Carrot and Pineapple Cupcakes

I always wonder with the blog whether it is more interesting to make crazy unusual recipes or just try out things and post the really good ones so people have a tried and tested source of recipes. In the end basically I just make what I feel like I guess - often dictated by the contents of my fridge and pantry.

This one was because I had a tub of cream cheese in the fridge and needed to use it up. So I googled "Cream Cheese Frosting" and found this little delight. These cupcakes are wonderful - The ingredients list looks a little weird but they are light as air and melt in your mouth. The recipe only makes 10 cupcakes officially -9 if you are me! Which is actually wonderful. So often I have zillions left over and feel like I eat too many myself. This way everyone in my office got one and husband and I got one each and that was it - just enough.

I think at a stretch you can even claim they are good for you - fruit, vegetables, dairy, nuts - all very good for you :)

The original recipe comes from www.exclusivelyfood.com.au

2/3 Cup Plain Flour
1/2 Cup + I T Caster Sugar
3/4 tsp bicarb soda
1/2 tsp cinnamon

1/3 Cup Oil
1 egg
1/4 tsp vanilla
1/2 cup grated carrot
1/4 cup crushed pineapple

Mix wet into dry, add 1/3 cup chopped pecans.

Bake in a 180C oven for about 15mins or until a skewer comes out clean.

Cream Cheese Frosting
Beat together
60g Cream Cheese
30g Butter
140g Icing sugar
1 tsp lemon juice

Top with a little toasted coconut.

Delicious! Really worth a try, even if you're not usually a fan of carrot cake the pineapple and pecans really add something special.

Have a wonderful day!

Feel Better Soup

Seeing as though Sydney is putting us through this dreadful extended wintry weather I suppose soup is not completely inappropriate in November.

I can't believe it was 30 degree all weekend and then today I had a scarf and coat on until midday - what is with that!

All this up and down weather means that flu season has arrived late and everyone seems to have a sniffle- this soup is my sniffle cure. It's actually gotten to the point where I crave it when the first symptoms appear and will drag myself half dead to the shops to pick up some ingredients if I don't have things I need for it.

Although the best part about this soup is that you just chuck in whatever you have in the fridge and hope for the best. The only must haves are chicken stock and garlic, rumoured to have restorative properties for colds, they kickstart a placebo effect that makes me feel instantly better!

This time I used:

Onion, garlic and bacon fried together

1 litre Chicken Stock

(Everyone Gasp! this time I used stock cubes! purists give up the perfectionism now - when you're sick it will work whether it's fresh or not and if you don't have homemade or a tetra pack on hand it's fine! get over it!

2 carrots chopped into little squares

1 stick celery chopped up (plus some of the tops chopped up)

1 potato grated in for a little bulk

Salt and pepper

I always serve with garlic bread to up the healthy garlic factor - plus it's just yummy!

Other things you can (and I have) pop(ped) in-

Shredded leftover bbq chicken - I've even poached a chicken breast in the cooking soup and then shredded it.

Chopped Chorizo

A tin of tomatoes

Pearl barley (I didn't love this but you might!)

Coriander and chilli and lime for a Tom yum style hit!

The depths of your fridge are the limit! Bubble the ingredients together until cooked and soft and lovely.

You'll feel better, it's simple and quick and it's actually good for you so everyone wins. In fact I could do with a steaming bowl right now, plus BBC's pride and prejudice on TV and a blanky...

Adventures in the black forest

As a child in the 80s Black forest cake was like the holy grail of fancy desserts - something grown ups ate in restaurants.
In the 90s all that cream and fuss became deeply unfashionable for it's calories and the millions of steps it takes and now it's more of a nostalgia thing - which doesn't make it any less annoying I've discovered.

It was my nanna's 85th birthday last weekend and she has been very unwell. In and out of hospital and off her food with a stomach ulcer that has only just resolved itself. I wanted to make her something really tasty as well as beautiful for a birthday cake so I decided on a black forest cake - which I've never made before- because the lady loves cream, and there are few things as cream stuffed than black forest cakes!

