Chocolate Coconut Slice

I made this to take along to my Nana’s party along with the lemon meringue cupcakes. It is nice and quick to make and super easy!

Ingredients:
Base
1 cup of self raising flour
125 grams of melted butter
¾ cup of desiccated coconut
½ cup caster sugar
1 tablespoon cocoa

Topping
½ cup icing sugar
40 grams butter
1 tablespoon of cocoa
1-2 tablespoon/s hot water
Coconut to decorate

Method:
Line a slice tin (mine is 24x18cm from Briscoes) with baking paper.  Preheat the oven to 180°C. 
In a bowl mix flour, coconut, sugar and cocoa and combine with the melted butter to make the base, then press firmly into the lined slice tin. 
Bake for 10 minutes, remove from the oven to cool. 
Mix together the butter, cocoa, icing sugar and water to make the topping mixture. Once combined and spread over the base and add a dusting of coconut to decorate.
Refrigerate until set and cut into squares.

Lemon Meringue Cupcakes

I have been dying to try and make this meringue topping for cupcakes after sampling the lovely Meredith’s weeks ago but I have been waiting for a special occasion – my Nana’s 85th birthday party was the perfect occasion. Now I have to apologise – the above photo does not do the topping justice, I was in a rush to get to the party and the topping had been on the cupcake for about two minutes before I bit into it to take a picture so it didn’t get time to set. However, it doesn’t matter because the cupcakes were absolutely delicious and a hit with everyone.

Ingredients:
90g softened butter
90g softened cream cheese
The rind of 1 large lemon (minimum of 2 teaspoons)
1 tablespoon of freshly squeezed lemon juice
⅔ cup caster sugar
2 eggs
½ cup all-purpose flour
⅓ cup self-raising flour

Method:
Pre-heat the oven to 160°C. Line a 12 cupcake pan, with cupcake papers.
Beat the butter and cream cheese until smooth, then beat in lemon rind/juice, sugar and eggs until you have a nice creamy mixture.
Sift the flours. Add the flour gradually to the cheese mixture and beat on a low speed, until just combined.
Divide the mixture evenly between the cake cases and bake for 20 minutes until firm to touch. Allow to cool for a few minutes and then transfer to a wire rack.

I used my ¼ teaspoon measure to scoop out the centre of the cupcake and I filled the hole with ‘Barker’s Lemon Curd’ or, you could make your own lemon curd.

 
Meringue Topping:
2 egg whites
150g caster sugar

Whisk egg whites and caster sugar in a heatproof bowl over a saucepan of simmering water for approximately 5 minutes (until sugar has dissolved - when you rub some of the mixture between your fingertips it won't feel grainy). Move bowl to mixer, using whisk attachment mix until stiff peaks form and the mixture thick and glossy.

 All packed up and ready to go

I doubled the recipe for both the cupcakes and the topping to take 24 along with me. I definitely recommend giving these a go – you will thank me, I promise. Oh and if you were wondering about the cute cupcake casings they are ‘Mrs Roger’s Baking Cups’ from Living and Giving.

Happy Birthday Nana! xox

Sticky Date Pudding with Caramel Sauce

 

1 ¾ cups dates, coarsely chopped
1 ½ cups boiling water
1 teaspoon baking soda
90g butter, softened
1 ¼ cups brown sugar
3 eggs, lightly beaten
1 ½ cups self raising flour
⅓ cup walnuts
⅓ cup pecans

Caramel Sauce:
1 cup brown sugar
300ml cream
100g butter, cubed

Preheat the oven to 180°C.  Grease a 22cm round cake tin, line the base and sides with baking paper.
Combine the dates and boiling water in a heatproof bowl.  Stir in the soda and then stand for 5 minutes.
Blend or process the date mixture with butter and sugar until smooth.  Add the eggs and flour; blend or process until just combined.
Spread the mixture into the prepared tin and sprinkle evenly with the nuts.  Bake for 1 hour or until cooked when tested.  Stand the cake for 10 minutes before turning out onto a wire rack.

Caramel Sauce:
Combine the ingredients in a medium saucepan.  Stir over a low – medium heat, without boiling, until the sugar is dissolved.  Simmer whilst stirring the liquid for 3 minutes.
Brush the surface of the hot cake with ¼ cup of the caramel sauce.  Serve with the remaining sauce.

*This pudding can be frozen for up to three months.

Sour Cream Lemon Cake

This is delicious and moist and I loved the fact that I didn’t have to ice it so it made it nice and quick.

110 grams butter
1 cup sugar
3 eggs
The rind of one large lemon
1 cup flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
120 grams sour cream

Glaze:
Juice of one large lemon
1 Tablespoon hot water
¼ cup sugar (with an additional teaspoon or two for dusting)

Cream butter and sugar.  Then beat in eggs and lemon rind.
Sift flour and baking powder.  Fold in flour mix in three lots alternating with sour cream.
Mix until smooth and pour into a well greased tin (I also lined the base of mine with waxed baking paper).
Bake in an oven that has been pre-heated to 160°C for 35-40 minutes.
To make the glaze, juice your lemon (make sure you get as much juice out as possible) and add the tablespoon of hot water (it will help dissolve the sugar), add the ¼ cup sugar to the juice a teaspoon at a time, stirring after each addition.
Once the cake is cooked remove from the oven, leave your cake in the tin for 5 minutes before pouring on glaze and dust with a teaspoon or two of sugar for decoration.  To help the glaze seep through the cake I used a skewer to pierce the cake all over.
Remove from tin when cool.  You can eat it by itself or alternatively with some fresh cream or natural yoghurt.

