On being Human

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I mentioned in my last post that we recently moved from Canberra to Sydney. Although I was born in Canberra, the past four years was the first time I had lived there as an adult, I got to know a different side to the city which is often derided for it’s lack of entertainment and soul. Canberra has so much more to offer than pot, porn and politics – and it’s not fireworks (the sale of which is now illegal) or the roundabouts (they’re not really that exciting..)

So, I was thrilled to be invited by ACT Tourism to be one of the humans on the Food and Wine stream for their Human Brochure campaign. As far as tourism campaigns go I think engaging 500 humans to visit a city and giving them carte blanche to write whatever they felt and thought about the experience is a pretty groundbreaking and brave idea.

I know that some had concerns that the treatment we got as “humans” was pretty exceptional and out of the ordinary for the average tourist.

Yes, we were treated exceptionally well and had access to engaging and charming hosts, tables groaning with beautiful food and a never empty wine glass. Yet, having lived in Canberra previously and visited some of the same places (Poachers Pantry, Realm Hotel, Museum of Democracy, the War Memorial) under my own steam I can honestly say that the service and quality of products I have paid for myself is very comparable to what I was lucky enough to experience on the #HumanBrochure weekend.

Tips for enjoying a visit to Canberra

  • Forget your preconceptions and visit with an open mind
  • Ask a local for advice on where to go and what to do or check out the Visit Canberra website
  • Stay in a central location so that you can walk to most of the cultural attractions or make sure you have access to some transport if you are off the main drag
  • Don’t compare Canberra to Sydney, Melbourne or even Brisbane – don’t even compare them to each other – they are all so different, you’ll go a bit potty doing that
  • Revel in the architecture, the seemingly endless blue skies, the access to so many cultural institutions, the fact that you are in a small city with big city attractions

More posts on the food, food, food, wine, wine, wine to follow!

 

Oh hai!

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*waves*

I know, it’s been a long time between drinks. My last post was in July! Slack. But there are reasons…

I’ve had a well-hectic few months. We got engaged, we’ve had family illness, family milestones, I got a new job – in Sydney. We’ve pretty much been moving here since September (a long story).

I also lost my beloved Grandpa in January. There’s been good times but a lot of hard, sad times as well.
But there hasn’t been much time, or energy, for blogging.

Credit

In reflection it’s probably been the most stressful 6 or so months of my life. I think I’m almost on the other side of this all now – though I’ve still got a wedding to plan – and I am looking forward to getting back into blogging and mangling some baking again.

Schmeckt Cooking: Steakon Chilli Con Carne

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It’s Mick’s birthday on Monday so we had family over to celebrate. Mick loves Mexican food and meat so I decided to adapt a Chilli Con Carne recipe for the slow cooker so it would be ready to serve up when everyone arrived. The original recipe (which comes from the chunky Hot Food cookbook uses minced (or ground) beef but I used chuck steak and bacon, hence “Steakon”.

I had over a kilo of chuck steak so I doubled the quantities below but we had enough leftover to freeze a large container.

Steakon Chilli Con Carne

2 teaspoons ground cumin
1/2 teaspoon of ground allspice
1-2 teaspoons of chilli powder
1 teaspoon of paprika
1 tablespoon of vegetable oil (I did not double this)
1 large onion, finely chopped
2 small chillies, seeded and finely chopped (Optional – I omitted these because of the guest list)
500 grams of chuck steak, cut into large cubes
2 full rashers of bacon, rind removed and sliced into strips
400 g (14 oz) can crushed tomatoes
2 tablespoons of tomato paste
425 g (15 oz) red kidney beans, drained and rinsed
250 ml (1 cup of beef stock)
1 teaspoon of sugar

Heat a small frying pan over a medium heat and dry-fry the cumin, allspice, chilli and paprika for 1 minute, or until fragrant. Remove from the pan.

In a large pan heat the oil over a medium heat and cook the onion for 2-3 minutes, or until soft. Add the garlic and chilli and cook for 1 minutes. Add the chuck steak, browning the cubes on each side. Add the bacon and let it cook for 4-5 minutes. Place this in your stockpot dish and add the tomatoes, tomato paste, kidney beans, stock, sugar and spice. Stir to ensure it is all mixed thoroughly.

I completed my prep the night before and then stored my whole slow cooker dish in the fridge. I cooked it on a low heat from 7.30am – 4.30pm or 9 hours. When I got home from work I used a large spoon to remove the fat on top and then stirred it thoroughly. The meat was still in chunks and a little dry at this stage so I cooked it for an additional hour on high without the lid and stirring it occasionally. By the time I served it up the steak had broken down so it was like a shredded meat and the flavours were amazing. I could definitely work on refining the cooking time but as I was cooking a double batch it was a little hard to ascertain what would work.

