Mini Date Loaves

Hello world!

So this is the alternative to writing up something about product feasibility for this assignment I have to do. I have also run out of Vampire Diaries to watch. I now have to wait a week for a single episode. So I have resorted to following the actors on Twitter. Sad I know.

Recently I have had a bit of a biscuit addiction. It has been terrible. It all started when Lucy brought dow four packets of biscuits from home. They were opened one packet at a time and slowly (or in the case of one pack very quickly) they were consumed. Then I started buying my own biscuits and I went rapidly down hill from there. So as it stands I am currently on my first day of biscuit cold turkey. No biscuits for me today. It is 8.23pm and I am going strong. However the other day (as in yesterday) I remembered these date loaves Mum used to make all the time. They were steamed on the stove for an hour in old tin cans and didn't contain any fat (well apart form the like 0.01% in the trim milk). So I got the recipe off her and decided to try them out. The ingredients are simple: Flour, baking soda, golden syrup, milk, ginger and dates. Even though they don't have butter or oil in them they are still extremely moist and cakey. Oh and did I mention they were fat free? (Let's assume that we will burn off the sugar in them and not store that as fat).

This was the second batch I made

So you will need:
1 cup flour
1 cup sultanas/dates
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon all spice (sultanas)/ground ginger (dates)
1/2 cup golden syrup
1 cup milk

3 clean tin cans
1 large stock pot with lid

Firstly, soften the fruit by pouring boiling water over the top of them. They will absorb up some of the water, making them juicier.

In a saucepan on a low heat, melt the golden syrup and milk together, be careful not to let a skin of milk on the bottom of the pan form so keep stirring.

Sift the dry ingredients together. Add the golden syrup and milk mix once it has melted together. Drain and add the fruit then mix well.

Grease the sides of 3 clean with butter and flour. Cut out circles of baking papers small enough to fit the bottom of the tin.

Pour the mixture evenly in to each of the three tins, they should be near 2/3 to 3/4 full.

Place enough hot water in your stock pot to reach up to the height that the batter reaches on the inside (remembering that the cans will displace some water when you place them in). Place the cans in the pot, pop on the lid and then leave to simmer on a low heat.

Check (using a skewer) after an hour to see if they are done (the skewer, when inserted should come out clean). If the skewer comes out covered in batter then leave them steaming for an additional 10 minutes to half an hour.

Let them cool for 10 minutes or so then run a knife around the edge of the tin to loosen. Then Bang them upside down onto the bench and they should come out cleanly.

 So here goes the recipe in pictures :)

 Soften your fruits with hot water.

 In a saucepan, melt your golden syrup and milk together.

 In a bowl, sift your dry ingredients together.

 Make sure you keep an eye on your milk.

 Add the milk and golden syrup mix to the dries and mix well as to remove any lumps.

 Drain your fruit well and then add those into the mix.

 Mix it all together.

 Line and grease your tins.

 I had high expectations with four.

 Prepare your stock pot.

 Pop on the lid and let them be for an hour. Test them after an hour and leave for an additional 10 minutes to half an hour if needed.

 And voila! They are done.

 Let them cool for 10 minutes or so then run a knife around the edge of the tin to loosen. Then Bang them upside down onto the bench and they should come out cleanly.

 Slice into pieces and smother with a good dosing of margarine or butter.

And there you have it. Moist tasty date loaves. Fat free (until you cover them in butter), egg free and most importantly, oven free! Yay minimal power expenditure.

Hope you try these out. I am going to have to make them again after Alix, Lucy and I managed to gobbled them all up last night.

Bye!

Here is an instagram picture:)

Sultana Cake

Hey everyone!

Sorry about the delay in postings. I moved back down to Dunedin and got very very distracted by Vampire Diaries (*coughstefancough*). When Miss Lucy, my flatmate moved in she brought with her some of her Nana's amazing sultana cake. Oh it was so good. I am pretty sure I ate the majority of it. It was topped with slivered almonds. Yes I know sultana cake isn't a flash work of art with twirls and swirls of delicately placed icing magic but it is an old classic and classics, although sometimes boring should be respected. Anyway I decided to try to make some myself as I was bored and not wanting to do an assignment due in two days. I figured the Edmonds Cookbook would be a good place to find a sultana cake recipe. Old ladies like that book. So I used Lucy's new edition to make the cake featured today. It wasn't until I opened by 1980 edition that I found the recipe was slightly different in a few departments. Old ladies love the older editions. Next time i'll make that version and see how the two compare. The cake is still cooking as I write this and the hallway is filled with the most delicious smell ever.

