liar liar

Not so long ago I said that this was no longer a food blog. I'm obviously an outrageous liar, as I have all of these food posts to give you. Above is my offering for my Australian Day BBQ - it was bring a salad or bring a desert, and so I made a trio of Australian Deserts.

On the far left is a lamington cake. It's fairly straight forward, vanilla cupcake, chocolate ganache with coconut. I'm sure you can work this all out. Although it does make me wonder how coconut companies think I'm going to use a kilo of shaved coconut, as this seems to be the smallest quantity available in your average supermarket. I would suppose my dozen cakes used about 15gm, so if you're ever in need, please let me know.

I got the ganache recipe from Joy the Baker. Most people thing ganache a doddle. It's always failed horribly for me and been runny and useless, even after a spell in the freezer. Joy pours the hot cream over her chocolate, rather than melt them both in a double boiler, and for me this made all the difference.

Also thanks to Joy for the middle cake, my Cherry Ripe cake. Cherry Ripe is apparently the oldest chocolate bar still being produced in Australia. I made a red velvet cake, using Joy's recipe below, but pushed a glace cherry just below the surface of each cake before putting them in the oven. The icing is a sour cream chocolate icing. This was too runny. Next time it's ganache all the way

Joy's Favourite Red Velvet Cakes

60gm unsalted butter, at room temperature

3/4 cup sugar

1 egg

2 1/2 Tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder

3 Tablespoons red food coloring

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

1/2 cup buttermilk

1 cup plus 2 Tablespoons all-purpose flour

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1 1/2 teaspoons distilled white vinegar

In the bowl of a stand mixer fit with a paddle attachment, cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy, about three minutes. Turn mixer to high and add the egg. Scrape down the bowl and beat until well incorporated.

In a separate bowl mix together cocoa, vanilla and red food coloring to make a thick paste. Add to the batter, mixing thoroughly until completely combined. You may need to stop the mixer to scrape the bottom of the bowl, making sure that all the batter gets color.

Turn mixer to low and slowly add half of the buttermilk. Add half of the flour and mix until combined. Scrape the bowl and repeat the process with the remaining milk and flour. Beat on high until smooth.

Turn mixer to low and add baking soda and white vinegar. Turn to high and beat a few more minutes.

Spoon batter into a paper lined cupcake baking pan and bake for 20-25 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the center cupcake comes out clean.

Let rest in the pan for 10 minutes, then place them of a cooling rack to cool completely before frosting.

On the far left are my Violet Crumble cakes. Honey cupcakes with the same average icing as the Cherry Ripe ones

Honey Cupcakes
120gm unsalted butter at room temp
3/4 cup caster sugar
1/3 cup honey
3/4 buttermilk
1tspn vanilla
1 egg
2 cups SRF

Preheat oven to 350F.

In a stand mixer using the paddle attachment, cream together the butter, sugar, and honey. Beat for about 3 minutes, until light and fluffy.

Beat in egg, scrape down sides after blended. Add in vanilla and beat for another 30 seconds. Starting with the flour first, alternate between flour and milk, ending with flour. So 1/3 of flour,
½ of milk, 1/3 of flour, ½ milk, 1/3 flour.

Blend until fully combined.

Bake for 20-22 minutes.


Both of these recipes worked divinely, probably largely because I followed the instructions and blended as long as I should have and didn't cut corners. The honey ones in particularly were incredibly light and fluffy, and I allowed the sugars and butter to beat well together. The honey gave it a much lighter texture than just sugar creamed in butter.

So, Advance Australia Fair. Let us all eat cake

an exciting new project

I have just received an email from Chris at A Free Man. He has an interesting cyber-project going, which involves bloggers interviewing each other. Sounds like a lot of fun and a good way of discovering some people who read the same sites as you. I only discovered Chris' site relatively recently, but it's always a good read, and really thought provoking, so if you haven't been there yet I suggest you check it out. He also shares my taste in music, which in suburban Adelaide can be a bit rare, so that also impresses me.

