Olive, Salami and Cream Cheese Muffins

These muffins were created out of stuff we had left over in the fridge.  I wanted to make something savoury that we could take as morning tea to work.  There was a container of olives and half a block of cream cheese left over from various salads we had made and I had a packet of salami waiting to be used in a pasta dish I kept putting off making because it needed tomatoes and they have been so expensive lately!  So, I made these muffins and they were a hit.  Simon loved them.  I couldn’t lazily put off photographing them because we both wanted to eat them!

Ingredients:
1 egg
220ml skim milk
¼ cup olive oil
1 ¾ cups self raising flour
½ cup Kalamata olives, pitted and chopped
½ cup salami, chopped into small pieces
½ cup cream cheese, broken into small chunks

Method:
Preheat the oven to 180°C.  Grease or line a 12 hole muffin tin.
Beat together the egg, milk and olive oil.  Mix through the flour.  Fold through the olives, salami and cream cheese.
Divide the mixture evenly between the prepared muffin holes.  Bake for approximately 15 minutes, or until golden brown and a skewer inserted in the centre a one of the muffins can be removed cleanly. 

Pretzel, Peanut and Chocolate Packed Cookies

These could also be called ‘Blokes Biscuits’, they came about after I wasn’t sure what to bake and started quizzing Shane about what he felt like. The saltiness of the pretzels with the sweetness of the cookie and chocolate is awesome. The broken pretzel bits and peanuts give pops of crunch to the cookie. For the cookie base I used our awesome Chocolate Chip recipe, so if your not feeling as adventurous you should give those a go if you haven’t already!

Ingredients:
250g butter, softened
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
¾ cup caster sugar
¾ cup firmly packed brown sugar
1 egg
2 ¼ cups flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1-1½ cup dark chocolate drops
1 cup mini pretzel twists (I didn’t crush mine as they broke nicely in the mixer)
½ cup unsalted peanuts

Method:
Preheat oven to 180˚C.  Grease a couple of oven trays.
Beat butter, vanilla extract, sugars and egg in the bowl of your electric mixer until light and fluffy.
Fold in the sifted flour and baking soda on a low speed. 
Fold in the chocolate, pretzels and peanuts on a low speed.
Roll tablespoons of mixture into balls, place about 5cm apart on the trays.  Bake for 10-12 minutes depending how crispy you want your cookies. 
Leave to cool slightly on the tray before transferring to a wire rack, if you want to decorate the top of your cookie with a pretzel press it into the top of your cookie while it is soft and warm.

Little and Friday: Celebrations

A couple of weeks back Mel and I received copies of Little and Friday: Celebrations (we have had a hard time waiting for the release date to be able to share this with you!), it is the beautiful follow up to the incredibly successful Treats From Little and Friday. Author and Little and Friday cafe owner, Kim Evans, is a self taught baker who knows the recipe to success, the Celebrations book which hits shelves today will have you plating up perfection no matter what the event.

Mouth-watering miniature tarts and cakes, savoury galettes, breads, biscuits and decorative cakes cater for simple gatherings, such as a summer picnic, birthday lunches and Mother’s Day. There are chapters devoted to making kids’ parties, Easter, Christmas, weddings and 21st’s occasions to remember forever. All beautifully photographed Tamara West, each turn of the page will get your creative juices flowing and leave you feeling excited and inspired to host your next event.

We are very fortunate today to be able to share with you one of the 100+ amazing recipes from the new book! But trust me, you will want to try more than just this one. Little and Friday Celebrations is available from all good bookstores from today – Friday 18 October, 2013 with an RRP of $45.

Chocolate, Beetroot and Salted Caramel Cake
This flavour combination is sensational

Ingredients:
Cakes
5 eggs
2½ cups caster sugar
300ml canola oil
250g good-quality dark chocolate, chopped
2 cups flour
1 cup good-quality cocoa
2 tsp baking powder
100ml milk
1 cup grated raw beetroot
3 cups Chocolate Ganache, to decorate

Salted Caramel
1½ cups caster sugar
300ml cream
½ tsp sea salt

Chocolate Ganache
½ cup cream
200g good-quality dark chocolate, grated

Method:
This recipe makes one 23cm triple-layer cake
1. Preheat oven to 160°C. Grease and line three 23cm round cake tins with baking paper.
2. Using an electric mixer, whisk eggs and sugar on medium speed until mixture is pale and creamy and tripled in volume. With mixer on medium speed, slowly drizzle in oil and combine.
3. Melt chocolate in a glass bowl over a saucepan of simmering water. Add chocolate to egg mixture. Stir to combine.
4. Sift flour, cocoa and baking powder into a bowl. Using a large metal spoon, fold a third of the dry ingredients into chocolate mixture. Add a third of the milk and combine. Continue in this way until all combined.
5. Fold grated beetroot through chocolate mixture.
6. Spoon mixture into prepared tins. Bake in centre of oven for 40 minutes or until a skewer comes out clean. Cool in tins before turning out.
7. To assemble, use a serrated knife to cut the domed tops off the cakes. Spread ½ cup Salted Caramel over the top of two cakes and stack to form one triple-layer cake Sandwiched together with caramel.
8. Spread a thick layer of Chocolate Ganache over top and sides of cake using a palette knife.