So what you will need:

2 cups sultanas
250g butter, chopped into cubes
2 cups sugar
3 eggs
1/2 teaspoon almond essence
3 cups standard plain flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder

Put the sultanas in a sauce pan. Cover with cold water and bring to the boil and then simmer for 15 minutes. Drain the sultanas well and then add the butter. In a bowl beat the eggs and sugar for 3 minutes. Once butter is fully melted, add sultana mixture and essence to the egg and sugar bowl. Mix well. Sift in the flour and baking powder and mix until combined. Spoon mixture into a 23cm lined cake tin. Bake at 160 degrees for 1 to 1 1/4 hours or until cake springs back when lightly touched. Leave for ten minutes before turning out onto a wire rack. Then of course how long you wait until you gobble it up is up to you :)

 The original recipe in the new book

New recipe in older book. How does this work?

Anyway here is the cake in pictures:

 So boil your sultanas and preheat the oven to 160 degrees C

Beat your eggs and sugar together

Weigh out your butter

 Drain your sultanas and add the butter

 Line a cake tin (or in my case two as they were both tiny 20cm ones)

 Pour the sultana and butter mix into the egg and sugar mix and mix well

 Add sifted flour and baking powder

 Mix mix mix

 Taste test . . .

 Pour the mix into the tin(s) evenly and pop in the oven for 1 hour (if a big cake - keep an eye on them for 40 minutes if it is a smaller one)

Clean everything up . . .

Bam! and they are done

Wait 10 minutes before turning out onto a cake rack or tea towel

and serve! Nom nom, btw this cake has the tastiest (and richest) batter ever. Do try it.

Now time to make a cup of tea and have another piece of cake!

Bye!

Cheapo Cooking Episode IV: Kushari

Hey everyone!

Tonight boys and girls we are making kushari. Kushari is a popular Egyptian national dish made with lentils and rice topped with a hot spicy tomato sauce and is my new favourite dinner. It is cheap as chips to make, which is why you can often buy it over in road side stalls for next to nothing. The recipe made here is from our wonderful Ripe Deli Cookbook.

Doesn't that look tasty?

Now originally when I thought of lentils, a mushy hippy-commune style of food came to mind. Bleh. Especially when you see them come out of the can. Yes we got the lentils from a can. Why? because we are lazy slaves to the convenience drone. Haha slash who can be bothered soaking their lentils overnight? Anyway keep buying convenience food. Making stuff for you to buy is what my future job will be, so keep buying so I will still have a job.

Mum got that can for $1.83, but you can get cans as low as $1.65. Bargain. The only expensive bits are the nuts and the olive oil. 

So here is how you make it:

Kushari - as told by the Ripe Deli Cookbook

serves 4-6

Lentils and Rice:

1 cup green lentils (we used brown)

50g butter

1 cup basmati rice

2 cups chicken stock (vegetable stock will do for you vegos out there :) )

1 teaspoon sumac (its a red-purpley coloured spice used in middle eastern dishes to add a lemony flavour to meats and other dishes. We didn't have any so we skipped this out. Not the end of the world).

1 teaspoon ground nutmeg

1 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

1 1/2 teaspoons salt

1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

1/4 cup olive oil

2 onions peeled and thinly sliced

1 cup toasted pistachios

1 cup fresh Italian parsley, roughly chopped

1 cup fresh coriander leaves, roughly chopped

Spicy Tomato Sauce:

1/4 cup olive oil

3 cloves garlic, peeled and crushed

3 red chillis, de-seeded and finely sliced.

400g can crushed tomatoes

1 1/2 cups water

1/4 cup cider vinegar/white wine vinegar

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon ground cumin

1 teaspoon paprika (we use la chinata smoked paprika)

1/4 cup fresh coriander leaves, roughly chopped

I know this seems like a long list of ingredients, but it's really not. Bear with me :)

Now we are assuming your lentils are already cooked (if they are from a can they are cooked and soft).

To prepare the spicy tomato sauce:

In a saucepan over high heat add the oil, garlic and chillis and cook for 3 minutes.

