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Rainbow Cake – Trying to be creative

admin — Sat, 16 Jul 2011 01:20:14 +0000

My daughter had to take a cake to school for her Music class on the last day of school for the term. Rather than buying a cake or making something boring we decided to make a Rainbow cake. The good thing about Rainbow Cake is that you can make it however you want, with whatever cake mix you want, and whatever icing etc you want.

We decided since the cake was rather tall, that we would try and make it marginally healthier by using sponge cake recipe for the cakes themselves. Sponge cake is a nice light fluffy cake that requires a lot less butter and sugar than most. We made a triple mixture, and split it into 5 breakfast bowls. We then mixed the colours in using a lot more colouring than normal to get a nice strong colour.

We baked each cake for half the usual time (because they were thinner) at 13 minutes each. Each layer was cooked seperately, and left to cool before using a knife to take any larger lumps or mounds off and get them all flat.

We decided to use Jam to stick them together, because it was cheap, easy, and better than icing or cream. Once all layers were aligned and together, we iced with cream cheese icing . This gave the overall flavour of strawberry (from the jam) Cheese cake!

Total time from start to finish, 2 hours plus about 20 minutes to ice it the next day.

Feta Pesto Spread

admin — Sat, 16 Jul 2011 01:09:18 +0000

Ingredients

half cup Feta cheese
2T Basil crushed (or dried, though better fresh)
1t Garlic crushed (again, dried does not work well here)
2T Oil

Instructions

Chop Feta cheese into small blocks/squares
Add Basil, Garlic, and Oil
Mash the entire lot with a fork until it blends and becomes creamy. You can use a blender or Bullet to do this part if you want.

Feel free to vary the amount of ingredients according to your taste. This spread is great in sandwiches, on top of steak or other meats/meals, and goes excellently with scrambled eggs (right into the egg mixture when cooking).
This spread should last a fairly long time in the fridge.

Peach Chicken Curry on Rice

admin — Fri, 15 Jul 2011 07:51:28 +0000

Ingredients

2 * 440gm tins Peaches (or one large one)
10-12 chicken thighs boneless and skinless (feel free to use other parts of chicken)
2T Curry powder
1t Salt
1 pinch Pepper
1/2t Garam Masala
2Cups peas
2T cornflour
1/4 cup water
Cooked Rice

Instructions

Puree the peaches in a kitchen mixer (or use eggbeaters)
Mix Peach puree, Curry powder, Salt, Pepper, Garam Masala into a large deep frypan.
Bring the mixture to a simmer, and add the chicken pieces in.
After 10 minutes simmering, add in the peas.
Leave the chicken to simmer for about 30 minutes total.
Once its fully cooked through, you may need to thicken it with cornflour.
To thicken, mix the cornflour with the water, then slowly mix it in. Once its thicker but still fairly running its done.
Serve over rice , this will feed 5-6 people.

My style of recipes

admin — Fri, 15 Jul 2011 07:41:42 +0000

For those wondering, i have a definite style. Easy is usually right up the top. Some things may have a lot of ingredients, but if i can throw the lot in a pot and it cooks itself, then its my kinda recipe!

Like a lot of others out there, i have a life, children, a full time job, and really not a lot of time on my hands. I don’t have time to be messing about with fiddly things like chopping dozens and dozens of vegetables, ill just buy them frozen (which is cheaper anyway!) and have a deep freezer full.

Another thing I very much like, and am into, is fairly healthy. I don’t mean over the top, never-eat-anything-bad healthy. I mean, i don’t like to fill my kids up on fats, sugar and deep fry things most days. Most of my gravys or sauces are not made from fat, butter, or other. I usually use puree of some sort, which not only gives texture, but a lot of taste. I also have to deal with a gluten and dairy free child, which can mean changes are required.

I have found you can successfully substitute oil in most baking with stewed apple no problems at all, and a butter chicken tastes just as good if made with puree pumpkin plus the same herbs and spices! Fruit goes extremely well with most meats, just as much as vegetables do. I also find that children will balk at most new foods the first few times, keep at it and get them to try them over and over. Pays to get them used to healthy diet young so they do it naturally, rather than trying to confront a teenager who is used to living on a diet of poor foods.

If you need to change diet for one reason or another, either health problems, or similar, take it slow! Making wild changes to your diet is the easiest way to trip yourself up, especially if you are changing the diet of a whole family.

As far as Gluten free goes, most recipes are easily able to use Gluten free flour which can be picked up at most supermarket. There is no point paying copious amounts of money for fancy items when you can get the flour and make it yourself. Bread is one of the few gluten free things that is hard to make right, and we found it just easier to go without for the most part other than the odd loaf bought or made.

Happy Cooking

Liz

Creamy Mayo – Easy on the Budget

admin — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 19:42:50 +0000

2 Egg yolks
340ml vegetable oil (12fl oz)
1tsp-2tsp lemon juice or white wine vinegar
1-2tsp Mustard
Salt & Pepper

Beat egg whites until stiff (for you kiwis, like a pav!)
Dribble a tiny bit of the oil in and continue beating
Keep dribbling small amounts of oil in and beating until 1/2 the mixture is done
Add in the lemon, mustard , then resume adding in oil. As you get further into the mixture you will be able to add more oil each time, and eventually have a thin trickle going at all times.
Once all oil has been added and its thick and creamy, add salt/pepper to taste, and refrigerate

The bonus of this recipe is that you can take out the lemon and mustard and throw in other things like garlic or onionetc for a Aoli or other flavour. Make sure you keep refridgerated, this will only keep for around 4-7 days due to the eggs not being pasteurized .

