the kitchen minx

Baby shower cupcakes

2012-02-23T01:31:00.002+11:00

I thought I would share a lovely idea my friend Ash had the other day. She was putting together a book-themed baby shower and asked me to make these cupcakes.

I used The Hummingbird Bakery Cookbook's vanilla cupcake and vanilla icing recipes. I won't copy out the recipes for them here because that's not the point of this post. As we don't know whether the baby's a boy or a girl, I divided the icing and put a splash of pink in one half and a splash of blue in the other. I'm quite proud of myself for managing these pale colours because I usually accidentally end up with extremely vibrant-looking food when I get hold of food colouring. Then I got carried away and sprinkled cachous over the tops (because, wheeeeeeeeee, they're so pretty)!

Next, I found a dozen popular kids' book covers on Google and printed two of each in tiny, cupcakey proportions. I laminated them (food-proof!) and used Blu-Tack to stick them back-to-back on toothpicks. It turned out to be a pretty easy and inexpensive way to make DIY cupcake decorations, and it could possibly work with some other baby shower themes as well.

Incidentally, see that weird tray the cupcakes are sitting in? It's part of a super-cool cake/cupcake carrier I bought online that makes transporting your baking a cinch. I love it!

Mini key lime pies

2011-11-06T18:01:00.000+11:00

It’s surprising how many Australians don’t know what key lime pie is (“Did you say 'keen line pie'?”) – surely it won’t be long before this delectable treat is considered a popular favourite right across the globe. For the time being, however, it’s a quintessentially American dessert. One that, in my mind, evokes images of Gran Stackhouse baking in her Bon Temps kitchen on a sticky, swampy Louisiana summer’s evening… even though her pie of choice was actually the pecan pie. But I digress.

So what is key lime pie, exactly? Well, if you like lemon meringue pie, you’ll love key lime pie. The base is made up of crushed biscuits (as with a cheesecake base) and the centre is sweetened condensed milk and egg yolk, mixed up with a good dose of lime – the tartness of which is offset by the fresh, whipped cream topping. While the meringue topping of a lemon meringue pie can turn that dessert into an overly-sweet mess, the fresh cream topping of a key lime pie allows the flavour of the filling to really shine.

Baked and then chilled in the fridge before serving, this is a make-ahead dessert that will never fail to impress. It’s also dead easy.

This week, I adapted my key lime pie recipe to a miniature size so it was easier to share around at work. It would also make travelling a lot easier if you don’t have a proper cake carrier.

Ingredients

Base
180 g digestive biscuits

60 g unsalted butter, melted and slightly cooled

Filling

6 egg yolks

600 g sweetened condensed milk

4 limes

Topping

300 ml thickened cream

Zest of 1 lime

Method

Preheat oven to 160ºC. Grease a 12-hole cupcake tray and line base of each hole with a circle of baking paper. Cut strips of baking paper and place two in every hole, forming a cross on the base, and rising up sides to above the height of the tray (see pictures below). These will act as pull-tabs to help you remove pies after baking and chilling.
For the base, break biscuits into smallish pieces and process in a food processor or similar until finely ground. Pour the butter over the biscuits and mix again until butter is mixed through.
Using finger-tips, firmly press about 2 tablespoonfuls of mixture into each cup to form a dense base approximately 0.5 cm thick. Bake for 12 minutes, then leave to cool completely in tray.
Preheat oven to 140ºC. Zest the 4 limes, then cut each lime in half and juice well.
In an electric mixer with a whisk attachment, gently whisk together egg yolks, sweetened condensed milk and lime juice and zest until mixture thickens slightly (about 1–2 minutes). Pour mixture into holes, not quite to the brim. Bake for approximately 13–15 minutes or until pies are slightly golden around edges. Set aside to cool completely before refrigerating for a few hours at least. Use pull-tabs to remove from tray.
Before serving, whip the thickened cream and dollop over the tops of the pie. Decorate each with a very small amount of lime zest.

Makes 12.

Tips

How small is ‘smallish’? I break each biscuit into four or five pieces about the size of a 20c piece.
I use my smoothie maker instead of an actual food processor, and process the biscuits in two smaller batches because my smoothie maker can’t handle the whole lot at once. I empty the first batch into a mixing bowl. Before emptying out the last batch from the smoothie maker, I add the melted butter to it and give it a good whiz. When I add it to the first batch in the mixing bowl, I mix it well with a wooden spoon to ensure the butter is distributed through the entire mixture.
If you don’t own a food processor or smoothie maker, you can still crush biscuits for pie (or cheesecake) bases by placing them in a plastic bag, tying it shut, and bashing the biscuits to bits with a rolling pin.
You’ll notice in my photos that I didn’t use the baking-paper pull tabs for each pie. I was testing different methods when I took the photos, and the pull tabs worked best. If you don't use pull-tabs, you’ll have to push a knife down the side of the pie to loosen it (and end up with a knife-shaped mark on the side of each pie).
Even though the pies are easy to make, there is a lot of “cooling time” involved. So that making these pies doesn’t take up your whole evening, you can do this recipe ahead up to Step 3, leave the finished bases in the fridge overnight, then continue with the rest of the recipe the next day.
If you don’t like the sound of the whipped cream topping, you can use meringue. But, as someone who doesn’t even like whipped cream, I have to say it is delicious with these pies and it would be a shame if you didn’t give it a chance!

Apple pie

2011-07-31T13:05:00.002+10:00

What better way to warm the cockles of the heart in deepest, darkest winter than with a slice (or two) of homemade pie? Lately my pie of choice has been the humble apple pie.

Perfectionist that I am, I’ve put a lot of effort into working out how to end up with apple filling that, while not looking like complete goo, has no “crunch” left in it. I mean, if Sara Lee can do it, why can’t I?

I Googled high and low for an answer, but every forum I found was discussing the opposite of my question – offering suggestions on how to keep a pie from being too gooey and too mushy. So I set out to do the footwork by myself.

After trying golden delicious, red delicious, royal gala, granny smith, fuji; not pre-cooked, slightly pre-cooked, completely stewed; roughly chopped, diced, thinly sliced; and various combinations of all of the above, my mind is made up. I’m hope you’re not too disappointed with what I discovered: my best result came from using tinned pie filling. For serious. It’s the holy grail of apple pie. Here’s a photo of some.

If you’re turning up your nose at the very notion of using tinned apples, see my “Tips” section at the bottom of this post for an alternative. But because I don’t like any “crunch” at all in my pies, I’m sticking to the tinned stuff.