Tonight for the first time in ages I'm baking. Predominately it's for a film night that an environmental organisation I'm involved with is putting on later in the week. There's also a bushfire fund raiser tomorrow at work, and despite my misgivings I'm putting some of the white chocolate and strawberry cupcakes I'm working on in the ring for that. I have some ethical issues with the way morning teas are organised at my new place of employment, but I've been far too controversial of late, so I will let this one simmer (read: fester) and come back to it at a later date.

I will go to morning tea, and throw my spectacular cupcakes in the ring, however my money will be going to the Wildlife Victoria fund. If you've been touched by the tragedy in Victoria, but like me think that a billion dollars (the latest tally) is enough for us horrid human beings, this might be a nice alternative.

second day of christmas

On the second day of Christmas, gingerbread cupcakes are the go.

There has been much talk of gingerbread houses, and ginger cake, and I had Chinese beef with ginger, snowpeas and coriander for lunch the other day, so why not I say?!

Gingerbread Cupcakes
1/2 cup self raising flour
1/2 cup plain flour
1/4 tpsn baking soda
1tspn grounder ginger
1/2 tspn ground cinnamon
1/4 tspn ground nutmeg
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 egg
90g butter
1/4 cup milk
2 tblspn golden syrup

then simply sift the dry ingredients into a mixer bowl, add the wet and mix together until golden and light. Put into 12 cups and bake for 20-25 minutes at 170 degrees

Simple Cream Cheese Icing
Mix 30g butter, 80g cream cheese and 1 1/2 cups sifted icing sugar, add a squeeze of lemon and a bit of zest.

These were rather nice. Needed more ginger, as the cinnamon flavour sort of took over, but they were still good. Just not particularly ginger. But the spice combination added a Christmas feel. They were a little dry, so I might think about putting a little cream or milk in next time.

What I'd really love to do is the whole gingerbread house thing. Maybe next year.

But also a cat update. Thurston's sulking and crying at the door. Apollo's constantly trying to get out and Tony's eating everything.

I like kittens......

easter cakes

hurrah! the tired, grumpy BHG of yesterday is gone. and in her place (aside from filthy kitchen) is a lovely array of easter cupcakes, which will be the take home prizes after tonight's round dinner party.

I adapted the cake recipe from the february CCH entry from the cupcakery. i altered it a little to suit what i had at home, so this is how i did it:

hazelnut and chocolate cupcakes
2 cups self raising flour
1/2 cup dark brown sugar
1/2 cup raw caster sugar
1 tsp. baking powder
125g butter, cut into pieces
1 large egg
1 tsp. pure vanilla extract
1/4 cup frangelico
200ml cream
1/2 cup milk
2 cups chocolate chips, or cooking chocolate finely chopped (yes, you read right 2 cups!)
1 cup chopped hazelnuts

1. place flour, sugars, baking powder and butter in a bowl and beat until nearly combined, and butter is clumped into small pieces.

2. add the egg, vanilla and frangelico. what there's only a little frangelico in the bottle. may as well drink it. mmmmmm.....

3. add the cream and enough milk to form a droppable batter.

4. fold in the nuts and the chocolate pieces

5. spoon into paper lined trays (this batter made about 18 big cakes for me) and bake at 180 degrees for approx 15 minutes, or until a skewer comes out clean. cool complete on a rack before icing.

i totally made up the icing, again to suit what i had in the fridge... still to hot to go to the shops.

1.in a large bowl mix 260g icing sugar with 125 softened cream cheese.

2. over a double boiler melt 160gm milk chocolate with 60gm butter, until just melted. cool a little and add to sugar and cream cheese.

this made a fairly thick icing, but that's ok because i wanted to draw the bunnies, and eggs and chicks (yes, that's what they are) on the top. i did this with a wiltons gliter icing pen.

these cakes are very moist, i guess from the cream, and very rich with all of that chocolate. i really chose this because i had a lot of hazelnuts in the pantry, but i'm sure i'll use this recipe again.

i was a bit doubtful about wasting all that frangelico on cake batter. i ate one of the cakes straight out of the oven, while the chocolate was still melted, and you couldn't taste it at all. this morning the flavour is stronger, but i'm wondering if hazelnut oil wouldn't give the same result. then there'd be more frangelico for me! hurrah!

