Banana and Pecan Bread

With these colder days persisting I couldn’t resist the temptation of making a beautiful banana bread to warm us all up and put a smile back on our faces. I make many versions of banana bread but this one is perhaps the most wholesome. I know that bananas are about one million dollars per kilo at the moment but I have thankfully got an ample supply in the freezer. I always put the bananas that have gone brown into a container in the freezer so that they are there for whenever the urge to bake takes over me. Aside from being frugal, the frozen bananas tend to produce the best banana bread.

I baked these ones in little muffin cases which makes them easier to pop into lunchboxes but also gives them a shorter cooking time. If you want to bake this recipe in a loaf tin you need to reduce the heat to 160°C and bake them it for a little longer

½ cup macadamia oil

6 bananas

3 heaped tablespoons of brown sugar

1 tablespoon golden syrup

2 cups wholemeal flour

1 cup plain flour

2 heaped teaspoons of baking powder

1 level teaspoon of bicarb soda

1 cup pecan pieces

Sesame seeds and slivered almonds for decorating

First you need to defrost your bananas by either leaving them at room temperature for a while or heating them in a little saucepan on a low heat until they become soft. Once your bananas are soft, mash them up then stir in your brown sugar, golden syrup and macadamia oil. Pour your flours, bicarb soda and baking powder into a separate large mixing bowl and make a well in the centre. Pour the wet banana mix slowly into the flour mix until it is all mixed together. Not fold through the pecan pieces. Spoon the mix into 12 muffin cases and sprinkle with sesame seeds and slivered almonds.

Bake in a preheated oven at 180°C for about 30 mins or until golden brown and the muffin bounces back when tapped on the top. Don’t be tempted to test these with a skewer because they will remain quite soft inside but if you cook until the skewer is dry you will get a horrible dry muffin. this bread is great hot with a big dolop of butter or it is just as good cold with a cup of coffee.

Black White and Bling Cupcake Tower

Here is my first ever fondant covered cake. Tada! This cake was made for a friend’s 50^th birthday party which was themed Black, White and Bling. Although then end product was something that I was proud of, let me tell you there were some disasters along the way and this cake is far from perfect.

I liked how the butterflies turned out, this is also the first time I have used petal paste or gum paste as I’ve more commonly seen it called, I had to remake the butterflies out of petal paste at last minute because the ones I made out of fondant fell apart. Being the first time I had used this product I found it quite surprisingly hard to roll out at first but once it had warmed up a bit it was a little easier to work with. The best thing about the petal paste was that it was so forgiving once you had cut it out, it didn’t even threaten to crack when I was busily arranging my butterflies on their folded cardboard so they could dry with their wings up.

I also liked the effect of the draped fondant on the back of the cake. This drapery however served two other purposes. It helped support the butterfly’s wing as it hadn’t completely had time to dry when I was decorating and it covered the biggest disaster of the cake which was a section of fondant that was completely cracked and bubbled. It looked horrendous. It would appear that I left the cake in the fridge too long after coating it with some frosting to make sure it was all smooth and ready for the fondant (my UTube tutorials had said to do this) apparently you should chill it for about ten mins just long enough to get a bit of a crust on the butter frosting but I left it in for around 2 hours.... ooooops. The condensation between the cake and the fondant turned out to be quite troublesome but it did give me a reason to get more creative and try different decorating techniques.

 All in all I think the end product was quite good and I will use petal paste again.

The Fairy Cupcake Tower

Ok here it is my first cupcake tower! This seems to be the latest craze in the cake world with the next 2 cakes I have on order also requesting these decadent cupcakes over a traditional cake. And true to form I said “of course I can” without ever really having the slightest idea of whether or not I possessed the skills to make these fiddly little numbers. None the less I seem to have pulled it off and the 6 year old who received this tower today was absolutely delighted (she didn’t even notice the cankles).