Ingredients

250 g unsalted butter, chopped

600 g plain flour

1 tsp salt

(Up to) 6 Tbs cold tap-water

3 x 400 g tins sliced apple pie fruit

250 g caster sugar

2 tsp ground cinnamon

1 egg

1 Tbs milk

Extra caster sugar for sprinkling

Method

Grease a 23 cm pie tin or tart tin.
In an electric mixer set on low speed, mix together flour, butter and salt until a sandy consistency. Without stopping the mixing, add 2 Tbs tap water and allow to mix in completely, then repeat with another 2 Tbs tap water. The mixture should start coming together a little bit; add up to another 2 Tbs tap water (so that’s 6 Tbs in total) until the dough comes together in a few large lumps. Be careful not to add more water than you need.
Turn off the mixer and push the dough together into a ball with your hands. Wrap the ball of dough in cling film and leave to rest for 1½ hours.
Preheat oven to 170ºC. Empty the cans of tinned apple into a large bowl and stir in caster sugar and ground cinnamon.
Place a bit more than half the dough on a lightly-floured bench or board, and roll out into a rough circle shape about 3 mm-thick with a rolling pin. Using the rolling pin underneath the dough to support it evenly, carefully lift the dough into the prepared pie tin. Shape the dough into the tin, lightly pressing it into corners and over the edges.
Pour in the apple mixture.
Whisk the egg and milk together in a cup with a fork. Using a basting brush, baste the overhanging rim of the pie with egg and milk mixture (this will help “glue” the lid on later). Retain the egg and milk mixture for use in Step 8.
With the remaining dough, repeat Step 5 to create the pie lid and carefully lift it on top of the pie. Cut around the outside of the pie with a sharp knife to remove excess pastry. Shape the excess pastry into shapes such as leaves, and press patterns into them with the blunt edge of the knife. Firmly press the tines of a fork all the way around the edge of the pie seal the “lid” shut and to decorate. Thoroughly baste the entire top of the pie with the egg and milk. Add the leaf decorations to the top of the pie, then baste them also.
Sprinkle extra caster sugar over the top of the pie. Use the sharp knife to make at least 3 small slits in the pastry through which air can escape through during cooking.
Bake in preheated oven for 35–40 minutes. Serve hot or cold with cream or ice cream.

Serves 8

sandy consistency

Tips

If you really don’t want to use tinned apples, instead create your own filling from 1.3 kg of peeled, chopped apples. Stew them in a large saucepan over low heat in a small amount of water until the apples reach your desired consistency. Drain if necessary. Cool apples, then stir in caster sugar and cinnamon.
The best “real apple” to use in apple pies is supposedly the granny smith, but I think the golden delicious and sun downer taste even better. And you don’t have to stick with one type of apple – mix together two or three of your favourites.
If you realise you haven’t rolled your pastry thinly enough and it’s not going to be big enough, don’t try to “make do”! Put it back on the bench and keep rolling until it is big enough. A bit of extra handling isn’t going to kill it.

Remove excess pastry with a sharp knife

Press the tines of a fork into pasty edge to decorate

Turkish delight

2011-07-21T21:34:00.004+10:00

I have always said that if I had to choose one chocolate bar to live on for the rest of my life (do you torture yourself with these hypothetical food questions too?), I would pick Fry’s Turkish Delight. The reason would not be that, as the wrapper claims, it has “60% less fat*”, but simply that it tastes fresh, isn’t too rich, and has a unique flavour. So this week I set about trying to recreate the taste at home.

While I really don’t think I managed to replicate the exact flavour and jelly-like consistency of a bar of Fry’s Turkish Delight, I have accomplished microwaveable Turkish delight (loosely based on a Super Food Ideas recipe) very similar to the boxed kind that you buy at the supermarket covered in icing sugar, and added some chocolate (a fetish I alluded to in my last post).

You might be interested to learn that the original name for Turkish delight is lokum. It was introduced to Britain after a British traveller tasted some in Istanbul – and was obviously as delighted by it (see what I did there?) as you will be if you try out my recipe.

Ingredients

750 ml hot tap-water

35 g powdered gelatine

500 g caster sugar

120 g cornflour

150 g soft icing sugar mixture

¼ tsp cream of tartar

2 tsp rosewater

4 drops red food colouring

200 g good quality chocolate, roughly chopped
Extra soft icing sugar mixture (if desired)

Method

Grease and line a 27 x 18 cm slice pan and line bottom and sides with baking paper.
Pour the tap-water into a large, microwave-safe bowl (I used my big Pyrex bowl) and sprinkle half the gelatine quantity over the top, whisking in thoroughly with a fork. Repeat with the remaining half of the gelatine. The gelatine should break up and mostly dissolve. Stir in caster sugar.
Microwave for 5 minutes, stir with fork, then microwave again for 3 minutes.
Whisk in cornflour, icing sugar mixture and cream of tartar. Microwave for another 3 minutes.
Whisk in rosewater and red food colouring, allow mixture to cool for five minutes, then pour into prepared pan. Scrape any bubbles from the surface with a fork. Cool to room temperature, then refrigerate overnight.
Melt the chocolate in a heatproof bowl over a saucepan of simmering water, ensuring bowl never touches the water. Stir occasionally until melted and smooth. Spread chocolate over top of the Turkish delight with a spatula.
Refrigerate about 20 minutes before turning out of the pan onto a chopping board and cutting into squares (or funky shapes) with a big cook’s knife.
Straight before serving, roll squares in a small bowlful of icing sugar, if desired.

Tips

Cooking times are based on my 1100 watt microwave.
Leave plenty of baking paper overhanging to make it easy later to remove the Turkish delight from the pan and peel off the baking paper.
From Step 5 onwards, I found it easier to use a proper whisk instead of the fork.
At Step 5, it’s important to allow that 5 minutes of cooling time so that the baking paper doesn’t warp and buckle into the middle of your mixture. Try it and you’ll see what I mean!
When melting chocolate in a bowl over simmering water, be careful not to burn yourself on steam escaping from between the bowl and the saucepan – especially when you're stirring the chocolate. You can actually buy double-boilers to use for this exact kind of thing, but I haven't bothered yet.
Heating your knife will make it easier to cut the Turkish delight. Heat your knife by holding it under a (very) hot tap for a whole minute and drying it off quickly before cutting. If you have trouble with the chocolate shattering, try turning the Turkish delight upside-down to cut.

“*than the average of leading chocolate bars”

Reverse chocolate chip cookies

2011-07-15T14:09:00.001+10:00

So I’ve just realised that I have a serious chocolate problem. One symptom: I believe I can “improve” every recipe by adding chocolate to it – well, every sweet recipe, anyway. And I’ve done it again!

These decadent little treats are a chocolate lover’s dream – a good dose of melted chocolate gleefully blended into a chewy cookie mixture, and plenty of white chocolate chips thrown in to give your teeth something exciting to hook into (and also provide a nicer visual than brown-on-brown).

My main piece of advice with chocolate chip cookies is to very carefully monitor the cooking time. Everyone’s oven works a little differently, so perhaps even do a few test runs of one or two cookies to find out what the ideal cooking time is in your oven. And it’s much better to take them out too early than leave them in too long. Who wants crunchy chocolate chips cookies?

When you take them out of the oven, the cookies will be tall and puffy, and you might think they’re undercooked, but rest assured that they will collapse back into a normal cookie shape as they cool. Leave them to rest on the oven trays for a while, otherwise they will be far too floppy to transfer onto the wire racks.

