Caramel and Walnut Brioche Scrolls

Caramel and Walnut Brioche Scrolls
Home Cooking

I can't even remember the last time I published a home cooking post. It's not that I don't cook at home anymore (although I admit that is a factor) but when I do cook, I'm very much a home cook and tend to chuck whatever I have in the fridge/pantry into a pot or pan at unspecified quantities. The end result tends to be quite tasty but nothing worth blogging about.

Pistachio Macarons

Pistachio Macarons
Home Cooking

Following the success of my French chocolate macarons, I became overconfident and assumed I could just whip them up without thinking. This lead to at least 3 sloppy batches and many dollars worth of wasted almond meal and icing sugar. I was wailing about my domestic failings to Jenny when she put me in my place. Macarons are NOT to be simply 'whipped up'. They are temperamental. They require planning and precision.

I don't know if the chocolate ones were just a fluke or if it was indeed an easier recipe to get right but I didn't want to take any more chances when it came to other flavours. My goal was to bake the perfect pistachio macaron and when I accidentally purchased $25 of pistachios, it became even more critical that I didn't screw this lot up.

French Chocolate Macarons

French Chocolate Macarons
Home Cooking

Macarons make me so sad. I've attempted them nearly 10 times and this one batch was the only one that worked. I haven't tried the same recipe again but I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest this recipe is easier to pull off than others. I'm a huge fan of David Lebovitz and I found this recipe for chocolate macarons on his blog. The content was reassuring to someone like me who had many failed previous attempts.

The theory is that chocolate macarons are a good place to start for the uninitiated because the cocoa acts as a stabilizer. Much of what makes macarons so temperamental relates to the moisture content of the mixture. There is a real science to baking them and when you start researching macaron recipes, you'll come across advice that range from chemistry lab-like to voodoo witchcraft.

In David's blog post, he trials many of these suggestions and discovers that for his particular recipe at least, they are not necessary.

Caramel Cookie Slice

Caramel Cookie Slice
Home Cooking 

I would be in no way exaggerating if I said that I've done more cooking in the past few months than I have in all of 2014. That's the Christmas period for you. Not that I'm complaining. Unlike people who have to cook for a household out of necessity, I only do it when I find a recipe I want to create. Cooking is a only a hobby on the side for me and because of that, I thoroughly enjoy it. I know that if it became a daily chore, the novelty would grow old fast.

Marc's workplace had a Christmas morning tea a while back so I was given the task of baking a contribution. I shuffled some mad scientist creations in my head (rum and raisin slice with coffee buttercream frosting was tossed up at one point) but ended up going with something easy and safe. I found this recipe for caramel cookie slice in Nick Malgieri's "The Modern Baker" one of my favourite, most used cookbooks of all time. Unlike some of the adventurous recipes in the book, this seemed exceptionally easy.

Gingerbread Cupcakes

Gingerbread Cupcakes
Home Cooking

Thanks to my overestimate of the amount of cream cheese frosting required to top my banana cake, I had a whole container's worth left to use. I started looking for alternative things to eat with cream cheese frosting. Carrot cake and red velvet cupcakes are obvious choices but I then found the less conventional suggestion of cream cheese paired with gingerbread. Thus, my gingerbread cupcakes were born.

The original recipe is for gingerbread cupcakes with molasses cream cheese frosting. Obviously, since I was aiming to use up my frosting, I wasn't about to make up a new batch. If you want molasses cream cheese frosting for your cupcakes, feel free to click the original link. Alternatively, if you like plain cream cheese frosting and need a refresher course on how to whip some together, I've included a recipe here that should provide the right amount. 

Christmas Biscotti

Christmas Biscotti
Home Cooking

Marc and I have spent the last couple of months painstakingly putting together our new apartment. Items of furniture, appliances, tableware and decorations have gradually arrived and each added a sense of home to the apartment. One of the last items to get here was our TV. It is a perfect example of our materialistic society that two people who don't watch TV and already owned a TV felt it necessary to purchase one just because the entertainment unit looked bare without.

Banana Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting

Banana Cake with Cream Cheese FrostingHome Cooking

Tis the season to be eating. Whilst I'm not much of a domestic goddess these days (not in the kitchen anyway; if ironing and picking up after the males of my life count then I am well into godliness) there is something about Christmas that puts the baking spirit in me. I find myself brainstorming recipes at work and sectioning off my weekends according to what I should bake/bring to which events. It may sound stressful to some but to me, I'm embracing the chance to touch up my baking skills.

