Cookbook Challenge: Week 30, Baked

Recipe: Molasses oatmeal loaf
From: Quick Breads

We're on to week 30 of the Cookbook Challenge, and the theme is "baked". Easy right?! For someone who does a lot of baking, this week's theme was great!

I was pretty keen to bake bread of some kind, but I ran out of time to do a proper loaf. Instead, I pulled out a book that has recipes for quick breads, and put together this loaf in just over an hour. It should have taken longer, but I didn't let the oats soak for the full 30 minutes - as soon as my oven had preheated I figured it was good enough.



The loaf is made with porridge oats, molasses or treacle (I used treacle), buttermilk and a mixture of wholemeal and white flour. And it is really good! The oats and wholemeal flour give a chewy, nutty, texture and flavour with a crisp crust. Because it has a mix of white and wholemeal flour, it's not too dense or heavy. When it came out of the oven, I couldn't wait for the loaf to cool completely before I cut a slice to taste. Bad, I know, but who can resist bread straight from the oven? Not me! It was great with butter (natch) and a second slice was also really good with honey. The third slice (ha!) saw the return of butter, but I do think a bit of sweetness works really well with this bread.

I'll definitely make it again. And I'm looking forward to eating the rest for breakfast tomorrow!

See previous Cookbook Challenge posts here.

Update: see the round up for this week at My Food Trail.



Molasses oatmeal loaf

From Quick Breads

Makes a medium loaf

2 tablespoons molasses/black treacle
300ml buttermilk
75g porridge oats
200g plain wholemeal flour
200g plain white flour
1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
1 teaspoon sea salt
25g unsalted butter, chilled and cut into cubes
1 large egg, beaten

a 450g loaf tin, well greased

Mix the molasses/treacle and buttermilk in a bowl and add the oats. Stir, and let it soak for 30 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 200°C.

In a separate bowl, stir together the flours, bicarbonate of soda and salt. Add the butter and rub it in, using the tips of your fingers until it looks like fine breadcrumbs.

Add the beaten egg and the soaked oats and mix well with a wooden spoon. It will be a very thick, heavy dough. Pour it into the greased tin and press it into a loaf shape.

Bake the loaf for 10 minutes, and then reduce the oven temperature to 180°C. Bake for a further 35 minutes.

Turn out on to a wire rack and let it cool completely before slicing.

Cookbook Challenge: Week 29, Blue

Recipe: Blueberry and pistachio muesli slice
From: Australian Women's Weekly "Bake"

For the Cookbook Challenge this week, the theme is "blue". And for the Challenge, I present "FAIL SLICE". What is fail slice? It's when you forget a vital ingredient when baking. Yes, major fail.

But let me tell you what it's supposed to be. I baked a slice for this week's theme - a blueberry and pistachio muesli slice. Sounds okay, right? The original recipe used cranberries, which I substituted with dried blueberries to fit with this week's theme.

It all started out fine. It's the easiest recipe to put together. Basically, it just involves melting sugar, butter and honey in a saucepan, and then adding the berries, oats, pistachios and self-raising flour. Oh yeah, unless you're me, and you just leave out the flour. Because why would a slice need flour?

Funnily enough, when I mixed it all together, I thought to myself, "I wonder if this is supposed to have flour in it?" Did that make me reread the recipe? Nope! I told myself it didn't, and put it in the oven!

In fact, I didn't realise my error until after the slice had been in the oven for almost 15 minutes and I realised it didn't quite look right.... and it was kind of burnt around the edges... and oh. Wait, what was that about flour again?

I am not sure what it tastes like. I'm sure if it's made properly, it'll taste great! Someone try it and let me know!



And since it's blue week, I'll leave you with a picture of Cookie Monster cupcakes. They didn't quite turn out the way I imagined them in my head - I certainly didn't imagine them looking so demented (and these are the good ones, seriously). The cupcakes are these vanilla cupcakes with the addition of crushed oreos in the batter and the face is made from fondant, with a mini chocolate chip cookie shoved in the mouth. Cookie, cookie, cookie!

See previous Cookbook Challenge posts here.

Update: see the round up for this week at My Food Trail.

Blueberry and pistachio muesli slice

Adapted from Australian Women's Weekly "Bake"

125g butter, chopped coarsely
1/3 cup (75g) firmly packed brown sugar
2 tablespoons honey
1& 1/2 cups (135g) rolled oats
1/2 cup (75g) self-raising flour
1 cup (130g) dried cranberries
1 cup (140g) roasted pistachios, chopped coarsely

Preheat oven to 180C and grease a 20cm x 30cm slice pan. Line the base of the pan with baking paper, extending it a couple of cms over the side.

In a medium saucepan, heat the butter, sugar and honey over medium heat until the sugar has dissolved. Stir in the remaining ingredients. Tip the mixture into the prepared slice pan and press firmly into it.

