Let the Christmas baking begin!

I absolutely adore christmas! I think as a Christian of course it means the most to me as a celebration of Jesus' birth as our saviour, and I get a special thrill out of the fact that there are nativity scenes everywhere and so many more people are acknowledging his birth rather than just us folks who appreciate it all year round!

But I also love the traditions - the tree, the lights, the wrapping, the buying, the television and movies and of course the food!

I usually begin the season with a tree decorating party and ply my friends with gingerbread and cheese platters, champagne and lovely fun food to start the season on the first Saturday of December. Unfortunately this year Super-husband's shifts, another event and both of us getting sick got in the way of our usual plans so we had a quiet evening putting up the tree together.

But nothing can prevent me busting out the gingerbread men! and this year I had an idea to make a hybrid version - part gingerbread, part stained glass cookie (you know, the ones with the melted lollies in the cute little cookie window)

Once again I was thwarted by my fridge and pantry. I just couldn't find the butter I was sure that I had bought!

Incidentally I had the same problem with the bacon from that shopping trip too and eventually found it under the seat in the car :) What a waste of good bacon! But the butter has not yet appeared

I had 85g of butter stuffed in the back of the fridge, but that was it. And the recipe called for 200g.... what to do...

I did have a tub of cream cheese - surely that's kind of similar right?

So my hybrid became a bit more bizarre but the dough tasted amazing so I decided it couldn't be all bad and it certainly wasn't!

100g soft butter (yes, I'm rounding up to make life easier!)
100g soft cream cheese
1 cup caster sugar
2 Tablespoons honey
3 teaspoons ginger

Beat this together until light - then taste - it is divine!!

add 1 egg and beat until combined then add 2 1/4 Cups sifted flour until just combined.

Split dough into 2 lots

Roll out between 2 sheets baking paper until 3mm thick and pop in the fridge to firm up.

When firm cut out with your favourite cookie cutters and then cut smaller shapes inside.

Bake at 180C for 10mins, then get the tray out and sprinkle each little window with crushed boiled lollies - be generous so it will melt to fill in the corners- especially if you have star cutouts!

Pop back in the oven for 5 mins or until cookies and lightly browned and lollies are melted. Cool on the tray so your stained glass will set!

These were so much fun! the cream cheese adds a chewiness that you wouldn't get with normal shortbread - but is reminiscent of gingerbread and a paleness that reminds you of shortbread.

I love christmas baking!

PS. The moon shapes are supposed to be doves :)

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!