Auckland Taste of New Zealand Festival

 
New Zealand’s biggest ever culinary festival will be running in Victoria Park, Auckland 19-22 October. It offers visitors a chance to taste incredible cuisine from some of New Zealand’s best restaurants, discover gourmet products and meet award winning chefs, including Rick Stein, Gary Rhodes, Annabel Langbein and Josh Emett. If you are keen to head along you can find more information about the event and tickets here.

Carrot Cake

I asked my Mum if she would make Simon a carrot cake for his birthday and he ended up with a big square carrot cake that he (mainly he) and our flat mates wolfed down in no time.  I asked mum to make one as I remember her baking the most beautiful carrot cakes when I was a kid, but I stopped eating them and have never made one.  Why?  Haha, well… I don’t really like carrots and as I got older I stopped eating carrot cake because I knew it was chocka full of carrots and I now can’t bring myself to eat it, even though I remember it being delicious.  I just scoop off and eat the cream cheese icing when Simon orders a piece when we go out for hot chocolate!

1 cup wholemeal flour
1 cup plain flour
2 teaspoons baking soda
2 cups raw sugar
¼ teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons cinnamon
3 cups finely grated carrots
1 cup cooking oil
3 eggs, beaten

Icing:
25g butter
50g cream cheese
1 cup sifted icing sugar
½ teaspoon vanilla
½ cup chopped nuts

Sift and mix the dry ingredients.  Add oil and stir well.
Stir in the beaten eggs, then add the carrots.  Mix thoroughly.
Grease the sides of a 10 inch square cake tin and line the bottom with greased paper.
Bake at 180°C for 1 hour.
For the icing, beat together all of the ingredients, spread of over the cake once it has cooled.  Sprinkle the chopped nuts over the top.

This recipe comes from my Mum’s well-used handwritten cookbook.

Pizza and Mozzarella making!

On Thursday 15th September, Simon, David (Simon’s brother) and I headed out to Muriwai for one of The Gourmet Gannet’s Pizza and Mozzarella making culinary workshops.  Simon and I had been out before for an English Pork Pie making class and were pretty excited to be going back.  We had heaps of fun and it was surprisingly easy.


Allison taught us to make pizza dough from scratch, without measuring the ingredients and to mix everything by hand.  This was great because it means we can now make pizza dough with whatever quantity of flour we like (as I did tonight to use up our leftover mozzarella) and we know what consistency we want to get it to.  I’ve made a little video which you can watch at the bottom of this post which outlines the process :)


While the pizza dough was proving (growing in size) we made our mozzarella.  This looked pretty gross while we were splitting the curds and whey of the milk, but was fun once we had it to the stage where you stretch it out and make your balls of cheese.  Once we had finished making the cheese it was time to get our dough into shape for the base, topped with sauce and our cheese and put into the oven to bake.  When the pizzas were ready we gave them a quick sprinkle with basil, salt, pepper and some olive oil then cut them up and enjoyed the fruits of our labour along with the delicious red wine that Alison opened for Simon’s birthday.


We had left over cheese to take home and because I was a bit over the top with my flour estimate, I had enough dough to take home and make some more pizzas the next day :)

If you are interested in making your own cheese you can get a kit from a company called ‘Mad Millie’ which has everything you need to make mozzarella, ricotta and mascarpone.  I’ve got myself a kit and think I might give making ricotta a try next.

And, if you want to go to a cooking class head along to The Gourmet Gannet website to book one.  While you’re at it check out Alison’s awesome blog ‘Pease Pudding’ too.

Little Hummingbird Cakes

So, I’m not too happy with how these look.  I found icing them really hard and they ended up looking childish rather than the sophisticated wonder I envisioned them to become.  I was thinking the icing would resemble silky smooth white chocolate spun artistically around the cakes.  Hmm, not quite the case aye Melissa?  It might have been because it was quite cold when I made them; maybe the icing would have spread better at a warmer temperature.  However, I do like the way they taste so I thought I would still share the recipe with you.  The pecan and pineapple bits through the cake are moreish.  If I make these again I think I will just ice them like normal cupcakes.

Makes 24.

3 ¾ cups self-raising flour
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 cup caster sugar
2 ripe bananas
½ cup sunflower oil
2 eggs, beaten
150g pecans, chopped
440g can crushed pineapple, drained
6 tablespoons chopped toasted pecans, to decorate

For the lemon cream:
115g butter, softened
3 ¾ icing sugar
2 tablespoons whipping cream
2 teaspoons lemon juice
¼ teaspoon vanilla extract

Preheat the oven to 180°C.  Grease two 12 hole muffin pans.
Sift the flour and cinnamon into a large bowl.  Stir in the sugar.
Put the bananas in a bowl and mash well with a fork.  Add the bananas to the dry ingredients with the eggs, oil, pecans and pineapple.  Stir until the mixture is just combined.  Spoon the mixture into the muffin pans.
Bake in the oven for 30 – 35 minutes, until golden brown and risen.  Leave in the pan to cool for 5 minutes then transfer to wire racks.  Leave to cool completely.

