MasterChef Lolly Bag Cake by Evil Genius Bernard Chu

Australian MasterChef was all about kids this week.  Not only did the show appeal to the younger audience but it also managed to tap into the inner child in a lot of us adults too, especially the ones that grew up with corner shops and lolly bags... like me.  So when I found out that there was going to be an elimination challenge and the contestants were to create a lolly bag cake I started to get excited. MasterChef you had my curiosity, but now you've got my attention.

A childhood favourite - Red Skins.

Lolly Bag

Red Skins, Bananas and Spearmint Leaves in lolly bags plus 100s & 1000s.

If you're familiar with my macarons then you would already know that I've made musk macarons inspired by the iconic Australian musk stick and I've made Adriano Zumbo's Strawberry Bubblegum macarons using Hubba Bubba bubblegum.  But what I've not told you is that our local milk bar still has an original 1960's lolly counter and yes you can still buy bags of lollies.  Prices are a tad different instead of 10c and 20c bags they cost one or two dollars.  It doesn't stock all of the lollies I was familiar with when growing up but it's not bad.  A plethora of sweets is still available; cobbers, bananas, mint leaves, chico babies, freckles, strawberries & cream, pineapple gums, chocolate coated pineapple chews, red skins, milko, milk bottles, strawberry clouds, raspberry clouds, racing cars, snakes, wizz fizz and pop rocks.  When I'm grocery shopping I often give the kids a couple of bucks and they run flat to the boards to the milk bar to get their sugar hit.  Not so good for their teeth and the dentist is making a fortune but I enjoy giving them the same type of memories that I had when I was a kid.

I reckon that the MasterChef Lolly Bag Cake challenge was awesome and if you tuned into social media a lot of others thought the same and it certainly created a buzz of excitement.  

After the challenge was done and dusted and Christina completed the most amazing cake ever in a mere 3 hours, I knew that I wanted to make it but I also knew that I didn't want to make one that costs a bomb.  If you go through the recipe and start doing some simple addition you quickly realise that oh, shit you're up for about a hundred odd bucks for chocolate, popping candy, isomalt, paillette feuilletine, powdered food colouring and the like and that's only the start.

Even though I'm not going to be posting any cakes today, I will show you how to make the mandarin puree, hazlenut paste and the Paillete Feuilletine, which are probably the most difficult ingredients to source.  I've also included some info about prepping some of your own popping candy.  I plan to make the full recipe.  No idea whether it's going to turn out or not but I'll certainly try.  If all goes well I'll post the pics, if not I'll just sulk in silence.  I'm going overseas in just over a week so will probably make it when I get back but in the meantime at least I can get some prepping done.

If you were to buy a kilo of Boiron Mandarin Puree it would cost about $27 AUD.  It just so happens that mandarins are in season so if you want to save yourself some money try making your own.  

  
Concentrated Mandarin Puree
6 x Imperial mandarins
caster sugar

Peel the mandarins and remove as much of the white part as possible and remove any seeds.
Place the mandarin segments into a bowl and weigh them - mine weighed 277g - then blitz them with a mini chopper or pop them into a food processor.  
Sieve the puree into a small saucepan and add 10% of the weight of your mandarins in caster sugar i.e. 27.7g caster sugar.
Bring the puree to a boil and simmer until it has reduced by more than half and becomes a thick paste.  
Allow to cool.  Store either in the fridge or freezer until required - I'll be freezing mine.
Tip: You can easily make a bigger batch of mandarin puree, just add as much fruit as you think you need and, if you want a bit more zing you can also add some zest.

Hazelnut Paste   
125g hazelnuts
15g vegetable oil (approximate)

Roast the hazelnuts for 10 minutes on a baking tray lined with parchment paper at 180 degrees celsius or until light and golden.
Using a tea towel remove the skins whilst the nuts are still warm.
Blitz in a mini chopper or a food processor using enough oil to make a smooth paste. 
Tip: If you need to make more you can easily increase the quantities for this recipe or if you'd rather cheat you can also use a hazelnut spread such as 'Nutella'.
Adapted from a recipe in Adriano Zumbo's book "Zumbo".

Paillete Feuilletine

30g butter

30g flour

30g caster sugar

120ml milk

1 small egg

1 tsp vanilla extract

In a small saucepan, gently heat the milk, butter and vanilla extract.

In a separate bowl, combine the flour, sugar and egg.  Whisk until smooth and it's free from lumps.

Pour the flour mixture into the milk mixture in the saucepan whilst still on the stove and whisk continuously until it starts to thicken and looks like crepe batter. When ready, remove from heat.

If the batter has developed a few lumps, strain the mixture through a sieve back into a clean bowl.

Place a couple of teaspoons onto a Silpat mat or silicone mat, smooth out with a pastry scraper or palette knife and bake on 150 degrees celsius for about 8 minutes or until the crepe is golden and looks a bit like lace.  When cooked, either use a spatula to fold the crepe or simply break it up into pieces and allow to cool.

When finished turn off the oven.  Place all of the cooked crepe batter back onto a baking tray lined with parchment paper and leave in the oven for an hour to an hour and a half until brown and crispy.  Store in an airtight container in a cool place for up to 5 days.  I've put mine in the freezer in an airtight container surrounded by some paper towel to absorb any moisture. When I need them, I'm going to put them back into the oven whilst still frozen to crisp them up again instead of allowing them to defrost. This recipe makes about 60g of Paillete Feuilletine.
Adapted from recettes-bretonnes  

The flour, sugar and egg mixture. 

A gorgeous crisp Brittany lace crepe (otherwise known as crepes dentelles or gavottes) before it's broken up into pieces to make Paillete Feuilletine.   Not bad for my first ever attempt.

Homemade Paillete Feuilletine 

100s & 1000s, Popping Candy, Pink Murray River Salt & Paillete Feuilletine 

Popping Candy

If you love the idea of popping candy (also known as pop rocks) but you don't like the idea of spending $33AUD on a 200g tub try preparing this too with the store bought variety.  I found a great article here about coating popping candy with chocolate.  Alternatively, you could buy some pure raw organic cocoa butter (Brand: Cacao Power), melt it and when cool use it to coat them.  Make sure though that the cocoa butter is really cool as any heat will activate the pop rocks.  Doing it this way will also add to the theme of the lolly bag cake as you'll get the added flavour of yet another lolly.  If you couldn't be bothered going to the trouble of prepping popping candy however, you could always just take a risk and throw it in when you're making the Freckle Crunch.  

Isomalt
I plan to decorate my cake with Isomalt.  Unfortunately, I couldn't get clear or red but managed to buy pink. Google Isomalt and you can buy it online.  If you don't want to spend the money you could always try spinning some sugar.  I made some to decorate an ice-cream cake - you can find the recipe here.  To make invert sugar you can follow this link. 

If you're after moulds make sure that you contact Jess and her team at Ecotelasia as they shipped my moulds out super fast and the whole team is absolutely amazing! You can also buy them at Savour School.

If making the ingredients for the lolly bag cake seems a bit too labour intensive you can always buy the ingredients from the Melbourne Food Depot  or from Savour School.

For my international readers you can order all of your Australian lollies here as they deliver world-wide.

If you need to access the recipe visit http://tenplay.com.au/channel-ten/masterchef/recipes/lolly-bag-cake

To see my journey making the cake visit my post on Not Quite Bernard Chu.