We served this with tortilla wraps, tacos, and a host of different toppings including guacamole, fresh coriander, diced tomato, diced Spanish onion, hot sauce, salsa and sliced spring onions.

YUM.

Schmeckt Cooking: Banana and Oat Muffins

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Finally, a fairly successful baking story! Whenever I’ve got a couple of overripe bananas lying around I’ve been making this Banana, Oat and Date Muffin recipe from Her Canberra but Mick’s doesn’t really like dates and real maple syrup is so expensive. Also, the muffins end up a little sweeter than I prefer. I had some natural yoghurt that needed using and I am a total convert to using yoghurt in my baking. It makes muffins and cakes so FLUFFY!

So, I actually experimented with a baking recipe and it actually worked. Praise the baking Gods!

Banana and oat muffins


Banana and Oat Muffins – many thanks to Her Canberra for the original inspiration
50 grams of butter – softened
1/2 cup of *brown sugar
*I upped this to 3/4′s as I was worried that it wouldn’t be sweet enough once I removed the dates and the syrup but after tasting them I think I would prefer them to be a little less sweeter
2 eggs
1 tsp of cinnamon
1 cup of rolled oats
1 cup of *self raising wholemeal flour – sifted
*if you only have regular wholemeal flour add two teaspoons of baking powder to the flour and sift well twice to mix them together
2 large overripe bananas halved lengthways, halved again lengthways and then cut into 1 cm slices
1 Tbs of honey
3/4 of a cup of natural yoghurt

Preheat oven to 180 degrees (my fan forced oven was on 160)
Cream butter, sugar and cinnamon
Add eggs and yoghurt and mix well
Add oats, flour, banana and honey and gently combine

Spoon mixture into muffin cases and sprinkle a few extra oats on top.

Bake for 20 – 25 minutes or until a skewer comes out clean.

Absolutely delicious

Schmeckt Shopping: What’s That Tea? A grand tea project!

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Recently I was lucky enough to win a tea pack courtesy of Stacy at The Domestic Artisan and Shardee at What’s That Tea?. Thanks ladies!

Adorable packaging!

It’s taken me a week or two to get around to trying the tea, mainly because I’ve been a bit vague lately… Anyway, I’ve had to take the week off work with some horrible Canberra Winter lurgey and thought there would be no better time to try it out.

I’m not really into herbal, fruity or floral flavours though I do drink vats of peppermint tea at night time. I would say that I am fairly conservative in my tea choices and like something with depth and and a definite “tea” taste. I’m partial to a “brickie’s tea” so Scottish Breakfast, described on the What’s That Tea site as a “hearty breakfast blend of black teas mingled with a rich, malty, Scottish character” seemed like the obvious choice.

Mental note: need new tea pincher thingie

I am so glad I chose this tea, it’s right up my alley. The packaging is adorable and the tea itself had a lovely rich flavour and was really satisfying. Sometimes there’s nothing better than having a good cuppa. I’ve had a few cups now and really, the teabags I have been using really don’t compare. I would not hesitate to purchase this myself once I use up the tin. Shardee also included a cute sample of the Strawberry and Champagne tea which I am looking forward to trying, once I locate it again. In my fug of sickness I’ve put it somewhere… mysterious.

Scottish breakfast tea featuring what my Grandma calls “visitors” (leaves that have escaped my strainer)

The website also has some fab gifting ideas, I am lusting over these adorable Chinese Teacups and I look forward to seeing what else Shardee comes up with.

Image from whatsthattea.com.au

I find it so inspiring when people decide to put themselves out on a limb to pursue their dream and I think we’re currently in an environment where we really have to encourage small Australian businesses.

If you’re a tea afficianado or searching for a sweet present for someone that thinks that tea is the ant’s pants make sure you visit What’s That Tea on:
their blog
their Facebook
their Twitter

 

Schmeckt cooking: Ethical chicken (chickun) and vegetable pie

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I’ve been home for most of this week recuperating from some vile bug. I don’t like to talk about snot in a recipe post but holy-moly, I wish I had shares in Kleenex..

Anyway, it’s become apparent that I quite fancy cooking when I am home sick, no idea why. I think all that chopping, stirring and the smell of something delicious is just dead soothing. Cooking for others is probably not ideal when you have a virus, lucky everything I’ve made has been cooked at a high temperature and no one has yet fallen foul of my plague.