Bake for about 20 minutes and cool in the pan before cutting.

Cookbook Challenge: Week 27, Insect

Recipe: Carrot cupcakes
From: The Australian Women's Weekly "Bake"

The theme for this week's Cookbook Challenge is the most challenging one we've had yet - insect. YES INSECT! I racked my brain the whole week, trying to decide what to make.

In the end, I decided to bake something and decorate it to look like an insect. Carrot cake is one of my favourite cakes, so I decided to bake carrot cupcakes and make them into ladybirds. I made the carrot cakes on Saturday, doing so in a bit of a rush because we were heading out for dinner. I had an hour to do the baking from start to finish - but fortunately the recipe I chose was, with the help of a food processor, super quick and easy and I threw it together in 15 minutes.

Unfortunately, I made a rookie mistake and.......... forgot to put the eggs in the cake mixture............. Sheesh! It's not even the first time I've left eggs out of a cake - I am a fail baker sometimes. Without the eggs, the cupcakes tasted fine, but they didn't rise very much.

Today (Sunday) I did the decorating. It was a very time consuming job - it took me nearly two hours to do six cupcakes! But I think they turned out pretty cute. :) My inspiration for the cupcakes was this image on flickr. Mine weren't as polished, but it was my first time covering cupcakes with fondant (I've only made fondant toppers before - see here and here). If you're interested, here's how I made them:



To start with, I iced the cupcakes with a thin layer of lemon buttercream. I had a small amount of left over buttercream in the freezer - just enough for six cupcakes.



To colour the fondant, I used red and black gel paste food colouring.



I started off with the red fondant - this was for the body. I rolled out the fondant and then cut out circles that were about the same size as the cupcakes.


The circles of fondant were placed on top of the buttercream, and then I smoothed it down and around the buttercream with my fingers.



To make the black faces, I rolled out black fondant and cut out smaller circles. These circles were cut in half. I wet the back of one of the semi circles, and placed it at the edge of the cupcake.


I used my fingers to smooth and pull the straight edge of the black fondant down to the paper case, and cut off the corners that overlapped.



After all that, I was on the home stretch! I cut a line down the body, and then pasted on several small dots of black fondant for spots. I also pasted on some eyes and used a circle cutter to cut a smile into the face.



And - ta dah! All done! I was very pleased with the result. My biggest problem now is I can't bare to eat them - they're way too cute!

See previous Cookbook Challenge posts here

Update: See the round up at My Food Trail.



Carrot cupcakes

Adapted from AWW's Bake

Makes 12

1/2 cup (125ml) vegetable oil
3 eggs
1 & 1/2 cups (225g) self raising flour
1 cup (220g) firmly packed brown sugar
2 teaspoons cinnamon
2 cups (480g) firmly packed coarsely grated carrot
3/4 cup (90g) coarsely chopped roasted almonds (the book recommends pecans, but I only had almonds)

Preheat oven to 180°C. Line a 12 hole muffin pan with paper cases.

In a bowl, combine the oil, eggs, sifted flour, sugar and cinnamon. Stir in the carrot and chopped almonds. Spoon the mixture into the paper cases.

Bake for about 20-25 minutes, or until cooked. Let them stand for about 5 minutes, before placing on a wire rack to cool.

Top with your favourite frosting and to decorate as ladybirds - see above!

Cookbook Challenge: Week 26, Green

Recipe: Pandan Cupcakes & Green tea cupcakes
Adapted from: Primrose Bakery's Cupcakes

Wow, it's week 26 of the Cookbook Challenge - and you know what that means, don't you? We're half way through the challenge! The theme for this week is "green" and I really like these kind of themes because it's so open.

This week I really wanted to make something with green tea - but unfortunately I couldn't find any recipes in any of my cookbooks. So I decided I would bake cupcakes and adapt a recipe for my purposes.



For the cupcakes, I thought that using matcha powder would be best. However, when I went to the Asian grocery store I couldn't find it anywhere. Fortunately, I came across a bottle of pandan extract. Perfect - for green week AND cupcakes!



For the pandan cupcakes, I followed a recipe for vanilla cupcakes, but substituted pandan extract for the vanilla extract. The extract was really green, but I wasn't sure how strong the colour would be after baking so I added a few drops of green colouring - it was for green week, after all!



For the frosting, I made pandan flavoured buttercream, piping it on in a rose shape. I didn't really think it through - green roses?? Maybe I should have tried piping leaves!

Taste wise, I didn't think that much of the cupcakes. I wish I had used this recipe for vanilla cupcakes which I have always had great success with. I found these cupcakes a bit dry, and they weren't as fluffy as I would have liked. But the pandan in them was lovely - giving a vanilla-ish, nutty fragrance. I would definitely try using the pandan extract in cakes/cupcakes again, with other recipes.