Salted Caramel - Makes 1½ cups

1. Place sugar in a small saucepan and just cover with water to achieve a wet-sand consistency.
2. Bring to the boil but do not stir. Using a wet pastry brush, remove any sugar crystals from sides of saucepan. Continue to boil until mixture turns amber. Remove from heat.
3. In a small saucepan, heat cream to boiling point. Gradually add to caramelised sugar, stirring constantly until smooth. This takes a while but eventually combines. Season with salt.

Chocolate Ganache – Makes 1 cup
In a saucepan, heat cream to just below boiling point. Remove from heat and stir in chocolate until melted and smooth. Allow to cool and thicken before using.
Kitchen Notes
The ganache can be made a day in advance and stored in a cool place. Do not refrigerate.
You can increase this recipe by using the same ratio of cream to chocolate. For 2 cups use 1 cup cream and 400g chocolate. For 3 cups use 1½ cups cream and 600g chocolate. For4 cups use 2 cups cream and 800g chocolate.

Reproduced with permission from Little and Friday Celebrations by Kim Evans. Published by Penguin Group NZ. RRP $45.00. Copyright © Kim Evans, 2013.Copyright © Photography Tamara West, 2013

Raspberry Choc Chunk Cookies

I made these Raspberry Choc Chunk Cookies as an alternative to your standard Chocolate Chip Cookies, something a little more adult, more rich and less sugary sweet.  These are a dark chocolate twist on the Raspberry White Chocolate Cookies I made last month, using a slightly different recipe.
They are made using frozen raspberries (I’ve been using them in lots of baking lately – so easy to have on hand.  I’m going through a phase of using raspberries and I’m also enjoying dark chocolate a lot.), so you can enjoy them any time of the year.  The raspberries make the mix really cold though, so brace yourself for frozen fingertips when rolling the mixture out!  But, that can be forgiven because I am loving the face that they are a ‘one bowl’ mix – I seriously don’t feel like I have the time for anything that requires more effort at the moment.

Make approximately 30 cookies.

Ingredients:
125g butter, softened
¾ cup brown sugar (I used Billington’s Light Muscovado Unrefined Cane Sugar)
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup plain flour
¼ cup self raising flour
⅓ cup cocoa powder
½ teaspoon baking soda
200g chocolate, chopped into chunks (I used white and dark chocolate)
125g frozen raspberries

Method:
Preheat oven to 180°C.  Line a couple of baking trays with baking trays with baking paper.
Beat the butter, sugar, egg and vanilla extract in a large bowl until combined.  Add in the flours, coco powder and baking soda, and mix until combined.  Fold through the chocolate and frozen raspberries.
Roll tablespoon sized pieces of mixture into balls then flatten slightly on the trays, placing them about 5cm apart.  Bake for approximately 12 minutes.  Remove the cookies from the oven and leave to cool for 5 minutes on the trays, before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely.

A Very Dr Seuss 1st Birthday Party

You might remember back in 2011 I blogged about our gorgeous friend Jess and her cake making venture 'Rosy Cakes', since then Jess has been very busy baking and decorating countless cakes, being Mum her nearly 3 year old Molly and Solomon who turned 1 this week - and was the reason for the amazing Dr Seuss themed party Max and I went to last Saturday!

As you can see Jess not only has a flair for making and decorating amazing cakes but for creating fabulous parties! I loved how balanced everything was, the different heights of everything on the table and how the colour scheme of red, white and blue ran through everything from the blue lemonade to the families co-ordinated outfits. The backdrop for the food table was simple but so effective!

Jess made delicious chocolate cupcakes with bright blue buttercream, cake pops and marshmallows (dipped in white chocolate and covered in blue sugar crystal) on gorgeous blue and white paper straws, there were also some healthy choices with popcorn and grapes served in paper cupcake cases with Dr Seuss stickers on the front. I also loved the mini milk bottles which were jazzed up with some bakers twine, paper and more Dr Seuss stickers!