Add the tomatoes, water, vinegar, salt, cumin and paprika. Bring to the boil then lower the heat and leave to simmer for 30 minutes until thickened.

Stir in the fresh coriander leaves. 

Taste to see if more salt, pepper or coriander is needed.

To prepare the rice and lentils:

In a saucepan over a high heat, melt the butter and then add the rice. Cook for 1 minute stirring constantly. 

Add the stock, water, sumac, nutmeg, cinnamon and salt and pepper.

Bring to the boil, then reduce the heat to a low simmer and cook for 12 minutes before removing from the heat.

Cover and set aside for 12 minutes (to let the rice cook).

While the rice is cooking prepare the onions.

In a large frying pan, heat the olive oil to a medium heat and slowly cook the sliced untils until dark gold in colour. This should take approximately 20 minutes.

Break the cooked rice up with a fork.

In a large bowl mix together the lentils (drained), rice, toasted pistachios, fresh parsley and coriander and 2/3 of the cooked onions.

Season with salt and pepper and pile high on a platter. 

Top with the remaining onions.

Once individual portions are served, pour the hot tomato sauce over the top.

 The rice was really tasty even without the tomato sauce. It would be a really tasty summer salad as well.

Every spoonful is different.

Enjoy! we sure did :)

See you later!

Oaty White Chocolate Chippies

Hello!

Like most of my posts, they come in twos. First it was oaty ginger slice now oaty chocolate chip cookies. I am certainly having a good day with the oats. Oats are good, they bulk things out and give something an ANZAC bickie feel. Hmm yum. These cookies are a cross between good old chocolate chips and ANZAC biscuits. Bringing the goodness of chocolate and the deliciousness of oats all rolled into one. Mum requested a batch of biscuits made up as Jack has restarted school again. He is now 7th form and still doesn't make his lunch so I had to make the baking component up for him. What is good about these is that because of the oats and coconut added to them the mixture gets bulked out a huge amount and so it ends up making 35-40 cookies depending on their size and the amount of mixture consumed.

Ok so you will need:

Oaty Chocolate Chip Cookies:
200g softened butter
2 cups brown sugar
2 large eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 cups plain flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
2 cups quick cooking rolled oats
3/4 cup desccicated or threaded coconut
1/2-1 cup chocolate chips (I prefer white)

Before you get going, preheat your oven to 170 degrees on bake.

Cream together your butter and sugar until nice and light brown and fluffy. Chris said he would help but I think he meant help with the eating rather than beating. He gave up very shortly after this photo was taken. He does not look too impressed.

Next beat in the vanilla and one of the two eggs.

Once the first egg is in and roughly mixed in, add the second. Continue beating until the volume of the mixture roughly doubles. The more volume you produce now, the more mixture there will be at the end for cookie rolling.

Next sieve in your flour, baking powder and baking soda.

Then add your two cups of oats and 3/4 cup of coconut. Mix carefully so that it doesn't go everywhere.

And next add the most important ingredient.

Chop the melts roughly, making them more manageable in the mixture.

Now once you've got it looking like this, grab a soup spoon and lightly flour your hands and roll soup spoon sized dollops into balls. Then place the balls on a baking tray lined with baking paper.

Now bake these for exactly 10 minutes and they should come out looking really rather tasty. Unless your oven is screwy.

 et voila!

Transfer to a cooling rack a few minutes after removing from the oven. Once a tiny bit cooler they taste so good. Slightly crisp on the outside but gooey on the inside. mmmm.

Like I said, this recipe made 38 cookies. That is a fair few school lunches!

So there you go. One of my favourite cookie recipes.

See you later!

Bye!

Oaty Ginger Slice

 Hello!

So today I am blogging about my Mum's most recent delicious discovery that is Ripe Deli's Oaty Ginger Slice. Once again it was recommended by the wonderful Sue. I blame Sue for many ingested calories over the last few years. She should probably stop giving Mum all these recipes, but then again maybe not. Anyway Mum loves ginger crunch and originally I thought this was a ginger crunch recipe but it turned out to be an oat slice crossed with ginger crunch. Which is excellent. I love oats. Especially when they are in ANZAC biscuits.