For the green tea cupcakes, since I couldn't find any matcha, I tried infusing milk with green tea. This didn't work as well as I had hoped - when they were warm and not frosted, there was a faint taste of green tea But when they were cold and with buttercream on top, I couldn't detect it at all.

Oh well! I'll have to get my hands on matcha and have another go. Now, who wants some cupcakes??

See previous Cookbook Challenge posts here.

Update: See the round up at My Food Trail.



Pandan cupcakes

Adapted from the vanilla cupcake recipe in Primrose Bakery's Cupcakes

Makes 12 cupcakes

110g unsalted butter, softened
225g caster sugar
2 large eggs
150g self-raising flour, sifted
125g plain flour, sifted
120ml milk, at room temperature
1 teaspoon pandan extract

Preheat the oven to 180°C and line a 12 hole cupcake tin with cupcake wrappers.

In a large mixing bowl, cream the butter for several minutes with an electric mixer. Gradually add the sugar, beating well between additions, until the mixture is pale and fluffy.

Add the eggs one at a time, mixing for a few minutes after each addition.

Add a third of the flours to the butter mixture and beat on low speed. Add a third of the milk and beat again. Repeat these steps until all the flour and milk have been added. Add the pandan extract and beat until just combined.

Spoon the mixture into the cupcakes cases. Bake for about 25 minutes, or until cooked.

Remove from the oven and place on a wire rack to cool. When completely cool, ice with pandan flavoured buttercream - see recipe below.



Green tea cupcakes

Adapted from the Earl grey cupcake recipe in Primrose Bakery's Cupcakes

Makes 12 cupcakes

125ml milk, at room temperature
4 teaspoons of green tea leaves (I used sencha)
110g unsalted butter, softened
225g caster sugar
2 large eggs
150g self-raising flour, sifted
125g plain flour, sifted

Preheat the oven to 180°C and line a 12 hole cupcake tin with cupcake wrappers.

In a saucepan, heat the milk over medium heat until it just begins to boil. Remove from the heat and add the green tea leaves. Leave to infuse for about 30 minutes. Once infused, strain the milk into a measuring jug. You may need to top up the amount of milk, so do that if necessary.

In a large mixing bowl, cream the butter for several minutes with an electric mixer. Gradually add the sugar, beating well between additions, until the mixture is pale and fluffy.

Add the eggs one at a time, mixing for a few minutes after each addition.

Add a third of the flours to the butter mixture and beat on low speed. Add a third of the milk and beat again. Repeat these steps until all the flour and milk have been added.

Spoon the mixture into the cupcakes cases. Bake for about 25 minutes, or until cooked.

Remove from the oven and place on a wire rack to cool. When completely cool, ice with vanilla flavoured buttercream.




Pandan buttercream


Makes enough for 12 cupcakes

250 grams unsalted butter, cut into cubes and very, very soft
3 cups sifted icing sugar
2 tablespoons milk
1 teaspoon pandan extract

Beat the butter in an electric mixer on high until it is very pale and fluffy.

Gradually add the icing sugar (I do this a tablespoon at a time), beating well between additions. Beat until the buttercream is very fluffy - about 5-6 minutes.

Heat the milk in the microwave until it's very warm. Add to the butter cream and beat on high for another couple of minutes. Add the pandan extract and mix to combine. Pipe on top of the cupcakes.

Cookbook Challenge: Week 24, Chocolate

Recipe: Spicy chocolate cookies
From: The Golden Book of Chocolate

Second recipe: Mexican chicken mole
From: The Golden Book of Chocolate


We're on week 24 of the Cookbook Challenge and the theme this week is chocolate. I decided to crack open a book that Bro gave me a while ago - the Golden Book of Chocolate - and make two recipes. One sweet, and one savoury. Oh yes, savoury!

Let's start with the sweet. I LOVE chilli and chocolate together, so I decided to make spicy chocolate cookies (biscuits? let's stick with cookies). As I was baking these cookies, I realised why I don't make cookies often. Because I don't find it rewarding! The batch of cookies used 250g of chocolate as one of the ingredients and I only made 19 cookies! C'mon! For that amount of chocolate I could have had a massive chocolate cake, such as the best chocolate cake ever.



That aside, what did I think of the cookies? I made a couple of changes to the recipe - rather than using coffee liqueur I opted for strong espresso, and instead of chocolate chips I dug out some cocoa nibs that I had in the pantry. I'm glad I didn't use chocolate chips because OH MY GOD these things were sweet! Mostly, I blame the inclusion of raisins - why oh why oh why with the raisins? If I felt like making these again I would definitely leave out the raisins. I would also up the amount of chilli flakes, they were only very faintly spicy and could have used a bit more punchiness.