don't mock me!

this month i decided to join kate at the clean plate club, for the cookie carnival. in australia we don't have cookies, we have biscuits (JC the chocolate queen will argue this one black and blue with me however), so this is my biscuit entry for this month.

i would like to start by saying that the results of this baking enterprise are in no way a reflection of kate, the clean plate club or cookie carnival (or biscuit bivouac - i'll come up with a better name), in any way, shape or form. the results can rest only with me.

it was a total and utter failure.

but let's start with the recipe. raspberry swirl biscuits (makes approx 2 doz)

ingredients
2 cups self raising flour
1tspn baking powder
1/4 tspn salt
125g butter, room temp
1 cup caster sugar
1 large egg
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 cup raspberry jam
1/2 coconut flakes
1/4 cup toasted walnuts

• beat the butter and sugar together until creamy
• beat in the egg and vanilla
• sift in the flour, salt and baking power and beat until moist clumps form
• gather the dough into a ball on the bench top. flatten and shape into a rectangle
• wrap in cling wrap and refrigerate for at least an hour (or overnight if you like)
• remove from fridge and roll out on a lightly floured surface.
• mix jam and coconut together and spread over dough
• roughly chop the walnuts and sprinkle over the top
• roll dough up along the long edge, wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate for another 30 minutes
• unwrap the log, discard the ends and cut the remaining dough into 2cm rounds
• place cut sides down, 3cm apart on trays covered with baking paper
• bake for approx 20 minutes at 180 degrees, or until golden on the bottom

yes, sounds so easy doesn't it. that's what i thought too.

i'm not sure if my dough was too cold, or too warm, or do dry or too sodding something, but it all crumbled and broke apart. i didn't so much roll it up as fold it over. i must say they taste much better than they look.

you know that bit in elephant man, when he says "i am not an animal.." they look a bit like that.

the photo doesn't help. it's too late, i'm too tired and it's still too bloody hot here for me to muck about with lighting so they look very dried out (as an aside i'd like you all to note the article about the heat i've linked to is from thursday. today is saturday).

on a cheerier note, i also made some cupcakes tonight. i don't have the right ingredients for the icing, so i'll let you know about that, and sunday's round dinner party tomorrow. that's right. round dinner party

pecans and well hung frenchmen

i've seen a post somewhere for pecan cupcakes. do you think i can find it now? can i hell. did find one on batspit, which i have adapted. whilst they were baking i watched this rather strange short film i found on her site too. it's very very french, even though it seems to have been made by a bunch of englishmen. I love the women too. even though they're not all really beautiful per say, they're all so glamorous and attractive. that's france for you!

pecan cupcakes
125g raw caster sugar
125g butter
125g self raising flour
2 eggs
vanilla extract
approx 1 1/2 tablespoons sour cream
50g pecans
1 tablespoon brown sugar
a shake of cinnamon

cream the sugar and butter together until smooth. add the flour, vanilla and eggs, then add sour cream half a tablespoon at a time until the consistency is right. meanwhile crush pecans with the brown sugar and cinnamon in a mortar and pestle until the nuts are crushed.

place half of the mix in 12 paper lined muffin tins. sprinkle with the nut and sugar mix and cover with the remaining batter. bake for approx 15-20 mins at 180 degrees, or until a skewer comes out clean.

when cool ice with 100g butter creamed with 200g of icing sugar, then mixed with 1 tspn instant coffee in 1 tblspn of boiling water.

here they are, already in their container, ready to take to work for morning tea tomorrow

finally, a recipe

The lovely ladies whose tastebuds i am vying for in this month’s CCH prize, slush at quirky cupcake and tempered woman, have informed me to be in the running i need to supply all of you out there in your cyber kitchens with a recipes for my cocktail party of cakes.

The basic recipe is adapted from Nigella Lawson, with some modifications to make it cocktaily. I’m not a great baker, because i’m not used to working with precise measurements as you’ll see from what ensues (see my ‘handful’ measurement below):

Basic cakes

125g of each unsalted butter (at room temp), caster sugar and self raising flour.