But as we foodies all know it isn’t all about looks, so I am pleased to inform you that I think I have perfected my cupcake recipe. These cupcakes are sweet, moist and fluffy and the frosting is, well, the icing on the cake.  Sorry I couldn’t resist the pun.

My recipe for the cupcakes and frosting is below but note that it will make 24 cupcakes so reduce the amounts if you want to make less.

Cup cake recipe

3 cups plain flour

1 1/2 cups sugar

250g butter

1 tablespoon vanilla extract

4 eggs (separated)

3 tap baking powder

1 ½ cups of milk (may vary depending on weather)

Cream butter and sugar and vanilla

Beat in egg yolks in one at a time

Add baking powder to flour

Continue beating while adding the flour and milk alternately

Beat egg whites until stiff. Gently fold whites through the batter ¼ at a time.

Line two trays with cupcake papers and fill cups almost to top with batter

This recipe makes exactly 24 cup cakes if using the trays of 12

Bake for 15 to 20 Mins at 180 degrees

Frosting recipe

250g butter

1.25kg pure icing sugar

½ cup milk (may vary depending on weather)

Beat butter until almost white in colour

Add the sugar a little at a time making sure all sugar is mixed in until adding more.

When the mixture starts to get too thick to beat, start adding milk and sugar alternately.

This amount will generously frost 24 cupcakes.

 

My Second Fondant Fairy

Well here is my second fondant fairy… she is a lot prettier than the first one but I had some trouble with her legs (let's face it, she has cankles). This is only due to the fact I wanted her legs to be dangling over the edge of the cake. The fondant is a little soft after you have worked it and it takes a while to dry so the legs are cracking a bit. Oh well, you live and learn.

Just a short post this time sorry. I will be happy to post any further instructions or recipes on this if anyone is interested. But let’s face it, no one is reading this!!

Gluten Free Chocolate Orange Cake

This is my first cake with fondant decorations. I kept the decorations simple and I quite liked the end result of them, however I’m not sold on the look of using fondant on ganache (perhaps it was just the way I did it) This cake was a little rushed so the ganache isn’t as smooth as I would have liked but the birthday girl was very happy with the end result so I guess that’s what counts.

Now let’s talk about the actual cake….. The lady I made the cake for was a celiac so I wanted to come up with a truly delicious gluten free cake. The end result was the sexiest cake I have ever made! The cake was two tiers with two layers in each tier. The bottom layer was a gluten free brownie and the top layer was an orange and almond yoghurt cake. I just love what orange offers chocolate, the fresh bite of the zest cuts through the rich decadence of the chocolate and leaves your palate begging for more.

 Being gluten free the cake is unusually moist. I wasn’t sure how this would be received but people were having moments similar to the café seen in “when Harry met Sally” - So I am going to label this recipe a success.

These recipes are for the 2 tiers so halve them for a single cake

Brownie Layer 

Ingredients:

5 cups almond meal

500g butter

2 cups caster sugar

12 eggs

1 cup cocoa

600g chocolate

½ cup water

Method:

Over a water bath melt the butter, sugar, chocolate, cocoa water and egg yolks

Allow the chocolate mix to cool while you beat the egg whites into they are nice and stiff

Pour the chocolate mix over the almond meal and mix together until all ingredients are wet and chocolaty

Add your egg whites ¼ at a time into the mix and fold them through

Pour the mix into greased and lined tins. Put your tins filled with brownie mix into a larger baking dish and pour boiling water into the outside dish until it comes about half way up the tin with the brownie in it. Bake @ 150 degrees for around one and a half hours or until a skewer comes out clean

Orange and almond yoghurt cake

Ingredients:

2 cups yoghurt

2/3 cup olive oil

2 cups sugar

Zest of 4 oranges

Juice of 1 orange (should be around half a cup)

4 eggs (at room temperature)

3 ½ cups almond meal

2 heaped tablespoons of cornflour

1 heaped tsp of baking powder

Method:

Whisk yoghurt, oil, sugar, zest and juice until all ingredients are smooth and there is not grainy feel to the mix.