Or perhaps I might just bake a cake next time. :)



On to the savoury - the second recipe was a Mexican (inspired) chicken mole. Having never eaten a proper mole before, I wasn't entirely sure what to expect. What can I say about this? It was weird and I'm sure that it was the recipe's/my fault as I have no doubt that a proper and authentic mole would be rather delicious. My main issue with my mole was due to an oily aftertaste I thought I could detect. The recipe asked for a cup of breadcrumbs, and I'm sure that the aftertaste was due to the breadcrumbs. I should've used better quality breadcrumbs! Oh well. As for the inclusion of chocolate, the dish didn't taste like chocolate - it just seemed to add an interesting dimension to the sauce. I would really like to try a proper mole one day.

Anyway, enough of that. Let's have a look at the cookies again, shall we?



Ahh. That's better.

See previous Cookbook Challenge posts here.

Update: see the round up at My Food Trail.



Spicy chocolate cookies

Adapted from The Golden Book of Chocolate

Makes about 18 cookies

2/3 cup (100g) plain flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes (or more if you're feeling brave - do it!)
1/8 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup (60g) raisins (highly recommend that you leave this out!)
2 tablespoons strong coffee
250g dark chocolate, coarsely chopped
1/4 cup (60g) butter
2 large eggs
3/4 cup (150g) caster sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1/2 cup (90g) cocoa nibs (or chocolate chips)

Preheat the oven to 180°C and line a baking tray with baking paper.

Heat the raisins and coffee in a small saucepan (or in the microwave).

Place the chocolate and butter in a heat proof bowl over a pot of simmering water until melted. Set aside to cool.

In an electric mixer, beat the eggs and sugar at high speed until very pale and creamy (about 5 minutes).

Add the chocolate mixture and vanilla extract to the eggs, and mix at medium speed.

Add the flour, baking powder, red pepper flakes and salt to the mixer and beat on low speed. Add the raisin mixture and cocoa nibs (or chocolate chips) and mix until combined. It will be a very wet, thick batter/dough.

Drop tablespoons of the dough a couple of centimetres apart on the prepared baking tray. Bake for 10-12 minutes, until risen slightly.

Let the cookies cool on the baking tray for about 5 minutes before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely.



Mexican inspired chicken mole

From The Golden Book of Chocolate

Serves 4

1.3kg chicken pieces
1 onion, peeled and cut into quarters
4 tablespoons blanched almonds
2 tablespoons sesame seeds
2 tablespoons raisins
3 black peppercorns
1 clove
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
2 teaspoons red chilli paste
2/3 cup water
1 onion, finely chopped
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
3 tomatoes, peeled and chopped
1 cup fine dry breadcrumbs
1 tablespoon sunflower oil
30g dark chocolate
salt and pepper

In a large pot, place the chicken pieces, the quartered onion, and enough water to cover. Bring to the boil and let it simmer until cooked - about 30 minutes should do the trick. Remove the chicken and strain the liquid into a bowl, setting aside for later. Cut the chicken into bite sized pieces, discarding the skin.

Place the chicken in a large oven proof bowl and set aside. Preheat the oven to 180°C.

In a dry frying pan, toast the almonds and sesame seeds until lightly browned. Transfer to a mortar and pestle with the raisins, peppercorns, clove and cinnamon and crush until finely ground. Transfer the mixture to a food processor, along with the chile paste, water, chopped onion, garlic, tomatoes and breadcrumbs and process until smooth.

Heat a frying pan over medium heat and saute the processed mixture for about 5 minutes. In a separate saucepan, add 2/3 cup of the reserved stock and the chocolate. Stir over a low heat until melted.

Add the chocolate mixture to the sauteed mixture and season well with salt and pepper. Pour the sauce over the chicken, and place in the oven, baking for about 30 minutes. Serve hot.

Cookbook Challenge: Week 20, Tangy

Recipe: Rhubarb Yoghurt muffins
Cookbook: Vegetarian cooking, a commonsense guide

The theme for this week's Cookbook Challenge is "tangy", and first up I must make a confession. I cheated this week - I actually made these muffins last week! I was going to make a fresh recipe for the theme this week, but in keeping with our long weekend tradition we did some more house painting on Good Friday (our bedroom and our ensuite). It looks fantastic, but painting seems to suck all the energy from me for the rest of the weekend and I couldn't muster up the motivation to do anything today!

A colleague of mine gave me some rhubarb from her garden, and I used them in these muffins last weekend. I love it when people give me food - particularly when they have grown it themselves! Coincidentally, the muffins fit with the tangy theme - since they had rhubarb and yoghurt in them.



The original recipe made a large cake, but I made small cakes instead. I'm calling them muffins because the rather thick batter is mixed like a muffin rather than a cake - but the texture of them is very cake-like, similar to a butter cake. They look quite flat, but they were very good and moist. The original recipe called for a tablespoon of rose water, which I halved because I was worried that it would be too soapy. Half a tablespoon gave them a faint, sweet, fragrance that went really well with the rhubarb. I think I worried needlessly, a whole tablespoon probably would've been fine!

I gave a couple of muffins to my colleague, and she has promised me more rhubarb in the future. Sounds good to me!

