Ms Pink Piglet's World

STOCK TO SOUP TO CONSOMMÉ - THE DARING COOKS’ SEPTEMBER 2011 CHALLENGE

2011-09-16T03:08:00.000-07:00

Thanks to Peta from Peta Eats, I found a super easy way to do a lovely consomme.

All 3 methods, traditional egg white, gelatine, freezer, and meal supplements, can be found on this Darking Kitchen's Official Recipe on PDF. Keep it, it will come in handy when you need to do an effort free WOW entree or meal etc...

Nothing exciting about my beef stock and soup, the normal stuff I make all the time.
Chuck steak, a couple of beef ribs, onions, black pepper, button mushrooms, white wine (I didn't want a dark stock), parsley stems, bay leaves.

I make beef stock a fair bit, use the beef in my curries or other stews, this time in pies, and use the stock separately.

Due the renovation happenning at home, I wasn't able to do a lot of cooking, so the freezing methods suit me. And it works. After defrosting in the fridge for a day, you can see clearly it's seperating...

I have a very fine siev, that I use instead of mousseline cloth sometimes, I have packed a few items and trying to live with the bare minimum.

And it's just easy to get the clear clear soup...

Will add some dumplings to it?

Home Made Strawberry Yoghurt

2011-09-08T04:02:00.000-07:00

I go through my phrases with cooking - I'm definitely not cooking as much lately, as much as I want to.

The thought that I have to pack up everything in the kitchen in a few weeks time does stress me out quite a bit. I'm trying to use up everything I have in the pantry, and not to increase new ingredients. It's just too easy for me to pick up bits and pieces for some one off dishes and keep the rest to use later, and end up, having quite a bit of left overs in the pantry. Some of the items I do use quite frequently. Like all different types of flour, self raising, chick pea, polenta, semolina, tapioca, whole meal, rye.... They do end up in different jars and containes, and all different types of sugars and syrups etc etc etc.... argg.... the panic of packing!

So the strategy is trying not to replace the item used, including every day items like cheese, butter, flour, I don't mean don't replace any, but reduce to just one type of every major category, so by the time I have to pack up the pantry for the worker to do the demolishing work, it will be easier.

But that also means I have to cook a bit less of varieties of things until my new kitchen's in, which is about a month and 2 weeks away.....

However, there are a few items I'd like to keep it going, including the yoghurt, and the sourdough. I have to keep the yoghurt culture alive as well as the sourdough starter. They are my babies, although I haven't really named them yet!

I bought some tubs of strawberries for the children's school lunch box. There were some left so I decided to make some strawberry yoghurts.

It's simple. Add 1 cup sugar, 2 tbsp water to half tub (around 100g-125g) of cleaned strawberries, bring it to boil on stove top, let it simmer for a few minutes to maximise the strawberry taste in the syrup.

My children don't like the actual fruit in their yoghurt so I took the cooked strawberries out leaving just the strawberry syrup.

The rest steps are the same as making any other yoghurt.

Bring 1 lt full cream fresh milk to boil, I usually let it simmer for 10-15 minutes, let it cool to 110F or 43.6C, add the strawberry syrup to cooled milk, and 2 tbsp of warm plain yoghurt, leave it in the thermo pot to keep the heat over night.

Home made yoghurt are nicer with all the fresh ingredients.

Greek Coffee & Figs Bread

2011-09-04T03:32:00.000-07:00

I've used Greek Coffee, and dried figs in this bread, but some how, I wouldn't really label this loaf as being "Greek", although I do cook a bit of Greek dishes and there are a lot of Greek influences in my food.

I read somewhere that Greek coffee is the finest and used in pastry, it can be quite nice, and dried figs is the type of snack that is always available at home.

Greek Coffee & Figs Loaf
250g dried figs
300ml water
1 tsp bi-carb soda
1.5 cup brown sugar
2 eggs
150g butter
150ml sour cream
2 tbsp Greek/Turkish coffee (medium roast, not dark roast)
3 cups of Self Raising Flour

Dice the figs and place figs and water in a small saucepan, bring it to boil and then take it away from heat. Add in the bi-carb soda and stir through, let it soften and cool to room temperature.
Meanwhile, cream butter with sugar, add in eggs, one by one.
Add the softened and cooled figs mixture to the butter and egg mixture. Stir in the sour cream.
Sift in coffee and flour.
Add to greased and lined loaf tin, bake in pre-heated 180C oven for 50minutes to an hour, or until skewer comes out clean.

It's a very easy recipe, and I actually used similar method making sticky date cakes so it's a blend of ingredients?

Pretty nice with a cup of Espresso (or Greek coffee) for brekky or afternoon tea....

Seafood Chowder with Spaetzle

2011-08-31T05:33:00.000-07:00

We wanted something different, some warmth during the still cold months but something not as heavy as red meat.

