I go through my phrases with cooking - I'm definitely not cooking as much lately, as much as I want to.
The thought that I have to pack up everything in the kitchen in a few weeks time does stress me out quite a bit. I'm trying to use up everything I have in the pantry, and not to increase new ingredients. It's just too easy for me to pick up bits and pieces for some one off dishes and keep the rest to use later, and end up, having quite a bit of left overs in the pantry. Some of the items I do use quite frequently. Like all different types of flour, self raising, chick pea, polenta, semolina, tapioca, whole meal, rye.... They do end up in different jars and containes, and all different types of sugars and syrups etc etc etc.... argg.... the panic of packing!
So the strategy is trying not to replace the item used, including every day items like cheese, butter, flour, I don't mean don't replace any, but reduce to just one type of every major category, so by the time I have to pack up the pantry for the worker to do the demolishing work, it will be easier.
But that also means I have to cook a bit less of varieties of things until my new kitchen's in, which is about a month and 2 weeks away.....
However, there are a few items I'd like to keep it going, including the yoghurt, and the sourdough. I have to keep the yoghurt culture alive as well as the sourdough starter. They are my babies, although I haven't really named them yet!
I bought some tubs of strawberries for the children's school lunch box. There were some left so I decided to make some strawberry yoghurts.
It's simple. Add 1 cup sugar, 2 tbsp water to half tub (around 100g-125g) of cleaned strawberries, bring it to boil on stove top, let it simmer for a few minutes to maximise the strawberry taste in the syrup.
My children don't like the actual fruit in their yoghurt so I took the cooked strawberries out leaving just the strawberry syrup.
The rest steps are the same as making any other yoghurt.
Bring 1 lt full cream fresh milk to boil, I usually let it simmer for 10-15 minutes, let it cool to 110F or 43.6C, add the strawberry syrup to cooled milk, and 2 tbsp of warm plain yoghurt, leave it in the thermo pot to keep the heat over night.
Home made yoghurt are nicer with all the fresh ingredients.
A fresh strawberry cream cake.... A lovely delicious challenge hosted by Jana from Cherry Tea Cakes.
It would be a much more fun event or events for us had it been summer for us... part of the pain being in the south hemisphere is that we don't have the seasonal fruits as the north - strawberries can be found but quite expensive, so are other berries and summer fruit. After my first attempt, I realised I could've used kiwi fruit which we can find quite a lot in the supermarkets lately, but the second attempt never took place, Luke's birthday, school production, and Bianca's school production took most of our time, plus the house renovation....
Apart from hubby, the children are not too keen on cream cakes, don't ask me why, but they are chocoholics, and whenever there's a chance to ask for a cake, it's always, chocolate cake, especially for Luke, chocolate mud, he wouldn't even take sponge.
I didn't want to make the the cake too big, the fresh cream wouldn't keep. The original recipes for the challenge can be found here:
First of all, I wanted to make a small heart shaped Red Velvet Strawberry Stack Cake....
Red velvet for the Red strawberries, always wanted to make a red velvet cake.
I used the recipe by Nigella Lawson for Red Velvet Cupcakes, but changed the frosting to cream cheese frosting because of the Creme Fraisier...
FOR THE CUPCAKES
• 250g plain flour
• 2 x 15ml tbsp cocoa powder, sifted
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
• 100g soft unsalted butter
• 200g caster sugar
• 1 x heaped 15ml tbsp Christmas-red paste food colouring
• 2 tsp vanilla extract
• 2 eggs
• 175ml buttermilk
• 1 tsp cider vinegar or other vinegar
• 2 x 12-bun muffin tins
CREAM CHEESE FROSTING
• 100g icing sugar (no need to sift if using a processor)
• 250g cream cheese
• 250g fresh cream
• 1 tsp lemon juice
I made 4 small heart shaped cake for my strawberry stack and 6 big cup cakes using the Texax Muffin Tin.
It's very hard to line the cakes, as I found out they are pretty fragile so I couldn't slice them thinner as I planned...
And I got a bit too ambitious stacking all the 4 cakes up....
But thanks to Nigella, the flavour of the cake was really really good...
And for the cup cakes... I brought them to the little get together with girl friend and got welcomed by her children...
Merry Christmas everyone!
First of all, it's a mad cooking season... We are doing the Christmas lunch this year and it's all go go go...
Well, a lot to write about, the pork, turkey and the others, but because I'm more excited about making sweet things, my super achievement this year was the traditional plum pudding, and the second dessert, the Christmas log.
The very traditional Aussie Christmas Dinner (well, it's usually a lunch), will usually have turkey, ham and plum pudding, but also, the very beloved pavlova. It's summer in the southern continent anyway.
I wasn't about to make another Pavlova (I made one for Church's Christmas Lunch) and was more interested in making a Yule Log, the recipe from Emmanuel Mollois, but when hubby saw Karen Matini's Pavlova Roll on Better Homes & Gardens, he said, I want to have that for Christmas.
So my Christmas Log was adapted from Karen Matini. The link will bring you to the video of Karen's show on Better Homes & Gardens. Certainly watching her doing it helps a lot to recreate this lovely log.
Ingredients:
4 egg whites
1 tbsp corn flour
1 tsp white vinegar
1 tsp vanilla essense
175g caster sugar
Filling
250g mascapone cream
150g thickened cream
1 tbsp marsala
handful of toasted almond flakes
Icing sugar
Dessicated Coconut
Berry Salad
punet of strawberries
punet of blueberries.
