02 Saturday Aug 2014
Posted in food
I’ve never done a mug cake before as most of the recipes I see have an egg in them. This one doesn’t and has turned out really nice, light and moist.
Ingredients and Method
3 TBsp milk (I used soy)
1 TBsp extra virgin olive oil
1 TBsp sugar/stevia alternative
Whisk these together in your mug.
Add 3 TBsp self raising flour
1.5 TBsp raw oats
0.5 TBsp cocoa powder
And a dollop of Nutella on top
Stir these til mixed in. Nuke in your microwave for 1 minute.
Voila!
Choccie Oat mug cake
13 Sunday Apr 2014
Posted in food
Forgot to write this one up – it’s not as sweet tasting as you’d think – but then a little goes a long way 🙂
Dry ingredients are: 2 cups of rice bubbles, a packet of smashed up arrowroot biscuits, 1 cup of halved maltesers.
Wet ingredients are: 125g butter, a can of sweetened condensed milk, 2 tablespoons of cocoa powder.
Put the wet ingredients in a saucepan and melt over medium heat until they start to bubble. Mix stirring for a minute and add to the dry ingredients. Note: mix the dry ingredients together in a large bowl before you add the wet stuff – it’s easier.
Press the base mix into a lined slice pan. Use the largest one you’ve got to spread it thin – once cool, the thicker this slice is, the harder it is to cut.
Melt a packet of white chocolate melts in the microwave and drizzle over the top – add more halved maltesers and pop the lot in the fridge to set.
Done.
white chocolate malteser slice
02 Wednesday Apr 2014
Posted in food
Nearly forgot I made this for a caramel loving friends birthday. Gird your loins and don’t make it on a hot day – it takes a half an hour of constant stirring. Make it the day before you need it to give it time in the fridge.
Prepare a 20cm square slice pan greased and lined with baking paper.
In a saucepan, put a 400g can of condensed milk (I use the 99% fat free/skim one), a cup of brown sugar, 2 tablespoons of liquid glucose, 1/4 cup of golden syrup, and 125g chopped up butter.
Let the stirring begin.
Warm this over low heat until the sugar dissolves so you don’t get a gritty fudge. Don’t let it boil – but keep it stirring for about 10 minutes.
Then ramp up the temperature a bit to a low medium heat/simmer stirring all the time. On my electric stove it took another 8 minutes to get to a soft bubble.
Now keep stirring like a mad person while it’s bubbling for another 8 or so minutes. You’re looking for the mixture to thicken and darken a little. Watch the heat on the bottom of the pan though – I had to lift the saucepan off a few times to moderate the temp.
Take the pan off the heat and drop in the white chocolate (200g) in small pieces and …you guessed it, stir til it’s melted through.
Pour your fudge into the slice pan. Mine ended up about 2cm thick all around. While it’s warm, sprinkle about 2 teaspoons of good quality salt flakes over the fudge. I used pink Himalayan salt.
Leave the fudge to cool for an hour and then cover with glad wrap and put into the fridge.
16 Sunday Feb 2014
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I just made these lovely little snack pieces. The original recipe was posted here by Not Quite Nigella.
Plump up 1/2 cup of sultanas in some hot water. I also rehydrated some cranberries. Mash up two ripe bananas in a bowl and add in 3/4 cup oats, 1/2 cup desiccated coconut, 3 tablespoons of cocoa powder, 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract, 1/2 teaspoon of cinnamon and about 3 teaspoons of agave syrup (for sweetness). Mix in the sultanas with this to get a wet mix. Roll into balls and roll these in more oats and coconut. Voila – healthy snacks for the working week.
19 Thursday Dec 2013
For those of you who are Oreo inclined, these look lovely and might…I say, might! make it through to New Years.
19 Thursday Dec 2013
Posted in food
Phew – busy, busy, busy. OK – just in case you hadn’t thought of it, here’s how to cheat a nice alcoholic tart…are you seeing a theme in my baking yet?
Using bought shells (having never made little tart pastries before – and you know, it’s a busy time of year etc etc) and a tin of caramel – yes, yes, I know!
BUT – if you stir up the tin of caramel with a little dollop of Kalhua (the Gingerbread flavoured one)…catch my drift???
Then you wallop a few ginger nut biscuits in a zip bag and sprinkle them over the top…. Well, I mean really, who would know besides us?
Merry Christmas 🙂
cheats tart
19 Thursday Dec 2013
I love Christmas time – it’s rum, rum and more rum! This is a soft fudge and very sweet.
Put 1/2 cup of raisins (which count as a fruit really) into a small saucepan with 1/2 cup of rum – Bundaberg rum of course! – and warm through to get the raisins nice and boozy. Cool them down.
