Cookie Carnival - April

This month’s cookie carnival recipe is Toasted Almond Lemon Bars from the Sweet Melissa Baking Book. There is actually a new baking group (like Tuesdays with Dorie) who are baking their way through this book. I must say I was tempted to join, but two things stopped me – once was a time thing, and the other was that sometimes it is nice to be able to bake and blog about things that you choose to make. TWD is probably enough for me at the moment.

But, I was excited to get the opportunity to bake a recipe from this book. I love almonds and I love lemony thing (although do prefer chocolate things actually), so I had high expectations for this recipe. The base is a shortbread base with toasted sliced almonds in it, topped with a lemon curd like filling. I halved the recipe to make a small slice tin. I didn’t love this recipe. I found that the base wasn’t quite as crisp as I would have liked and the filling not as lemony as I would have liked. The filling actually had almond essence in it as well, but I left that out, mainly because I haven’t fully unpacked my spices etc yet, and couldn’t be bothered looking for it!

By the way, I am normally a good sleeper, but couldnt last night - this photo was taken at 3am this morning.

I am sure that there are lots of great recipes in the Sweet Melissa Baking book, but for me, I wouldn’t make this one again. You can check out the cookie carnival here.

Rachel Allen, Bake

One of the things that we have in the new house that we didn’t have before is Food TV. I cant believe that as a dedicated cook and baker I have existed this long without it :0) Actually, to be honest, I am not a huge TV person and I do have limited time to watch it, but I have been enjoying Rachel Allen, Bake. I love her soft lilting Irish accent. And, being a sucker for cook books, I recently bought her book that goes with the TV series.

Last night was both the first time that I have baked cookies in my new oven and the first time to make something from Rachel’s book. My husband said that he fancied chocolate chip cookies, so I made Rachel’s basic biscuit recipe, varying it to make the cookies dark chocolate with white chocolate chunks. The recipe was so simple – butter, sugar and flour and the cookies turned out just as I like them – quite shortbready. I used dutched cocoa which gave a wonderful depth of flavour and chunks of milky bar. I loved the easiness of these cookies and can see them becoming a favourite as I experiment with different variations.

Double Chocolate Cookies (adapted from Rachel Allen, Bake)

110g sugar
225g butter
225g flour
50g dutched cocoa
180g white chocolate cut into chunks

• Cream butter and sugar
• Stir in flour and cocoa and lastly chocolate chunks
• Roll into balls, place on trays and flatten slightly with a fork
• Bake at 170c for about 15 minutes

TWD - Chocolate Cream Tart

Well, I hope to have my baking groove back with this Chocolate Cream Tart which is Kim from Scrumptious Photography’s TWD pick this week. I didn’t even get to do the Daring Bakers challenge for this month, but I took yesterday off work and even though the kitchen is still not complete, I have at least sorted out the scullery which means that finally, my baking gear is mostly unpacked! The other thing I unpacked was a box with some new tea towels in it that I had been collecting for the new house – today I have 37 new tea towels hanging on my line. OCD – who me?

This tart was a great thing to be the first baked item (other than the disappointing muffins last week) in my new oven. I quartered the recipe and made two small tarts. The pastry is a delicious chocolate shortcrust pastry. I used dutched cocoa which gave it a lovely rich, chocolate flavour. The filling is basically a chocolate custard. I could have eaten the whole lot by itself – very yummy and very easy to make. The cooked pie crust is then filled with the chilled custard and topped with whipped cream. Yum! Chocolate, pastry and cream – I think this is my favourite April TWD recipe.

See what the other TWDers thought here. I promise to be a better blogger after my total lapse this month during the house move!

Anzac Cookies

Tomorrow is Anzac Day – the day which commemorates Australian and New Zealand troops landing on the shores of Gallipoli in World War one – April 25, 1915. Anzac biscuits are the biscuits sent to the men at war by the women back home – they are made with oats and golden syrup and are particularly hardy, meaning that they could be sent to the other side of the world. Anzac Day is a special day for most New Zealanders and for me it is the day I think of my great grandfather, who I never knew, but was wounded in the battle of the Somme and my granddad who died when I was 11, but who served the entire 6 years of WW II. I cant imagine going off to war as a 19 year old and coming back 25 – it must have been horrific.

I made these anzac biscuits before we moved back into our house. They are crunchy, but chewy and quite moreish. Best served with a glass of milk! The recipe is on my blog here.

Not much going on in my kitchen....