Add the eggs one at a time. Don’t be tempted to add them all together and do not use eggs straight from the fridge. There is a high risk of curdling

Add the dry ingredients to your wet mix and stir until all mixed together

Pour the mix into greased and lined tins. Put your tins filled with cake mix into a larger baking dish and pour boiling water into the outside dish until it comes about half way up the tin with the orange cake in it. Bake @ 150 degrees for around one and a half hours or until a skewer comes out clean

The cooking time on these cakes will vary from oven to oven. Just make sure the centre of the cake is cooked. Don’t put your oven up too high, they will burn! The cakes should be moist but the skewer should not be pulling the centre of the cake away as you are taking it out.

Real Food

I watched Julie and Julia last night for the first time (I  know, I can’t believe it took me this long), what a clever Idea of Julie Powell’s I only wish I had come up with it first. However if I had to choose one idol in the same manner as Julie Powell then I would have to choose Stephanie Alexander. I honestly believe that she has made the single largest contribution to preventative health in Australia with her “Stephanie Alexander’s Kitchen garden Foundation”. The students involved in these programs have such a culinary head start but more than that they have a healthy relationship with food. That being said I am not about to start cooking my way through The Cooks Companion, I’m afraid it’s a task too all consuming for this point in my life.

There is a lot of time given to the airways in Australia at the moment for cooking shows of all shapes and sizes. Although I don’t have a TV I do appreciate the interest in cooking real food that has been generated by these programs.  I take comfort in the knowledge that more people know how to make mayonnaise and subsequently know there is no such thing as a 98%fat free mayo! I hold hope for the next generation of Australians, maybe the fresh produce section of the supermarket will have to expand and fingers crossed the heavily processed lines in the freezer and on the shelves will gradually degrease... I live in hope

Fondant Fairy

When I first started doing some catering a few years back the one thing I swore I didn’t do was cakes in fact “I don’t do cakes” were my exact words. Please feel free to use these words against me when reading the following few posts. All I ever seem to do for people these days are cakes.

As my orders for cakes increase so too does my interest in different styles of decorating. I haven’t experimented much with fondant in the past, mostly due to the fact I don’t particularly like the icing, but recently I have become interested in using fondant for decorations that can be placed on top of beautiful frostings or ganaches. This style of decorating can be quite cute.

I thought I would attempt some of these decorations for a fairy cup cake tower I am making for a 6 year olds birthday………              

           

Need more practice!!!!!!!!!!!

Any how I did promise to keep you informed of my successes and my failures so here is my first attempt at a fondant fairy. She’s a little fat up top, a little skinny in the legs and she doesn't appear to have a neck but I am happy with her little wings and the skin tone I managed to get using just the yellow and pink natural food colours.

Oh well back to the old drawing board. I will continue to practice and if i do manage to get any better at it I'll be sure to share the results.

Bruschetta

Tomato bruschetta is a beautiful and simple dish. I always think it perfectly sums up Italian cuisine; a few key fresh ingredients that results in a beautifully balanced dish.

This version of bruschetta is good for those nights where you have been caught unprepared and therefore have no sourdough on hand. I always have some tortillas or flatbreads in the freezer as they come in handy all too often as they will again in this recipe.

The recipe below will serve two so it is easy to double the amounts if you need more.

Ingredients:

2 tortillas                                        

½ punnet of baby roma tomatoes

1 handful of basil

1 clove of garlic

A good slurp of olive oil

And salt and pepper to taste

Method:

I like to make the mix first. Quarter the baby tomatoes and toss them in a bowl. With the garlic I grate it finely then chop it so it can be evenly mixed through the dish without any super garlicy bits.  Add the garlic to the tomatoes. Break up the basil if the leaves are big and toss it into the mix. Pour a good slurp of olive oil over the lot then season with salt and pepper