Hmm isn't that delicious looking? Unfortunately I didn't have a camera on me at the time of the slicing so I had to make do with my good old trusty phone :)

Ok here goes Ripe's Oaty Ginger Slice as told by the Ripe Deli cookbook . . .


Oaty Ginger Slice

Base:
200g unsalted butter
3 tablespoons golden syrup
1 cup soft brown sugar
1 cup desiccated coconut
2 cups rolled oats
1 cup flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
2 teaspoons ground ginger

Topping (I doubled the recipe):
1 cup icing sugar
75g unsalted butter
2 tablespoons golden syrup
1 tablespoon ground ginger

You will also need a good trusty slice tin approx 20x30cm in size and a big chunky knife to cut it once set. A flimsy butter knife won't cut the mustard. Or in this case a very chunky solid base.

So first up, preheat your oven to bake at 170 degrees.

 So my friends, the next first thing you will want to do is to pop your base butter in a saucepan and heat until metled.

Next add the brown sugar and golden syrup and stir over a low to medium heat until all the sugar has dissolved.

Oh yeah a trick with golden syrup if your Mum hasn't already taught you is to pour boiling water over the spoon you plan to use before dipping it in the syrup. The heat melts the syrup making measurements more accurate, the syrup more pourable and less gets stuck to the spoon.

In a separate bowl mix all your other ingredients together such as your flour, oats, coconut, baking powder and ginger. Mix until evenly distributed.

 Pour your hot butter mixture over the top of your dries (just like in ANZAC biscuit making) and stir until well combined.

Once all nicely mixed, line your slice tin with baking paper like so.

And proceed to mold the base mixture to the base of the tin, making sure it is nice and even and goes right to the corners.

I find using the bottom of a half or full cup measure works really well to flatten the base evenly. This base is quite greasy so you don't need to flour the cup but for more doughy bases dip the cup's base in flour to stop it from sticking.

Sweet we are now ready for the oven. 20 minutes at 170 degrees.

Now this base looks quite dark in the next few photos, almost over done. But I have found that it needs to be cooked until that colour for the base to be crunchy enough to carry the soft, smooth topping. It's all about preferences. I love really hard crunchy ginger nuts but my Dad can't stand them so of course I want mine to be as crunchy as possible. Make sure you leave this to cool before pouring on the topping.

So now for the topping. It's dead easy. Like I said up the top, I make a double recipe, Mum does a one and a half. It doesn't really matter. One and a half is for people who arn't as fatty as myself but is more than sufficient.

In your trusty saucepan, melt your butter and then add your icing sugar, ginger and golden syrup.

Stir stir stir until it is all melted and smoother than the inside of Chris' thigh. Not joking about that either. Women would kill for such sparse thigh hair growth. TMI? Yeah thought so too. Anyway the idea is that you want it molten and smooth.

So that when you pour it, it looks like this.

Tilt the tray around to spread it around the base.

Oh doesn't that look good?

Leave to cool for a few hours on the kitchen bench. Our first batch was cooled in the fridge. Mum seems to think the fridge made it soft. Once all nice and set take to it with that big knife of yours and cut it up into delectable wee pieces. Did you know they say ginger is a natural blood thinner and can help to ease cramping when you get your monthly bill? What an excellent excuse to eat lots of this at a time when you are already feeling fat, bloated, cranky and sore! haha.

Ok time for me to right up the oaty cookies that I made simultaneously :)

See you soon!

Swimming Pools and Cakes

Hello!

Yesterday, with the help from a team of engineers and builders (as well as a design student) I/(we) created the pool of all swimming pool cakes for Sam, Chris' cousin's 9th birthday. Trying to tell this team that less is more when it comes to decorations is like trying to tell my 9 year old self that you don't need so much glitter. The message just gets ignored. Anyway in the end we presented a Japanese sushi bar, airport swimming pool infested with man eating alligators. Yes. Hmm well it was colourful. Actually no it was hilariously awesome. Definitely tasty. Except for the blueberry jelly, I don't like blueberry jelly. 