See previous Cookbook Challenge posts here.

Update: See the round up for this week at My Food Trail.



Rhubarb and yoghurt muffins

Adapted from: Vegetarian cooking, a commonsense guide

150g finely sliced rhubarb (plus a couple of stems, thinly sliced, for decoration)
250g caster sugar
310g self-raising flour
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 eggs, lightly beaten
125g plain yoghurt
1 tablespoon rosewater
125g unsalted butter, melted

Preheat the oven to 180°C. Lightly grease a 12 cup muffin tin.

In a bowl, mix together the rhubarb and sugar. Sift the flour over, and mix into the rhubarb mixture. Stir in the vanilla, egg, yoghurt, rosewater and butter until just combined (the mixture will be very thick).

Spoon the batter into the muffin trays, and decorate with the extra pieces of rhubarb. Bake for about 20 minutes, or until a skewer inserted into the muffins comes out clean.

Remove from the oven and turn out on to a wire rack to cool.

Cookbook Challenge: Week 15, Muffins

Recipe: Citrus poppy seed muffins
Cookbook: Australian Women's Weekly "Bake"

The theme for the Cookbook Challenge last week was "muffins", so I turned to the trusty AWW Bake as it has a whole chapter on muffins. Despite the entire chapter, nothing really took my fancy. Perhaps there's still a lingering obsession with cupcakes, and muffins just seem unrefined and boring by comparison?

In Bake, there were a lot of recipes for savoury muffins, but I had already decided I wanted to make sweet ones. There were also quite a few recipes with berries and banana, neither of which I wanted to use. In the end, I finally decided on citrus poppy seed muffins. It was a pretty good choice because it's a really easy recipe to put together. All the ingredients get thrown into an electric mixer and voila! Muffin batter! I think it took me longer to line the muffin trays with baking paper.



As you can see in the pictures, these have quite a cakey texture, unlike most other muffins. They definitely need a good amount of citrus rind - don't skimp on the rind if you make them. It's also far too easy to over bake them. Mine tasted okay when they were warm from the oven, but the next day they seemed a bit dry. Ahh well. It was okay when washed down with a cup of tea but I'm not sure if they're good enough to warrant another try. So many muffins in the world, and so little time!

Update: See the round up at My Food Trail.



Citrus poppy seed muffins

From Australian Women's Weekly "Bake"

Makes 12 regular sized muffins (I got 8 large ones out of the batter)

125g butter softened
6 teaspoons finely grated assorted citrus rind eg lemon, lime and orange
2/3 cup (150g) caster sugar
2 eggs
2 cups (300g) self-raising flour
1/2 cup (125ml) milk
2 tablespoons poppyseeds

Preheat oven to 200°C. Grease a 12 hole muffin pan.

In an electric mixer, beat the butter, citrus rind, sugar, eggs, flour and milk until combined. Increase the speed to medium and beat until the colour of the mixture is paler. Stir in the poppyseeds and spoon the mixture into the muffin tin.

Bake for about 20 minutes or until a skewer in the middle comes out clean. Stand the muffins int he pan for 5 minutes, and then tip out on to a wire rack to cool.

Cookbook Challenge: Week 13, Love

Kindly ignore the big crack in my cake, thank you.

Recipe: Moist chocolate beetroot cake
From: Nigel Slater's Tender

Oh, it's Valentine's Day! And Chinese New Year! Rather aptly, this week's theme for the Cookbook Challenge is "love" and this week I'm breaking out a Nigel Slater recipe because I love his book, Tender. and I love his writing.

This week I made a moist, chocolate beetroot cake, which also fits in with the theme because beetroots are red, and red is the colour of luuuuuuuuuuurve. Additionally, everyone loves chocolate, and any people who are non-chocolate lovers are not worth knowing (only kidding, you non-chocolate lovers! I still love you!).



The first step to making this cake is to cook some beetroots until soft. Once that is done, it's no more difficult to put together than any other moist chocolate cake (unless you're particularly clumsy and are at risk of staining your kitchen red!). There are some strange steps in the recipe that I didn't quite understand - 200g of chocolate is melted in a bowl over a pot of simmering water, but the recipe specifies not to stir it. Later, once the chocolate is almost melted (but not stirred!), hot espresso is poured over, and butter is added. This is left to soften, and then it is stirred later. Why is this? Why can't the chocolate and butter be melted together and stirred? If there's a good reason for it, I'd like to know!

The other part that confused me is the egg whites. In the recipe, the egg whites are whipped until stiff, and then sugar is folded into the whites. This is then added into the chocolate mixture, and finally the flour is folded in. Most cake recipes have you fold in the egg whites last, so you don't lose the air that you so carefully whipped in. In the end, I deviated from the recipe and folded my egg whites through last. But if there is a good reason for the former method, I would like to know what it is!