2 large eggs

½ tsnp vanilla extract

Cream the butter and the sugar, sift in the flour then add the eggs and vanilla and mix to a smooth batter. Now for the fun part! The original recipe calls for 2-3 tablespoons of milk. In place of this add approx 1 to 1½ cap fulls of spirit, to form a nice batter that drops easily into muffin tins lined with cake papers. Different spirits affect the liquidity of the batter differently, so start with half a cap and continue to add until the batter is smooth, but not too runny.

cosmopolitans: cointreau

strawberry daiquiris: plain vanilla (add milk). Pipe a good quality, not over sweet strawberry jam into the cakes after they are cooked.

mango daiquiris: mango pulp and milk

cowboy cocksuckers: bailey’s irish cream

B52s: kahlua

mojitos or margaritas: juice of approximately 2 limes

affogato: plain vanilla (add milk)

Bake for 15-20 minutes in a pre-heated 200 degree celsius oven. Transfer to cake rakes and ice when cooled.

For the icing

For the basic batter sift 125g of icing sugar into 100g of softened cream cheese. This makes the icing quite stiff, but the spirit added can easily make it runny. If you want extra punch in your icing, you will need to add a little more icing sugar

Cosmopolitans. A few days before take a handful of dried cranberries, place in a bowl or plastic container and just cover with vodka. Leave to sit until the cranberries are plump and the vodka is coloured. Add the liquid to the icing, and top the cakes with the fruit.

Strawberry daiquiris: add vodka, and some red food colouring for effect. Top with strawberry slices

Mango daiquiris: add vodka and some mango pulp to icing. Top with more mango

Cowboy cocksuckers: add butterscotch schnapps to the icing and top with crushed butterscotch lollies

B52s: baileys icing

Mojito: add lime juice to icing. Garnish with a sugared mint lolly

Margaritas: lemon juice and tequila icing (be careful not to add too much juice or it will make the icing too runny. You could go easy on the tequila instead but...well, you know). Garnish with lime wedges

Affogato: frangelico and coffee icing. Garnish with coffee bean

And that’s it. Off course making a batch of each of these simultaneously will leave you very full, or very drunk. And if you’re doing this to get drunk, you’re probably better of just drinking the tequila. I made a batch with one of each cake. The recipe is for 12 cakes, but by the time you’ve divided them up into separate bowls to add the flavours, and lost batter on the side of each bowl, and each spoon, you end up with around 10 cakes anyway, same with the icing. For this challenge I tried a few others that either didn’t work (note: blue curacao and cakes just don’t mix), or were a little too obvious: vodka and orange. However there were flavours i was using just to get into the spirit of it (no pun intended) that really did work – the tequila in the margarita icing was particularly nice.

One of the joys of these would be making them for some sort of girlie party. You get to eat cake and have the flavour of the alcohol without ending up completely messy. The pink of the cosmopolitans is extra cute. Of course they’re not particularly appropriate for children’s parties or prohibitionist gatherings.

cupcake hero, february 08

these photos are from my first ever cupcake hero entry. this month's theme is liquor. i'm not sure, but i think american's use the term liquor the way us australian's would use the term spirits. normally i'm a coopers pale ale, or a gin and tonic person. neither of these really lend themselves to the cupcake realm.

my next favourite drink is a cosmopolitan (although unfortunatley they're so delicious i drink them too quickly and become quickly very, very messy). So i decided to soak some dried cranberries in vodka to make cosmopolitan cupcakes. then i thought about affogato, and thought i could do a vanilla cupcake with a coffee and frangelico icing (i always have a shot of frangelico on the side when i order affogato). in the end i did a whole freakin' cocktail party - i just got carried away. i did screwdrivers, and daiquiris (mango and strawberry) and mojitos and blue hawaiians and margaritas and B52s and cowboy cocksuckers. These photos are of the cosmopolitan, the mango daiquiri and the margarita. the margarita was acutally really nice - who would have though of putting tequilla in a cake??

of course i had to flavour both the cakes and the icing individually, which meant using a million little chinese bowls, which created a hell of a lot of washing up, and also gave me lots of bowls to lick (any adult who says they no longer lick the bowl is likely to be lying). so i'm feeling a little sugar'd (and vodka'd) out at the moment. i can see something very savoury in my future for dinner....