We started with a triple layer chocolate cake with chocolate icing and a doughnut shape cut into the two top layers to make the pool ditch. The whole thing was iced then a bit of tin foil placed in the bottom of the pool to make it jelly proof. Then we met with council pool fencing regulations and make a chocolate finger fence around the pool. Then we got out pink wafer creams and laid the decking down. Chris, out resident design student constructed the umbrellas (the supermarket didn't have the little cocktail umbrellas so we had to improvise). Next came the alligators and the snakes and the chocolate fish and the jelly babies. Then the alligators were made to look like they had a jelly baby in their mouth and from out of no where a jet plane flew over! Note to self, don't let kids loose with fondant because next thing you know giant (proportionally giant) sushi takes a spot on the deck chairs oh wait! and so does the fruit! Haha it was awesome. We ate a lot of sugar in it's construction. Quality control of course. 

Jelly babies in deck chairs

Sushi!

Before the Jelly struck

The army of builders

More sushi! and an alligator

And the floodgates opened

It was destroyed

There was an alligator climbing up somewhere.

My favourite bit was the chocolate finger fencing. I love chocolate fingers :) Hmm yum. Yes this wasn't a beautiful piece of art, hand painted and sculpted but it was fun and non stressful to make. I hope the pick 'n' mix at your local supermarket gives you some inspiration! :) 

I wish I could jump in that pool (the one in the background) now haha.

See you later alligator!

Cheapo Cooking Episode III: Asian Lettuce Cups

Good afternoon to you all!

I have just filled up on foamy milkshake and I am ready to go! We cooked this the other night but had I uploaded it then it would have meant four posts in two days. Waaay too OTT so I have stretched it out a bit. The last few days I have been chilling at Chris' house as well as making his cousin a mean as birthday cake, but that is another story entirely. My time has been filled with A LOT of Sims 3. I don't have the Sims at home, I used to but we got rid of the PC and replaced it with Mac. Macs don't like the Sims. Which is a shame. Which is probably a very good thing. Anyway Chris was playing Team Fortress 2 so I had to do something so for hours on end we gamed. My eyes were blood shot by lunch time. Eep! Anyway the moral of the story was that my sim was extremely fertile and kept having children. Then they grew up. Hmm I didn't manage to kill anyone which was a shame. My matriarch did however become an elder. Anyway back to those lettuce cups.

This recipe is basically carb-less so guys look away. But girls is really rather tasty and it's lack of carbs means that you can have dessert too! haha excellent.

You will need for the mince:
500g beef or pork mince
1 Tablespoon sesame oil
1 onion
4 cloves finely diced garlic
1 chilli finely sliced (a teaspoon of chilli powder will do)
1 Tablespoon crushed ginger or 5cm root ginger grated
1 spring onion chopped
1 bunch coriander, both roots and leaves chopped
2 tablespoons sweet chilli sauce
2 tablespoons kecap manis (sweet soy sauce)
1 Tablespoon fish sauce
juice and rind of 1 lime
1 iceberg lettuce separated into their leaves

Sweet chilli sauce to garnish

Garnishes:
1 red capsicum all chopped up
1 carrot julienned
1 spring onion chopped
1/2 cup roasted, salted peanuts chopped

So basically you brown your mince then add all the sauces and onion and garlic and spring onions and coriander and lime. Then this simmer for 20 - 30 minutes.

From left: Fish sauce, kecap manis, sweet chilli, sesame oil.

 This fish sauce was only $1.99!

 Mum got a whole bag of these wee chillis from the Asian supermarket and keeps them in a freezer until when she needs them. Remember the smaller and redder they the hotter so you only need one. Slice them in half and scrape out the seeds. Wear gloves to stop the capsaicin (the chemical which makes them spicy) getting on your hands because it doesn't wash off easily. Then when you scratch your eye . . yeah well hmm. Just wear gloves haha.

Now get your lettuce leaves, wash them and split them so they make nice bowl shapes.

Now to serve, pop everything in bowls on the table. Place the lettuce  on the plate and everything else on the lettuce like you would when making a burrito. Then wrap it :)

And there you have it! They are really rather tasty. The sauce that the mince is in is delicious and lettuce is unfortunately not absorbent enough to soak it up.

 Have a good afternoon!

Cheapo Cooking Episode II: Quick and Tasty Corn and Feta Fritters

Two posts in one night! flip too much culinary activity is going on in my house today (check out my lemon cupcakes I also made today!)!