Interesting fact: chocolate chip cookies were invented by a happy mistake! A cook named Ruth Wakefield was making cookies and, after running out of her usual ingredient (the exact ingredient varies depending on which version of this story you read), decided to use chopped up chocolate instead, thinking it would melt into the cookies as they cooked. Luckily, she was wrong, and so began the life of chocolate-chip cookies, which were initially named “toll house cookies” (after the name of Wakefield’s inn). It’s hard to believe this only happened about eighty years ago – can you imagine life without chocolate chip cookies?

Ingredients

120 g Nuttelex (see tips below for alternatives)

½ tsp vanilla extract

85 g brown sugar

85 g white sugar

½ large egg

190 g plain flour

½ tsp bicarbonate of soda

1 tsp cocoa powder

50 g dark chocolate Melts, roughly chopped

160 g white chocolate chips

Method

Preheat oven to 170°C and line baking trays with baking paper.
Melt the dark chocolate pieces in a heatproof bowl over a saucepan of simmering water, ensuring the bowl never touches the water. Stir occasionally until chocolate is melted and smooth.
Allow chocolate to cool while beating together Nuttelex, vanilla, sugars and egg with an electric mixer until light in colour and texture (see image below).
Scoop a cupful of the mixture into the melted dark chocolate and mix together with a spoon to bring down the temperature of the chocolate, before adding it to the rest of the mixture and mixing thoroughly until the colour is even.
Sift together the flour, bicarbonate of soda and cocoa powder into a large bowl. Add half at a time to the mixture, mixing well after each.
Add white chocolate chips and mix lightly and briefly with the elective mixer or by hand.
Refrigerate 1 hour.
Roll mixture into 3 cm balls and place on the prepared baking trays approximately 3 cm apart from each other.
Bake cookies for 10 minutes. Cool on trays for about15 minutes or until cookies can be lifted across to wire racks without bending too much. Cool completely on wire racks.

Makes 25–30.

Step 3 – beat the mixture until it becomes light

Step 4 – add some of the mixture to the melted chocolate

Tips

Nuttelex is a dairy-free table spread, which we used in my house while I was growing up. It’s an alternative to butter and margarine, and you can find it beside them in Australian supermarkets. I’ve also tried this recipe with unsalted butter and Meadow Lea (margarine), and they all work fine, but I love the Nuttelex ones best. Just use whatever you have in the fridge.
If you don’t have white chocolate chips, it’s perfectly okay to simply chop up a white chocolate block, but make sure the pieces are the size of chocolate chips – because huge lumps of white chocolate don’t taste as nice in a cookie as huge chunks of real chocolate do.
If you’re wondering why the ingredients list specifies half an egg, it’s because this recipe in its original form makes about 60 cookies from one egg. I crack one egg into a glass and whisk it well with a fork to combine the yolk and the white, then pour half of it into the mixture (very slowly and carefully or the entire egg will plop in all at once). I haven’t tried using an entire egg, but chances are it would work okay.
When melting chocolate in a bowl over simmering water, be careful not to burn yourself on steam escaping from between the bowl and the saucepan - especially when you're stirring the chocolate. You can actually buy double-boilers to use for this exact kind of thing, but I haven't bothered yet.
The mixture will be fine if left in the refrigerator for longer than an hour, but will become firmer the longer it’s in there.
This recipe makes enough cookies to require three baking trays. Because I only have two, I put the cookie mixture back in the fridge while the first two trayfuls are cooking and cooling.

Chocolate brownies (cakey)

2011-06-30T21:58:00.002+10:00

As many people like their brownies fudgy as those who prefer them cakey – when I put the question out to my Facebook friends, the responses were evenly split. A few weeks ago, I posted my recipe for lovely, dense and fudgy brownies. Since then, I’ve gone through kilograms of chocolate and butter, trying to perfect lighter, “cakier” brownies… and I’ve finally done it!

The secret seems to be cutting back drastically on the quantity of butter and sugar. I’ve added some sour cream because I saw it used in a brownie recipe in the Bourke Street Bakery cookbook and it seemed like a good idea.

I’ve also started using a metal tin when I make brownies (instead of my old ceramic slice pan) because I’ve read that it gives brownies a better “crumb”.

Of my two versions of brownies, this one has to be my personal favourite.

Ingredients

200 g dark chocolate (buttons, or roughly chopped)

50 g unsalted butter, chopped

2 eggs

200 g caster sugar

100 g plain flour

1½ tsp baking powder

Pinch salt

65 g sour cream

Method

Preheat the oven to 170°C. Grease a 26 x 16 cm slice tin and line with baking paper.
Melt the chocolate and butter together in a heatproof bowl over a saucepan of simmering water, ensuring the bowl never touches the water. Stir occasionally until butter completely melted. Mixture will stiffen. Remove from heat and allow to cool.
Beat eggs and sugar together with an electric mixer until they are well combined and light in colour.
Add the cooled chocolate (it will have probably formed a ball) and mix well. Scrape bottom and sides of bowl with a spatula.
Sift together flour, baking powder and salt, then add to the chocolate mixture. Mix lightly until colour is even. Scrape bottom and sides of bowl again.
Add sour cream and mix until just combined.
Turn out into prepared tin and spread out evenly with a spatula or knife. Bake for 30 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean.
Cool completely in tin before turning out, removing the edges with a big, sharp cook’s knife and slicing into squares. Dust with icing sugar if desired.

Makes 10–12.

Tips

When melting chocolate in a bowl over simmering water, be careful not to burn yourself on steam escaping from between the bowl and the saucepan - especially when you're stirring the chocolate. You can actually buy double-boilers to use for this exact kind of thing, but I haven't bothered yet.
The very top of the brownies will probably wrinkle or pucker during cooking because the brownies rise then deflate. If it worries you, leave the brownies upside down for a while before cutting them- it could “squash out” the wrinkles; honestly, I don’t bother.
Ensure the brownies are completely cold before slicing, or they will end up with sloppy, rough-looking edges.
I think these are best eaten within 24 hours of slicing.

Lemon delicious

2011-06-26T13:49:00.002+10:00

To continue the theme of my last post, I’ve found another pudding that’s not common, but is definitely a crowd-pleaser. While it belongs to an earlier generation than mine, I’ve noticed lemon delicious is making its way back into the cookbooks recently. It’s one of those Australian recipes handed down through families over the years, so I’d say there’s quite a few version of it out there. A few weeks ago, I sat through an in-depth discussion between my grandma-in-law and an aunt-in-law as they debated whether or not you should strain the pulp from the lemon juice (I’d love to give you a run-down of both sides of that argument, but I was too busy stuffing my face to pay close attention).

If you have no idea what lemon delicious is, imagine a light lemon sponge floating over a creamy lemon sauce, and pure heaven where the two meet.

Now, the word on the street (okay, in the recipe books) is that it’s necessary to bake lemon delicious in a water bath. “What’s that?” you wonder. A water bath is a basin (usually a large, deep roasting pan), filled with water, into which you place the pudding dish. The purpose is to prevent the mixture curdling during cooking.