There hasn’t been much baking at all going on since the week before Easter. We did get our kitchen bench on Monday night (and it is beautiful!), but we still don’t have cupboard doors and drawer fronts. I don’t really want to unpack too much until we have those, as the amount of dust created when anything new is installed is quite incredible!! But, on Sunday afternoon I thought that I better make some muffins for my husband for his morning teas during the week. I felt like making a new recipe given that there haven’t been too many new recipes made lately, so l looked in my new Allyson Gofton book, Bake that my sister gave me as a house warming present and chose the blueberry muffins.

Now, when I made muffins for my husband, I usually add in some bran or wholemeal flour so that he thinks that they are healthy! But I decided to stick with Allyson’s recipe (although I did use oil instead of butter – and reduced the amount and used one egg instead of two) and make plain blueberry muffins. Well, they didn’t turn out quite as I wanted. I found that they spread a bit across the trays and I just didn’t really like them. They had sidewards peaks and I think that is because they had baking soda in them. I like to use just baking powder in muffins. And I don’t think it was my new oven, I think it was the recipe. There are so many other recipes in Bake that I want to try, but for the moment I think I will stick to my tried and true, every day blueberry muffin recipe that I created myself.

My Blueberry and Bran Muffins

1 c each wholemeal and plain flour
½ c bran
4 tsp baking powder
¾ c sugar
2 tsp cinnamon
1 c milk
1 egg
¼ c rice bran oil (or other flavourless oil)
1 c blueberries

• Combine flours, bran, baking powder, sugar and cinnamon
• Whisk together the milk, egg and oil with a fork
• Stir blueberries through dry ingredients, then gently fold in the liquid
• Spoon into muffin cases and bake at 200c for about 18 minutes or until cooked through

TWD - Four Star Chocolate Bread Pudding

This week’s TWD recipe was chosen by Lauren of Upper East Side Chronicle and is Four Star Chocolate Bread Pudding. Once upon a time I thought that bread pudding sounded the most revolting thing ever, but after making a chocolate and banana bread and butter pudding about 8 years ago, I was converted. It’s not something I make often though so it was nice to get another opportunity.

This bread pudding is not bread and butter pudding – it’s just bread pudding and I actually found that the lack of butter also meant lack in richness. The bread pudding was really easy to make - cube your stale bread, make a custard with sugar, milk, cream, eggs and chocolate, pour over and bake. I adjusted the recipe a bit, quartering it to make two small ramekins (one each for me and my husband) and I used all milk (low fat at that), no cream. I had to go and buy some bread to make the pudding as I didn’t have any leftover bits in the freezer, and I went with ciabatta – but I think that this particular recipe really does need a richer bread like brioche.

While this pudding was ok, I didn’t like it nearly as much as bread and butter pudding where you spread your bread with butter before soaking it in the custard. I think it is a good example of results speaking for the ingredients – if I had used the cream, full fat milk and brioche I think I would have got a richer, more delicious dessert.

See how the other TWDers did here.

Baking For Hospice

I made these cupcakes a couple of weeks ago for the monthly baking for hospice arranged by one of my readers, Nessie. The cupcakes are called Banana Fudge Cupcakes and the recipe is from the Crabapple Bakery Cupcake book. Unfortunately it is packed away, so I cant give you the exact recipe, but I can give you the idea.

The cupcakes are little banana cupcakes, studded with chopped macadamia nuts. I would suggest just using your favourite banana cake recipe. The icing is a chocolate buttercream – usual buttercream made with butter, icing sugar, cocoa and a little milk.. I topped the cupcakes with scorched almonds which I thought looked a little bit like Easter eggs. En masse the cupcakes looked quite effective. In the crabapple bakery book they topped their cupcakes with chocolate dipped macadamia nuts and drizzled them with white chocolate. I didn’t have any white chocolate at home when I made these, but I do like the idea of the drizzle.

Even though I haven’t done any baking in my new kitchen (all my baking ingredients are packed away – bench top arrives on Monday!!), I have cooked a few meals. So far we have had a mushroom risotto, chicken breasts topped with sliced almonds, cinnamon and smoked paprika and served with an orzo salad, and a fish dish cooked on top of the stove with tomatoes, olives and baby spinach leaves and served with rice and broccoli. Last night I made meatballs with minced beef, toasted pinenuts, ras al hanout (a Moroccan spice blend), smoked Maldon sea salt and crushed garlic. I served it with a bughar wheat salad that had seeded, chopped tomatoes, baby rocket and lemon juice tossed through, extra rocket with avocado and natural yoghurt. This is actually my favourite kind of after work meal – it is quick and easy to prepare and I love meatballs and I also love Moroccan flavours.