In a bigger saucepan, stir a can of sweetened condensed milk, a firmly packed cup of brown sugar with 120 grams of chopped up butter until the sugar dissolves. I didn’t use glucose syrup because I like grainy fudge, but if you want it smoother and creamier, add into this saucepan 2 tablespoons of glucose syrup. Once the sugar is dissolved, raise the heat to medium and stir for 10 minutes until it’s a light golden colour.
Take the large saucepan off the heat and add in 200grams of chopped up milk eating chocolate – you could do dark if you wanted. Stir the chocolate in until it’s melted in. Add in the boozy raisins (and rum!) and when it’s all combined, pour it into a lined square tin. Let it cool and set – put in the fridge if you’re in a hurry. When it’s set, slice and dice it into little pieces and enjoy.
rum and raisin fudge
19 Thursday Dec 2013
Posted in food
Is it called a truffle if there’s no truffle in them? I wonder to myself. Oh well, these taste lovely anyway 🙂
white chocolate, coconut and lemon/lime truffle
In a saucepan, put 1/2 cup of coconut cream, 360grams of white eating chocolate and as much grated zest of limes and lemons that you can handle zesting. The recipe suggests 2 tablespoons of each, but keep going til you can do no more! Stir over a low heat until the chocolate melts then pour into a bowl, cover and get into the fridge to cool and solidify. You need to be careful with the amount of coconut cream – too much and the mixture won’t set (tip for young players :). Leave the mixture to cool for as long as possible – overnight is great.
When set – get a bowl of some kind of coconut (moist/shredded – even desiccated). Take a teaspoon of the mixture and roll into a ball – cover with the coconut and put on a lined tray to put back into the fridge until ready to eat.
19 Thursday Dec 2013
Posted in food
These dark chocolate balls are chockers with raisins and cranberries soaked in port. Delish!
In a bowl, put 1/4 cup of raisins and 1/4 cup of chopped dried cranberries to soak in 1/2 cup of your favourite port. In a saucepan, melt a large block (200gram+) of dark eating chocolate with 1/4 cup of thickened cream. When melted, take off the heat and add in the raisin/cranberry bowl of goodies. Put in a bowl and refrigerate until set. I left overnight and had a glass of port myself :).
When the mixture is set, take a teaspoon sized amount, roll into a ball and place on a lined tray. When you’ve rolled all the balls, melt another 200gram block of milk eating chocolate in a saucepan. You can either drizzle the milk chocolate over the balls or dip them in – it’s entirely up to you. Refrigerate until you’re ready for the eating part.
port balls
19 Thursday Dec 2013
This is a family tradition – probably more for Boxing Day nibbles while watching the cricket, but they are always there somewhere.
NB: You need a deep frypan (that can get up to a high heat) or an electric frypan you can control the temps on.
Put one cup of water in the heating pan with 2 cups (1 lb) of sugar. Colour with cochineal/red food dye. Stir to dissolve the sugar and then bring it to the boil (200C – or 375F in the old scale). When boiling add 2 cups (1 lb) of raw peanuts and lower the temp down to around 120C (260F) and put on the lid. Leave it to bubble away for 20 minutes. Turn off the heat and take the lid off. Start stirring it all until the sugar crystallises…which can take a few minutes. Allow to cool and voila.
a boxing day tradition
10 Sunday Nov 2013
Posted in food
Is there anything as good as potato and ham fritters with lashings of tomato sauce? Those were a Sunday evening favourite for my family – particularly during winter. Via twitter I was gifted the recipe for an holumi and zucchini version, which is way better for me, I’m sure. (Hat tip to Richard Chirgwin). But as good as they are – and they are very good – I’m not sure they eclipse the humble spud variety as our family tradition.
In a bowl grate 4-5 zucchini
1 packet of holumi cut into small squares
1 onion – diced
2 eggs
1 cup of breadcrumbs (I used panko crumbs)
Half cup of plain flour to bind it all together.
(If the mix is too dry – add another egg).
Shallow fry in oil (rIce bran oil has a high smoke point).
Enjoy with a salad.
03 Sunday Nov 2013
There used to be a show on Aussie tv called The Cook and The Chef. Maggie Beer was the cook and Simon Bryant, the chef. On one episode he did his mocha granola and it’s to die for.
Here’s the original recipe on the ABC site
Here’s what I do…
Dry ingredients in a bowl
5 cups of oats
1/4 cup of dark cocoa
Add the wet(ish) ingredients
8 shots of espresso
2 tbls of grated palm sugar
The seeds from 2 vanilla beans
1/3 cup of vegetable oil
1 cup of orange juice
2 tbls honey
Mix it all together so it’s all a bit moist.
Spread out on a tray and add almonds and some coconut on top. Into a low oven (80 degrees) for 2 hours. Turn off the oven and let the tray cool completely in the oven before putting in a container lined with baking paper.
It’s supposed to make up to 10 breakfasts but it lasts me longer. It’s delish with soy milk.
05 Saturday Oct 2013
Posted in food
Quick recipe for using up ripe bananas.