Well, every recipe is spectacularly different and of course I picked a traditional german version with sliced chocolate cake, cream, chocolate mousse, cherry syrups, ganache, shaved chocolate and slices of butter cake in between the layers - the internet offers far too many choices for a perfectionist like me...

Then I bought the ingredients and started the process. Not too far in I had a meltdown. I was melting chocolate, whipping cream, reducing cherry liquid and mixing a cake simultaneously. The kitchen looked like a bomb had hit it and I was covered in cream and chocolate. Some sanity saving decisions had to be made! I scrapped the butter cake layers and chocolate mousse and all of a sudden the task became a lot more manageable.

Then I struck the next problem - the cake. It was the oddest cake batter I've ever come across:

250g Chocolate & 180g butter melted together
Beat in 250g sugar, 1.5 cups flour and 6 eggs.

Does that seem like a ridiculously small amount of flour and a ridiculously large amount of eggs to anyone else?

Anyway, I was making 2 small cakes rather than one large so I cooked up the batter in a little wedding cake topper tin.
It came out at the exact consistency of chocolate brownies- except in a giant cake shaped version- not exactly as expected.
I've since been informed that a traditional German version is supposed to be very dense - this was VERY dense so I suppose VERY traditional..

I cut it into 3 almost even slices. Then I reduced the syrup from a jar of morello cherries and plopped the cherries back in - which honestly made it just as runny again. I sandwiched the layers with sweetened whipped cream and the cherries.

The whole thing was topped with a fabulous ganache- can I just shout to the hills how wonderfully adding a teaspoon of glucose syrup to ganache works! That's a brilliant stepford secret.

95ml Whipping cream
1 tsp glucose syrup
pinch of table salt
95g chopped chocolate
20g unsalted butter

melt together gently.

Chopped chocolate went on top plus a cherry to make it look perfect. It did look beautiful and was received well by the birthday girl but I wasn't very happy with the texture. Plus imagine how tricky it would be to cut layers of dense brownie sandwiched with cream, it all slid around into something resembling trifle, yummy but not quite right.

So take two! This time I decided to make my own nod to the black forest. I had to make a dessert for a women's dessert and coffee night last night and I still had all the ingredients so this time they became black forest cupcakes.

The cakes:

Melt together 250g butter, 1.5cups water with 1 tablespoon instant coffee dissolved in it, 200g caster sugar and 200g dark chocolate.
Sift and beat in 1.5 cups self raising flour, I cup plain flour, 1/4 cup cocoa, 2 eggs and 2 teaspoons vanilla.

Bake in cases at 160C for about 30mins or until cooked through.

I then scooped out their middles and filled with morello cherries drizzled with the reduced syrup they came in (with a little sugar added) and a little of the ganache. Whipped cream was piped on top and then ganache drizzled over.

They were fabulous. My only regret is not saving a cherry for the top of each cake - I'm so pathetic that forgetting that step actually unsettled my sleep last night - what a nerd!

I think in the future my version of black forest will be the winner- even if it's not traditional, it's a bit lighter and well more aussie :)

Next time I'll take on something a bit less complex!

Aquarium Cake!

This one is backdated quite a bit - I think I made it for lovely friend Kristen's birthday about 2 years ago. My apologies for the dodgy photograph too, this is back in the days when my phone camera was the best option available...

The reason I haven't been blogging much in the last few weeks is because my lovely camera died! I'm saving up towards a new one but in the meantime I've got a few old pics that I'd love to share.

This recipe is fancy birthday cake made simple. It's so easy but super impressive and perfect for kids or young at heart adults.

You bake a cake in a roasting tin, pop it out to cool and then set a packet of blue jelly in the same tin lined with cling wrap. When it's set plonk the flat side of the cake on top and then turn the whole creation out onto your cake board and decorate to your little heart's content!

I iced the sides in blue and used lolly snakes to make the weeds. Guylian chocolate sea creatures chopped in half swim around the sea and coloured chocolate pebbles make the sandy bottom of the sea.