This evening, Mum couldn't really be bothered cooking and so we made corn fritters using an Annabel Langbein recipe from her book Good Food for Busy Lives. The only expensive ingredient in these is the feta cheese which is totally optional, you can even substitute it for your normal cheese if you wanted. Just grate the edam or whatever and add it to the mix. You can usually buy whole kernal corn in brine for $0.99 if its on special and for a single batch here you only need 1 can. Cheap or what! Tonight we were feeding Chris, Jack (who is just always hungus!), Dad, Mum and myself so we did a double recipe and that worked out just nicely. A single recipe makes around 8 depending on how big you make them.

Ooh! don't they look good?!

Ok Here is what you will need:

1 cup self raising flour (if you don't have self raising you can use standard flour with 2 teaspoons of baking powder added)
2 eggs
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup soda water (we use milk when we have no soda water)
1 can of whole kernel corn ( not creamed!!!)
half a packed of feta
fresh herbs such as parsley, sage and thyme
cracked pepper if you wish

 (Lettuce from Mum's garden - I like the colour which is why I took a photo)

 Beat the eggs, soda water flour and salt together.

Add the corn, feta, herbs and pepper and mix well.

 Fire up the stove!

 Slosh a bit of cooking oil into a hot frying pan. Make sure the pan is hot before you add the batter as it helps prevent the fritters from sticking. The same goes for fried eggs and pancakes.

 I use a 1/3 cup as my scoop as it makes good medium sized fritters. Cook them until the edges bubble and look par cooked then flip them over.

 Oh don't they look nice and golden!

 Serve them with a nice salad

 I prefer serving mine with a nice dollop of sour cream and sweet chilli sauce! Yum!

And there you go, quick and tasty corn fritters that are so so cheap to make but nice and healthy (provided the sour cream you dollop is lite! :) )

Nighty night!! Happy cooking!

Lemon Cupcakes with Lemon Curd Filling

Good afternoon!

Today my father requested some nice pretty cupcakes in order to give to some of the people at work as a thank you treat, Mum said I should make vanilla but I am so over vanilla, I wanted to make something different I could share with you on here. So I went through all my loose recipes that need to be copied into my book and I found a lemon cupcake recipe from the Hummingbird Bakery. I have done this one before but I think this time I will cover the tops with nice bright daisies instead of my stock standard rose. These are extra delicious because when you bite in to them a stream of lemon curd flows from the center and onto your taste buds causing a delightful taste sensation.

(You will find out later that I gave up on the daisies haha)

So to get started I made the lemon curd this morning. It is pretty easy. All you need is:

Lemon Curd:
The rind and juice of two large lemons
1 cup sugar
100g butter
2 eggs, beaten

 So first zest the two lemons - I didn't really here since my lemons were ugly and I didn't want black bits in the nice smooth yellow.

 Next I recommend squeezing the lemons over your bowl through a sieve - so it catches all the pips and bits of pulp you don't want.

Next add the cup of white sugar to the bowl and place over a double boiler making sure the water does not touch the bottom of the bowl.

 Now stir to encourage the dissolving of that sugar.

 Next you are going to want to cube your 100g of butter (to increase the surface area for melting) and add it to your juice and sugar mix.

 One must always have a cup of tea on hand.

When the butter has totally melted and everything dissolved you are going to want to grab two eggs . . .

 In a separate bowl whisk the eggs up to break up the yolk . . .

  . . . like this.

 Start stirring the butter, juice and sugar mix and slowly pour in the eggs, make sure you don't stop beating! Otherwise the eggs will scramble.

 Keep stirring for 20-30 minutes until the mixture thickens quite a bit.

See how thick that looks?

 Quality control of course.

 Next, to get rid of the few bits of egg that didn't quite mix and cooked into white blobs, strain the curd through a sieve.

 And there you go, a nice jars worth of lemon curd. Just pop this in the fridge after leaving to cool to room temperature on the bench.


Now for the cupcakes.

 You will need those items above and:

Lemon Cupcakes (from the Hummingbird Bakery Cookbook)
120g plain flour
150g caster sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
2 tablespoons grated lemon zest
40g unsalted butter (room temperature)
120ml milk
1 egg
(I also added a squeeze of lemon juice for extra lemony ness).

Preheat your oven to bake at 170 degrees C.

Beat the butter and sugar together to a sandy consistency.

 Sieve in the flour, baking powder and zest and beat some more to reach an even sandier consistency.

 Next add the egg milk and beat until smooth.

 A squeeze of lemon for good luck.