1.5 tbsp lemon juice
3 tbsp caster sugar
Make the meringue as instructed in the video, it only takes a couple of minutes, the oven temperature is 165C, and I only baked for 15 minutes.
Lay a sheet of grease proof baking paper over the clean tea towel and sprinkle with dessicated coconut and icing sugar, generously.
Let meringue cool for at least 5 minutes.
Gently flip over the meringue (Karen did it with ease in the video, I did have hubby's help...) and remove the baking paper (the baking paper does need to be greased properly before the meringue was added to it, otherwise it's hard to remove)
Karen used goat's yoghurt to blend in with mascapone, I prefer the whipped cream as it's an everyday item in our fridge, and no need to go out and hunt it down somewhere. Whip cream till soft peak, add marsala and fold in mascapone.
Spread onto the meringue sheet, and sprinkle on the toasted almond flakes - just to give the soft light dessert a bit of crunch.
I made the log in the morning, and let it sit in the fridge till serving after 2pm, but half an hour before serving, I sliced up the strawberry and marinated it in the sugar and lemon juice. It's a little bit risky for us to use the balsamic and basil with the children as per Karen's recipe.
It's a pretty log, and very light and fruity. Full of summer flavour.
Maybe one year, we will go to the northern hemisphere and experience the White Christmas?
It's always easier to make a big pavlova for gatherings in summer, for Christmas parties etc. And that's usually what I make for our church gatherings.
When we say the traditional pavlova, I guess every family in Australia has their own "traditional" version of the good old pav. I guess we have all read the recent report about the Pavlova being claimed as a Kiwi tradition rather than aussie, which makes it even more perfect for our family to bring the big pav... Both hubby and I have strong New Zealand connection. Either way, it's our family tradition to bring our family tradition version of the pavlova to the party.
I usually make it simple, with chantilly cream and berries, this time, strawberries and currents.
The Pav:
6 Egg Whites (My cake carrier couldn't handle any bigger, but anything smaller won't be enough)
1.5 cup of caster sugar
1 table spoon of corn flour
1 teaspoon of white vinegar
1 pinch of salt
1 teaspoon of vanilla extract.
There are not a lot of ways to make the base for the pav. It's a baked meringue. I've never made pav with Italian meringue, and just followed the traditional way of making the base.
It's always better to use room temperature eggs and egg whites separated a bit earlier, similar to the Macarons.
Pre-heat oven to 150C or 130C fan forced.
Whisk egg whites with salt till peak, slowly blend in caster sugar, whisk on high till silky and soft, blend in vinegar, vanilla extract and fold in corn flour.
Normally the instruction goes like draw a 20cm in diametre circle on grease proof baking paper... but lazy people like me don't like to do extra work, which means, free form. well, I normally lay the baking paper over my trust worthy pizza tray, it's round anyway so I think it's not to hard to work the meringue into the circular base. I'm not too artistic with the sides... but that will do.
In the oven, ooops, reduce the oven to 120C or 100C fan forced before you chuck the pav in.
and bake for an hour.
Leave it in the oven over night.
It's alright, let it dry out a bit.
It doesn't really matter the next morning, it's lowered a bit in the middle and there are a bit of cracks on top, we are not baking macarons here, there will be toppings. Of course, it might help with a new oven with more even distribution of heat... I will have my new oven installed in the new year...
The Chantilly Cream.
300ml thickened cream
1 tsp vanilla extract
60-80g icing sugar (well, that's approx because I didn't measure, let's say 70g, but maybe less)
Whisk cream till firm peak (I had to be at church at 10:00am in the morning, with the pav, the pasta bake and a pizza, so I whisked the cream the night before when I baked the pav base. normally if serve fresh, it's better to whisk the cream till soft peak, so it's a night before version here or easy to transport version)
Blend in a further 80ml thickened cream to loosen it up just before serving.
The Strawberry and Currents:
1 250g punet strawberry, halved.
1 bunch of currents.
50g caster sugar
1 table spoon lemon juice.
Marinate strawberry in caster sugar and lemon juice, half an hour before the topping.
Well, I didn't really get to taste the pav myself. As soon as our friends knew it's home made from scratch, the pav went within 5 minutes.
The verdict, it's much nicer and cheaper to make the pav base ourselves. And it's not that hard at all. The case is not as dry and our friends love it.
I've been thinking about making ice creams for a quite while, and even got a small ice cream maker. But never did much. I have been reading some lovely ice cream blogs from Cherry Teacakes and decided, it's time for me to have a go as well...
I've got some strawberries in the fridge, so I thought, why not.
It's a pretty lay back version of making some ice cream, the end result is good. I guess I will make more ice cream and sorbet this summer.
Strawberry Cinnamon Ice Cream
1 punnet – 250g strawberries
1 cup sugar
300ml thick cream
100ml milk – full cream
2 eggs
1.5 tsp gelatine
1 cup water
1 tbp ground cinnamon
Whisk eggs till light and fluffy.
Simmer the strawberries, sugar and water in a pot to make coulisse.
Sift coulisse, push the strawberries through sift.
Add gelatine to coulisse once cooled a bit.
Add cream and milk to eggs and whisk well to mix.
Add cinnamon and the coulisse.
Mix well and put the mixture in a freezer friendly container, in the freezer for an hour, and then bring it out and put it in the ice cream maker to finish the process (my ice cream maker is not big, so needs a bit of help, some other ice cream makers, you don't need the freezer.)