Marc and I try to be healthy most of the time but I believe it'll be increasingly difficult until after Christmas. I'm sure that's why new years resolutions were invented. In any case, I don't make things any easier by all the baking I've been doing. One of my projects last weekend was a banana cake. I absolutely adore banana bread. If I could eat anything I wanted without putting on weight, it would be a staple in my diet. I've whipped up a large number of banana loaves and cakes for this blog.

Gingerbread Men

Gingerbread Men
Home Cooking

It's been a long time since I've done any kind of cooking. Between working in Toowoomba, rushing to Brisbane on weekends and trying to keep a relatively healthy diet, I've omitted dessert production from my range of weekly activities. Christmas is one of those times in a year (along with birthdays) that reliably knock down any premises of self-control. It's a time for indulgence.

As well as (literally) opening up to an array of glorious food and decadent snacks provided by others over the 3 days (Christmas Eve to Boxing Day), I dusted off my own kitchen hands and decided to do a spot of baking. Christmas-themed desserts are plentiful but I kept it simple because I had to transport ingredients and equipment the 2hrs from Toowoomba to bake at mum and dad's house. Marc's keen on gingerbread and they're suggestive of the holiday season so I decided to make a batch of gingerbread men.

Sugar Free Coconut and Macadamia Paleo Muffins

Sugar Free Coconut and Macadamia Paleo Muffins
Home Cooking

I talked about my quest to go sugar-free for 8 weeks in an earlier post. Today's write up is an extension of that. I mentioned briefly my view that reducing/cutting sugar is sure to have some positive effect but that reducing carbohydrates as a whole would introduce further health benefits. Again, there is a lot of back chatter so if you're just after the recipe, skip to the end of this dialogue.

Cutting back sugar has been EASY for me. I never drank soft drink or fruit juice. I don't really enjoy processed snacks. All I had to do was substitute fruit for nuts. What has been a huge challenge for me is eliminating bread from my diet. I don't like rice or noodles but bread is a staple for me. On my first week of going sugar-free, I was nearly downing 4 slices a day. That's when I realized that just cutting sugar didn't automatically mean improved diet. Complex carbohydrates were getting the better of me.

Activated Nuts and Coco-nutty Granola

Activated Nuts and Coco-nutty Granola
Home Cooking

There's a lot of nutritional mumbo jumbo in this post about the theory of cutting sugar from one's diet and my opinions on it. If you're interested, read on. If you just want to know how to make delicious sugar-free nuts to eat at breakfast time or as a snack, skip to the recipe at the bottom.

Mochi, my friend and past regular on this blog has turned into a health fanatic. She's my idol! I'm totally inspired by her and wish I had her willpower. She told me a while back about how she was trying to cut out sugar from her diet. This seemed pretty intuitive until she mentioned that fruit was also out. I often eat fruit as an alternative to dessert to cut sugar cravings so for me, this was terrible news. I also found it non-sensical that fruit would ever be considered our enemy. I wrote it off as a quack theory and continued along my normal diet.

Just last week, I was roaming the internet when I stumbled across Sarah Wilson's blog and her plight against sugar. I started reading... and read enough to download her eBook 'I Quit Sugar'. What grabbed me the most was that she described herself as a past sugar addict who didn't appear to be a sugar addict. She had a seemingly 'healthy' diet, substituting honey instead of sugar, avoiding most processed foods and so on. It was reflective of my own diet and intrigued, I read more.

Salmon and Cream Cheese Ribbon Sandwiches

Salmon and Cream Cheese Ribbon Sandwiches
Home Cooking

I can't remember which day it was this week that I suddenly developed a craving for NY bagels. Marc only eats smoked salmon in sushi form and has a personal vendetta against bagels (they're too chewy? That's the point!) so he couldn't understand the appeal. I tried to make a point by point argument for it but in the end decided it was easier to make the damn thing and demonstrate. I didn't wind up doing that (forgot to purchase key components: bagel and capers) but I stayed with the smoked salmon theme and produced some neat little sandwiches.

I've used smoked salmon for catering before (smoked salmon omelet rolls for example) and I think it's one of the best ingredients for introducing a bit of class without having to work for it. These little sandwiches are a great example of something quick and simple that is not only tasty but filling.