I have been wanting to try out Kiwi chef Fleur Sullivan's recipe when she did it on Masterchef Australia a couple of months ago. Please follow to the link to the original Master Class recipe.

I did use some gourmet marinara mix instead of the shell fish because it's easier for the children and used what I have on hand. The marinara mix consists of prawns, calamari, mussels and king fish fillets.

For the Chowder:
100g butter
100g plain flour
2 tbsp tomato paste
1/2 cup white wine
2 tsp Hungarian paprika
600g gourmet marinara mix
chopped parsley and oregano
1 fennel
1 carrot
half of onion
1 glove of garlic
1 lt fish stock

For the Spaetzle:
250g plain flour
160ml milk
1 large egg
pinch of salt.

Method:

For the Chowder, melt butter in pan, sweat the vegitables, add in flour and cook and stir till it's sandy, add tomato paste and wine, make sure there's no lumps, and slowly add the warmed stock to make roux, keep stirring to make sure there's no lumps. Add herbs and spice, and then bring the sauce to boil and add the seafood mix, allow to cook quickly.

For the Spaetzle, mix ingredient to make a very wet dough, let it sit for a while when making chowder. Boil a big pot of water with a bit of salt when chowder is almost ready, and put dough into the ricer (my potato ricer has got 3 discs and one of them is the spaetzle setting) and squeeze into the simmering water.

When cooked, drain and stir through some olive oil.

Serve....

Chocolate Ginger & Peach Pudding / Cobbler

2011-08-28T00:38:00.000-07:00

It was a warm pudding we made a couple of weekends ago, after our normal Saturday roast dinner. Just like all things, the renovation and the flu and cold in the family had the best of me, and I haven't been doing much cooking and updating on the blog in the recent weeks. Updating things slowly.

I made a ginger bread peach cobbler using one of the recipes from Super Food Idea's Magazine, a simple food magazine with a lot of easy everyday recipes. This chocolate Ginger & Peach pudding / cobbler is just the adaption from that.

Chocolate Ginger & Peach Pudding / Cobbler
50g Dark Chocolate (Lindt's 70% Cocoa with Ginger)
50g Milk Chocolate
2 eggs
1 tbsp good cocoa powder
150g sour cream
200g SR flour
1/2 tsp bi-carb soda
100g room temperatured butter
150g brown sugar
1/2 tsp ginger powder (The ginger flavour from Lindt's is pretty strong, if use normal dark chocolate, use a bit more ginger powder)
815 can of sliced peaches

Cream butter and sugar.
Beat in eggs, one by one.
Melt chocolates with sour cream, let it cool to room temperature.
Mix the wet ingredients together, mix well.
Sift in the dry ingredients.
grease a baking dish, I used my 10" ceremic quiche dish.

Put in the peach slices (drained syrup).

Spoon on the batter. Bake in 190C oven for 30 - 38 minutes, dust with icing sugar.

Spoon out and serve with fresh double cream.

Home Made Vanilla Honey Yoghurt

2011-08-24T06:16:00.000-07:00

I have been making yoghurt for myself for a while, I like plain yoghurt, simple to make, can be used in cooking, dips and add a bit of fruit, coulis, jam, it's great for a snack.

However, I have been having trouble converting my whole family into home made yoghurt, maybe sometimes, but not all the time. They are used to the sweet taste of flavoured yoghurts.

So recently, I have been making Vanilla Honey Yoghurt for them, it's easy, and it has the natural taste and as many natural ingredients I can put in.

It's simple.

1 lt milk, full cream, good quality milk, it's always a good sign to tell if milk is really milk - some milk can't be made into yoghurt. Can we trust any products these days?
2 heap tablespoon of full cream milk powder
1 tsp vanilla essense
3 tbsp white sugar
1 heap tablespoon of good quality honey
2 heap spoon of plain yoghurt (home made will be best, you know what's in there, otherwise try to get organic yoghurt, full cream. There are yoghurts sold in shops that will not make yoghurt)

Bring the milk to boil and then reduce heat to a slow simmer, let it simmer for 15 minutes.
Let milk cool to around 110F or 43-45C, add to the mixture of milk powder, vanilla, sugar and honey, stir through till smooth, and let sugar dissolve, add the room temperatured plain yoghurt to the milk mix.
I use my trust worthy thermo pot to keep the yoghurt warm over night, it can be a slow oven of 43C (110F).
Usually it takes 7-8 hours, the yoghurt will set in pot, and leave it at the back of the fridge to cool. If it's left in a warm spot, yoghurt culture will keep multiplying.
Ready to be consumed when it's chilled!

Very Rich Dark Chocolate Glazed Tart with Profiteroles - Epicurious

2011-08-22T05:18:00.000-07:00

I made it a while ago and didn't have time to post it.

