Self Saucing Chocolate Pudding

 
Now that it’s getting colder it is the perfect excuse to bake yourself a yummy warm pudding! This is super quick, super easy and super delicious. Another bonus about this pudding is that it can all be mixed in the dish you cook it in (I suggest using a Pyrex dish).

Ingredients:
1 cup self raising flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 tablespoon cocoa
½ cup white sugar
60 grams butter
½ cup cold milk
1 teaspoon vanilla essence
2 teaspoons cocoa
½ cup brown sugar (can substitute with white sugar)
2 cups boiling water

Method:
Mix flour, baking powder, first measure of cocoa (1 tablespoon), and sugar in your cooking dish.
Melt butter, add milk and vanilla and mix to combine with dry ingredients.
Mix second measure of cocoa and brown sugar. Sprinkle on top.
Carefully pour boiling water over.
Bake in a 180˚C oven for 35 minutes, or until cooked.
Serve with ice cream and/or cream.

*Because of using the brown sugar the sauce had a yummy caramel taste, if you want it to be more chocolatey I would recommend using the white sugar.

Ginger Cupcakes with Lemon Frosting

 
I saw Tamara Jane of Tempt Cupcakes on Good Morning make some ginger cupcakes with lemon icing a month or so ago and have been meaning to trial them, I did a quick scan of the ingredients list and thought I had everything I needed but I didn’t so I ended up adapting the recipe (quite a bit) and am incredibly pleased with the results.  Shane has become a cupcake connoisseur in recent years and ranked these up there with the red velvet cupcakes.  I think they have the perfect amount of spice and the lemon frosting sets them off perfectly.  Enjoy!

Ingredients
2 cups flour
¼ teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon salt
2 ½ tablespoons ground ginger
½ teaspoon nutmeg
½ teaspoon cinnamon
150g butter, softened
1 ¾ cups sugar
4 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla essence
125 grams sour cream

Method
Preheat oven to 170˚C.  Line two 12-hole muffin trays with cupcake papers.
Sift together flour, baking soda, salt, ground ginger, nutmeg and cinnamon.
In a separate bowl, cream the butter for 1-2 minutes.  Add the sugar slowly while continuing to mix, beating for 2 minutes after each addition.  Beat until the mixture is light and fluffy.
Add eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition and the mixture is light and fluffy.  Add half the sifted dry ingredients and half of the sour cream.  Repeat with the remaining ingredients.
Divide the mixture evenly between the cupcake papers and bake for 15-20 minutes or until the cakes springs back when touched in the centre.
Cool cupcakes in the muffin trays for 5 minutes before removing the cupcakes to a wire rack to cool completely.  Ice with lemon frosting.

Lemon Frosting
200 grams butter
4-5 cups icing sugar (depending on how stiff you want your frosting)
Grated rind and juice of 1 lemon

Cream the butter and icing sugar together.  Add the rind and juice and continue to beat until light and fluffy.  If you have added to much icing sugar and it has become too stiff add a tablespoon of milk.

Chocolate Pistachio Fudge

I decided to give this recipe a go as I like Lindt’s ‘A touch of Sea Salt’ dark chocolate and I thought this would be similar as pistachio’s have quite a salty taste.  The fudge wasn’t quite as I expected – as the pistachio nuts I used were quite bland – I used the raw, de-shelled ones from the baking isle.  I think next time I would buy them in their shells because I think they taste saltier.  However, I’ve found sprinkling a tiny bit of sea salt on the top of this fudge does give it a taste I like that is similar to the Lindt chocolate, and it makes the fudge look pretty impressive too :)

375g packet dark chocolate melts
395g can condensed milk
30g butter
Pinch salt
1 cup unsalted pistachios, shells removed

Put the chocolate, condensed milk, butter and salt in a saucepan and stir over a low heat until melted and well combined.  Put pistachios in a plastic bag and crush with a rolling pin.  Add pistachios to the chocolate mixture and stir well.

Pour the mixture into a 20cm square baking tin that has been lined with baking paper.  Smooth the top.  Allow the fudge to cool, then refrigerate until set before cutting into pieces.

Cinnamon Cupcakes

I made these for the high tea we had at Melissa and Simon’s a few weeks ago.  I also made mini versions at Christmas but hadn’t posted the recipe as I wasn’t able to get a photo to share with you until now!

To make you will need:
1 ½ cups of sifted flour
1 ¼ teaspoons baking powder
3/4 teaspoon cinnamon
¼ teaspoon salt
100 grams of butter, softened
¾ cup of brown sugar, packed
1 egg (room temperature)
1 teaspoon vanilla essence
¾ cup of milk (room temperature)

Preheat oven to 180°C. Sift together flour, baking powder and salt in in a bowl. In a separate large bowl beat the butter, cinnamon and sugar until light and fluffy, add the egg and vanilla and mix well.
Add the flour mixture to the wet mixture in three additions, alternating with two additions of milk. Beat lightly after each addition just enough to combine the ingredients.
Divide the batter between 12 medium cupcake papers so that each is ⅔ full.
Bake for 15-20 minutes or until you can remove a skewer cleanly. Cool completely before icing.
I recommend icing with a vanilla buttercream.

 

Oreo Cheesecake

This is a very rich and creamy cheesecake – perfect for anyone who loves Oreos!