My Max and Jess' Molly will be turning 3 in a few months time and this party has me feeling inspired to get on with planning Max's next party - which I have been informed will be dinosaur themed! What are your favourite kids party themes?

If you want to keep up with what Jess is working on check out her Facebook page, I am constantly blown away with what she comes up with!

If we didn’t have birthdays,
you wouldn’t be you.
If you’d never been born,
well then what would you do?
If you’d never been born,
well then what would you be?
You might be a fish!
Or a toad in a tree!
You might be a doorknob!
Or three baked potatoes!
You might be a bag full of
hard green tomatoes.

Or worse than all that…
Why, you might be a WASN’T!
A Wasn’t has no fun at all.
No, he doesn’t.

A Wasn’t just isn’t.
He just isn’t present.
But you… You ARE YOU!
And, now isn’t that pleasant!

- Dr Seuss

A huge thank you to Jess for sharing her photos with us and a big happy 1st birthday to wee Solomon xox

Banana, Bran and Walnut Muffins

I was really surprised by these muffins.  I think of bran muffins as boring little rock cakes – a dense lump and not at all appealing.  But, in an effort to make something not so sweet and a tad more healthy, I gave some a go.  The surprising part is that I love the result.  You can taste the bran a bit, but the banana flavour is there, stopping the muffins from being bland, and in every mouthful you get some slightly crunchy walnut bits.  The thing that surprised me the most is that the muffins still have that crumbly cake texture that I thought I was going to sadly be missing.  I am really happy with these muffins;  I don’t feel guilty eating one for morning tea (or breakfast – I’m writing this post before having breakfast and trying to describe the muffins talked my brain into making me go get one!), they are soft, moist and have a cakey texture, and they have the perfect banana flavour.  Oh, and I made them so they are a simple beat the wet ingredients together, mix through the dry ingredients, pour them in the tins and back recipe.  Really quick. 
I was going to mix through some Chia seeds but completely forgot, so if you try that addition (a couple of tablespoons maybe?) let me know how they go.  I now have bran in the cupboard so I’m going to be experimenting with more recipes soon!

Makes 12.

Ingredients:
1 cup mashed banana
2 tablespoons oil (vegetable, sunflower or canola)
2 eggs
100g butter, melted
½ cup milk
1 cup bran
½ cup sugar
1 cup flour
½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
½ teaspoon nutmeg
2 teaspoons baking powder
½ teaspoon baking soda
½ cup chopped walnuts

Method:
Preheat the oven to 200°C.  Grease or line a 12 hole muffin tin with muffin papers.
In a large bowl, beat together all the wet ingredients (the banana down to the milk on the list).  Add in the dry ingredients, excluding the walnuts, and mix through to make a smooth batter.  Fold through the walnut pieces.
Divide the mixture between the prepared muffin tin holes and bake for 10 – 15 minutes, or until golden brown and a skewer inserted into the centre of a muffin can be removed cleanly.
Remove from the oven and leave standing in the tin for 5 minutes, before removing and placing on a wire rack to cool completely.

Charlie and George Cafe

Charlie and George is a very cool new cafe in the Auckland suburb of Stonefields. The cafe is owned and run by the very lovely Rebecca McRobie and is named after her sons. The cafe manages to strike the balance of being trendy while still being a child friendly place to eat. I loved the terrariums on the tables, I’m inspired and thinking of making my own for our dining table at home.




Shane, Max and I popped along on their first Sunday open a week and a half ago and word of mouth about this place had quickly spread – we were lucky to get a table and that is saying something as seating options are ample. Charlie and George have both indoor and outdoor seating, there’s tables for couples/small groups, communal seating on large outdoor concrete tables with a variety of herbs potted in terracotta pots through the middle as well as some larger tables inside - great if you want to meet a group or have a big family.




Charlie and George have a great selection of wholesome and filling meals on their menu as well as a selection of cabinet foods – the cabinet baking was so popular on the day we were there that it was almost sold out. But, I was told by another patron that the baked goods she selected were to die for. They also serve Kokako coffee in the cutest moustache mugs, the bagels are supplied by Best Ugly Bagels, and the bacon and eggs come from Freedom Farms.  They also stock Nice Blocks and have an excellent selection of preserves for sale at the counter!



If you are in Auckland and want to check out this great new cake you can find them here:
Charlie and George
Stonefields Ave
Mt Wellington, 1050
You can also check them out on Facebook

Remember that you can follow us on Facebook too and if you’d like sneak peeks of what Mel and I are up to in the kitchen (or what cafes we are visiting) you can follow us on Instagram as well!