Since Febuary this year, we have been talking to the builder, the draftman and the pool builders, and kitchen makers to negotiate our home renovation. Although cooking is stress relief for me, sometimes, I just didn't have the energy any more after going around and look at different colours of paint, designs and spending whole afternoon in the hardware stores.

In a couple of week's time, I will be living without my kitchen, new one will be in, but old will be out. We are in the mode of packing, reducing pantries and fridge items, and all of the renovation dos and don'ts.

I haven't put this tart on the blog before, it was a bit of reminder of our wedding cake, a big chocolate mud cake with profiteroles filled with chocolate creme pattiserie and lots of chocolate curls.

A dark chocolate tart based on this recipe from Epicurious Website:

Chocolate Glazed Chocolate Tart

The only thing I did different was using Arnott's Chocolate Ripple Biscuit instead of chocolate graham crackers (I'm not sure if I can find it here).

Added profiteroles filled with vanilla creme pattiserie and drizzled with spun sugar, caramel to stick the profiteroles together.

Voila....

Chocolate Walnut Cake with Strawberry Butterscotch Sauce

2011-08-17T02:53:00.000-07:00

This were made last weekend? I bought some strawberries from the sales rack, not the best quality, but it's so nice on desserts, and I've promised the children something chocolate. I was playing around with a couple of things, and as usual, chucking in bits and pieces from the pantry, and I got this:

Chocolate Walnut Cake with Strawberry Butterscotch Sauce

Cake:

150g SR flour
1 tsp baking powder
100g walnut (lightly toasted in pan and grounded)
50g ground almond
50g butter
100g olive oil
100g white sugar
100g brown sugar
100ml cream
50ml milk (extra if needed)
2 whole eggs - Beaten
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp all spice
100g dark chocolate
50g cocoa

Strawberry Sauce:

80g cream
50g butter
150g strawberry
1 tsp cream sherry
Juice from Half of a Lemon
50ml water
150g white sugar

Method:

For the Cake:
1. Heat up the cream to just boil with butter and pour over broken dark chocolate piece and white sugar, stir till smooth.
2. Wait until cool a bit, add in brown sugar and eggs and mix well.
3. Sift in flour, and spice mix together and mix well till smooth, mix in the nuts.
4. Add in milk and stir through to check consistency, add a bit more if needed to be.
5. Pre-heat oven to 190C and line and grease a 20cm cake tin.
6. Bake for 1 hour and check if skewer is clean when stick in.

For the Syrup:
1. Make sugar syrup with water and white sugar.
2. Add Strawberry and cook till liquid is pink. Add Lemon juice
3. Add sherry.
4. Take strawberry out, add butter, stir through till mix well.
5. Add cream and cook till creamy and mix through.

To serve: Add sugar strawberry on top of cake and pour sauce around cake.

Brioche with A Espresso Chocolate Cake Twist

2011-08-10T03:29:00.000-07:00

A cakey bread or a bready cake?

Something I did when I can't decide what to bake.

Bread or cake....

This is done on a sheet of brioche dough, I used whole egg with milk so it's a bit toned down simple brioche, and a layer of espresso chocolate butter cake batter, rolled up and cut into scrolls, proofed again and baked into little cup cakes.

Brushed on a bit of egg wash on the bread sheet.

So, do you call it a cake, or a bread roll?

Poached Salmon with Creamy Rice and White Sauce

2011-08-07T05:07:00.000-07:00

I love salmon, although it is a quite oily fish, every time we cook it, we end up eating quite a lot of it. So break it down to smaller portions, poaching rather than pan frying, is the way that we can try to be a bit more cautious with what we eat.

We have 2 big pieces of Atlantic salmon cutlets, around 700g. More salmon pieces can be used in the similar quantity of poaching liquid.

To prepare the poaching liquid, I put:
1 cup vegetable stock
1 cup white wine
2 tbsp white wine vinegar
3 bay leaves
7-8 whole black pepper
1 onion
1 lemon (without skin)
salt
parsley stems
and enough water to cover the fish.

Bring the poaching liquid to boil and then reduce the heat, poach the salmon in the lowest heat, for around 15-20 minutes, you shouldn't be able to see the liquid simmer. Once cooked, take the salmon out and break it down into chunks, take out of all the bones.

Creamy rice:
2 cup chicken stock
2 long grain rice (jasmine or basmati)
1 cup risoni
1 cup milk
salt and pepper to taste
grated parmesan cheese
Olive oil

Heat up olive oil in the sauce pan to cook rice, then add rice and risoni, stir till a bit fragrant and rice change a bit of colour. Add warm stock, slowly and keep stirring. Add warm milk, and salt and pepper. The process is a bit like making risotto, add a bit more stock than 2 cup depending on the rice. When almost cooked, add parmesan cheese and take the sauce pan off stove, close lid and let it sit for 10 minutes.

