dark chocolate and silky caramelised white chocolate ganache go together. When the little filled easter eggs are set inside the experience is an Easter explosion in your mouth. It is the PERFECT special occasion dessert that can be made a day or two before Easter and requires only 5 ingredients.

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I have been making so many Easter recipes for clients this year that you would think it would make me sick of Easter cooking. Well, it did the opposite! All the super cute Easter recipes I’ve been making motivated me to create something special for Chew Town. These Easter cupcakes in tiny terracotta pots! There are two kinds – 6 cottontail cupcakes and 6 birds nest cupcakes – and inside is a vanilla bean cupcake with a little mini Cadbury cream egg hidden inside before baking. The best thing about these cupcakes is that you can actually bake the cupcakes inside the terracotta pots in the oven which means they rise in the pots and come out perfectly positioned for decorating (I did pop in a cupcake liner before adding the batter because the terracotta pots aren’t really food safe).

They really are just the cutest and are one of those treats that are almost a shame to eat… but never fear, you get over that quickly when you are rewarded with such a delicious cupcake centre! In the recipe below I walk you through all the decorating steps. Quite simply, it is one batch of cupcake batter that is baked in all 12 cupcakes, one half batch of vanilla bean buttercream for all 12 cupcakes (because you only need to cover the tops of the cupcakes) and then two slightly different ways of decorating. But remember, if two different types of decorations seems daunting, then pick one and make 12 of them! The cottontail cupcakes and certainly the easier of the two to decorate.

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I know, I know, It’s been a while. I feel like a broken record saying this every time I manage to find the time to post. This time, I have an excuse… there has been a LOT going on with my food photography business. If you feel like hearing more about it, head over to the Chew Town Instagram highlights called “Studio Tour”. Because I have moved my photography and styling business out of our home and into a COMMERCIAL SPACE! I’m proper adulting now. Although I do have a 3 year old and an investment property, but that didn’t really feel like adulting for some weird reason.

Signing a commercial lease, now THAT’S adulting. Taking serious financial risk and committing to a multi year lease agreement that absolutely requires you to make money is taking things to the next level and it is frightening. It’s also the reason I’m somewhat sporadic in my posting. Sure, I’m cooking and shooting every week, but it’s for clients and I’m often so busy, I don’t get time to make things for fun.

Today, I actually made something for fun! This was a recipe request from a dear friend who lives in another state. She sent me a picture of a half eaten anitpasto platter the other night with the words “Can you identify something delicious for me?… I would love to make it”. She was at a gathering with friends and a wonderful savoury creamy antipasto terrine wrapped in cheese was on the platter with other meats, cheeses, dips and olives. After exchanging messages back and forth, I had her taste it a few more times and answer a myriad of questions I threw at her until I decided on what it was and how to develop the recipe for her having never tasted it myself. It had Italian flavours so I was confident I could work it.

My searching of the Italian language recipe sites yielded nothing, so I figured either I wasn’t using the right Italian words for the recipe, or it was a hybrid dish created outside of Italy but using Italian flavours. Either way, I came up with a recipe and sent her a first draft that night.

I then got to work this week testing the recipe and here it is, our antipasto terrine with layers of pesto, sun dried tomato & capsicum and cream cheese all encased in provolone. There is no actual cooking involved, just three different mixtures made using the food processor and then layered together in a loaf pan or cake pan lined with provolone cheese. You then place it in the freezer until it sets completely hard, then pop it on your platter and bring it to room temp before serving.

It is seriously delicious and the perfect accompaniment to a charcuterie board. The best bit is if you don’t eat all of it, just wrap it up and store it in your freezer until your next set of guests drop in (if that even happens anymore thanks to the global situation). Or, do what we plan to do and cut it into smaller portions, freeze and have it on a few consecutive Saturday nights at home with some wine while the kid is asleep.

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It seems like I make an inordinate amount of cakes these days. The truth is that I don’t get a lot of time to write for the blog these days thanks to a very busy schedule of client styling and photography work. I’m constantly cooking and shooting for clients that I find it hard during time off to make things for the blog. Also, when my toddler isn’t at daycare, she commands all of my attention (I know you other mothers out there will get it).

When I do find the time to make things for me, I like to incorporate my love of craft too and cakes are the perfect vehicle for both cooking and crafts. With Halloween a few weeks away, I recently had the idea for this bat cake after creating a delicious Halloween recipe for a client (I’ll link that recipe here for you soon) and I knew I just had to share it. The idea for the bat cake is that it is completely black and white on the outside and bright and colourful with key halloween colours on the inside.

I suppose it is also time to let you all in on a little secret. Almost all the cakes I make for the blog use special cake batter recipes that I’ve developed, tested and created. Sometimes though, when making cakes for friends or when I want to focus solely on the decoration I do 100% use a packet cake. There is absolutely nothing at all wrong with that. On those occasions I always use Betty Crocker packet cakes (either chocolate or vanilla cake depending on the cake’s concept). When I use a packet cake I ALWAYS get asked for the recipe for the cake. Thanks to being a stickler for telling the truth, I always end up telling them my secret.

So the truth is, this cake used 2 Betty Crocker vanilla packet cakes with salted caramel flavouring for this bat cake. I then split the batter in 3 and added gel colouring to each lot of batter. Around the outside and in the middle I used my tried and tested vanilla buttercream with black gel colouring. The rest of the decoration is easier than you think: The webs are made using marshmallows with a technique that is actually really quick and easy; and the drips are made with a combination of white chocolate, white candy melts and vegetable oil to get the colour white while also allowing for it to run and set properly when creating the drips. If you would like to make this cake, the full how-to is under the next image.

To finish it all off, the cake topper is simply white and black cardstock hot glued on skewers that I painted black. I cut these with my Cricut Maker machine after creating the bat design in Cricut Design Space. If you want the link to the cut file you’ll find it here.

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