I don't think my folding through the egg whites last affected my cake negatively. I also baked it for a bit longer than the recipe specified and it still seemed to come out fine, if you ignore the big ass crack. Nigel says about this cake: "This is a seductive cake, deeply moist and tempting."

It is moist, indeed. Really, really moist. But anyone who tells you that you can't taste the beetroot in it is a big fat liar. I didn't think that the beetroot was "subtle or elusive", I thought that it screamed beetroot. The cake is a very dark purple brown, unlike plain chocolate cake, and the beetroot added an earthy, tanginess to it that I was unsure about. Nevertheless, even though I didn't think I particularly liked it, I found that I went back for another spoonful... and another... and another.

Hmmpt. Perhaps that's why it was described as seductive. Happy Valentine's Day everyone.

Update: I ate a piece of cake the day after I baked it, and the beetroot wasn't as pronounced. It's moist like a mud cake, but didn't seem as heavy. So I've decided that this cake is REALLY REALLY REALLY good! In fact, I think it's one of the best chocolate cakes I've ever made.

See previous Cookbook Challenge posts here.

Update: see the round up at My Food Trail.



If you'd like to make this cake - check out the recipe here. PS: the cake photo on the website is NOT of the chocolate beetroot cake. It's a beetroot seed cake in the book.

Bagels

Note: This is a scheduled post - Alastair and I are currently in Hong Kong and will be back home soon. Normal programming will resume shortly!

At my old job, I had a terrible habit of not taking breakfast to work, and buying breakfast at the cafe in our building. I also had a bad habit of taking breakfast into work, not eating it, and buying something instead. Gaaah.

Finally, something clicked, and I realised I was doing this because I didn’t like what I had planned for breakfast! I kept buying bagels for breakfast, and "ding ding" I realised that I could just make my own.

So I did! And they were awesome. They were very chewy, which I do like, but due to the chewiness I preferred them toasted rather than fresh. I stashed several in the freezer for future breakfasts.

The recipe says that when the bagels are put into the water for boiling, they should sink first and then rise back to the surface. Mine all floated – and rather annoying, there was nothing to indicate how to make them more “bagely” so they would sink. And for some reason, when they came out of the water, they were all lumpy! So not very attractive, but I managed to hide the lumpiness with sesame seeds and poppy seeds.



Bagels

The recipe is from here. I have rewritten it to make it easier to follow, but I recommend you read it through because it has some useful tips.

6-8 cups bread flour
4 tablespoons instant yeast
6 tablespoons sugar or light honey
2 teaspoons salt
3 cups hot water
Vegetable oil
Water for boiling
3-5 tablespoons malt syrup or sugar
A few handfuls of cornmeal (I used fine polenta)

Pour 3 cups of warm water in a large bowl. Stir in the sugar or honey. Sprinkle the yeast over and stir to dissolve. Set it aside for 10 minutes.

After 10 minutes, the yeast should be nice and foamy (if this doesn’t happen, start again with new yeast!). Add 3 cups of flour as well as the salt to the yeast mixture and start mixing it in. Add more flour, half a cup at a time, mixing each addition thoroughly before adding more. Eventually, it will become a stiff dough (you may not need all the flour).

Turn out on to a clean, dry countertop and knead until it is smooth and elastic. It should be heavy and stiffer than a normal bread dough.

Place the dough in a lightly oiled bowl and cover it with a damp kitchen towel. Leave the bowl in a dry, warm place and leave it to rise until it is doubled in volume (I left mine for a couple of hours).

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F. When the dough has risen, get the boiling water ready. Get a large pot and fill it with a generous amount of water. Put it on high heat and let the water come to the boil. When it reaches a boil, add the syrup or sugar and turn down the heat so the water barely simmers.

Turn out your dough on to a clean work surface, punch it down, and divide into about 16 even-sized pieces. To form the bagels, shape the dough into a long cylindrical snake shape. Wrap it around a rolling pin, push the two ends together to join, and then roll the bagel up and down the rolling pin to smooth out the sides.

When all the bagels are formed, let them rest for 10 minutes. They will rise slightly, ideally by about 1/4th volume.

One by one, drop the bagels into the pot of simmering water. Only have two or three bagels in the water at a time – and they will puff up so watch out for it. The bagels should sink first and then flat to the top. Let the bagel simmer for three minutes then turn it over and simmer for another three minutes.

Lift the bagel out of the water and set on to a clean kitchen towel. The bagels should be shiny, due to the malt syrup/sugar in the boiling water.

When all the bagels have been boiled, sprinkle baking trays with cornmeal. Arrange the bagels on top, put them in the oven, and bake for about 25 minutes. Turn them over and bake for another 10 minutes. This helps to prevent flat bottomed bagels.

Remove from the oven and let them cool completely on wire racks before slicing.

Vanilla vanilla cupcakes

Note: This is a scheduled post - Alastair and I are currently on holiday!