Toast your tortillas under the grill untill nicely toasted then cut them into 4

Now you just have to pile them up. The trick is not to put too much tomato mix in between the layers or else you won’t be able to balance each layer. ENJOY

Bloody Mary Breakfast

Sunday morning is perhaps my favourite. It is usually the only morning I get a genuine lay in and when I wake I am hungry. I love to cook a great breakfast on a Sunday and am easily persuaded to offer ala carte dining to the rest of the household. This Sunday it was bloddy mary mushrooms and eggs for myself and my handsome boyfriend and BLT’s for the rest.  I won’t post the recipe to my BLT as there really isn’t anything special about it but I will give you the recipe to my bloody mary sauce because it is worth trying.

Ingredients:

6 medium size mushrooms

4 slices of sourdough

2 eggs

Olive oil

Bloody Mary sauce:

1 tsp horseradish

¼ tsp of ground chilli

2 tablespoons of worcestershire sauce

1 clove of garlic

5 ripe tomatoes

Salt and pepper to taste

You need to make the sauce first for this one as it will take the longest and is easily reheated if other ingredients end up being ready first

So here goes, finely dice your garlic, toss it into hot oil with the horseradish and chilli. Swish this all around a bit until garlic is a bit soft but isn’t going brown. Before you burn your garlic add the worcestershire sauce and stir it all up. Add diced tomatoes to the pot, turn down the head and let it all simmer until the tomatoes are all broken up. You can puree this sauce if you want to.

For the rest of the breakfast you need to basically cook some sliced mushrooms toast some sourdough and poach an egg. None of which is terribly challenging although if you don’t know how to poach an egg properly you should really make sure you learn. (Feel free to ask me for tips)

When you have your sourdough toasted put a little of the bloody mary sauce on one slice and pop your perfect egg on top of it then put your cooked mushrooms on the other slice spoon a generous amount of the sauce on top…… ENJOY and have a great Sunday.

Spicy Cointreau and Fruit Pudding

I was just going through some old pictures on my phone and found this photo of a fantastic pudding myself and one of my girlfriends made on an amazing camping/cooking holiday on Lady Musgrave Island. This pudding is a favorite food memory of mine and I hope it seduces your senses as it did mine.

Ingredients:

1 kg sultanas
600g dried apricots
2 tablespoons grated fresh ginger
2 teaspoonful cumin
2 teaspoonful cinnamon
2 teaspoonful nutmeg
3 teaspoonful bicarb
6 eggs
2 cups flour
250g butter
2 cups brown sugar
1 cup cointreau
100g slivered almonds

This pudding was made in a double boiler and was devoured within minutes. The double boiler used was quite large to accommodate the number of us camping so feel free to reduce the recipe and use a smaller pot. We served this with vanilla custard which I highly recommend. 

Method

Soak dried fruit in a generous amount of cointreau and set aside

Cream butter and brown sugar until pale and thick, whisk your eggs then add them to the butter and sugar, stir them through until you have a silky mix

Mix in the spices, slivered almonds and bicarbonate of soda, tip the soaked fruit into the mix and stir it through.

Sift in the flour and stir it through, making sure it is mixed in well

Pour the batter into a greased double boiler and Cook in on a medium heat for 3 to 4 hours

Spatchcock

I decided to make a romantic dinner for my handsome boyfriend and I generally couple this idea with an excuse to cook something that I would never eat myself I’m not the biggest fan of cuisine of the fleshy kind but I absolutely love to cook it and furthermore would love to advance my butchery skills, you never know one day I may even partake in the end product.

Firstly, there seems to be some confusion about what spatchcock is so allow me to clarify if you will. Spatchcock typically refers to baby chicken. Spatchcock is also a cooking term referring to a chicken or game bird that has been split down the back bone and butterflied for grilling or barbequing. On this occasion I was cooking the little wrinkly baby chicken kind. The sides I served it with are really quite simple so let me first talk about the preparation, I decided to quarter mine.

