Marshmallow Brownie Slice

Want something a little fancy to serve at your New Years eve party?  Or, for afternoon tea while chillin’ on holiday?  Really you don’t need a reason to indulge in Marshmallow Brownie slice; just make it.  It’s delicious.

So, all this Marshmallow Brownie slice is, is the Marshmallow Brownie Cupcakes but baked in a 20 x 20cm tin.  Easy peasy.  Mine has pink water droplets on it because I made the slice, put this pinkilicious (or however it’s spelt) sprinkle stuff on it and then put it in the fridge.  The sprinkles went weird.  Oh well.

Courtenay has made Brownie by just doubling or tripling the Brownie mixture used as the base before.  I will have to try it one day as it is the most deliciously fudgy chocolatey brownie.

Happy New Year!

More Mini Christmas Puddings!

I made these little Christmas Pudding truffles to take along to Christmas Eve dinner at my Dad’s to contribute to the dessert buffet.  They were a hit!  I used Melissa's Mint Chocolate truffle recipe and instead of dipping the truffles a second time in the dark chocolate to completely cover them, I poured white chocolate on top of each once the dark chocolate had set.  Then I added some holly mix sprinkles!

 
Melissa has previously posted about some mini Chocolate Christmas puddings made using marshmallows, which you can check out here.

Shortbread

Is a favourite in my family, particularly at Christmas time, so I just had to whip up a batch – it is the season after all!  It is a simple recipe, to make it you will need:

250 grams of butter
1 cup icing sugar
1 ¼  cups corn flour
1 ¾ plain flour

Pre-heat oven to 180°C.  Cream butter and icing sugar together until light and fluffy.  Sift in corn flour and flour, mix in using a wooden spoon.  Combined mixture should be kneaded well in the bowl.
Lightly flour a board or clean bench space and roll out mixture to about 0.5cm in thickness (mine are slightly thinner than this as I find they bake better like this when using different shapes).
Cut out using a cutter of your choice or cut into pieces.  Place on a lined baking tray - at this point you can decorate with little cachous.
Bake for 15-20 minutes, until golden but not brown.

I found this mixture made 24 full sized biscuits and 30 mini biscuits.

We hope you all had a fantastic Christmas!

Meringues

 
The perfect summer treat and great for Christmas!  Best served with whipped cream or for something a little different, whipped cream infused with berry coulis.

To make you will need:
3 egg whites (size 6)
¾ cup of caster sugar
*whipped cream to serve

1. Pre-heat your oven to 180˚C.
2. Beat egg whites until stiff but not dry, add half the sugar and beat well, add remaining sugar a tablespoon at a time, beating well after each addition.
3. Drop oven temp to 120˚C and pipe or spoon small amounts (slightly smaller than bite size as mixture will expand) of the mixture onto an oven tray lined with baking paper.
4. Bake for 35 minutes or until meringues are dry but not brown.
*Tip – do not open oven door while cooking!

Meringues like Pavlova can be different in texture each time you make them due to things like the weather and the humidity.

Enjoy and Merry Christmas!

Christmas Goodies: Coconut Ice and Chocolate Peppermint Shortbread

Before Melissa and I wound up at work for the year I made some goodies to hand out as thank you’s to colleagues.  The packs included coconut ice, chocolate peppermint shortbread and of course some mini Christmas themed cupcakes.  The cupcakes were just chocolate with vanilla icing decorated with holly sprinkles and green dusting sugar.  Coconut ice is a quick and easy Christmas gift, to make it you will need:

Coconut Ice:
395g can of condensed milk
2 ¼ cups of icing sugar
4 cups of desiccated coconut
¼ teaspoon of raspberry essence
1-2 drops red food colouring

1. Line a 20 x 20cm square cake pan with baking paper.
2. Place condensed milk in a large microwave proof bowl and put it in the microwave for 20 seconds to warm.
3. Sift the icing sugar into the condensed milk and stir, until well combined.  Add the coconut one cup at a time mixing well after each addition.
4. At this point you need to place half the mixture in the pan and spread it out to form an even base.
5. Add raspberry essence and a couple of drops of red food colouring to remaining mixture and combine to make it a pale pink colour, you may have to use your hands.
6. Place the pink mixture on top of the white in the pan so that it covers the base layer completely, use the back of a large spoon to smooth the top layer.
7. Cover with a clean tea towel and leave to dry, usually overnight is best.
8. Cut into squares and package as desired.