When I told Twinsy that I was interested in making vanilla cupcakes, she lent me her Crapapple Bakery cupcake cookbook and told me to try the vanilla cupcake recipe. The book says that the vanilla cupcake is the biggest seller at the bakery. After making them, I can see why!

The cupcakes are really light and fluffy - even when it’s still at the batter stage you can tell how fluffy they're going to be. I don’t like cakes and desserts to be too sweet, and these fit the bill. They’re not too sweet, they’re fluffy, and they have a strong vanilla flavour. They're really, really good.



On top of the cupcakes is a vanilla buttercream. I didn’t follow the buttercream recipe from the Crabapple Bakery cookbook though – just reading the recipe made my teeth ache because it asks for 8 cups of icing sugar for about 200g of butter (For comparison, the recipe I use has 3 cups of sugar for 225g of butter and it is definitely sweet enough for me!).

The recipe makes a large amount - I made about 28 cupcakes out of one batch. If you don't want to make as many, try halving the recipe, although I'm sure you wouldn't have any problems sharing them amongst friends if you made the full batch. I must stress again how good they are – the best cupcakes I’ve ever made according to my friend Rukiye.



On my last day at my old job, I took a batch of mini cupcakes into work for my colleagues. I halved the recipe and managed to get 47 mini cupcakes. I thought they were very cute and they went down a treat. :)



Vanilla cupcakes

From the Crabapple Bakery Cupcake Cookbook

Makes 24 cupcakes

2 & 3/4 cups plain flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
200g unsalted butter - softened
1 & 3/4 cups caster sugar
4 eggs
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
1 cup milk

Preheat oven to 170°C. Line two 12-hole muffin trays with liners.

In an electric mixer, cream the butter on high for a couple of minutes until pale and fluffy. Add the caster sugar a third at a time, beating for several minutes before the next addition.

When the mixture is light and fluffy, add the eggs one at a time, beating on medium for a minute after each one. Add the vanilla extract and beat until combined.

Add the flour and milk alternately to the butter mixture in several batches and beat on low speed until just combined.

Spoon mixture into the cupcake liners and bake for 18-20 minutes or until an inserted skewer comes out clean. Remove from the trays immediately and let cool completely on a wire rack before icing/frosting.

Vanilla buttercream

Thanks to Maria

250 grams unsalted butter, cut into cubes and very, very soft
3 cups sifted icing sugar
2 tablespoons milk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Beat the butter in an electric mixer on high until it is very pale and fluffy.

Gradually add the icing sugar (I do this a tablespoon at a time), beating well between additions. Beat until the buttercream is very fluffy - about 5-6 minutes.

Heat the milk in the microwave until it's very warm. Add to the butter cream and beat on high for another couple of minutes. Add the vanilla extract and mix to combine. Pipe on top of the cupcakes.

Lemon meringue cupcakes

After all the cupcaking over the past month, you would think that I would want to take a break from cupcake baking. Erm... nope! After reading Maria's post, lemon meringue cupcakes have been on my "to bake" list for a while... a rather long while, I'm afraid. But I finally got around to it last weekend - and now I wonder why it took me so long!

I started off making the lemon curd, following a recipe that I found on taste.com.au (I have rewritten the overly complicated recipe below – there is enough curd there to make two batches of cupcakes). Next I baked the cupcakes, which is fairly easy, and waited for them to cool before I tackled the meringue. The meringue required a sugar thermometer and a stand mixer to make, but the end result was light, delicate, and delicious. I confess to eating rather a lot of meringue.... erm, let's just say
I was cleaning the beaters prior to washing up. Finally, after I had gorged on enough meringue, the cupcakes were assembled - I cut a small hole in the middle of each one, filled the holes with lemon curd, and then piped the meringue on top. Alastair expertly blow torched the meringue for me (and we won't discuss how he set a couple on fire!).

And the result? Ohmygod! They were amazing - heaven in a mini cake form. The cupcakes were really moist, and delightful with the gooey, sourish lemon curd and sweet fluffy meringue on top. Swoon!

If you like lemon based desserts, try these. It may seem like a lot of effort, but it's totally worth it!



For the cupcakes, see cuisine.com.au for the recipe.


Basic lemon curd

Adapted from taste.com.au

2 tsp finely grated lemon rind
½ cup lemon juice
200g caster sugar
3 x 60g eggs, at room temperature, lightly beaten
100g unsalted butter, cut into 1cm cubes

This recipe makes more than you’ll need for 12 cupcakes so have a sterilised jar handy for the rest of the lemon curd (if you need instructions for sterilising a jar, go to the original recipe).


Place the lemon juice and sugar in a stainless steel bowl placed over a saucepan of simmering water. Stir to combine.

Pour the eggs through a sieve into a separate bowl, and use a wooden spoon to gently push the egg through.