White sauce:
A bit of something to add to salmon and rice, so it's not too dry. Just reduce some of the poaching liquid (it's already quite flavoursome) and add a bit of butter and cream.

My children are very fussy eaters and they are happy with this subtle flavoured dish.

Cakey Chocolate Chip Cookies - Martha Stewart Recipe

2011-08-05T04:51:00.000-07:00

I borrowed this cook book from the library, and it's full of wonderful cookie recipes.

Martha Stewart's Cookies

Please follow the link to the actual recipe.
Cakey Chocolate Chip Cookies

Lovely cookies, and I'm addicted to Martha Stewart recipes!

Fudgy Double Chocolate Cake for Birthday

2011-08-03T02:12:00.000-07:00

Luke didn't get chocolate cup cakes to bring to school, so I promised him a very chocolate birthday cake. He's into simple things, so, a fudgy chocolate cake he chose from the library book Epicure Chocolate.

Fudgy Double Chocolate Cake

120g butter
250g Lindt's dark chocolate 50% cocoa
2 cups self raising flour
2 eggs
1.5 cup sugar (I used 1 cup white sugar, 0.5 cup brown sugar)
3/4 cup milk
1/2 cup warm water
1/2 cup cocoa powder

Preheat oven to 180C.
Beat egg with sugar until ribbony and at the meantime, melt chocolate and butter.
Mix the liquids once chocolate and butter cool a little, and add water and milk last.
Sift flour and cocoa powder together into a clean bowl, and then add to the liquid.
Fold and mix well. Line and grease a 20cm spring form tin (it's higher than normal cake tin) and bake the cake for 45 minutes.
The cake might still be a bit gooey in the middle, that's fine. Cool and then chill in fridge before apply icing.

Chocolate Ganache
100g Lindt's dark chocolate 50% cocoa

100ml thickened cream
30g butter

Luke didn't like other icing, but I had to explain to him that with out another colour, I can't write on the cake... the yellow icing was the bit of left overs from his cup cakes...

Lemon Cup Cakes with Lemon Butter Icing

2011-08-01T05:28:00.000-07:00

I told Luke's teacher that I would make some cup cakes to send to his school on his birthday.

Just some simple ones as there's no baking competition in the local school and kids appreciate tasty cakes. I did scratch the bottom of the barrel trying to find out what I can make when I was told, please do not send anything with chocolate or nuts due to allergy concerns...

No chocolate, that's a bit harsh, considering, Luke doesn't like any other cakes apart from chocolate. Very occasionally, he'd take some vanilla cakes, but he's very very particular about fruits, dry or fresh in his cakes.

He doesn't like them and he prefers smooth texture.

But just butter cake, will that be a bit bland?

As long as there's no chunks of fruit. We settled down on:

Lemon Cup Cakes with Lemon Butter Icing

For 28 Cup Cakes
(including the students in his class, his teacher, the teaching aid and his speech therapist)
3 cups of Self Raising flour
1/2 tsp bicarb soda
200g salt reduced butter, room temperature
4 large eggs
1.5 cup sugar
1 cup milk
very fine zests of 2 lemon
Juice of 1.25 lemon
1/2 tsp vanilla essense

Lemon Butter Icing
50g butter
100g icing sugar
1.5 tsp yellow icing
Juice of 0.75 of lemon (juice of 2 lemons in total)

Pre-heat oven to 180C
Cream butter and sugar, till light and pale, add in eggs, one by one, I used bench top mixer on high.
Add in room temperature milk and vanilla and whisk till well mixed.
Sift flour and bi-carb soda in another clean bowl and add to the milk butter mixture. Fold in well and add lemon juice and zest.
Share the batter in the cups and bake for 15-18 minutes, until it's turning a bit light brown.

For the icing, it's simple, just heat up lemon juice and butter, mix well and add in food colouring and icing sugar, till it's thick and glossy. Apply to cooled cup cakes and add on a bit of sprinkles...

Chocolate Roulade With Chocolate Cream Filling and Chocolate Glaze

2011-07-28T05:45:00.000-07:00

Lots of chocolate for the sponge roll....

That's how we like it? Made it for the morning tea at work.

Recipe adapted from Chocolate Indulgence Magazine.