Serves 15

350g Oreo original cookies
80g butter, melted
375g cream cheese, softened
½ cup caster sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla essence
1 cup cream
3 teaspoons gelatine, dissolved in ¼ cup boiling water
200g white chocolate, melted, cooled slightly
For decoration: Strawberries or extra Oreo cookies, broken

Place 250g of the Oreo cookies in a food processor and process into fine crumbs.  Add the butter and process to combine.  Press the mixture in to a greased 18cm x 28cm slice pan (or 20cm round spring-form tin) and chill.
Beat the cream cheese, sugar and vanilla with an electric mixer until smooth, then beat in the cream.  Stir through the gelatine and white chocolate.
Roughly chop the remaining biscuits and stir through the filling.  Pour the filling over the cookie base.  Refrigerate for 3 hours or until set.  Cut into triangles and decorate with strawberries and the extra Oreo cookies before serving.

Baptism Bakes!

Little Max was Baptised over the weekend so I was brave (okay – maybe cheap… Have you seen what cake shops charge for two tier cakes!) and made my first two tier cake covered in fondant.

It’s not perfect but I was happy with it, I loved the colour (I had to colour the fondant myself) and it tasted good which is the most important thing.  It was chocolate cake with a chocolate ganache butter cream.  I used a cookie cutter to make the cross and piped Max’s name with royal icing, which was used to secure the ribbon to the cake as well.  The cake also doubled as Max’s four month cake as part of my on going project to do a cake for him every month to improve my skills so I can make him a really awesome first birthday cake next February.

I also made little thank you favours for our guests, little short bread crosses which I sprinkled with blue and white sugar to jazz them up a bit!

Gingerbread Slice

Our friend Andie, who blogs over at Red Strawberries, made a gingerbread slice for our high tea.  It was pretty yumm-o and I have the recipe for ya!

 
150g butter
½ cup brown sugar
½ cup treacle
½ cup golden syrup
1 ½ cups high grade flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
3 teaspoons ground ginger
1 teaspoon cinnamon
2 eggs
50g soft butter
2 cups icing sugar
2 lemons

Melt the butter, brown sugar, treacle and golden syrup in a large saucepan.  Remove from heat.
Sift the flour, baking powder, baking soda, ground ginger and cinnamon into the saucepan.  Lightly beat the eggs and add to the mixture.
Return to a low heat.  Mix until everything is combined and the mixture is bubbly on the surface.
Line a baking tin with baking paper and pour mixture in.
Bake for 20 - 25 minutes at 180˚C or until cooked.  Cool before icing.

 
Icing:
Finely chop the lemon rind of one lemon.
Mix the butter, icing sugar and lemon rind until smooth.  If a bit more liquid is needed use some of the juice of the lemon.  Only add ½ a teaspoon lemon juice at a time and mix before adding anymore to ensure the icing doesn’t get to runny.
Spread onto cooled slice.  Top with the rind of the other lemon and cut the slice into finger food sized portions.

Thanks Andie for sharing your recipe with us!

Simple Sammies

For the high tea I made three different types of little sandwiches.

One was cooked chicken, avocado and cheese, seasoned with salt and pepper.  Another was ham, cheese, and mashed egg with mayonnaise.  I also made a salmon, lettuce, capper and fancy lemon infused cream cheese variety.  I didn’t try any of these ones as I am not a fan of salmon, but they were all eaten so they must’ve been good.

There’s so many different sandwich fillings that you could try out – just experiment with your fave fillings.  If you want the recipe for the salmon sandwiches you can find it here on the Australian Taste website – there’s a few other ideas on it too :)

Just a quick word

I won’t be posting any other recipes from the high tea for a few days as I am heading off for the long weekend – no computer and hardly any cell phone reception.

However, before I go, I need to alert you to the new Cadbury Mousse Chocolate blocks.  This stuff is heavenly and you must try it.

Also, Simon has done a couple of cute food related things recently which I snapped photos of…

 
The other night I was really tired and had headed to bed when I remembered that I hadn’t boiled some eggs for my lunch the next day (I’ve been having egg mashed with mayo and ham sammies).  Simon offered to do it and when I came out into the kitchen the next morning these eggs with cute sad faces greeted me.

 
And, this morning he made me pikelets for breakkie!  Love.

Speaking of pikelets, I recently got this plaque to go on the wall in our kitchen:

You can get pavlova and hokey pokey ones too.  I got ours from The Garden Party on Ponsonby Road but I have seen them in the Texan Art School shops as well.

Anyways, off I go.  Have a great weekend :)

Chicken Meatballs wrapped in prosciutto

 

There wasn’t any of these left over after our high tea, they were yum!  I used turkey mince when we made them because our supermarket didn’t have any chicken mince (but yeah, they randomly had turkey!) which I think worked quite well because I kinda like the flavour of turkey.  I’ve re-made these at a later date with chicken and they were just as good and went just as fast!  The picture above is are the chicken ones and the photo at the bottom of the post are the turkey meatballs.

Makes about 24.

500g minced chicken or turkey meat
100g grated haloumi cheese
finely grated zest of one lemon
2 tablespoons chopped flat leaf parsley or sage
1 egg yolk
50g dried breadcrumbs
sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
10-12 slices prosciutto

Preheat the oven to 180˚C and line two baking trays with baking paper.
Place the chicken, haloumi, lemon zest, parsley, egg yolk and breadcrumbs in a bowl.  Season with the salt and pepper and combine well.  Shape the mixture into small meatballs, no bigger than a golf ball.
Cut the prosciutto into thick strips, wide enough to wrap around the meatballs.  Wrap each meatball with a strip of prosciutto and place on the baking tray.  Bake for 10 – 12 minutes or until cooked through.