This recipe is from Party Cakes for Kids By Murdoch Books Pty Limited, Zoe Harpham, Jacqueline Blanchard. I highly recommend it. It is an excellent book - second only to my old favourite - The Women's Weekly Birthday Cake Book!

Have a lovely day

x

Chocolate self-saucing pudding (or gooding)

At our house growing up it came from a packet mix and was referred to as gooding - because it's just so good (Thanks Mum!)

I didn't ever actually realise how easy it was to make from scratch. Chocolatey sponge with a miracle sauce that just appears underneath.

This is what I made as dessert to go with Frederick the Free Range Chook in case I had difficulty eating it, I knew that there was yummy dessert coming!

But this is no ordinary gooding. I borrowed the recipe from Donna Hay's Modern Classics 2 and altered it a little because of the contents of my pantry (as always!)

The lovely thing about Donna's recipe is the addition of hazelnut meal. It alters the whole texture from a light sponge to a dense, moist pudding- plus with a kick of hazelnut flavour. Her recipe called for malted milk powder which I substituted with great success to Milo! I know it seems totally naff to get the brand name daggy products involved but ever since Nigella cooked her Ham in Coca-Cola I've felt a bit more freedom in that area :)

Anyway, the Milo was a delight and added a richness and depth to the sauce that I couldn't have produced any other way - highly recommended!

This pudding is massive! If you are feeding 8 then it would suit but for just the 2 of us I would cut the recipe in half to eat over a few nights.

135g softened butter
1 & 1/4 cups caster sugar
2 eggs
1 &1/2 cups plain flour
2 & 1/4 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 cup cocoa powder
1/2 cup hazelnut meal
1/4 cup Milo
1 cup milk

Preheat oven to 170C

Cream butter and sugar until pale. Beat in eggs. Sift in the dry ingredients and add the hazelnut meal and milk and beat until smooth.
Smooth into a greased dish.

For the sauce mix 2/3 cup brown sugar, 2/3 cup Milo, 1.5 Tablespoons cocoa and 1.5 cups of boiling water and then pour it over the pudding mix.

Pop in the oven for 45-50mins until risen and a skewer comes out clean.

Rich and lovely, I could (and sadly did) eat the sauce straight out of the dish with a spoon.

Have a lovely day
x

Bruschetta Cups

I'll have to bypass my promised Chocolate self-saucing recipe due to popular demand.

Today I made bruschetta cups for the lovely Susie's birthday at work and now people are demanding the recipe so they can use it on the weekend - there's never been a more flattering compliment than that! I was hunting for something savoury (others were bringing sweets) and something including goat cheese (one of the birthday girl's favourites) so I hastily grabbed some quick bruschetta ingredients thinking I could think of a way to involve the goat cheese somehow on the drive home :)

This is a recipe that I first made in about 2003 adapted from a recipe in a magazine for the bread cups. It is so simple that it isn't worth the accolades!

For the bread cups you cut circles out of slices of white bread and press them into a muffin tray that has had a light spritz of cooking spray until they look like little pastry cases. I then brushed mine lightly with olive oil and sprinkled with a little salt. They then go into a 180C oven for about 15mins or until golden brown. Keep an eye on them though - the timing always seems to change! Cool them on a rack and then store in an airtight container.

For the filling I did a traditional bruschetta and a mushroom version that I invented. I just felt like 2 options was a bit more fun, and I'm glad I did - the mushroom one was definitely the more popular!

Traditional Bruschetta

Roma Tomatoes (about 5), seeded and chopped
Half a red onion, chopped.
4 Basil Leaves, chopped.
Balsamic Vinegar
Olive Oil.

Combine to taste.

Put a blob of goat cheese in the case and then fill with the tomato mixture.


Mushroom filling

1 container of sliced mushrooms (I bought them already sliced!)
1 teaspoon (or clove) minced garlic (I used from a jar!)