Sponge:
2 eggs
75g caster sugar
45g cake flour
5g good quality cocoa powder
pinch vanilla salt
25g unsalted butter, melted

Filling:
250ml cream
1 tsp vanilla essense
100g Lindt Dark Chocolate 100% Cocoa
100g Lindt Milk Chocolate Orange Creme
25ml Water

Method:
The Sponge:
Preheat oven to 210C.
Grease and line a 15x30cms rectangular tin.
Beat egg and sugar over bain marie, until all sugar has dissolved and mixture ribbony, light and fluffy.
Sift together flour, cocoa and salt into the egg mixture, fold gently to create a light batter.
Mix a couple of spoons of batter into the melted butter, and then carefully fold the butter mix back into the egg mixture.
Pour the batter in the prepared cake tin, and smooth out.
Bake for 10 minutes or until it's just firm to touch. Remove from oven when ready.
Sprinkle a bit of caster sugar on a clean tea towel, lift the sponge still in baking paper and turn upside down and place the sheet sponge onto the tea towel, roll up and set side to cool.

The filling:
Whip the cream with vanilla till soft peak and set a side.
Melt the chocolate, and add water to make a smooth mass.
Fold a small amount of cream to the chocolate, and then fold chocolate back to the remaining cream, chill in fridge for 10 minutes.

Assembly:
Unroll the sponge, Evenly spread about half of the filling leaving a bit of gap along the long edge, carefully roll up.

Chill in fridge for 10 minutes.

Apply some of the left over cream fillings on the outside, and as finishing touch, I warm up the rest of the filling a bit to return it to a smoother glaze, let cool and drizzle over the roulade...

Submitting this swiss roll - chocolate roulade to Aspiring Bakers #9 - Swiss Rolling Good Times ....

Fresh Fraisiers - July 2011 Daring Baker's Challenge

2011-07-27T07:02:00.000-07:00

A fresh strawberry cream cake.... A lovely delicious challenge hosted by Jana from Cherry Tea Cakes.

It would be a much more fun event or events for us had it been summer for us... part of the pain being in the south hemisphere is that we don't have the seasonal fruits as the north - strawberries can be found but quite expensive, so are other berries and summer fruit. After my first attempt, I realised I could've used kiwi fruit which we can find quite a lot in the supermarkets lately, but the second attempt never took place, Luke's birthday, school production, and Bianca's school production took most of our time, plus the house renovation....

Apart from hubby, the children are not too keen on cream cakes, don't ask me why, but they are chocoholics, and whenever there's a chance to ask for a cake, it's always, chocolate cake, especially for Luke, chocolate mud, he wouldn't even take sponge.

I didn't want to make the the cake too big, the fresh cream wouldn't keep. The original recipes for the challenge can be found here:

First of all, I wanted to make a small heart shaped Red Velvet Strawberry Stack Cake....
Red velvet for the Red strawberries, always wanted to make a red velvet cake.

I used the recipe by Nigella Lawson for Red Velvet Cupcakes, but changed the frosting to cream cheese frosting because of the Creme Fraisier...

FOR THE CUPCAKES

• 250g plain flour
• 2 x 15ml tbsp cocoa powder, sifted
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
• 100g soft unsalted butter
• 200g caster sugar
• 1 x heaped 15ml tbsp Christmas-red paste food colouring
• 2 tsp vanilla extract
• 2 eggs
• 175ml buttermilk
• 1 tsp cider vinegar or other vinegar
• 2 x 12-bun muffin tins

CREAM CHEESE FROSTING
• 100g icing sugar (no need to sift if using a processor)
• 250g cream cheese
• 250g fresh cream
• 1 tsp lemon juice

I made 4 small heart shaped cake for my strawberry stack and 6 big cup cakes using the Texax Muffin Tin.

It's very hard to line the cakes, as I found out they are pretty fragile so I couldn't slice them thinner as I planned...

And I got a bit too ambitious stacking all the 4 cakes up....

But thanks to Nigella, the flavour of the cake was really really good...

And for the cup cakes... I brought them to the little get together with girl friend and got welcomed by her children...

Chocolate Cupcakes with Orange Flavour and Ganache

2011-07-24T05:16:00.000-07:00

I love Lindt's, all sorts of flavours of Lindt's. I know there are better chocolates, but within my budget, especially when they are on sales, it's good.

The only thing is, when it goes on sales, you don't get the full flavour range, sometimes, however, it's a good time to sample the different flavours of chocolate and choose what to do with them.

This time, Lindt's orange creme filled milk chocolate.

Chocolate Orange Flavoured Cupcakes with Ganache
makes 12 medium size cup cakes

For the cupcakes:
75g Lindt's dark chocolate 70% cocoa
50g Lindt's orange creme filled milk chocolate
1 tbsp Cointeau
150g Self Raising Flour
2 tbsp dutch cocoa
2 eggs
100g softened butter
100ml room temperature milk

For the Ganache:
30g Lindt's dark chocolate 70% cocoa

20g Lindt's orange creme filled milk chocolate
50ml cream
50g icing sugar
20g butter

Decorate with a few pink jewels or hundreds and thousands and chocolate sprinkles...