Cream Cheese Pound Cake

Cream Cheese Pound Cake
Home Cooking

Wednesdays were designated as my cooking and baking day but I've recently been incapacitated by having to do 5 days a week for the next couple of months. I thought that would be goodbye to my recipe posts for a while but my need to cook amplified and I ended up developing a little routine to make things work.

The key issue here is lighting. It might seem obvious to cook at night instead of on my RDO, since that's what most people do. However, because I like to blog everything, the ability to take good photos is crucial. Night time is terrible for photos but I figured I could produce the food at night, after work and get up early in the morning to take the snaps. It's been working out fairly well.

Savory Pumpkin Bread

Savory Pumpkin Bread 
Home Cooking

I went cucko about a month ago about bought all these vegetables that I didn't know what to do with. Pumpkin was one of them. I thought about just boiling the bejeebus out of it and making mash but I didn't want to eat pumpkin mash so I started scouting around for recipes that I could use it in. I found this recipe on Taste.com, which sounded perfect because it required 500g butternut pumpkin and that was EXACTLY what I had, once my pumpkin had been peeled and deseeded.

Apple Oatmeal Brulee

Apple Oatmeal Brulee
Home Cooking

This post is about a sort of boring food item so I need to start with a story. I was just at the onset of my current cooking mood and all keen about what to bake/cook this week and the following week and the week after that and so on. I had a portion of turkey mince in the freezer and came up with the bright idea of making Donald Trump's turkey burgers. They're not actually 'his' but they're an item sold at his private club, Mar-a-Lago and Oprah raved about them in an episode of her show. I didn't end up making the burgers (a particular brand of pear chutney is one of the critical ingredients and I just couldn't find it... or any kind of pear chutney I could use as an alternative) but I did find some other recipes trawling through Oprah's site.

The apple oatmeal brulee was one of them. I am like a horse when it comes to oats. Horses stereotypically go nuts for oats, right? I like oats especially in winter. Or when I'm sick. Or when I'm depressed. Or anytime really. Porridge is rad! I'm picky with oats. I don't eat instant oats. I need the traditional whole oats and I cook them slowly in milk (it has to be all milk, no water) with sultanas and dried apricots. Occasionally I'll add chopped up green apples or pears and a sprinkle of cinammon. I usually sweeten with honey. My biggest barrier in eating oat porridge is that milk is not a common feature in my fridge. I try to keep some long life stuff in the pantry but I prefer to use that for baking emergencies. I know that not having milk is inconceivable to most but I just don't drink it that much (my instant coffee only needs water) and I hate stuff going off.

Nigella Lawson's Orange Breakfast Muffins

Orange Breakfast Muffins
Home Cooking

My current morning breakast ritual is simple but effective. It requires flipping on the kettle and pushing 45 seconds into the microwave. The former is for instant coffee and the latter is to warm up a muffin. I'm loving morning muffins so much sometimes it keeps me awake the night before in anticipation. The raspberry and oat muffins kept me going for a while but last week I moved onto these orange muffins.

From cookbook to tray to plate

I first spotted the recipe in Nigella Lawson's 'Nigella Bites' about a month ago. All the ingredients were bought and ready to go but I came down with a cold so my baking plans were foiled. It's interesting because as a child, I was never a huge fan of fruity flavors in ice-cream, desserts or candy but it's something that has grown on me over the years. My craving for orange muffins was so severe I repurchased the necessary ingredients and whipped up a batch last week. I've been happily munching on these every morning for breakfast since then.

Sweet Potato and Zucchini Bread

Sweet Potato and Zucchini Bread
Home Cooking

It'll be apparent now that I have an uncanny obsession for sweet potato and zucchini. They seam to feature a lot in my recipes. I have justified the sweet potato thing with an accidental over-purchase. I'm not going to present any justifications for zucchini. I NEED zucchini to survive. It's strange because I hated it as a child. I couldn't stand it. Now, it's one of my grocery staples.

When I grocery shop, there are some things I buy every time. If I forget, for whatever reason, I'll need to make an extra trip. Or die, instantly and painfully. Zucchini is one of those things. The other items I need for survival are: avocados, unsweetened Greek yoghurt and goat's cheese.

