So many flavours, so many egg whites left over

Merry Christmas.  Happy New Year.

There it is. 2012, right there in front of you.  A new year, all fresh ready for new things to do.  So what does one do with a new year?  One of course perfects a new skill.

Because I now own a chest freezer, I got something I have always wanted for Christmas.  The ice-cream maker attachment for my Kitchen Aid.  I thought I perhaps already loved my Kitchen Aid a little to much to be considered healthy, but now it has an ice-cream maker to go with it - hold me back.

December 27 and I tackled my first batch.  Plain vanilla?  Oh no, not me.  A little judicious googling brought forth a recipe for salted caramel ice-cream (which as we know is one of my favourite flavours).  Sadly, no pictures remain of this masterpiece.  It was delicious.  And since then there has been no stopping me.  We have made:

• Vanilla with raspberries
• Creme fraiche and lemon
• Mango sorbet
• Honey
• Coffee

The honey, made with Tasmanian Prickly Box, is particularly fine.  And the coffee pleases even me, which is a big call, since I am very fussy about my coffee ice-cream.

In this bowl, a scoop of honey, a scoop of coffee and a scoop of mango sorbet.  Perfect on a hot evening (or a cold evening for that matter).

Next I want to try liquorice.  And gingerbread.  And lemongrass.  And tarragon and anything else I can think of.  Meanwhile, we are buried in meringues, as I have to do something with all those egg whites and after one disastrous attempt I am happy to leave macaron making to the experts.  (Maybe some almond bread would go nicely with the ice-cream).

Sadly, this dairy excess does not bode well for the new improved Gretchen who has been making an appearance lately.

So today I bought this.

So surely now I can have one scoop more?

The search for the perfect portuguese custard tart

I've been making PCTs for a while now, courtesy of Bill Granger's quite achievable recipe.

Speaking as someone who has never had an affinity with custard, either cooking or eating it (dating back to a traumatic experience in primary school involving bananas, packet custard and a boy named Karl) I'm quite proud of my custard tarts.

I'm also becoming more fussy about the quality of the tarts I eat that are made by others.

So when I had an event recently at Parliament House, I took the opportunity to have PCTs on the menu for morning tea, knowing that the pastry chef at Parliament House is a pretty talented individual.

Firstly, a custard tart at 10.30am when you have been up since 4.30am, already run one event and are a good way into the second tastes pretty good.

The custard was good - a bit softer than mine with a nice flavour. A lovely dusting of powdered sugar and a little bit caramalised around the edges. The pastry wasn't very crisp. My kind banquets person on the day gave me a take home pack for the children and they loyally said they preferred mine. Time to compare.

A weekend batch of custard tarts resulted. I made the custard a bit looser than I usually do and infused a bit of mandarin peel in the custard. They came out of the oven looking pretty good and we took them around to share with Bronwen and Claire M.

Bronwen, not having tasted the Parliament House version was unable to compare. The girls and Claire M could compare. We seem to prefer my pastry and the Parliament House custard.

I'm going to keep working on this, since a good PCT is a fabulous thing. And with new chickens on the scene at Bronwen's place (welcome to Twitter and FaceChook) eggs are not something we are short of. I'll keep you posted on how I go.