To make the lemon cream, put the butter in a large bowl and beat with an electric whisk until creamy.  Gradually beat in the icing sugar, then beat in the cream, lemon juice and vanilla extract.  Beat well until light and fluffy.
Invert the muffins and spread with the lemon cream.  Sprinkle a few chopped pecans over the top of the muffins to decorate.

Blueberry and Courgette Loaf

We made this loaf in the weekend and man it was yum!  I’ve been busy making some cushion covers for a buyer through my felt. shop and haven’t done any baking lately, but really wanted to try out this recipe because I couldn’t imagine what courgettes and blueberries would taste like together, it sounds disgusting.  However, the loaf was delicious – sweet and moist and eaten up pretty quickly!  And, I suppose it kinda counts towards your 5+ a day of fruit and veg - did you know the courgette is actually a fruit?  Personally I couldn’t really taste the courgette but you see flecks of green through the loaf which looked quite pretty with the purple blue colour of the blueberries.

3 eggs, lightly beaten
1 cup vegetable oil
3 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 ¼ cups white sugar
2 cups shredded zucchini
3 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking powder
¼ teaspoon baking soda
1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
1 pint fresh blueberries

Preheat oven to 175°C.  Lightly grease 2 loaf pans.
In a large bowl, beat together the eggs, oil, vanilla, and sugar.  Fold in the zucchini.  Beat in the flour, salt, baking powder, baking soda, and cinnamon.  Gently fold in the blueberries.  Transfer to the prepared loaf pans.
Bake for 50 - 60 minutes, or until a knife inserted in the centre of a loaf comes out clean.  Cool for 20 minutes in the pans, then turn out onto wire racks to cool completely.

Rugby Fever Hits Baking

The Rugby World Cup kicked off in New Zealand on Friday and it seems most of the country has caught rugby fever!  Max turned 7 months old yesterday so as promised here is his (rugby themed) cake.  I really need need to fork out for some gel colourings if I am going to use fondant for things in the future as your standard liquid food colouring from the supermarket only creates pastel type colours.

 
It is quite difficult to get pictures of Max with the cakes at the moment (unless I hold him and his grabby little hands), so here is a picture of him taken right before we left for a trip to the Auckland viaduct (with approximately 200,000 other people) to celebrate the opening of the tournament.

 
Unfortunately there is no new recipe to share today – it is just an ‘Easy Peasy Chocolate Cake’ hiding under there.  But I should have something new for you in the next week.

New Product Alert!

Our flatmate Nick works at the Chelsea Sugar Factory and every month they have a ‘product of the month’ that he gets to bring home.  This month he came home with their new Lemon flavoured Icing Sugar.  Ashley, his awesome wife and the genius behind the Tropical Muffins posted on here last month, made some cupcakes and gave the icing sugar a go.  Apparently you just mix it with water and you have delicious lemony icing – easy peasy!  I’ve eaten a couple of the cupcakes today and there’s still a few left, taunting me because I didn’t make them which means I can’t be a piggy and gobble them all up.  I think I need to talk Nick into getting us the Berry flavour to try…

Snickerdoodle Cookies

Cute name huh! I have been wanting to try these out for a while but kind of forgot about them until I made Mere’s Blondies, which can be topped with a snickerdoodle coating. I found a really easy recipe here on ‘Joy of Baking’ which includes video instructions.

Ingredients:
Cookies:
2 ¾ cups  all purpose flour
½ teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 cup  unsalted butter, room temperature
1 ½ cups granulated white sugar
2 large eggs
1 teaspoon pure vanilla

Coating:
⅓ cup granulated white sugar
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

Method:
In a large bowl whisk together the flour, salt, and baking powder.
In the bowl of your electric mixer (or with a hand mixer), beat the butter and sugar until smooth (about 2 to 3 minutes).
Add the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition.  Scrape down the sides of the bowl. Beat in the vanilla extract.
Add the flour mixture and beat until you have a smooth dough.  If the dough is soft, cover and refrigerate until firm (about one to two hours).
Preheat oven to 190°C and place rack in the center of the oven.  Line two baking sheets with parchment paper. 
Shape the dough into 2.5 cm round balls.

To coat:
In a large shallow bowl mix together the sugar and cinnamon.
Roll the balls of dough in the cinnamon sugar and place on the prepared pan, spacing about 5 cm apart.  Then, using the bottom of a glass, gently flatten each cookie to about 1.5 cm thick.
Bake the cookies for about 10 minutes, or until they are light golden brown and firm around the edges.  The centres of the cookies will still be a little soft. Remove from oven and place on a wire rack to cool.

I thought that they tasted a bit like ‘Elsie’s Fingers’ – so they are yummy!
Enjoy!