Chocolate Peppermint Shortbread:
After seeing these in a November issue of  New Idea magazine I was hanging out to make them and I don’t know about you, but I think there is something Christmassy about peppermint so it was the perfect excuse.  These yo-yo style biscuits were super easy to make and are bound to become an annual Christmas recipe in my house.

150g of room temperature butter
½ cup caster sugar
1 ¼ cups plain flour
¼ cup cocoa
¾ cup white melting chocolate
¼ teaspoon peppermint essence

1. Place butter and sugar in a bowl and beat with an electric mixer until light and fluffy.  Add combined flour and cocoa, beat on a slow speed until well combined and the mixture has formed a soft dough.  Wrap the mix in plastic wrap and refrigerate for 10-15 minutes or until firm.
2. Roll single teaspoons of dough into balls and place 4 cm apart on an oven tray covered in baking paper.  Press each ball gently with a fork to flatten slightly.
3. Place tray in an oven heated to 180˚C oven and bake for 15-20 minutes, leave on the oven tray for at least 5 minutes before moving on to cooling racks.
4. Combine and essence in a heatproof bowl  over a saucepan of simmering water until smooth.  Remove from heat and allow to cool slightly before using it to sandwich biscuits together.  (*Be very careful not to add to much peppermint essence as it will result in you not getting the desired texture from the chocolate).

Recipe makes 16 and can be made up to one week in advance if kept in an air tight container.

Mini Chocolate Christmas Puddings

OMG these are so cute, and easy, and yummy, and they aren’t full of that disgusting Christmas fruit mince!

To make these I just used a pack of marshmallows and guessed the amount of chocolate I needed.  However, the amounts below will make around 58 little puddings:

58 large marshmallows
2 cups milk chocolate melts
1 cup white chocolate melts
Cachous to decorate

Basically, you need the same amount of marshmallows as the amount of puddings you want to make.  I stuck my packet in the fridge to make them cold so the chocolate would set on them quicker.

Melt the milk chocolate.  Place each marshmallow on a fork and dip into the melted chocolate (like I do in my truffle recipe).  Don’t worry too much about covering the bottom of the marshmallow because if you put them into little mini cupcake papers later no one is going to see.  Allow the chocolate to set and then remove from the forks.

Melt the white chocolate.  Using a teaspoon drizzle a little of the chocolate over the top of the milk chocolate covered marshmallows.  Spread the chocolate with the spoon so a little dribbles down the side, so it looks more like icing.  Before the white chocolate sets, place a few cachous on top to decorate.  Finish the presentation off by placing your mini puddings into mini cupcake papers :)

   
Oh, how’s that for Christmas cute?  Haha, I’m such a geek!

Christmas Cookies

The recipe for these cute Christmas cookies comes from the latest Donna Hay magazine (Issue 24, Dec / Jan 2011).  I tried making them the other day because I’ve never actually had a go at icing biscuits before.

In the magazine they used a 8cm circle cookie cutter and they claim it makes 25 cookies.  I used some standard Christmas cookie cutters I picked up from Steven’s and I had more than 25 cookies, and that is with burning about half the mixture – they take around 8 minutes to bake and I kept forgetting about them :P
I also didn’t use a piping bag to ice them as the recipe states, I used my new icing set – made things easy peasy.  Here’s the recipe:

 
250g butter, softened
¾ cup caster sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 egg yolk
2 ¼ cups plain flour, sifted
2 ½ cups icing sugar, sifted
red food colouring

Preheat oven to 180˚C.  Place butter and sugar in the bowl of an electric mixer and beat until pale and creamy.  Add the vanilla and egg yolk and beat well to combine.  Add the flour and beat until a smooth dough forms.  Divide the dough into four portions, wrap in plastic wrap and place in the fridge for 15 minutes or until firm.
Roll the dough out between 2 sheets of non-stick baking paper to 5mm thick.  Cut out your desired shapes from the dough and place on a tray lined with non-stick baking paper (I found that once rolling the dough out it became to soft – maybe because it has been insanely humid here, so I put the dough back into the fridge for a few minutes before cutting it).  Bake for 8 minutes or until lightly golden (not brown!).  Cool on a wire rack.

 
Place 1¾ cups icing sugar in a bowl with 2½ tablespoons of boiling water and mix until smooth.  Set aside.  Place the remaining icing sugar, 2 tablespoons of boiling water and a few drops of food colouring in a separate bowl and mix until combined.  Spread the cookies with the plain icing.  Allow to set.  Place the red icing into a piping bag and pipe lines onto the cookies. 