Yesterday morning I dragged my sorry self up to the shops to get milk and with a vague idea I might buy something to cook for dinner. At first I was toying with the idea of making the Cauliflower and bacon soup that I saw on Erin’s blog (you really should visit her blog, if you haven’t already, she’s cooking her way through all the CWA recipes). Sadly my tiny Woolworths only had tiny half heads of cauliflower and I would have to buy 3 to make the recipe. In the end I dragged home a dragged home a full bag of groceries including a free range chicken and an enormous leek.

I’ve made a chicken and bacon pie from David Herbert’s Really Useful Cookbook
 and decided to use the same basic principles but adapt it to include vegetables. My friend Jude and I started calling it the ethical chickun pie as a joke and now it shall forever be known as that.

Ethical chicken (or chickun) & vegetable pie – with thanks to David Herbert for the inspiration & Jude for the name

*note* This is not a quick dish, it’s definitely something to cook when you’re pottering around at home for the day.
1 large chicken – must be ethical – free range, not open to bribery and an upstanding member of the chickun society
1 very large onion (or 2 regular size) – quartered
1 carrot – trimmed and quartered
Tablespoon of black peppercorns
Tablespoon of mustard seeds
1 or 2 bay leaves
3 cloves of garlic (I had some absolutely enormous cloves so only used 2)
1 large leek – green part trimmed off, washed and sliced into thin rings
1 cup of white wine
Cauliflower (I used one small half head, probably 4 large florets) – washed and separated into florets
Pumpkin – 2 cups – peeled and cubed
Cup of peas – frozen or fresh
Flat leaf parsley – generous handful
Butter
Plain flour
Pastry – fresh or frozen. Puff or shortcrust.

Place your chicken in a large, deep saucepan and fill it with cold water. Add the onion, carrot, peppercorns, mustard seeds, bay leaves and one of the garlic cloves which you will quarter. Put the pot on a low heat so that after it heats up it will simmer for an hour or so.

Nekkid chickun

Turn off the heat and let the pot cool down a little before removing the chicken using tongs. The chicken will have some liquid inside it’s cavity so be careful that you don’t burn yourself. Place the chicken on a plate and let it cool down enough for you to handle it. Remove all the skin and throw it away and then remove all the flesh from the bones. Cut the flesh into chunks and set aside. This process is messy but easy.

You now have a lovely stock which you will make your pie sauce with and lots left over that you can freeze. Firstly drain the onions, carrot etc out so you only have the liquid remaining. You will want it to cool enough that you can scrape the excess fat off and dispose of it. I sometimes put the stock in the fridge to speed this process up.

While the chicken & stock cool boil or steam the cauliflower and pumpkin until almost cooked and then drain.

Pre heat your oven to around 180 degrees (mine is fan forced so you might have to adjust this to a higher heat)

In a large frypan heat a drizzle of olive oil and add your remaining garlic clove (sliced) and the leeks. Saute on a low heat so they start to soften, rather than burn. Add your wine and let it simmer gently.

While your leeks are simmering you will be start your white sauce. I melted the knob of butter on a low heat and then added a couple of tablespoons of flour, using a wooden spatula to create a thick paste, then a ladle of the stock to thin it out. I think I added about 5 ladles of stock in the end, stirring continuously the whole time. Sorry I can’t be more specific, if you’ve made a white sauce before you will be fine – if not let me know and I will dig out the precise instructions. It will be quite runny but will thicken upon stirring.

Add your chicken and peas to the leek and garlic and then add your pumpkin, cauliflower, roughly chopped parsley and finally your white sauce. Turn off the heat and stir everything well, season with salt and cracked pepper. Don’t worry if your pumpkin starts breaking up or seems too mushy, when the pie is baking the pumpkin will break down and become part of the sauce anyway.

Put your mixture in a large baking or pie dish. You can choose to grease the pan and line it with pastry or simply put pastry on top (my choice this time. I had to roll out my sheet of shortcrust pastry to fit over the top and then I put three holes in the centre for the heat to escape while cooking. I brushed the pastry with milk and then baked it for around 30 – 40 minutes. Again, a bit vague but you want your pastry to look nicely coloured and crisp.

Pre-pastry

You can eat this on it’s own (I think it has enough vegetables) or served with a crisp garden salad.

I had enough stock left over to freeze three containers, much cheaper than buying the cartons of stock in the supermarket (they’re about $3 each) and there is no salt in the stock. It’s the first time I’ve used mustard seeds and I noticed a quite a few in the bottom of the drained stock, I’ll be interested to see how it turns out.

Schmeckt Cooking: Warm Lamb Salad

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Warm Lamb Salad

I’m interrupting my slapdash baking attempts with a short and savoury dinner recipe that I concocted last week. Look, variations of it probably exist but throwing the feta in the pan and the subsequent taste sensation was delicious.
I wanted to call this Warm Greek Salad but really.. it’s nothing like that and I fear that offending the Greek nation with this hodge podge may be a bit too much for my wee blog to take on.