Low fat Raspberry and Oat Muffins

Low fat Raspberry and Oat Muffins
Home Cooking

Wait a second... did someone say low fat? And muffin?  I'm there! I was Googling food one night (basically what I do every night) when I came across this recipe for low fat raspberry and oat muffins. I originally wanted to make blueberry muffins but I remembered I had some raspberries in the freezer. This was a monetary relief since blueberries go at roughly $1000000 a punnett.

I've mentioned my attraction to oats in baking recipes before. The fact that these muffins contained oats, yoghurt and raspberries as well as being low fat made me leap for joy. I didn't literally leap for joy. What I really did (which is arguably just as crazy) was wake up at 5:30am one morning and baked these as stealthily as I could so as to not wake up my housemate, Stain. I'm not sure how successful I was but soon, the smell/promise of freshly baked muffins overrided my consideration for his sleep.

Mushroom, Goat's Cheese and Hazelnut Open Sandwich

Mushroom, Goat's Cheese and Hazelnut Open Sandwich
Home Cooking

I recently went through a frenzy of flipping through my cookbook collection, dog-earing pages and highlighting ingredients. Any recipe that sounded doable was meticulously listed onto my phone so that I wouldn't forget. The problem with anything in book form is that I do forget and end up Googling for recipes instead. I'm trying to make my cookbook purchases financially justifiable. I need to use them more. To be completely honest with you, as nice as it is to have a hoard of cookbooks to decorate your kitchen/bookshelf/coffee table with, they are a pain to look through. The internet is much more practical, but I'm going to put in the effort and get my money's worth from these old purchases.

Bill Granger provided the first viable option. I found a recipe for an open sandwich with mushrooms, hazelnuts and goat's cheese in his book 'Feed me now!' When it comes to sandwiches, I don't think they can be correctly termed 'recipes' but rather ideas of what to put on bread. I hadn't thought of this idea before but it sounded great to me. I once asked Marc "if you had to guess what supermarket items I can't live without, what would you say?" I actually asked the question on this blog first and then randomly decided to ask him. His first guess was goat's cheese, which is correctly on my list. That should tell you how dependant I am on goat's cheese. If goat's cheese was a banned substance with life-destroying properties, I'd be in rehab for it.

Lemon Cheesecake Squares

Lemon Cheesecake Squares
Home Cooking

 The thought of lemon cheesecake wormed its way into my head at some point this week and couldn't find its way out again. I was hooked on the idea. I had to make cheesecake. Usually, making a baked cheesecake is a real ordeal involving stand mixers and water baths and you end up with a giant cake that's impossible to dish out when there's no occasion for it.

My solution to get around that was to make mini cheesecake squares that were bite-sized and easy to share either with workmates, friends, family members or Marc. I started Googling for recipes. I had something distinct in mind because I wanted it to be baked rather than set (mainly because set cheesecake tend to require condensed milk and I didn't have any of that in my pantry) and I wanted a layer of lemon curd on top for an extra zing of flavor.

I found this recipe, which was an answer to my prayers because it was everything I wanted - a cheesecake recipe that didn't require an extra trip to the grocery store. So many cheesecake recipes call for sour cream or cream or something else to go into the cheesecake mixture besides cream cheese. This one only requires eggs, which I had plenty of, so it was ideal for me.

Avocado Egg Salad Sandwich

Avocado Egg Salad Sandwich
Home Cooking

I get the 11-midnight munchies predictably, as long as I'm awake around then (which I usually am). I don't improve matters by then scouting the internet for food porn. I was on one of my favorite everyday eating food blogs (by which I mean, he makes plausible food suggestions that are easy to reproduce at home), Closet Cooking when I found a suggestion for avocado egg salad.

It's a hilarious concept (in an inside-joke way, so apologies if no one else gives a bum) because to me, it sounds DELICIOUS. I love avocado in any way shape or form (including as a dessert or cooked or whatever) and so I was interested in how it would work as an egg salad sandwich. Marc HATES avocado, HATES tomato and hates egg (he'll eat it if it's disguised in cake form but that's about it). He especially hates egg salad. There's not many things he doesn't eat but those 3 items pretty much cover it. If I snuck in some olives (the food he hates more than anything in the world) , I would have successfully created an amalgamation of his worst food nightmare.

Anyway, I didn't add olives. But the rest is all there.