Having purchased and received as gifts a tonne of cookbooks over the past year I wanted to ensure I put them to good use. So, this year, I decided to join the 2011 Cookbook Challenge.
For those of you not familiar, the Cookbook Challenge is a group of food bloggers who challenge themselves by cooking a recipe from cookbooks they already own based on a specific theme each fortnight. It’s a great way to challenge yourself as a cook and a great way to ensure that all the cookbooks that food bloggers collect are put to good use.
This fortnights theme is stonefruit. For my submission I decided to cook the Nectarine Tart with Orange Syrup from Donna Hay’s Seasons cookbook. Seasons is a beautiful cookbook broken into chapters on each season with recipes based on the seasonal produce available in Australia for each season. The photography and styling in the book, as with all of Donna Hay’s work, is stunning and so evocative of each season represented. It’s also the perfect coffee table book as you could happily spend hours flipping through the beautiful recipes and photography.
What is your favourite Donna Hay cookbook?
Nectarine Tart with Orange Syrup
Recipe from Donna Hay Seasons
Nectarine topping
3 nectarines, halved and stones removed
1/4 cup (55g) of caster sugar
1. Heat a large non-stick frying pan over a medium heat.
2. Sprinkle the nectarine halves with the sugar and place cut side down into the frying pan and cook until the sugar is melted and golden.
3. Set aside to cool slightly.
Tart Base
90g of butter, softened
1/2 cup (110g) caster sugar
2 eggs
1 cup of almond meal (ground almonds)
1/4 cup (35g) plain flour
2 teaspoons finely grated orange zest*
1/4 teaspoon of baking powder
1. Preheat the oven to 160 degrees celsius and lightly grease a rectangular loose bottomed tart tin.
2. In a food processor add the butter and sugar and blitz until just combined.
3. Add the eggs, almond meal, flour, orange zest and baking powder and process until just combined.
4. Spoon the mixture into the prepared tart tin.
5. Press the prepared nectarines into the mixture and bake for 30 minutes or until cooked when tested with a skewer.
* The original recipe called for lemon zest but I decided to use orange zest seeing as I used oranges in the syrup.
Orange Syrup
1 cup of freshly squeezed orange juice
1/4 cup of orange-flavoured liquer
1/2 cup (110g) of caster sugar
1. Place the orange juice, liquer and sugar in a small saucepan and place over a high heat and bring to the boil.
2. Reduce the heat to low and simmer for 10 to 12 minutes or until the mixture thickens.
3. Set aside to cool.