Warm Lamb Salad
Serves 2

Olive oil
1 x large brown onion
2 x cloves of garlic – finely sliced
½ lemon – juice and zest
Lamb steaks – cubed (I think I used approximately around 200 grams per person)
½ x can of chickpeas – rinsed
Greek feta – cubed (I used low around 5 cubes per person)
2 x large handfuls of mixed salad greens – washed & dried (I used a mix of rocket and spinach. If you haven’t got a lettuce spinner, I highly recommend one – they are the ant’s pants!)
Cherry tomatoes – halved

Heat a lug of olive oil in a medium sized fry pan on a low heat and add the garlic and onion. Cook until the onion is slightly transparent, turn up the heat and add the chickpeas. Cook for a couple of minutes stirring once or twice.

Meanwhile place the mixed greens in the centre of a plate and top with the tomatoes.

Once the chickpeas start to brown and caramelise add half the lemon juice, lamb and then season with pepper. Let the lamb brown on all sides before adding the remaining lemon juice, feta and zest. Cook for a couple of minutes until the feta starts to soften.

Remove the pan from the heat and let it stand for a couple of minutes before piling the lamb and chickpea mixture on top of the salad. Garnish with a wedge of lemon.

It’s not rocket science – or even cordon bleu for that matter but it was quick, delicious and pretty healthy.

Schmeckt Cooking: Individual White Chocolate Chip Cakes

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After tackling this recipe I had to sit down and remind myself of the reasons why I am doing this. I am trying to teach myself how to bake. I can’t get frustrated on the second recipe and just give up.

You can probably guess by that intro that I didn’t have a fantastic result with these.

The fantasy

I got the recipe from Baking -  a commonsense guide, a book I invested in because I thought it would be the holy grail of baking. This is the second recipe I’ve tried and I don’t remember being impressed with the last one. This book better shape up, or I’ll be shipping it out – straight to Vinnies!

First mistake: Deciding that I felt like baking at 8.40 pm on a Monday night whilst also wanting to watch The Voice. Do I have rocks in my head? What’s wrong with me?! I don’t think I am the sort of person that can bake on a whim – I need organisation and plenty of relaxed time up my sleeves before I can attempt baking. I had the tele on, a messy kitchen and work the next morning. What a thick.

With one eye (and an ear) on the televisual warbling I skimmed the book looking for recipes containing buttermilk as I wanted to use up the leftovers from my Ginger cakes with orange glaze. Later on I noticed on the carton that you can freeze buttermilk. Excellent information, hopefully next time I will not enter into hasty baking decisions to use up leftover goods. This recipe contained buttermilk, white chocolate and cream cheese – ingredients I had so I figured it was a winner.

Second mistake: Not reading the recipe in full before deciding to upon the recipe. When will I learn?! This happened last time!  When I started the batter I realised the recipe specified white chocolate chips, rather than the white chocolate melts which I had (you might think the title of the recipe would be a dead giveaway…) One melt would probably equal about 10 chips so I decided to chop them up with a steak knife as the kitchen knives were all dirty and waiting to be washed. After nearly stabbing myself with the tip for about the 15th time I realised that using a steak knife was a stupid mistake. But I persisted and ended up with chunks of white chocolate, bigger than chips but smaller than melts. In retrospect it’s quite lucky I didn’t bleed on the chocolate, what with it being white and all. Of course as I hadn’t read the recipe properly I didn’t notice that the icing also included white chocolate, I had exactly enough for the cake batter so the icing would had to be chocolate-less.

Third mistake: Over-exuberant use of the Mixmaster. (I don’t even own a Mixmaster, I think it’s a Breville food mixer, but I just call them all Mixmasters). I had to beat the (softened) butter & eggs using an “electric beaters” and then “fold” in the other ingredients. Of course, as I was ill-prepared my butter was rock-hard from being kept in the fridge so I had to zap it into the microwave, long enough to soften it but not too long that it would be melted. Don’t do this. I was supposed to beat the butter and eggs until “pale and creamy”. I just ended up with a large clump of slightly soft, mostly hard butter swinging around on the electric beaters like a drunk on a chandelier, flicking sugar all over the place. It took forever to resemble anything near “pale and creamy”. After this and the hand-chopping of the chocolate I was feeling a little tetchy – I just wanted to sit down and watch The Voice – I didn’t want to miss what was sure to be a glorious showdown between Prinnie and Mahalia! I just had to fold the other ingredients in and I could whack these babies into the oven. Isn’t it fortuitous that my Mixmaster has a folding option?!