Due to the fact that every single lemon delicious recipe I’ve seen requires this water bath, I have included the step in my recipe here; however, I have made lemon delicious sans water bath before, and there were no dire side effects. Perhaps I was just lucky.

Place the dish in a water bath

Lemon delicious can be served warm or cold. I don't like to hoe into lemon delicious fresh from the oven, because the sauce is still thin, runny and too hot for my greedy little mouth. I prefer to leave the pudding on the bench for an hour or so and serve lukewarm, or pop it into the fridge and serve cold later on. The sauce will thicken up nicely as the pudding cools. This makes lemon delicous a fantastic dessert to prepare the day before you need it, and keep in the fridge overnight.

Fresh from the oven, the sauce is quite thin

The sauce will thicken as the pudding cools

Ingredients

70 g unsalted butter, softened

200 g caster sugar

Zest of 1 lemon

3 eggs, separated

90 g self-raising flour

400 ml milk

80 ml lemon juice

Method

Preheat oven to 160°C and grease a 2.5 litre baking or casserole dish.
Beat butter, sugar and lemon rind with an electric mixer until very well combined.
Add egg yolks, one at a time, beating well after each.
Add flour, lemon juice a milk, and beat on low speed until combined.
In a separate bowl, beat egg whites until the form soft peaks. Fold the egg whites into the mixture.
Pour mixture into prepared dish, place in water bath and bake uncovered 50 minutes.
Leave to cool or refrigerate before serving. Dust with icing sugar and serve with cream.

Serves 6.

Beat egg whites to soft peaks

Tips

If you’d like to use fresh lemon juice, I suggest you use more than 80 ml. I find that bottled lemon juice has a more concentrated flavour than lemons I squeeze myself (perhaps I should try straining).
Put a twist on this dish by using lime instead of lemon. Remember that lime has a stronger, sharper flavour than lemon, so you won’t need to use as much zest and juice.

Banana and butterscotch pudding

2011-06-16T09:00:00.031+10:00

As winter closes in on us and evenings grow darker and colder, it's time to bring out that most comforting of all comfort food: the pudding. This unstuffupable self-saucing pudding was published in The Herald Sun nearly ten years ago, and I've kept the clipping in one of my books of miscellaneous recipes. I've made some small changes to quantities and added some cinnamon. The flavour is more like golden syrup dumpling than a true butterscotch taste, so if you don't like the sound of that, you'll need to add more brown sugar into the sauce.
This pudding is best served fresh from the oven, so when I need to make it ahead of time, I assemble the entire pudding (leaving it uncooked), cover with cling wrap and refrigerate. When I'm ready to cook it, I simply peel off the cling wrap and whack the pudding in the oven.

Ingredients

125 g plain flour

Pinch of salt

120 g caster sugar

3 tsp baking powder

⅓ tsp ground cinnamon

1 banana, mashed

250 ml milk

80 g unsalted butter

1 egg, lightly beaten

1 tsp vanilla extract

Sauce

140 g brown sugar

3 Tbs golden syrup

250 ml boiling water

Method

Preheat oven to 180°C and grease a 2.5 litre baking or casserole dish.
Sift flour, salt, sugar, baking powder and cinnamon together into a mixing bowl.
By hand, or using a mixer with a whisk attachment, whisk in the banana, milk, butter, egg and vanilla until combined. Don't overmix.
Pour mixture into prepared dish.
Heat sauce ingredients in a small saucepan over medium heat, stirring occasionally until boiling. Remove from heat and slowly drizzle the sauce over the pudding mixture.
Bake pudding uncovered 40–45 minutes.
Serve with ice cream.

Serves 4–6

Tips

The simplest way to mash bananas is with the back of a fork.
Don't skimp on the ice cream, because it's necessary to offset the very sweet golden syrup flavour of the pudding.
The sauce is quite gluggy and doesn't reheat back to its former glory – so it really is best fresh from the oven.

Sideways Deli Café

2011-06-11T08:00:00.041+10:00

I figure it’s time I spice up my blog a bit with some non-recipe posts in case I have any readers who don’t cook – and what better way than to occasionally review some places I like to eat at?

It’s no coincidence that Sideways Deli Café is the first eatery I’d like to draw your attention to; I can’t stay away from the place!

Situated at the intersection of five quiet residential streets, it would be easy to overlook Sideways, but you’d be really missing out. The peaceful location is the perfect setting for a relaxing Saturday brunch with friends, and even if you choose to dine al fresco and soak up those sweet weekend rays, there is no noisy traffic or bustling of dozens of passersby to disturb the conversation at your table.

The cheerful yet efficient demeanour of the staff makes the experience all the more relaxing. Here you can be confident you won’t be left waiting, won’t be rushed, and won’t ever feel like an annoyance. Service is quick, but you'll be left to enjoy your meal at your own pace.

On weekends, the café is packed to the brim with locals, and other customers who (like myself) don’t mind a bit of a drive when there is a treat like this at the end of it. And my favourite treat is the ricotta pancake topped with stewed rhubarb and a dollop of yoghurt, served with maple syrup on the side. Sweet but not overpoweringly so, filling, quite lovely to look at, and with such a soft and fluffy pancake, this is one of those meals you could look forward to all week.

Food choice isn't limited to what you can see on the menu; there’s also a host of goodies available at the counter – from cakes, slices, muffins, brownies and friands, to pies, croissants, gingerbread men and even nougat.

For a Sydney café that is consistently well-reviewed in local food guides, the prices at Sideways are very easy to swallow (pardon the pun). I am told that the steak sandwich is to die for, but haven’t managed to move past my darling ricotta pancakes yet – hey, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!

Where?

Sideways Deli Café

37 Constitution Rd

Dulwich Hill NSW 2203 (Sydney)

Ph: 02 9560 1425

www.sidewaysdelicafe.com.au

When? Open every day from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.

How much? Mains $9–$15

A bonus Tiny Teddy comes with every hot drink

My pal Jenni obviously enjoying her smoked salmon bagel!

Oreo truffles

2011-06-07T22:27:00.000+10:00

If you think the taste of an Oreo can't be improved on, you're wrong. When mixed with cream cheese, shaped into balls and coated in chocolate, Oreos can become even more magical. Also referred to as Oreo balls, these delicious Oreo truffles are quite rich, with an intense flavour not unlike cookies'n'cream.
They are fantastic as snacks or bite-sized desserts, and the good news is that the recipe only requires a few ingredients, all of which you can store in your kitchen for months - so if you have the ingredients on standby, you'll be able to whip up a batch without making a special trip to the supermarket.