Chocolate Boutique Café

I have sooo much to share!  I’m going to try get all my posts written up today and I’ll share them with you over the next few days.  But first, Simon and I went to the Chocolate Boutique Café in Parnell today.  Yum yum.  I had a white hot chocolate and Simon had a spicy dark choc one (which kinda sucks because I don’t like spicy chocolate so I can’t ‘share’ his :P).   The people next to us got waffles – reminded me of when I had them at Lindt in Melbourne, mmmm.  The shop is quite cute too, they have a huge range of chocolate too; perfect place to pick up some Christmas presents :)

Chocolate Boutique Café
Shop 1, 323 Parnell Road, Parnell Village, Auckland
Ph: 64 9 377 8550
E: enquiries@chocolateboutique.co.nz
W: http://www.chocolateboutique.co.nz/

Blue Velvet Cupcakes

A couple of weekends ago my lovely friend Tayler threw me a baby shower to celebrate the impending arrival of my baby boy, so I could think of no better excuse to make ‘blue velvet cupcakes’ using the same red velvet cake recipe I posted about back in February.

They came out of the oven looking a bluey green colour (rather ugly compared to the lovely rust red of the red velvet cake). I covered them up with some cream cheese icing and dusted on some blue sprinkles, they had the same taste as the cake that I have come to love over the last 10 months, but, when bitten into the blue colour was uneven and not nearly as striking as the red.

I think in the future I will stick to making the cake the way it was intended to be made.

Another new baking toy

I got myself the Kuhn Rikon Cookie and Cupcake decorating set today to go with the frosting deco pen I have :)

I used my new set today too, so check back soon as there will be new posts popping up shortly.  I tried out two different recipes today and this weekend my family are having a little Christmas get together down at my nana’s, which means I will have lots of food to share!  However, you will have to wait and see as I am off to help Simon with his Christmas shopping.

Christmas cool

 
If you’re in Auckland and bored one night, head along to Ponsonby and check out the Christmas lights – take a stroll down Franklin road and visit the Telecom Christmas Tree.

  Pictures taken from www.zimbio.com

Also, on Franklin Road you should stop in at Agnes Curran for refreshments and visit the Parinto store out the back, where you can grab yourself (or someone for Christmas) a cute baking t-shirt or tea towel.  Both are open late to cater for the peeps visiting Franklin Road :)

Window display of Agnes Curran.

 
Tea towel from Parinto.  Love!

Inspiration: Christmas

Christmas is just around the corner!

Roast Tomato & Broad Bean Salad with Haloumi

I know, not baking, but hey – wotcha gonna do?  Simon and I made this last weekend to go with our dinner before we had the Raspberry and Ricotta Cakes.  The recipe comes from Foodtown Magazine, issue 56, December 2010 / January 2011.

Serves 12 as part of a buffet.

250g punnet of mini tomatoes, halved
olive oil spray
salt and freshly ground black pepper
500g packet frozen broad beans
1 tablespoon olive oil
125g haloumi, sliced into ½ cm thick slices
1 tablespoon lemon juice
130g packet baby spinach leaves
½ cup balsamic dressing

Preheat oven to 200˚C.  Place the tomato halves on a baking tray lined with baking paper.  Spray with the olive oil spray and season with the salt and pepper.  Roast the tomatoes for 20 minutes or until they are soft and lightly browned.  Remove the tray from the oven and set it aside for the tomatoes to cool.

Meanwhile, bring a medium sized saucepan of lightly salted water to the boil.  Add the frozen broad beans, bring back to the boil and blanch the beans for one minute.  Drain, run the beans under cold water to cool, then peel them.

Heat the olive oil in a frying pan over a medium heat.  Add the haloumi slices and cook them for 1-2 minutes on each side, or until they are golden.  Sprinkle the cooked haloumi with the lemon juice.

Place the baby spinach on a serving platter.  Top with the tomatoes, broad beans and haloumi.  Drizzle over the balsamic dressing and serve immediately.