Fry these together in a little butter until brown - I did mine in two batches so as not to crowd the pan, take off the heat and stir through half a cup of grated parmesan/pecorino (I had a packet that was a ready grated mixture) and half a cup of toasted pine nuts (I bought a packet ready toasted!!)

Place Tablespoons full into the bread cases.

Clearly this was SO easy. And I know I sound terribly lazy for buying everything in packets ready made but it works, it was really tasty and as no one had to melt down from the stress of making it all - I think everyone wins. Obviously this includes the supermarket :)

I assembled these at work and 5 of us demolished the equivalent of an entire loaf of bread. It's the best work lunch I think I've ever had. And the birthday girl was happy too!

If you make them let me know how they go!

Frederick the Free Range Chook

If you happened to read my facebook status last Tuesday it went along these lines:

'Just bought one of the school chickens and was given the instruction "Don't eat it tonight, it was only killed this morning." The ex-vegetarian in me feels very squeamish.'

This was followed by a flurry of comments about rigor mortis setting in and needing 2 days for the muscles to relax again so it won't be tough. Ugh. Yes, I was vegetarian. And for fluffy bunny reasons. Health reasons are actually what forced me to go back to eating meat and I don't regret it. I actually enjoy it now and have gotten over my issues.

I went from a 15 Year old who had to cut raw chicken with a knife and fork because the texture made me heave, to a 30 year old who will happily eat, cut and handle it. But rigor mortis? brought back some residual squeam. The thought that this morning it was happily pecking grass just down the path and then had a date with a person at the abbatoir and then was in the plastic bag in front of me.... I know we are all about sourcing food locally these days but this was a bit personal!

I've mentioned that I'm a school librarian. Well, the school has an agriculture plot so we often get the opportunity to buy fresh eggs at low cost to help the program pay for itself. This week was the first time I remember fresh chickens being offered and at $6.00 for a small and $8.00 for a large free range, it was an offer I couldn't pass up. It can't get more free range than being born and bred 100m from my office window. I can see how lovely it is out there. A utopia for chooks of grass, gum trees, dams and blue sky - plus the affectionate attention of Year 10 trying to get a decent grade.

The chickens were apparently a year 10 agriculture project, and they appear to have done pretty well. It was the largest "small" chicken I've ever seen. Weighing in at about 2 kilos, I had to look up how long to cook it - according to Donna Hay about 1.5hrs for the poor dear.

That was the other thing. I started referring to it as the 'poor dear' all the time as it sat in my fridge "relaxing". My friend Kate at work (the country girl) suggested it was better not to name it as that would make the process more traumatic. She then suggested if I needed to call it something i should call it "dinner" or "chicken with lemon and thyme". I thought this to be very wise but when I got it home and explained it to the lovely husband he immediately christened it Frederick. Oh dear.

Then it came to actually cooking poor Frederick. I made Husband cut off his still existing neck the night before and remove it from the blood/water in the bag.
When we gave the neck to the cat for a treat, the citified creature had no idea what to do with it, looked at us quizzically and went back to munching on her dry cat food - apparently the taste for fresh meat is not instinctual. I hear you sister. Looks yucky to me too.

It may surprise people to know that I've never actually roasted a whole chicken before. Husband occasionally does, but I always buy the deboned rolled ones from Leonards (mmm honey macadamia stuffing!) so I looked up a few recipes and decided to put cut up lemon and garlic and thyme in the cavity, - that is a kind of gross process i must say- paint him with olive oil and sprinkle him with salt, thyme and paprika.

I roasted him in a 190C oven for 1.5hrs with pumpkin, potato and some lemon wedges.

And the flavour.... it was good. I have to say I did feel a little bit odd eating it and I think that affected my view of the flavour but Husband said it was great and the house did smell delicious. I made dessert too, so that if dinner made me a bit uncomfortable I would have a yummy back up plan. More about the wonderful chocolate self saucing pudding next time!

Would I do it again? Yes. Possibly without a name next time.

Alas poor Frederick, I knew him well. And he tasted pretty decent too....