Ingredients
3 x 150 g packs of Oreo biscuits (or similar)
250 g cream cheese, softened
320 g milk chocolate melts
320 g dark chocolate melts

Method

Crush or chop Oreos into small pieces
Mix softened cream cheese on low–medium speed for about 30 seconds just to loosen the cream cheese a little. Add the crushed Oreos and mix on low speed until well combined. Refrigerate mixture for 1 hour.
Take 2 or 3 large dinner plates (note that they will need to fit in your freezer later). Shape tablespoonfuls of mixture into balls by rolling between your hands. Sit the rolled balls on the dinner plates. Freeze the plates and balls for at least 1 hour.
Melt the milk chocolate in a heatproof bowl over a saucepan of simmering water, ensuring bowl never touches the water. Stir occasionally until chocolate is melted and smooth.
Remove half the quantity of Oreo balls from the freezer. Using two forks, dip each ball into the melted chocolate to coat completely, then carefully place back onto the cold dinner plate. Refrigerate.
Repeat Steps 4 and 5 with the dark chocolate and the remainder of the quantity of balls.
The coated truffles will not take long to set. Serve cold.

Makes approximately 40.

Tips

The quickest way to break down the Oreos is to lay one packetful at a time on a chopping board, and chop into small pieces with a big butcher's knife
You can experiment with different quantities in order to find you perfect ratio of cream cheese to Oreos.
When melting chocolate in a bowl over simmering water, be careful not to burn yourself on steam escaping from between the bowl and the saucepan - especially when you're stirring the chocolate. You can actually buy double-boilers to use for this exact kind of thing, but I haven't bothered yet.
To remove excess melted chocolate from the balls, scrape the underside of the fork with the other fork before placing the ball onto the plate.
If you have time to decorate the Oreo truffles, you could sprinkle Oreo crumbs over them before the chocolate sets, or, after the chocolate has set, drizzle with melted white chocolate
Why freeze the balls on dinner plates? Firstly, freezing the balls ensures that they won't become too mushy when dipped into the warm chocolate (which would leave you with very messy-looking truffles). Secondly, having the dinner plates extremely cold means that the melted chocolate won't spread too far before it sets. If you use room-temperature plates, the truffles will turn out with large "feet" and you could even end up with your truffles sitting in one big puddle of melted chocolate.
Once the truffles are set, if you think their "feet" are too big, just sit them on a flat surface and carefully cut away the excess chocolate using a small, sharp knife.
Oreo truffles are best served straight from the fridge (or at least below room temperature), otherwise the cream cheese flavour will be too intense.

Chilli prawn tagliatelle

2011-06-04T13:17:00.002+10:00

I don't know whether tagliatelle is recently experiencing a huge increase in popularity in Australia, or if I've just had my head in the sand for the last twenty years; suddenly, tagliatelle leaps out at me from every restaurant menu and foodie mag.
Tagliatelle is similar to fettucine, but even wider, and according to Wikipedia, is pronounced taʎʎaˈtɛlle (which I interpret as tal-ya-TELL-a).
Anyway, keen to try out this fettucine-on-'roids in my own kitchen, I scooped up a packet from the supermarket, and I'm happy to report it's as easy to cook as any other packet pasta. I'd like to challenge myself by making the tagliatelle from scratch, but I don't have a pasta maker... yet!
I've teamed the tagliatelle with one of my favourite flavour combos: chilli prawn. And I've thrown in a good dose of cherry tomatoes to assuage my guilty conscience (I wish I could tell you that the basil counts as a green vegetable). Enjoy.

Ingredients
400 g pack of tagliatelle
50 ml olive oil
4 cloves garlic, finely chopped
4 red chillies, finely chopped
600 g prawns, raw with tail on
350 g cherry tomatoes, halved

⅓ cup basil leaves, chopped

Method

Cook tagliatelle according to packet instructions, then drain (not quite completely - leave a little bit of water in the pan to help later). Leave tagliatelle in its saucepan to rest while you prepare the rest of the meal.
Heat olive oil in a frying pan over medium heat. Add garlic and chilli, toss for 1 minute.
Add cherry tomatoes, cook 2–3 minutes, then add prawns. Cook, turning occasionally, until prawns are pink on both sides.
Add basil and toss for a few moments, then tip everything from the frying pan into the saucepan containing the tagliatelle. Toss together and serve immediately.

Serves 4.

Tips

Have all your ingredients out on your kitchen bench, chopped and ready to go, before you start preparing this meal. You don't want the pasta to grow cold while you fiddle around with the rest of the ingredients. Steps 2–4 should only take about 5 minutes.
If desired, you could serve this meal with a bit of parmesan cheese grated over the top. Personally, I prefer a bit of cracked pepper, but it depends on how hot your chillies are.

Honey jumbles

2011-05-29T19:07:00.000+10:00

Here's a secret formula I learnt in my kitchen this week: sugar + spice + all things nice = honey jumbles.
Now, you could always save yourself the trouble and pick up a pack of honey jumbles at the supermarket, but it won't beat having that warm and gingery aroma wafting through your home, or that happy feeling you get when you open the oven and pull out a tray of golden, fresh honey jumbles.
You might be surprised to see that this recipe actually doesn't include any honey at all – the golden syrup provides the sweetness and colour. If this contradiction bothers you, you could probably swap out the golden syrup and replace with honey and brown sugar (but I haven't tried that yet)... Or, indeed, you could simply start calling them "golden syrup jumbles". But I digress.
No matter what you call 'em, the only thing to do with these jumbles is slather them with icing, brew a pot of tea, and plonk yourself down on the sofa with a good book.

Ingredients

Sugar + spice (the jumbles)
100 g unsalted butter, chopped
250 ml golden sytrup
400 g plain flour
2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
2 tsp mixed spice
2 tsp ground ginger
Pinch cloves
3 Tbs milk

All things n(icing)
1 egg white
240 g sifted icing sugar
2–3 tsp lemon juice
2 tsp plain flour
Food colouring of your choice

Method

In a medium saucepan, heat butter and golden syrup until just boiling (when bubbles begin to break on the surface). Remove from heat and cool for 10 minutes.
In the meantime, sift the dry ingredients. Once the syrup mixture is cooled, stir in the dry ingredients and milk. Mix well, then cover the saucepan with cling wrap and leave to rest for 2 hours.
Preheat oven to 180°C and line two baking trays with baking paper.
Turn out about a quarter of the mixture onto a very lightly floured board or bench. Roll into a long snake shape approximately 2.5 cm in diameter, then cut with a knife into 5–6 cm lengths and place onto baking trays. Repeat this step three times until all the mixture has been used.
Bake 10 minutes and cool on trays. When the jumbles are completely cold, spread icing over them with a knife.

Makes 16

All things n(icing)

Beat egg white in a cup with a fork until it's as frothy as you can get it.
Place half the quantity of icing sugar in a bowl and make a well in the centre . Tip the egg white into the well and mix thoroughly, starting from the inside and slowly working outwards to the edge of the bowl.
Add the remaining icing sugar, flour and 2 tsp of the lemon juice and mix thoroughly again.
Add up to 1 tsp extra lemon juice to get the mixture to the right consistency.
With a knife, spread the icing over half the quantity of honey jumbles.
Add a few drop of the food colouring of your choice to the icing sugar mixture and mix well again before spreading it over the remaining half of the honey jumbles.
Leave to set at room temperature.

