Food Pr0n

Round here, winter is for baking!
Here's a peek at some of the baking I've been doing lately, because when stuff goes right in the kitchen it's worth celebrating, for me.

First, a chocolate zucchini cupcake with peppermint and choc-fudge icing. It's got vegetables in, it's healthy, right? Without the icing it's actually been a huge toddler hit and I'll be doing them again.

And here are some Very Naughty gingerbread men that I sent to my sister, after a silly discussion about me mailing her "hot naked men". Well, except for the one of them who got shy and donned a posing pouch!

Chocolate and oranges

I had this sudden craving for these two flavours together, at the beginning of this week, so purchased three likely looking oranges (and checked our cocoa stores. As always, the level was high. Ha!).

I used this recipe for chocolate orange sticks, as it looked to be the easiest. It was still a special kind of hell (that took hours) on account of how fiddly it was, and I have a new-found respect for my mother's efforts each Christmas as I was growing up.

I also decided to try my hand at chocolate-orange cake, using the juice of my oranges. I altered the chocolate orange muffin recipe over here by substituting one of the eggs with about 180mLs of orange juice (all of what my oranges gave up). I ended up with a kind of fudge-consistency sweet and sharp cake thing. It is very tasty, but I think next time I'll use less juice.

Now, does anyone know what I can do with 2/3 cup sugar syrup and 4 litres of orange water?

No, I have not done the vacuuming this month. Why do you ask?

The motto of my life is honestly "Why do Housework when there is so much else to do in the world!?" but every so often I come across a blog that makes me seriously wish I were a Domestic Goddess, capable of balancing my contented baby on one hip whilst stirring up a batch of beautiful biscuits as my Made-Just-From-Fresh-And-Locally-Sourced-Produce-Dinner was finishing cooking each evening, in my perfectly, naturally cleaned kitchen.
Soule mama is one such. Kale for Sale a recently discovered 'nother! (Though both are from the US, so their seasons are always upside-down!)

At least my kitchen is cleaned using natural cleaning products... when it's cleaned.

Gingerbread for winter chills

The year that I turned thirteen I spent a lot of time making gingerbread.

It got so that I had the recipe memorised. With this friend and that, on weekends and holidays we'd gather in someone's kitchen to mix up a batch, covering available surfaces in flour, using up our mother's ground ginger (or, in one particularly memorable and potent batch, scrounging fresh ginger root from the neighbour).
When the bickies were fresh from the oven, we'd scoff as many as we could manage, as fast as their heat would allow. Warm, fresh gingerbread always tasted the best.

I've forgotten the recipe I used, then. But in recent years I have rediscovered my love of baking.

I've baked sugar biscuits and pumpkin. Almonds and cakes. And I always (especially in the depths of winter cold) come back to gingerbread.

This is the recipe I use now.

Ingredients

• 125g butter


• 1/2 cup brown sugar


• 1/2 cup golden syrup


• 1 egg


• 1 3/4 cups plain flour


• 2tsp ground ginger

You can also add other spices alongside the ginger. I like to toss in a teaspoon or two of white pepper and maybe a dash of cinnamon, to make the bickies a bit bitey.

Preheat your oven to 180 degrees Celcius.

Beat the butter and sugar together until you have a pale, creamy mixture. Then slowly add the egg and golden syrup, beating both in thoroughly.
Add the flour, ginger and bicarb about half a cup at a time, beating all the while, until the dough starts to form a ball.

Cover your bowl and place it in the fridge for a minimum of thirty minutes. This step is important. Without it, the mix is not firm enough to roll out and cut biscuits from.

Now the fun part!
Take your mix out of the fridge. Knead it well and roll it out on a well-floured surface until it's about as thick as a regular pencil.
Cut out your shapes, using a floured bickie cutter, and place them on a greased tray.
Bake for around 10 - 12 minutes, or until golden brown (the edges are usually a darker shade in my biscuits, as an indicator that they're done - my oven does not heat evenly, boo!

Your biscuits will be soft when first emerging, but will harden over the next five minutes or so to a firmer texture. Do not try to remove them from the tray till this has happened.

Ooh, bakey bakey!