*Gluten free, Diabetes friendly :)

Raspberry and Ricotta Cakes

 
As mentioned previously, I am hosting this weeks edition of Magazine Mondays for Cream Puffs in Venice.  I made Raspberry and Ricotta cakes from the October 2010 edition of the New Zealand recipes+ magazine.  They look so summery and inviting, especially with the raspberry syrup drizzled over the top of them.  Yum!  They were the perfect accompaniment to my stay with Simon at my family’s beach place, up North at Ruakaka.  Aside from baking I also managed to go swimming for the first time this summer :)

One little note about the cakes though; mine don’t look like the picture in the magazine.  They are supposed to be little loaf-like cakes, but I didn’t have a mini loaf pan up at my beach house.  Simon and I couldn’t find any on our trip to Whangarei either, so I made do with a texan muffin tin.  Anyways, here is the recipe:

 
Makes: 4          Preparation: 15 minutes          Cooking: 20 minutes

1 ⅓ cups self raising flour
⅓ cup firmly packed brown sugar
½ cup buttermilk
1 egg
30g unsalted butter, melted, cooled
1 teaspoon vanilla essence
80g fresh ricotta
80g frozen raspberries, plus 220g extra
2 tablespoons icing sugar
1 tablespoon freshly squeezed orange juice
Whipped cream to serve

Preheat oven to 180˚C.  Grease 4 holes of a ⅔ cup mini loaf pan with butter.  Sift flour into a medium bowl.  Add the brown sugar and stir to combine.

Whisk buttermilk, egg, butter and vanilla together in a large jug.  Stir buttermilk mixture into the flour mixture.  Add ricotta and 80g of raspberries and stir until just combined.  Spoon mixture into the prepared loaf pans.  bake for 20 minutes or until golden.  Cool for 5 minutes in the pan, then transfer to a wire rack.

Place the extra berries in a small saucepan over a low heat.  Add icing sugar and juice and stir until the sugar has dissolved.  Simmer for 5 minutes.  Serve cakes with berry sauce and whipped cream.

Check out what other people have made this week:

• Heather from girlichef made Turkey Tetrazzini from Saveur Magazine.
• Tia from Buttercream Barbie made Buttercake Bakery’s Chocolate Vanilla Swirl Bundt Cake from the L.A. Times in June 2008.
• Sue from Couscous & Consciousness made Pork Chops with Saffron Baked Potatoes from the November 2007 issue of Delicious magazine.
• Tina from Life in the slow lane at Squirrel Head Manor made Noodle Casserole from Family Circle magazine.
• Lynn from I’ll Have What She’s Having made Pear and Cranberry Hand Pies from the December 2010 issue of Food & Wine magazine.
• Mary from Caramels, Bonbons et Chocolats made Crisp maple shortbread cookies from the latest issue of Chantelaine.

Summer Treat: Ice Cream Cake

 
I saw this in one of the weekly woman’s magazines a couple of weeks ago and decided to give it a go when we had Melissa and Simon over for a BBQ last weekend.

To make you will need:

1 small chocolate swiss roll
1L vanilla ice cream
1L chocolate ice cream
1 family sized bag of maltesers (155g)
100g of dark chocolate chopped
⅔ cup of cream
1 small handful of chocolate chips to decorate

1. Grease a 24cm round spring form cake tin then line the sides and base with baking paper.
2. Cut the swiss roll into pieces, approx 2-3cm thick each and arrange in a single layer over the bottom of the tin (tip – I broke up the left over pieces to fill any gaps).
3. Place the vanilla ice cream in a bowl and let it stand until it reaches room temperature and has just softened.  Mix it with a wooden spoon, add maltesers and stir through. Spoon this mixture over the chocolate swiss roll and place in the freezer until firm.
4. Place the chocolate ice cream in a bowl and again stand until it has reached room temperature and just softened. Mix with a wooden spoon and place it on top of the vanilla layer. Take extra care to make sure the top of the chocolate layer is smooth and place in the freezer until firm.
5. Place chocolate and cream in in a heatproof bowl. Place the bowl over the saucepan of simmering water and stir until smooth, remove and cool then pour over the frozen chocolate ice cream and return quickly to the freezer where it must be left until set.
6. To serve you will need to remove the cake from the pan and slide it on to a serving plate. Decorate with the chocolate chips and let it stand for 5 minutes to soften slightly before cutting.

This cake can be made up to 4 days in advance and is sure to impress.  Enjoy!

Inspiration: Magazines

Told ya I have a lot of magazines, haven’t I?  Well, the picture above represents just the tip of my magazine iceberg.  I am bout to go trawling through them to find a recipe to make soon as I am hosting the Monday 6th December edition of Magazine Mondays for Cream Puffs in Venice. 

To take part find yourself a recipe from a mag, make it, post it to your blog and email to let us know.  I’ll mention you in Monday’s post.  Either that, or check back on Monday to see what the other participants and I have managed to whip up :)