Tips

Don't flour the board/bench too much, or your honey jumbles will have flour stuck all over them – even after cooking. A very light sprinkle will do the trick.
Don't worry about the cracks that appear in the top of the jumbles as they cook. That's just what happens. After you've iced the jumbles, no one will be able to tell the cracks are there.
Be careful not to over-cook the jumbles! Ten minutes should be enough. Eleven minutes will probably cause burnt edges.
What's the right consistency of icing? I had to try a few times to get the icing on my jumbles smooth and shiny, and I think it helps to have a frothy egg white, to mix the ingredients together very well, and add enough lemon juice so that the mixture is thin enough to slowly run off a knife. If it's staying in a clump on your knife, it's not thin enough, and you should add more lemon juice. But be careful not to go too thin, because then the icing will trickle off the jumbles. Also remember that the food colouring will thin out the mixture even further.

Champagne with lychees

2011-05-18T23:19:00.000+10:00

Lychees amaze me – they have such a striking appearance, an other-worldly flavour (almost like a grape, but sweeter and somehow foreign), and in your mouth they even feel exotic. So I love an opportunity to use lychees whole in a recipe. They go very well in fruit salads, but one use you may not have considered for lychees is simply to drop them into a glassful of bubbly. I use tinned lychees because you don’t have to concern yourself with peeling and pitting them or searching for fresh ones at your supermarket, but also because the delicious lychee syrup included in the can helps create a delightful cocktail.

It’s a simple treat for a girl’s night or a brunch. The syrup takes away some of the sharpness of the drink, and you get that bonus at the end: alcohol-drenched fruit at the bottom of your glass – yum.

Ingredients

1 x 750 ml bottle of sparkling wine, chilled

1 x 560 g can of pitted lychees in syrup (undrained)

Method

Take 6 glasses. Place 2 lychees and 2 Tbs of syrup in each glass.
Divide sparking wine evenly between the 6 glasses. Stir gently to spread the syrup through each drink. Serve.

Makes 6 glassfuls.

Chocolate brownies (fudgy)

2011-05-14T20:52:00.002+10:00

Is there anyone who doesn’t like brownies? Surely they must be as rare as those poor suckers who can’t stand chocolate. The brownie, which started life only a little over a century ago in America (okay, I’ve just lost everyone who thought I was talking about Enid Blyton’s mischievous hobgoblin creatures), is now pretty much universally adored.

I can remember the very first time I tasted a brownie. It was at a friend’s birthday party in early high school, we were playing pool in her den and listening to Coldplay’s “Yellow” (it was also the first time I’d heard Coldplay) and I picked up a strange, under-cooked-looking chocolate slice and took a tentative bite. There was no going back.

I understand that everyone has their own strong opinion of what makes the perfect brownie (fudgy or cakey, choc-chips or not, nuts or not, packet mix or homemade), so I’m not going to be stupid enough to promise that my recipe will rock your socks. But I can assure you that it’s rich, dense, fudgy, and I love it to bits – or, as Chris Martin sang, “you know I love you soo-ooo”.

Ingredients

250 g dark chocolate (buttons, or roughly chopped)

130 g unsalted butter, chopped

300 g caster sugar

100 g plain flour

50 g cocoa powder

3 eggs

Icing sugar, to decorate (optional)

Method

Preheat oven to 160°C. Grease a 27 x 18 cm slice pan and line with baking paper.
Combine caster sugar, plain flour and cocoa powder in a large bowl.
Melt the dark chocolate and butter in a heatproof bowl over a saucepan of simmering water, ensuring bowl never touches the water. Stir occasionally until mixture is melted and smooth.
Add chocolate mixture to flour mixture and mix thoroughly. Add eggs and mix again.
Spread mixture into the prepared pan and even out the surface a little with a spatula or knife. Bake 30 minutes or until just firm. Be careful: over-cooking will make the edges too hard and crunchy.
Cool in pan, then turn out onto a wire rack to cool completely. When cold, slice into squares with a sharp knife.
If desired, sprinkle with sifted icing sugar before serving.

Makes 12 squares.

Tips

When melting chocolate in a bowl over simmering water, be careful not to burn yourself on steam escaping from between the bowl and the saucepan - especially when you're stirring the chocolate. You can actually buy double-boilers to use for this exact kind of thing, but I haven't bothered yet.
Including some white choc-chips after Step 4 will add some interest and texture to the brownies.
I always remove the outer edge of the brownies to give each square a neat, symmetrical look. But that’s just me.

Minestrone with damper

2011-05-08T21:24:00.004+10:00

Here’s a deliciously hearty combination to keep you warm this winter! It’s simple, and doesn’t take long to prepare – the most time-consuming part is chopping the veggies. And the damper can be fully prepared while the soup is simmering on the stove.

The great thing about minestrone is that you can make it up as you go along. If you don’t have the exact ingredients I’ve listed below, simply substitute them with whatever you have in your fridge or pantry. Capsicum, zucchini and kidney beans are some examples that also work well in minestrone.

It’s nicest eaten the same day because if left overnight, the pasta will eventually soak up most of the moisture, and it won’t be soupy anymore (it'll still taste great, though).

Minestrone

Ingredients

2 Tbs oil
2 brown onions, diced
3 garlic cloves, crushed
6 rashers of bacon, chopped
Half a bunch of celery, chopped
2 carrots, diced
1 cup green beans, chopped
2 x 400 g tins of chopped or crushed tomatoes
2 medium tomatoes, roughly chopped
1 x 400 g tin cannellini beans, drained
4 cups vegetable or beef stock
3 cups boiling water
2–3 cups spiral pasta

Method

Heat oil in a saucepan, then stir in onion, garlic and bacon and brown for a couple of minutes.
Add the remainder of the ingredients, bring to boil, then reduce heat and simmer, covered, for 30 minutes.

Serves 8–10

Parmesan damper

Ingredients

4 cups self-raising flour
2 cups parmesan cheese, finely grated
1–2 bunches of chives, roughly snipped
1 cup oil
1 cup milk

Method

Preheat oven to 180°C and line baking tray with baking paper.
Mix flour, cheese and chives in a large bowl, then add oil and milk, stirring to form a loose dough.
Turn out half the mixture onto a lightly-floured board, kneading lightly to coat with flour. Roll into a short, fat, sausage-shaped loaf and place on prepared tray. Repeat step with the remainder of the mixture to form a second loaf, and place on the tray also
Bake 20–25 minutes, then cool on a wire rack. Serve warm or cold, with butter.

Serves 8–10

Banana bread

2011-05-03T20:46:00.002+10:00

Got bananas going bad in your fruit bowl? Hate to see them go to waste? While I detest the sickly-sweet flavour of overripe bananas, that sweetness is the perfect ingredient to incorporate into some delicious baked goodies. My personal favourite would have to be banana bread. Sure, it's so unhealthy that it completely defies the point of eating fruit, but at least I'm not wasting bananas... Right?
It has taken me a few attempts to get my banana bread turning out the way it looks in cafes. I've found that a great result requires dark brown sugar, heaps of bananas (the riper the better, and if you have time, leave the mashed bananas sitting for a few hours to brown slightly), and a few hours for the loaf to settle after baking. The result? Deep brown, moist banana bread that slices like a dream.