Firstly un-wrap your delicate little bird and you may, as I did, discover that the neck is still attached, you should really remove this even if it’s just for presentation purposes as it looks rather creepy. The next thing to do is open up the cavity of the bird a little and see if you can get a good kitchen knife inside, you want to be cutting down the middle of the back bone. After the unnerving amount of crunching you will have a butterflied bird. You can use kitchen shears for the rest. The wing and breast will come away from the thigh quite easily if you follow the rib line.

To cook your bird you need to first render out some of the fat from the skin by placing it skin down onto a hot pan

Cook the little birdie until the skin is nice and golden then turn the pieces over and pop them into a preheated oven at 180 degrees for about 15 mins but keep an eye out because it really doesn’t take long

I served mine with a sweet potato mash with a hint of freshly grated nutmeg, some quickly wok tossed snow peas with a sprinkle of sesame seeds and a good dollop of my plumb and ginger sauce (if anyone is interested I am happy to post the recipe of the plumb sauce) there was little left on the plate so I reserve the right to conclude it was a success.

The Dreaded Sponge

The dreaded sponge has been something that has plagued me for years. Previously mine have always turned out more like sweet frittatas than lovely light fluffy clouds of cake, this is something I have been meaning to remedy… So I decided IT JUST CAN’T BE THAT HARD! I looked at several recipes and decided I’d put them all aside and make up my own and low and behold, I made sponge.

The day of this attempt was 40˚c and my best girlfriend told me it was just crazy talk attempting sponge on such a desperately hot and sticky day so true to form I took her wise suggestion and used it as all the inspiration that my stubborn being needed to prove everyone wrong! I set about my task with a little newly acquired knowledge, a fair lack in skill and a bucket load of determination, not to mention 4 organic eggs at room temperature (40˚c) needless to say all of which were desperately clinging to their liquid form. 

There is a bit of science in this one so allow me a small amount of time to explain. Self raising flour is just plain flour mixed with some baking powder ( I never buy it as I never get the same result as adding my own baking powder), baking powder is a combination of cream of tartar and bicarbonate of soda….. so as it was such a hot day I wanted to use the cream of tartar separately to stabilise the egg whites and allow them to go nice and stiff, therefore I have added some bicarb and some baking powder to the dry ingredients to even out the mix so in fact the recipe actually ends up with a total of about two heaped tsp of baking powder overall.

Now for those of you who haven’t already nodded off below is my recipe, give it a go I hope it gives all of those who have always struggled with this precious little cake a new found love of baking it.

                                                                           

Ingredients:

4 eggs separated

½ cup caster sugar

½ cup plain flour

½ cup corn flour

1 heaped tsp cream of tartar

1 level tsp bicarb soda

1 level tsp baking flour

50g butter

1 dessert spoon of vanilla extract (as opposed to vanilla essence)

Picture by Jamieanne

Method:

First you need to grease and line two spring form tins and set your oven to 180˚c – if you are making lamingtons just grease and line one small to medium lamington tray and vary the baking time slightly.

Cream the egg yolks with half of the caster sugar until they are thick and creamy, turning almost white in colour.

Melt your butter, mix it with vanilla extract and set it aside

Beat your egg whites with the cream of tartar until tripled in size then gradually add the sugar while beating until mix forms stiff peaks

Gently fold the yolk mixture into the whites

Sift the remaining dry ingredients into the egg mix and softly fold it through until there are no lumps and bumps but do not overwork it!

Now pour your melted butter and vanilla in and repeat the gentle action of folding. The batter will now start to become really silky and shiny

Pour half the mix into each tin and bake for about 15mins making sure a skewer comes out clean. Or pour the whole mix into a lamington tin and bake for 15-20mins

These cakes should be taken out of their tins quite quickly and allowed to cool to prevent continuing cooking from the hot tins.

To serve either fill the middle with cream and berries or do what I did and dip them in a chocolate icing mix and dust them in coconut to make the good old fashioned lamington, either would be the perfect afternoon tea for a hot summer’s day.