synopsis

the last week or so has been totally mad!

firstly work has been really demanding. after the departure of the best boss in the world, i have been working my arse off whilst trying to get the most important event of the organisation's year off the ground. this has involved me sucking up to both the governor and the minster (through their respective people), which is something i really hate doing! ooopps... just remembered no one is meeting the minister while she arrives. must email self to get this fixed!

but now to the fun stuff. BDO on Friday was just wonderful. Arcade Fire were completely amazing, it's been a long time since i've seen anyone as good live. pleeeeeease let them tour here again soon! also caught some of billy bragg, the hilltop hoods and bjork, who were also all good. too many bogans there though - tony was right. but managed to get home at a reasonable hour and stone cold sober.

this meant that i was able to get up nice and early to start the cooking for young luke's christening on the sunday. he's such a cutie. i've never been to a christening before (and all my friends thing i'm catholic), and it was quite interesting. lainiebird’s family are somewhat mad and heavy drinkers, but there is no surprise there and i had a lovely time. But again was totally exhausted and had to crawl home to bed early.

this weekend i have promised myself a quiet one, with lots of baking. I will go to the markets on the way home from work and do my food shopping and then stop in and prepare my entry(s) for my first ever cupcake hero event. It’s liquor this month, which has given me so much food for thought i can’t tell you. also had a package waiting for me when i got home, and had the terrible melvin twins for dinner, so all is good with the world.

cup cake farewell

it's fair to say i'm a little tired at the moment. it's been a busy week. yesterday was the last day in the office for the best boss in the world. like the little wall flower she is, she didn't even think that we might give her a farewell. so tuesday night i stayed up and baked cupcakes. many, many cupcakes.

the successes were mixed. the cakes themselves were fine. i used JC's chocolate one, and nigella's vanilla. after getting home from work and feeding the cats I set about whipping up 12 dozen. needless to say the sink quickly filled with egg shells and the floor took on the same feeling the one at the exter has (sticky) after i broke a bag of sugar and it sprayed everywhere. but the cakes were cooling and i made myself some jiaozi to level out the emense amount of sugar and fat i had consumed through all of that bowl licking....

the icing proceeded nicely. i did a white chocolate and sour cream one, and cream cheese one from nigella (she's a bit of a cupcake fan herself) and sprinkled with chocolate sprinkles or sugar stars, depending on the icing. for the vanilla ones, and the ones that i was writing on i wanted a chocolate icing, so i made ganache. would it set. i think not. at midnight i had it in the freezer. exhausted and just wanting sleep i loaded it up with icing sugar in the hope that this would thicken it. no, again failure. so this icing was very runny and took away form the effect a bit, but the photos make it look like it was all ok. and the boss was happy and surprised and got some lovely flowers too.

aside from the ganache episode it really was lots and lots of fun. am thinking of joining in the cupcake hero events. january is coffee, and i probably don't have time, but if the february challenge is to my taste i might give it a go. am already thinking of fantastic things i could put in them.....

instructables

this is my new favourite website, which i was introduced through a teacher's online community at work. lots of excellent things and i am wasting far too much time that i could be outside with the trees and the birds and the faeries trawling through it. There is even a pie one, even though it is an american sweet pie, rather than a good, ol' fashioned aussie meat pie. but this one is 'modular' 20-sided pie. i guess the challenge is to work out if i can do this with a savoury pie. i guess you could use a pizza style pie. father is on his way home from egypt where they make a pizza like thing, called a fatir, which is a fillo style based covered with either savoury or sweet fillings and is just delicious. then again i could just make a regular fatir and not waste time making 20 triangular pie trays.

the cupcake trials went very well yesterday. put a peanut butter filling in one, as suggested by cupcakerehab, and it turned out very well indeed. peanut butter is not normally one on my things, but the thick, sensual texture of the paste around the indulgent gooiness of the cake (i used jc's recipe) is just divine. i'll take some pictures of the final ones next week and upload if they work well. am going to try a few variations, but am a bit short on time, so this might have to be a project that goes a couple of weeks!