Moist Apple Rhubarb Loaf

2011-07-21T06:18:00.000-07:00

It's a simple and moist breakfast or afternoon tea loaf, a cakey bread that takes minimum time to prepare.

First of all, make the rhubarb compote.

Use 50g sugar and half of cup of water to make a simple syrup, add sliced rhubarb, about 3 stems.
Peel and clean and dice one large Granny Smith apple and add 20g of sugar and a tsp of cinnamon sugar, half tsp of vanilla to coat and set a side.
Add rhubarb compote to apple and mix well once it's cooled a little.

For the loaf:

100g butter, room temperature
80g sugar
300g SR flour
100ml Milk
100g sour cream
2 eggs
1/2 tsp bi-carb soda

Cream butter and sugar till light and fluffy, beat in eggs, one by one. add milk and sour cream, beat till smooth, sift in flour and bi-carb soda, fold in apple chunks and and rhubarb compote.

Sprinkle the top of the loaf with extra cinnamon sugar.

Bake in 190C oven (pre-heated) for 40-50 minutes, till skewers come out clean. Cool a little on rack, slice best serve it warm with cream, or toast, serve with butter.

Crisp Cocoa Cookies with Chocolate Chips - Epicure Chocolate

2011-07-19T05:42:00.000-07:00

My girl friend who has been on Maternity Leave called me for a meeting during the school holidays. She and her baby has some story time at the local library so we went over there to meet her.

Children love books so it's alright for them to spend the time there without getting bored. And of course, I found some books I'd like to borrow (I'd love to own them) so this is one of them, Epicure Chocolate.

Luke asked me to make the Crisp Cocoa Cookies out of the recipe book, he said he will want them for snacks for school lunch boxes.

So here I was, till 10:00pm, baking cookies. Lucky it's an easy one.

Epicure Crisp Cocoa Cookies with Chocolate Chips
(only half of the recipe)
125g softened butter, unsalted
1/2 cup castor sugar
2 tbsp brown sugar
a drop of vanilla
1 cup plain flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
2 tbsp dutch cocoa
100g chopped milk Lindt's chocolate (instead of the dark chocolate chips)

Cream butter and castor sugar till pale and smooth, mix in brown sugar, whisk well.
Add egg, whisk well till smooth, and add vanilla.
Sift in flour, cocoa and baking soda, mix well, it's a soft dough, but dry, so mixing is not quick, and need to work with care, not over working the mixture.
Fold in chocochips or chopped chocolate.
Scoop out by spoon onto the lined baking trays.
Bake in pre-heated 190C oven for 10-12 minutes.

Happy children.

Our Love for Sausage Rolls - Classic Sausage Rolls

2011-07-18T05:49:00.000-07:00

I must say Australian food is heavily influenced by English food. Footie pies, sausage rolls, and I can hardly imagine a cocktail style party without party pies, and sausage rolls, especially, children's parties. I have been watching a bit of Masterchef USA on Youtube and giggled with hubby when I saw Gordon Ramsay quickly demolished the big sausage roll from one of the contestants.

I prefer to make mine from scratch, when time is short, I'd use frozen puff pastry from the shop, but it's nice to use the home made pastry, cheaper, more flakey and easier to work with.

So the sausage rolls start with the trust worthy Rough Puff Pastry, recipe from Maggie Bear.

For the amount of sausage rolls I'm making, I only need a portion of the recipe.

Home Made Classic Sausage Rolls
Make 4 long sausage rolls, cut into 20 1" serving portions

Rough Puff Pastry
120g plain flour
120g butter
60ml icy water
1/3 tsp salt

Extra flour to work with.

Dice cold butter into small cubes, like pea size.
Mix salt and flour and put butter on top, add icy water and make a rough dough.
Make sure everything stay together and work the dough on a floured bench top with a rolling pin, roll out into as close to rectangle as possible, to about 1/2cm thick - it will be rough.

Fold the dough sheet like folding letter, and roll out again, on floured bench top, and repeat the fold and roll again. Fold, put in cling wrap, and set it in fridge for roughly 15 - 30 minutes.
Repeat the whole process a couple of times, you will see the pastry getting more and more smooth.
Leave the pastry in the cling film and in the fridge whilst prepare the sausage roll fillings.

Sausage roll fillings:
200g beef mince
150g sausage mince
half of an onion
half of an apple, granny smith
splash of lemon juice
2 tbsp chopped pasley leaves
2 tbsp tomato ketchups
1 tbsp of Worcestershire sauce
1 egg (lightly whisked, leave 1/4 out for the egg wash)
1 medium size carrot
2/3 cup of bread crumbs (I usually make my own bread crumbs from the left overs of the loaves I made, so it's usually a mixture of sourdough, pain viennois, plain white bread etc)
salt and pepper to taste.

Use the food processor to blend everything together. Make sure the mixture is well blended and light and airy.