Excuse me if I'm excited. I have just discovered Bittersweet, a Vegan baking blog. Since I'm living largely dairy-free these days for the health and happiness of my son these days, the sweet recipes over there are filling me with glee. Dairy-free fudge! Egg-free chocolate cupcakes! Nomnomnom!

Ooh, Crumbs!

I'm not the world's greatest cook, but I do enjoy baking. And after experiencing two amazingly iced first birthday cakes in the past two months I'm feeling like the bar has been set pretty high.
I'm currently googling fondant icing recipes, but I'm also taking great joy in the gorgeousness of the plain old buttercream iced cakes in this flickr stream and this craft blog, that my search threw up.
They look so good it would be a shame to eat them!

Bananananananana Bread

You haven't been reading this blog for very long if you are yet to realise that I have a sweet tooth.
In my quest to convince myself that my sweet lustings are "healthy" I bought some bananas last week - some of which were left to brown on the counter. Thus; banana bread!

I used a sugar-free recipe from allrecipes.com, that used honey and vanilla essence as sweetener instead. I also used 2 bananas instead of 3 (since that's all I had) and threw in some choc-chips at the end instead of walnuts (because I love choc chip banana bread and alas, had no walnuts). The wonderful thing about this recipe is that it's also dairy free!

Upon reflection, I think it may have been better as a less-sweet walnutty version. I also think 1 less banana meant I should have cooked it on a slightly lower heat, as the edges got a bit burned whilst the centre was still very moist and just cooked. But it was still VERY tasty.

Experimental Cake Making

So I've been fiddling with that white cake recipe I posted last month, and come up with a sweet, dense variation that is a little moister than the original recipe. I didn't get a picture of the finished product (with peppermint buttercream icing) because we ate it ALL before I had a chance. It was that good.


ingredients

* 1 cup white sugar
* 125g butter
* 2 eggs
* 2 teaspoons vanilla essence
* 1 1/4 cups plain flour
* 1 3/4 teaspoons baking powder
* 1/2 cup cocoa powder
* dash of milk
* 1/3 cup coca cola or cola drink


what to do
The order seems to make a difference to the final texture and taste of the cake.

* Preheat oven to 180C.
* Cream together the sugar and butter. Beat in the eggs, one at a time, then stir in the vanilla. essence. You could substitute this for peppermint essence if you like.
* Combine flour, cocoa and baking powder, add to the creamed mixture and mix well.
* Stir in the milk and then cola, a dribble at a time, until mixture is smooth. Pour or spoon into a prepared pan.
* Bake for 35 minutes or so.


Peppermint Buttercream Icing
This is adapted from the Buttercream Icing recipe in Jane Price's the home guide to cake decorating.

ingredients
*125g of softened butter, margarine or (in my case) soy-based margarine substitute
*Approx 1 1/2 cups of icing sugar, sifted
*1 teaspoon of peppermint essence
*food colouring

what to do
*Use an electric mixer to beat the butter until it is light and fluffy.
*Slowly add the icing sugar, beating all the while, until it tastes 'right' (ie, like icing, not soy-based margarine substitute)
* add peppermint essence, beat well.
*add food colouring, beat again.
*Smush on cake. I used a spoon and then a butter knife but it's up to you. Really.


EAT THEM!

Adventures in Cooking

As my friend Jenni says "I am NOT a Domestic Goddess".


In my case, people are even less likely to get confused than in hers, as I am also decidedly not a dab hand in the kitchen anyway. So after reading about all the additives in packet cake mixes it was with some nervousness that I resolved to try making cake from scratch from now on.
Australia Day presented the perfect opportunity to test out my caking abilities - with green and gold cakes! So I headed over to trusty Allrecipes and found this easy-peasy white cake mix recipe.


I'm happy to say the cake proved super easy to make, and just over an hour later I had two dozen tiny cupcakes, iced with peppermint butter icing. They were very well received, and went within about ten minutes.



I'm now wondering why on earth I've been using packets all these years - the recipe was just as easy, only required a little more measuring, not really any more time, and tastes so much better! I think I'm sold on the cake-making from scratch from now on, and am going to try tweaking the recipe a bit to make extra moist cake (extra plain yoghurt or sour cream?) or chocolate (choc bits or cocoa powder).