 Next line a 12 pan muffin tray with patty cases of your choice.

 Spoon in the mixture until the case is 2/3 full.

 Now pop these in the oven for 16 minutes at 170 degrees or until golden and springy.

 Chris pouncing on the left over scraps of batter on the beaters and in the bowl.

 16 minutes later and they look beautiful!

 Can you tell our oven is hotter at the back?

 Now I popped on a 40-something writing tip on my piping bag, filled my piping back with a spoonful of the lemon curd and then inserted the tip into the cupcake and squeezed, filling the cake with curd.

 Make you you push the tip all the way down.

 Now put your left over curd in a clean jar to store in the fridge, ready for your toast in the morning.

Now for the icing:

I just used a normal butter cream icing but added another squeeze of lemon and a couple of teaspoons of the curd in with it. I was going to make daisies but they weren't working for me today :( I was using a 104 petal tip to make the petals but no luck. I think my icing was the wrong consistency. That or my tip was too big. Anyway I first covered them with icing to make a good base for the daisies.

 My first attempt

 That one isn't too bad, it's just when I covered the whole cake it looked really weird and mono-tone. I think I need to get a couple of bags and tips and make shades of yellow. Hmm aren't daisies white? haha my bad.

 So resentfully I resorted back to roses. Bleh I really wanted cute flowers.

Hmm the back ones look messy. Today was not my day for piping. I may or may not have thrown a tantrum over them resulting in a few of them ending up upside down . . .

So here they are, lemon cupcakes with lemon curd filling. We could only fit 11 in the box so I gave the 12th to Chris and he rated them a "really good" out of ten. Shot Chris.

Anyway I am about to post up what we made for dinner tonight as part of my cheap cooking special so check that out too, corn fritters, nom nom.

See you later alligators!

My First Attempt at Swiss Meringue Buttercream

Hi again!

Last Friday was Chris' brother's 14th birthday, so to celebrate I offered to make the cake. We set high hopes for this cake; three layers of chocolate mocha cake and plastered together with a teal green Swiss meringue butter cream and dotted with black fondant mustaches using my munchstache cookie cutters. Well I am pleased to say that my efforts were a success! I used the Whisk-Kid recipe for the buttercream and my mocha chocolate cake recipe so no new exciting recipes today i'm sorry but hopefully this will encourage you to try to decorating techniques like I did. I was so worried this would turn out a total flop and waste a whole heap of ingredients and electricity. Luckily Chris' step mum has a wonderful KitchenAid standing mixer so I was saved a whole heap of beating when it came to making the meringue.

From reading online, Swiss meringue buttercream was apparently a superior icing, with a velvety smooth texture all the while not being sickly sweet. It wasn't very sweet but it was very buttery, I don't know which I prefer. Because it was so hot I had to keep the iced cake in the fridge so that the icing wouldn't melt off or go off in the heat. The cooler fridge temperatures made the icing firm and had a mouth feel like that of butter.On a positive note it is an excellent icing to use in cake construction. It is a great glue and smooths on the sides really easily without picking up on the knife when you go over with more icing.

I recommend using the Whisk Kid instructions (just click the link above), she knows what she is talking about :)

8 inch cake pans were only $7.50 at Farmers the other day and so Chris bought me some in order to make layer caking easier. I am still not so sure how to get a non-doming cake though, some people put strips of toweling around the edge, is that supposed to help?

 Ahh, the tried and true mocha chocolate cake recipe

Isn't it beautiful?

We had a very watchful observer

Making the batter took me a grand total of two minutes!!

 Bam! and the tins are full! I used to use the same pan (I was too poor to afford three of the same size haha) and so if each cake took half an hour to cook I had to stick around for an hour an a half for all three to be done one after the other. It was so tedious. I love my new pans!

 25 minutes later! Bam. Just note that in my mocha chocolate cake recipe I say to cook the cake for an hour (I think), that is for a large one layer cake. I found these only took 25 minutes each. Keep a watchful eye on them, the last thing you want is a dry, overdone cake.