Roll out the pastry to quite thin, about 2mm thick (or if you prefer more pastry, just make a bit more and roll out a bit thicker), and a long rectangle.
Spoon the filling into the middle and roll - make sure the bottom of the roll has double layers.

Place on lined tray and brush on egg wash. Sprinkle on sesame seeds.
Bake in 190C oven for around 30 minutes or till pastry is puffed and golden.

Cut, and serve, with Ketchups, and this time, I made a bit of avocado dip use avocado, sour cream, salt and pepper and a splash of lemon juice.

Individual Apple Upside Down Cake - Pudding

2011-07-17T06:27:00.000-07:00

We only have Bianca around every second weekend, and that's usually the weekend I make some desserts after dinner.

We love our sweets, but not the sizes of our waistline so we usually move the cakes and cookies to afternoon snacks, smaller portions and hopefully eating at a earlier time will help us burn some of those calories off.

It's winter, so out of abundance of fresh apples, I decided to make another apple dessert.

Individual Apple Upside Down Cake - Pudding
Make 6
1 large granny smith, braeburn or pink lady apple, skinned, sliced.
6 tbsp sugar
2 tbsp water

Place water and sugar in a small clean saucepan and slowly bring it to boil. Wait until caramel is getting a little bit blonde and add apples. Cook until apple slices are getting a bit transparent.

Grease 6 ramekin moulds with a bit of butter. Share the apple with the caramel to each mould.

For the Cakes:
80g softened butter
150ml milk
100g self rasing flour
1 tsp cinnamon powder
1 tsp vanilla essence
50g white bread crumbs
1 tbsp maple syrup
4 tbsp castor sugar
2 eggs

Cream butter and sugar until pale and fluffy. Beat in eggs, one by one.
Sift flour, cinnamon powder into another clean bowl.
Beat in room temperatured milk with the butter mixture and vanilla until smooth.
add flour, mix well and fold in bread crumbs.

Share into the moulds and bake in 150C oven for 45 minutes.

Serve with whipped cream, or, chocolate mousse?

My Noodle Hands - July 2011 Daring Cook's Challenge Take 2 - Noodles Chinese Style

2011-07-16T03:48:00.000-07:00

They say noodles originated from China.

Nowadays, most Chinese style noodles are not home made - for home cooks. Even when we do dumplings, we can buy the dumpling skins.

However, home made noodles are nicer even though they are time consuming.

There are a lot of varieties of Chinese noodles, this time, I started off some very simple water and flour dough, and used the same dough to make some stretch noodles and pot stickers.

400g flour
300ml water
a pinch of salt

From a soft dough, knead till elastic and let it rest for an hour or so, till it's more pliable.

Dust the bench top with dry flour and roll the dough into a long stick, cut small chunks out and roll out the dumpling skins. The skins should roll out when turning around, making sure the outer sides are thinner. Add in the filling (pork mince, Chinese chive, mushrooms, Chinese cabbage, salt, pepper, light soy sauce and a bit of rice wine) and make small dumplings. Dust more dry flour at the bottom and let it sit.

It is time consuming to make the dumplings, especially making the skin as I go, making the dumplings.

I have explained how to cook pot stickers in earlier posts.

I left 1/3 of the dough for the noodles, just roll out as thin as I can, both sides dusted with dry flour, and cut, stretch. Dust in more dry flour.

The youngest wasn't a big fan of pot stickers, so I just made some simple noodle soup with peas and egg for her.

My Noodle Hands... Fettuccini with Giant Meat Balls July Daring Cook's Challenge

2011-07-15T04:29:00.000-07:00

When I told the children about this month's Daring Cook's challenge, they rejoiced...
They love their noodles...

This month, Steph from StephFood challenged us to come up with some simple noodles dish, out of our own food culture, making noodles from scratch. She has attached some recipes of different types of noodles here.

Our family, most of the hand made noodles are fettuccini or linguini, so this is the take one of this wonderful challenge:

Fettuccini with Giant Meat Balls

The Meat Balls - Rissoles

Beef mince
Sausage mince
onion - minced
carrot - grated
white bread crumbs
salt & pepper
mixed dry herbs
egg
Ground white pepper

Mix the ingredients and rolled it in bread crumbs, this is the same simple recipe for rissoles and we use it as big meat balls with passata,, parsley, bocconcini.

Now for the fettucini.

That's the simple part as we make them at least once a month - I wish we had more time to make more of them.

300g 00 flour or plain flour mixed with 1/3 semolina
3 large eggs
a pinch of salt
bit of extra virgin olive oil.

Make a well with the flour and salt and crack in the eggs.

Mix and form the dough, knead, wrap in cling film and rest the dough in the fridge for about an hour.

Use our trust worthy pasta maker...

dust with some plain four and I usually hang them up before cooking in slightly salted boiling water.