Add the strained eggs to the juice and sugar mixture. Mix to combine. Bring the water to a gentle simmer and stir the mixture for about 20 minutes or until it thickens and thinly coats the back of the wooden spoon.

Remove the bowl from the pot and add the butter, a couple of pieces at a time, stirring until the butter melts and mixture is combined.

When you have stirred in all the butter, add the lemon rind and pour into sterilised jars. Cool to room temperature before storing in the fridge.

Chocolate Guinness Cupcakes with chocolate whisky ganache and Baileys buttercream

Hooray! After weeks of practice cupcake baking, the Cupcake Challenge is finally here! (Quick recap - today is the RSPCA Cupcake Day. We are participating at work with a little bake off, with all proceeds going to the RSPCA.)

As soon as I saw these cupcakes on Hold the Beef, I knew immediately that I wanted to make them for the Challenge. Because - well just listen to the description - a chocolate Guinness cupcake, filled with a chocolate and whiskey ganache, and topped with Baileys buttercream... swoon!



I baked a practice batch a couple of weeks ago, and discovered that the cupcakes were as delicious as they sounded. You can't taste any alcohol in the cupcakes, but the Guinness does seem to add something that I can't describe. There's no bitterness from the stout - most likely because there's two cups of sugar in the recipe! I've heard chocolate Guinness cake being described as very rich, but in cupcake form it's moist and not at all heavy. The other bonus of the Guinness is that you get more than a cup of liquid in a can, so you can drink the rest while you bake the cupcakes!



The middle of the cupcakes are filled with a chocolate whiskey ganache. I know, it couldn't possibly get any more decadent.



For the Cupcake Challenge, I also made fondant toppers. I made ducks, penguins, little cupcakes, sheep heads, bunnies and bumblebees. I actually purchased some Playdoh to practice with before making these! Fondant doesn't have exactly the same consistency as Playdoh (it's softer) but I found that practicing with Playdoh still helped a lot.

I was quite pleased with how the fondant toppers turned out - I think my favourites are the sheep heads and maybe the bunnies.

(The toppers aren't on the cupcakes because I didn't want to put them on until the last minute.

So what do you think? Do you reckon I have a fighting chance in the Cupcake Challenge?



Chocolate Guinness cupcakes with chocolate whiskey ganache and Baileys buttercream

Adapted from Hold the Beef, and originally from Smitten Kitchen

I have adapted some of the measures to metric but not all of them. I know that you're not supposed to have a combination of weight and volume measurements in a recipe, but that's the way I bake. The buttercream recipe is thanks to Maria who has been unbelievably helpful in all things cupcake!

For the cupcakes:

1 cup Guinness
225 grams unsalted butter
3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
2 cups plain flour, sifted
2 cups caster sugar
1 & 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
3/4 teaspoon salt
2 large eggs (I used 3 eggs, as mine were small)
2/3 cup sour cream

Preheat the oven to 180°C. Line 24 cupcake cups with liners. (The first batch of these I baked, I managed to get 28 cupcakes. With the second batch I made larger cupcakes and only got 18.)

In a saucepan, heat the Guinness and unsalted butter until simmering. Turn off the heat and whisk in the cocoa powder until smooth. Set aside to cool slightly.

In a separate bowl, combine the flour, sugar, baking soda and salt.

In a mixer, beat together the eggs and sour cream. Add the Guinness mixture, and beat to just combine.

Add the flour mixture, and beat briefly on a slow speed until combined.

Spoon into the cupcake liners, and bake for about 17 minutes, or until a skewer comes out clean. Cool on a wire rack.

For the ganache:

230 grams good quality dark chocolate, chopped in rough pieces
2/3 cup thickened cream
30 grams butter, room temperature
2 teaspoons Irish whiskey (or more to taste - I used double this quantity and would still have been happy with more!)

Either melt the chocolate and cream in a double boiler, or do what I do and put the chocolate and cream in a microwavable bowl. Microwave in 30 second bursts, stirring between bursts, until melted. Add the butter and whiskey, and stir until combined. Set aside to cool slightly.

Filling the cupcakes:

When the cupcakes are cool, use a small knife and cut cone shaped chunks out of the middle of the cupcakes, making sure that you don't cut all the way to the bottom (the other recipes say to use an apple corer or biscuit cutter but I found it easier to just use a knife). Eat the cupcake middles as you go and remember that the bigger holes you make, the more you get to eat! Spoon the ganache into the cupcake holes and fill them to the top.

For the Baileys buttercream

250 grams unsalted butter, cut into cubes and at room temperature
3 cups sifted icing sugar
2 tablespoons Baileys

Beat the butter in an electric mixer on high until it is very pale and fluffy.

Gradually add the icing sugar (I do this a tablespoon at a time), beating well between additions. Beat until the buttercream is very fluffy - about 5-6 minutes.

Heat the Baileys in the microwave until it's very warm. Add to the butter cream and beat on high for another couple of minutes. Pipe on top of the cupcakes.