Ok now for the icing. The basic steps involved in making a Swiss meringue buttercream are:
1: dissolving the castor sugar in the egg white using a metal bowl over a pot containing 2cm of simmering water.
2: once the sugar has dissolved, removing the bowl from the heat and beating the egg whites and sugar until very stiff glossy meringue peaks form.
3: slowly adding small cubes of cold butter to the mixture causing the meringue to collapse and forming a sloppy concoction.
4: beating lots more
5: putting the mixture in the fridge to cool it a bit so it becomes less soupy (which usually happens never fear!)
6: adding flavourings such as vanilla and then continuing the beating until the buttercream becomes smooth and fluffy once again.

I ended up making a 1 2/5 recipe (the 2/5 recipe after I ran out half way through the top coat).

This is what you need to the 1x recipe:
5 large egg whites
200g castor sugar
226g butter cut into small cubes
a splash of vanilla

Basically I recommend you check out the link up the top.

 Luckily the KitchenAid bowls are metal so fit quite well over a pot of simmering water.

 Whisk the egg whites, make sure it doesn't get too hot (which is unlikely) otherwise they will scramble.

 Dip your clean fingers into the bowl and rub the mixture between your fingers, keep whisking until it is no longer grainy (ie all the sugar has dissolved).

 Next transfer it to your beating station. This works too with a handheld mixer but I was still enjoying the novelty of this toy.

 It also helps to turn the power on at the wall before attempting to beat :)

 I had the Whisk Kid's instructions open and was following them religiously. Ipads are so handy.

 See how thick and glossy it gets? This is good. It also tastes delicious. Pity we have to add the butter.

I continued to beat and it became a marshmallowey foam which was quite cool. See the weird texture? At this stage start adding the butter one small cube at a time.

This is a heap of butter.All 226g of it.

You can see in photos that the meringue totally collapsed and it became all gross and soupy, so what I did was pop both my butter cubes in the freezer and my flopped meringue in the fridge and waited for 20 minutes or so for everything to cool down. The cold butter cubes stopped the butter cream becoming soupy in the future.

 Looks kinda gross really. Do not panic! This can be fixed with a quick trip the the fridge!

 Haha and only half the butter was in (the butter never seemed to run out!)

Gross!

Nearly there!

So in the end (trust me) it turned out all good! I coloured it green and flavoured it vanilla. Just keep beating and it will sort itself out.


Now to the frustrating part: Construction and icing.

 Which is a good excuse to perform quality control on the product . . .

 And the icing . . .

Again I would use the Whisk Kid tutorial on how to assemble and crumb coat a layer cake. She makes it sound so easy. Crumb coating just means a bottom base coat of icing left to set which creates a seal, sealing all the crumbs in so that they don't get into the top layer of your icing.

 Crumb coat! (Probably a wee bit on the thick side)

 Getting there (I had to make a second 2/5 batch of icing to cover the entire cake)

 I love getting a nice sharp edge

 Bam! Ok the base is done. Now for the frilly bits!

I decided to experiment with fondant for the first time. It was rather tricky (and sticky!) but a few more attempts (and internet stalking!) and I think I might get the hang of it. I coloured it with the Wilton black food gel which went all over my hands. By the time I got to do this part it was about 9pm (I started the cake at 2.30pm), which is why the photos got a bit funny (Chris doesn't think about changing the settings so everything looks yellow).

 Oh yeah James and Jared (Chris' friends) came round and started playing with the spare fondant to make objects to surround the cake. They insisted they were useless and sculpturing but it was funny seeing how intensely focused they were at the end of the hour and made from pretty hilarious things like a cat eating a severed arm complete with blood (aka red food colouring).

 After rolling the fondant flat we popped it in the freezer for 5 minutes to that it would firm up and become easier to cut and stamp without it falling apart and stretching.

 From left: James, Antony (Chris' dad), Jared and Chris.

I think it needs a border. I don't know why we did the mustache thing. I think it was because his bother (also James) was turning 14 and so we wanted a manly theme. That or I just wanted to use these munchstache cookie cutters again.

 I used a small star tip nozzle to pipe (badly - it was 11pm) the borders. Hmm it looks a bit wonky from here. I even added glitter on the top! So fabulous.

So yes. Here is the final product. By golly it took a while. It tasted rather nice as well when we had it the next day. James was pretty stoked too and it all went down a treat. So for my first attempt at a Swiss meringue butter cream covered cake I don't think I did too badly. But this was just the first, improvement is just around the corner!

It was so dark and moist! haha moist moist moist! 

Bye for now,

Ciao!