Drain in colander, and drizzle some extra virgin olive oil.

Serve with the giant meat balls.

Grate some parmesan cheese - happy children!

I've made more noodles during the challenge month, and will post later.

Apple Strudel Yeasty Pie - Bread

2011-07-13T05:40:00.000-07:00

We love apple strudels, and I do try to make different varieties of bread, loaves and cakes (the not so sweet versions) for our breakfast.

And we have quite a lot of delicious apples now, new season, juicy, and just right for a lot of apple bread, cake, pie, whatever.

So this is my Apple Strudel Bread, or a Yeasted Apple Pie.

The dough is the normal sweet bread dough:

400g bread flour
220ml milk
1 egg
50g butter
2 tbsp sugar
1 tsp salt

For the Filling:

2 Granny Smith apples, thinly sliced
60g sugar
1 tsp cinnamon powder
1 tsp nutmeg powder

Make the bread dough as usual and set aside to proof, cover by damp cloth.
Meanwhile, add sugar and spice to the apple slices and let it sit aside to develop flavour.

Once dough is proofed to double, roll out into a rectangle, as it's a yeasted pie, or a bread, it doesn't have to be that thin. Brush on a bit of melted butter, place the apple sliced on the pastry and roll up like a log, brush on melted butter as you roll.

I fold it into a ring and place it on slightly greased tray. Let it proof for another 45 minutes to an hour

Brush on egg wash and bake in pre-heated 180C oven for 35-40 minutes...

Creamy Coconut Prawn Soup with Crusty Sour Dough Bread

2011-07-11T05:00:00.000-07:00

We had a big lunch whilst out shopping yesterday, so last night's dinner, I decided to go light. After all, it has been a cold winter and we had a little too many stews and we need to shed a few pounds.

Got some beautiful Australian king prawns, so I decided to use it for dinner.

I must admit we usually have our prawns cooked with shells but this time, they are just too nice so i decided to clean the prawns, and use the heads and shells to do a nice little bisque.

Creamy Coconut Prawn Soup with Crusty Sour Dough Bread
For 4 serves, use 750-800g of fresh prawns.

For the bisque:
1/2 cup of white wine
6-7 black pepper corn
half of onion
1 clove of garlic
2 pieces orange peels
juice of half of a lemon
olive oil
salt
parsley stems

Heat oil in pan and brown the onion and garlic, add the prawn shells and heads, and let them heat through and press to release flavours. Add wine, lemon juice, salt, pepper corn and orange peels, and let it cook to relase more flavour. Add a bit of water.
Once it's done, pass through sieve and you get that golden thick liquid.

For the coconut veggie soup:

2 Large desiree potatos, peeled and diced
1 sweet potato, peeled and diced
2 carrots, peeled and diced
diced half of red onion
bit of olive oil
1 can of light coconut milk

Heat up the oil to sweat the onion a bit, add the veggies and cook them through a bit, but don't let them brown. Add coconut milk and prawn bisque, season the soup, and let the veggies cook through.

When soup is cooked, add the peeled and cleaned prawns to the pan. Stir a bit, as the prawns cook really quickly.

Serve with chopped parsley and lemon juice and a bit of zest, and toasted crusted bread.

This makes a nice entree, or a light meal.

Preserving Season again - Grapefruit Marmalade

2011-07-10T05:41:00.000-07:00

Preserving season again... from home produce.

We have a good producing lemon tree and a grapefruit tree, with plenty of water this year, they have been doing extremely well.

I've used a lot of lemons this year, lemon curd, preserved lemon and lots of lemon cakes. I have been giving lemons away, neighbours, friends, people at work.

What do I do with the grapefruits?

I have been juicing them, but I thought I have read from somewhere, that they are alright to be made into marmalades.

Checked a few recipes, I think I'm alright, although I don't think the skin is very nice, so I used orange peel intead.

I didn't measure to the exact, but roughly, about 1.5kgs cleaned grapefruit chunks, peeled, cut off as much of the white bits of the skin, and de-pitted and middle tough bits cut away.
2kgs of sugar
cleaned and sliced peels of 3 small oranges
1/2 cup of light corn syrup
2 tbsp maple syrup - I might be too hooked onto the maple flavour
1.5 cup of water
25g of Jam Setta (with Pectin)

The fruits were very juicy and didn't need a lot of water. I boiled the water with the fruit first and then add sugar as I go. Then the other flavours. After it boiled down and almost ready, I stirred in the Jam Setta.

End up with 3 big jars (around 500g each) of marmalade. I did use the recycled bottles, boiled the lids and bottles to get rid of the germs etc. Once boiled and cooled, press down the top button of the lid, and it's sealed as the pop top stayed down...

Preserving is really easy, and home made jams are much tastier..