This recipe makes a fairly large portion of mayo, you may want to half it.

Winter Durchfall (my own recipe of vegetable stir fry)

admin — Fri, 24 Jun 2011 01:15:34 +0000

Ingredients

1/2 pumpkin (I used Crown/Grey Pumpkin)
3 Onions Sliced
3 Capsicum
2T Garam Masala
1t Cumin
1t Salt
1/2t Pepper
1 1/2t Garlic (crushed, fresh, however you like it)
700gms Beef Schnitzel

Preperation

Roast pumpkin in oven, or cook in microwave, either whole or in large chunks
Whilst pumpkin is cooking, slice Onions and Capsicum
Lightly fry the Onions and Capsicum together , feel free to sprinkle salt to flavour
Once pumpkin is cooked, remove skin and dice into bite sized cubes
Put pumpkin cubes into large bowl or bag, add Garam masala, Cumin, Salt, Pepper and carefully mix together
Dice the meat into bite sized squares, fry quickly in the frypan with the Garlic and a little salt.
Put the pumpkin into an serving tray and mix Capsicum & Onion mixture gently into it, then sprinkle meat over it.

Notes: Feel free to drop the meat out of this one for a vegetarian option.

PS. Sorry for anyone speaking German, my daughter named it after asking what was in it, and i replied ‘lots of shit from the fridge’

Quick Easy Ginger Beer (24 hours)

admin — Mon, 25 Apr 2011 01:30:15 +0000

2X 2.25 Coke bottles
2 litres (or just over) bottle of boiled/clean water
2 tablespoons of grated ginger
1 lemon (size doesnt matter much)
1 cup of sugar ¼ teaspoon of dried yeast

Using a plastic funnel, pour the sugar into the bottle.
Add the dried yeast to the bottle.
Mix the grated ginger and lemon juice together in a cup or other suitable piece of crockery.
Next you need to add the ginger/lemon mixture to the bottle using your funnel
Add the water to the bottle until it is about ¾ full, then put the cap on and shake the bottle until all the sugar is dissolved.
You then need to top the bottle up until there is approximately a one inch gap at the top. This gap is to prevent explosions once the yeast gets to work.
Put the cap on the bottle as tightly as you can, then place the bottle somewhere warm. I put mine in my airing cupboard. You’ll need to leave it for 24-48hours to let the yeast go to work.
Once the bottle is very hard, and can’t be squeezed, the ginger beer is done. It took 24 hours for my batch to be ready.
Place the bottle in the fridge overnight. This halts the yeast and stops the bottle exploding.
Once the ginger beer is chilled, pour it into the 2nd coke bottle through a sieve to remove lumpy bits.
Pour it into a glass and enjoy.

Notes: You really don’t want to leave that bottle in a warm place for any longer than 48 hours.

European Chinese (takeaway style chop suey) with noodles or rice

admin — Mon, 25 Apr 2011 01:15:00 +0000

Ingredients

large packet frozen veges (or up to 1kg fresh chopped veg)
1 Table spoon ground ginger
1 Tablespoon Garlic crushed
1 Tablespoon soy sauce
500gms sliced meat of your choice (optional)
1-2 Tablespoon Cornflour.
1 Cup of water

Instructions

Put the Vegs, water, meat, everything but the cornflour into a pan with a lid and let it simmer.
Once they have cooked for about 5-10 mins, mix the cornflour with a bit of water till disolved and slowly mix it until it thickens to desired amount.
Cook rice or noodles to go with it as required.
Serve!

Waffles anyone?

admin — Thu, 07 Apr 2011 10:02:48 +0000

Found this website a while back, but i keep going back to it, its amazingly inventive and comes with great ideas and recipes.
Basically, they can make everything from Waffles, cupcakes, doughnuts,to Pizza, Burgers , and even Macaroni Cheese ….. in a Waffle maker! No, i’m not joking!

Go check it out over at http://www.waffleizer.com/

Muesli Bars – Whatever flavour you want

admin — Tue, 05 Apr 2011 00:03:00 +0000

Ingredients

half cup brown sugar
2 eggs
3-4 cups of other ingredients (oats, rice pops, fruit, nuts, etc – you choose!)

Instructions

Mix brown sugar with egg until smoth.
Mix all of your other ingredients into that mixture until its fairly dry and stuff (too wet just does not work).
Line a slice tray or similar with grease proof paper
Pack the slice mix into the tray hard.
Bake in oven for 30 mins at 180C

Variations

Here are a few ways I have varied the ingredient list

Kids like this one, its light and tasty

1 cup oats
1 cup Rice pops
1/2 cup coconut shredded
1/2 cup Cashew nuts
1/2 cup choc chips

When I’m cycling i like something more like this

2 cups oats
1/2 cup variable nuts
1/2 cup sultanas
1/2 cup choc chips

Try a few variations of your own dried fruits, nuts, whatever you like. I often also melt a bit of cooking chocolate and do a squiggle (chocolate is key to making children think its nice!). You could probably just use pre-made muesli in a rush

Prep time: 15mins

Number of servings (yield): 12

Meal type: snack