Ingredients
270 g dark brown sugar
2 eggs
280 g plain flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
2 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp ground nutmeg
500 g mashed bananas, browned
140 g unsalted butter, melted

mashed bananas

after a few hours, browned

Method

Preheat oven to 160°C. Grease a 23 x 13 cm loaf tin and dust with flour.
Combine sugar and eggs with an electric mixer, add bananas and beat until well combined.
Add dry ingredients and beat thoroughly again, before slowly pouring in the melted butter and beating until well combined.
Pour mixture into the loaf tin and smooth the surface with your spatula or a knife
Bake for around 70 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the loaf comes out clean. Cool in tin for 5 minutes, then remove to a wire rack to cool completely.
This loaf is best left to rest for eight hours before slicing.

Tips

The riper the bananas, the sweeter the bread.
500 g equals about five medium-sized bananas. If you want a lighter bread, simply use less bananas. The recipe will still work, but won't be as dark, dense or sweet.
I find it easiest to "mash" the bananas on a plate using the back of a fork. Once they're mashed, I leave them on the plate to brown for a few hours. This isn't necessary, but I think it makes the bread a little darker in colour.
To prepare the loaf tin, just grease it as normal then sprinkle with flour. Turn the tray gradually in one hand, tapping it sharply with the other hand to spread the flour around the surface of the tray. The flour will stick to the greasy surfaces as it moves around the tray. This step ensures that the loaf is very easy to remove from the tin after baking.
Why leave the loaf to settle for eight hours after baking? It's not at all necessary, but I have found that the bread will be more dense, and the slices will be neater and look more professional. But don't worry if you can't wait, it will taste just as good fresh from the oven!

Tandoori salmon on basmati rice with watermelon and fetta salad

2011-04-25T09:13:00.001+10:00

This is a beautiful meal – colourful to the eyes, tastebuds and the nose. The tandoori flavour is offset wonderfully by the refreshing coolness of the watermelon salad, and the mingled aromas of the tandoori and the coriander-infused basmati rice are mouth-watering. Best of all, this is a stress-free meal to put together when you’re having guests to dinner. It doesn’t take long to prepare, and most of the legwork can be done ahead of time, leaving you free to socialise when company arrives. I coat the salmon in the tandoori mixture and prepare the salad beforehand and keep them in the fridge, so all I need to do once the guests arrive is put the salmon straight into the oven, toss the salad and prepare the rice (which only takes 90 seconds in the microwave).

Tandoori salmon

Ingredients

4 fresh salmon fillets

300 g Greek yoghurt

6 Tbs tandoori paste

Method

Preheat oven to 220°C and line a roasting pan with baking paper
Skin salmon fillets (see instructions and photos at the bottom of this post)
Combine yoghurt and tandoori paste in a bowl, then generously cover both side of the salmon fillets with the mixture
Lay salmon fillets in the roasting pan and place in oven for 15-20 minutes (until cooked to your liking)

Basmati rice

Ingredients

1 family size pack (450 g ) Sun Rice microwaveable basmati rice

3 Tbs snipped coriander

1½ Tbs lemon juice

Method

Microwave basmati rice according to directions
Toss quickly with coriander and lemon juice. Serve while hot.

Watermelon and fetta salad

Ingredients

1 red onion, diced

2 Tbs chopped mint

2 cucumbers, seeded and thinly sliced

½ large watermelon, cut into large cubes

200 g fetta, cubed or crumbled

1 Tbs lemon juice

Method

Combine ingredients in a bowl, top with the lemon juice and toss together.

Tips

If you’ve got plenty of time on your hands, you can make the basmati rice from scratch on your stovetop, but I prefer to use the microwaveable variety because I serve this meal when I’m time-poor or simply don’t want to have to worry. You can place a few saffron threads in the saucepan with the rice to give it a beautiful yellow hue.
The salmon could instead be cooked in less than 10 minutes in a pan on the stovetop, but because the salmon fillets I buy are so thick, I find the oven is the best option, because the salmon can cook all the way through.
How to skin salmon fillets: with a large butcher’s knife, make a deep incision into the thick end of the fillet (nearly to the skin), then turn the knife until it’s at less than a 45° angle with your bench top, and carefully saw along the length of the fillet, using the meat you cut at the thick end of the fillet as a handle. Discard skin.

make a deep incision near the thick end of the fillet

carefully saw along the length of the fillet

Chocolate-coated snakes

2011-04-20T22:02:00.002+10:00

I hadn't even thought of this idea until I saw some chocolate-coated snakes for sale in the cafe at work. I quickly bought some (purely for educational purposes, of course) and decided to re-create them at home. I must say, my snakes taste better to me - probably because I used my favourite chocolate.
I thought I should share the "recipe" with you (if you can call it that) in the chocolatey spirit of Easter.

Ingredients
300 g of your favourite chocolate
350 g pack of snakes

Method

Chop chocolate into small pieces and place in a heat-proof bowl over a saucepan of simmering water. Keep on medium heat until chocolate is melted, stir until smooth and remove from heat
Wait for chocolate to cool slightly (just a couple of minutes), then dip each snake in the chocolate
Place chocolate-coated snakes on a sheet of baking paper to set
Refrigerate once completely set.

the unsuspecting victims

preparing the torture chamber

Tips

When melting chocolate in a bowl over simmering water, be careful not to burn yourself on steam escaping from between the bowl and the saucepan - especially when you're stirring the chocolate. You can actually buy double-boilers to use for this exact kind of thing, but I haven't bothered yet.
I found that waiting for the chocolate to cool slightly before dipping the snakes into it meant that everything was less messy, and the chocolate didn't spread out too much on the baking paper while the chocolate was still setting
Don't like snakes? Chocolate-coat your favourite lolly instead. I would love to see some photos. Next I'm going to try chocolate-coating some of Darrel Lea's soft eating liquorice... Those will be some massive chocolate bullets!

Choc-dipped Anzac biscuits

2011-04-17T21:52:00.003+10:00

Mmmm… Easter is only a week away! And as you Australians would have noticed, this year’s Anzac Day falls on the same weekend – resulting in five days off work for most of us. I decided to celebrate the occasion with Anzac bikkies… dipped in chocolate.

Ingredients

75 g rolled oats

120 g self-raising flour

90 g caster sugar
90 g brown sugar

50 g shredded (or desiccated) coconut

100 g unsalted butter (chopped)

1½ Tbs golden syrup

1½ Tbs boiling water

1 tsp bi-carbonate of soda

250 g chocolate (chopped)

2½ tsp olive oil

Method

1. Preheat oven to 150°C and line baking trays with baking paper

2. Roughly combine oats, flour, sugars and coconut in a bowl

3. Melt butter with the golden syrup and water in a saucepan over medium heat

4. Remove from heat and whisk in the bi-carbonate of soda

5. Pour the syrup mixture over the dry ingredients and mix together with a wooden spoon

6. Form tablespoonsful of mixture into balls and place on the baking trays 4 cm apart

7. Bake for 12 minutes, then cool on trays for approximately five minutes (to enable biscuits to harden) before transferring to racks to cool completely

8. Place chocolate in a heatproof bowl over a saucepan of simmering water until melted, then stir chocolate until smooth. Remove from heat and stir in oil.