Heat your oven to 170 degrees Celsius/moderate.
Cream 60g butter and beat in 1/2 cup caster sugar gradually. In a bowl, mash up 2 bananas and stir in one egg. Slowly add this to the butter mix.
Sift 2 cups of self raising flour and 1/2 teaspoon of salt and slowly add this to the butter/banana mix and continue to beat it in.
The batter will be quite dry, so add 3 tablespoons of yoghurt. This mix gets poured into a greased loaf pan. You can sprinkle chopped walnuts on top (any kind of nut would work, I suppose).
Bake for 50 mins, or until a skewer comes out clean. Enjoy.
* I had 4 bananas to use so I baked a double batch to get a mother loaf and 6 babies.
23 Monday Sep 2013
Take eleventy billion zucchini and grate them. Sweat down a humungous bunch of spinach in a saucepan with a little butter and soy sauce. Add in some mushies and soften these too. Slice up as much ham as you like and add it to a large pie dish with the zucchini, spinach and mushrooms all mixed up. Whisk up some eggs with a good dose of pepper (I used 8 – this is a HUGE quiche). Pour the eggs over the dish and flatten it out. Then add some grated cheese over the top. The dish goes into the oven (sans lid) at 160 degrees until the eggs are cooked and the top is golden brown. Allow to cool, then slice and freeze for “tired night” dinners with some salad or wrap up for picnic lunches at the cricket 🙂
12 Thursday Sep 2013
The Ashes at the Gabba is a HUGE deal and the preparation for the “catering” our group organises for each day is taken extremely seriously. Limes cut for the drinks. Nibblies for elevenses and threesies. Salads and/or rolls for lunch. It’s serious Masterchef picnicking stuff.
Tonight’s effort (guinea pigging work mates tomorrow) is a roasted pumpkin and feta pastry.
How it goes:
Thaw 2-3 pieces of puff pastry.
Oven to 180-200 Celsius.
Slice and dice the pumpkin (I used a half of one) and spread it on an oiled (or baking paper lined) tray. Season it with the herbs and spices of your choice. I love harissa flavourings – but turmeric and garlic go well also. Whatever you like really. Roast for 20 minutes and then get it out to cool a bit.
Whisk up three eggs and 100mls each of light sour cream and milk (you could also use cream if you’re feeling decadent).
Oil two muffin trays. Slice each pastry sheet into 9 squares (for a big muffin tray) or 16 squares (for a small muffin tray) and line each with a square of pastry. (I got 12 large and 24 small out of this recipe). ** Don’t forget to oil the tray!! These suckers are difficult to get back out.
Fill each pastry with some spiced pumpkin. Spoon the egg mix over each. Don’t overfill. Crumble some feta over the top. I used a whole packet (250g).
These go into the oven for another 20 minutes or until golden. Let them cool in the tray before getting out onto a wire rack to finish cooling. Because the egg mixture ran over a bit, I ended up using a cake tester to loosen the edges of each to get them out of the pan.
25 Sunday Aug 2013
Posted in food
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This is very tasty and very easy to make.
Mix 65g melted butter into a bowl containing 1/2 cup brown sugar, 2/3 cup plain flour and 1/2 cup of almond meal.
Flatten this mix into an oiled & papered slice pan (small square) and bake on 160 Celsius for 10-15 minutes til it has a little colour. It’ll be baked again with the topping, so better to go a little under here. Leave this out of the oven to cool while you make the topping.
Melt another 80gm butter in a small saucepan with 3 big dollops of honey – go more if you like the taste. Let this simmer for 3 minutes then stir through 1 cup of sliced almonds so they’re all soaked and covered in the gooey goodness.
Pour the topping over the base slice and pop back in the oven for another 15 minutes until golden.
26 Wednesday Sep 2012
It seemed simple – a general tweet out to the twitterverse asking if anyone knew a chocolate beetroot cake recipe…
I figured I’d at least get some suggestions on where else to look. All my recipe books had buttermilk in the ingredients and that’s just plain wrong. And google keeps failing me.
I’d always depended on my Mum’s recipe – and I’d lost it. Funny thing was, so had she! So Mum started calling her friends, and I turned to the biggest hivemind I know and tweeted. I follow quite a few foodies – funny that! – who retweeted my request a few times to spread the question a little wider.
My tweep-in-shining-armour was an English gent who thought his Mum might be able to help and he offered to add my request to his email home. Well, bless her if she didn’t come through! Awesome. A lovely lady called Shelagh on the far side of the world has shared her recipe with a complete stranger in Australia. And I hope she doesn’t mind, but I’m giving a copy to my Mum in case she never finds where she’s written hers! 😉
I made muffins instead of a cake, as I took it to work for my team to taste. They never believed me that you can’t taste the beetroot. Thanks to Shelagh and her travelling son Omar, that’s a save for my recipe collection.
I’m very very grateful.