9. Dip each biscuit into the chocolate mixture, then leave to set on wire racks or cold plates covered with baking paper.

Makes 30

Tips

Anzac biscuits spread much more than normal biscuits during cooking, so take care to use only a tablespoonful of mixture for each biscuit and place them the full 4 cm apart on the trays.

Red velvet mini cupcakes

2011-04-14T21:13:00.007+10:00

Co-workers seem to be the perfect guinea pigs when you're trying out new recipes (who doesn't get those 3 p.m. snack cravings when they're cooped up in an office?), but sometimes, especially in the industry I work in, they're too worried about their diet to indulge. I have an excellent solution: mini cupcakes!
This week I converted my favourite cupcake recipe from The Hummingbird Bakery Cookbook to suit mini cupcakes, and it was a success with my workmates.
For those of you not yet familiar with it, red velvet cake has a mild chocolatey flavour (thanks to a bit of cocoa powder), and is topped off with lashings of cream cheese frosting. Yum! And red food colouring gives the cake a distictive blood-red hue, which looks absolutely divine against the white frosting.
When you convert a normal cupcake recipe to suit mini cupcakes, you must lower the temperature of the oven as well as shorten the cooking time. Think about it: mini cupcakes are about one quarter the size of regular ones, and there's nothing worse than a dried-out cupcake. I baked these babies at 160°C for about 12 minutes. I'd recommend checking on them at 10 minutes by doing the skewer test: if a skewer poked into the cupcake comes out clean, you're done.

Red velvet mini cupcakes (recipe adapted from The Hummingbird Bakery Cookbook)

Ingredients
60 g unsalted butter (at room temperature)
150 g caster sugar
1 egg
10 g cocoa powder
20 ml red food colouring
½ tsp vanilla extract
120 ml buttermilk
150 g plain flour
½ tsp salt
½ tsp bicarbonate of soda
1½ tsp white wine vinegar

Method

Preheat oven to 160°C and place cupcake cases in cupcake trays.
Beat butter and the sugar on medium speed in an electric mixer until light, fluffy and well combined. Crank up the mixer to high speed, slowly add the egg and beat until everything is well incorporated.
In a separate bowl, mix the cocoa powder, red food colouring and vanilla extract with a teaspoon to create a thick, dark paste. Add to the butter mixture and mix thoroughly.
Turn the mixer down to slow speed and slowly pour in half the buttermilk. Beat until well mixed, then add half the flour, and beat until everything is well incorporated. Repeat this process until all the buttermilk and flour have been added.
Turn the mixer back up to high speed and beat until mixture is smooth. Turn the mixer down to low speed and add the salt, bicarbonate of soda and vinegar. Beat until well mixed, then turn up the speed again and beat for a couple more minutes.
Fill the cupcake cases to halfway (or slightly more, but not much more!) and bake in the preheated oven for about 12 minutes. The sponge should bounce back when touched. Leave cupcakes in trays to cool slightly before turning out onto a cooling rack. Cool cupcakes completely before frosting.

Makes 36 mini cupcakes.

Cream cheese frosting (recipe adapted from The Hummingbird Bakery Cookbook)

Ingredients
300 g icing sugar, sifted
50 g unsalted butter, at room temperature
125 g cream cheese, cold

Method

Beat the icing sugar and butter together in an electric mixer on medium-slow speed until well combined.
Add the cream cheese in one go and beat until it is completely incorporated. Turn the mixer up to medium-high speed. Continue beating until the frosting is light and fluffy (at least 5 minutes). Do not overbeat, as it can quickly become runny.

Tips

It's best to have your butter at room temperature if you intend to cream it, like in this recipe.
The Hummingbird Bakery Cookbook recommends Dr Oetker Red Food Colouring, but I use any old red food colouring. Like me, you may find you don't need to use 20 ml of colouring. I add a few drops of water to the paste instead to get it to a nice consistency.
Scrape down the sides of the bowl with a spatula a few times during the cupcake-making process to ensure ingredients (especially the coloured paste) are well mixed in.
I use mini-muffin trays and mini-muffin cases.
If you fill the cases much more than halfway, they will overflow, and you'll end up with mushroom-shaped cupcakes. Trust me - I've done it. Bigger is not necessarily more beautiful!

Perfect scones

2011-04-11T14:19:00.003+10:00

Food goes out of date eventually, but there are some foods that will never go out of fashion.
Here's how to make those classic tall, fluffy scones your grandma used to make, but with none of the fuss of rubbing in butter or 'cutting' the mixture with a knife. Quick and easy to make, there's no way you can muck up these lemonade scones. And don't worry, they will taste exactly the same as Grandma's - despite the lemonade!

Ingredients
3 cups self raising flour
1 cup thickened cream
1 cup lemonade

Method

Preheat oven to 230°C and line a baking tray with baking paper.
Combine ingredients in a mixing bowl with a wooden spoon.
Turn out the mixture onto a lightly-floured bench-top and knead very lightly, just to cover it with flour.
With a rolling pin, roll out mixture to 2 cm thickness and cut out scones with a circular cookie cutter.
Place the scones closely together on the baking tray and bake for 12 minutes.
Cool slightly on a cooling rack, then cover it with a tea towel to keep the scones warm if desired.
Serve with jam and whipped cream

Makes approximately 16 scones

Before

After

Tips

Flour the rolling pin to prevent the mixture from sticking to it. I have a 'non-stick' silicon rolling pin, and still flour it. You can also flour the cutting edge of the cookie cutter, making it easier to remove the scones from the cutter without spoiling their shape.
Packing the scones tightly together on the baking tray helps them rise upward nicely during cooking.
There is no need to baste the top of the scones with milk. These scones brown up nicely without milk.
You can mix in some grated cheese or chopped dates at Step 2 for some extra flavour.
Be inventive and serve with Nutella or other toppings. My dad even loves scones with peanut butter!

The inaugural post

2011-04-06T21:41:00.000+10:00

Here it is: the obligatory first post. "Yay, I've started my blog! I swear I'm going to post, like, at least three times a day! For the rest of my life! It's going to be, like, the best, best blog EVER..."

Not really. But I'm sure there are plenty of other like-minded wannabe-chefs out there who will enjoy my however-sporadically-posted recipes, tips and tales of kitchen misfortune.

Although I'm primarily a baker and dessert-maker, hopefully blogging will encourage me to branch out and become more confident with preparing savoury dishes and main meals. If so, my husband will be eternally grateful. And so will my waistline.

Bon appétit!