Note to self: Probably not..

The batter ended up so ridiculously thick that when I disengaged the metal beaters from the machine they could actually stand up in the batter it was so thick. It made it incredibly difficult to get the batter off the spoon and into the patty pan, and I overfilled some of the them so I ended up with cupcakes that were overflowing by the time I pulled them out of the oven.

If you eat too many of these cakes your thighs will look like this batter

On a positive note, because I think we’re all in need of at least ONE by now, the flavour of the batter was amazing. Have you tried the cake batter ice cream at Cold Rock? The flavour was almost exactly the same. But it was incredibly sweet, it didn’t take much batter to make me feel a bit ill.

Fourth mistake: Incorrect cooking time. After a rather lengthy discussion at work regarding fan-forced ovens and baking temperatures we all agreed that I should factor down recipes by about 30 degrees to avoid the burnt bottom result I got last time. Big mistake. When I removed the cupcakes after the specified amount of cooking time of 20 minutes they were almost still batter. I ended up baking them for another 14 minutes altogether. I let the cakes cool for 10 minutes and then turned them out upon a wire rack and some of them started to fall apart, like they were still a little on the uncooked side.  Mick and I shared one of them that was falling apart, I ate about half of the top (it had grown to look like a muffin) and even though the melted chocolate was delicious they really were too sweet and I think that they also had a slight undercooked flavour.

I let the cupcakes cool and read the instructions for the icing – not only should it have white chocolate, of which none remained, but it also had cream, cream cheese and icing sugar. No way was I covering those cakes in that! It made my arteries harden just thinking about it.. and let’s face it… I was well over baking by this time.

Mick took the cakes to work – I was far too embarrassed to take them to my office.

The reality - note chocolate chunks and greasy patty pan cases

Presentation: 4/10 – Crap
Taste: I’m going to give them 6/10. Mick’s workmates gobbled them all up. They were edible and without the white chocolate the cake itself would have been quite nice.
Texture: 4/10 – Also crap. Could have been improved by the correct temperature and not beating the crap out of them.

Here’s the recipe, I’d love to know if anyone makes these and their thoughts on the end result. Personally, I’ll never attempt these again.

Individual White Chocolate Chip Cakes

Makes 12

Preparation time: 20 minutes (does not include hand-cutting chocolate melts down to chocolate chip size)
Cooking time: 20 minutes (does not include extra 14 minutes of cooking time if you get all confuzzled and bake it at the wrong temperature)

125 g unsalted butter, softened
185 g caster (superfine) sugar
2 eggs, lightly beaten
1 teaspoon natural vanilla extract
250 g self-raising flour, sifted
125 ml buttermilk
280 g white chocolate chips
white chocolate, shaved, to decorate (omitted from my recipe as I didn’t have any left…)

White chocolate cream cheese icing
100 g white chocolate
60 ml cream
200 g cream cheese, softened
40 g icing sugar

Instructions

  1. Preheat oven to 170ºC (325ºF or Gas 3). Lightly grease twelve 125 ml muffin tins (for some reason I decided to use patty pans in mine – after I’d tipped them out – and finished watching the Voice, I went to wash pans up, I could see droplets of congealed butter in the bottom – these cakes are lardy)
  2. Beat the butter and sugar in a large bowl using electric beaters until pale and creamy. Gradually add the egg, beating well after each addition. Add the vanilla extract and beat. Fold in the flour alternately with the buttermilk and then fold in the chocolate chips.
  3. Foll each muffin hole three quarters full with the mixture and bake for 20 minutes, or until a skewer comes out clean when inserted into each cake. Leave in the tins for 5 minutes before turning out onto a wire rack to cool.
  4. To make the icing, melt the chocolate and cream in a saucepan over low heat until smooth. Cool slightly, then add to the cream cheese and icing sugar and then beat until smooth.
  5. Spread the icing over the cakes and decorate with white chocolate shavings.

Schmeckt Cooking: Ginger Cakes with Orange Glaze

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I’ve just finished eating one of these, no better time to write about it than when I can still taste it. This recipe came from the The Australian Women’s Weekly (AWW) Retro Cookbook, though in there it’s called Ginger and Orange Cakes. As orange only features in the glazed icing I decided that the name above was more indicative of the end result.

Recipe

The font in the book is a little on the small side, I found it difficult to read the fractions (2/3 cup etc) as they were tiny, and I have great eyesight. I also made the mistake of not reading the recipe in full before I decided to bake these. I went to the shop, bought the ingredients I needed and when I got home discovered the recipe called for mini-fluted tube pans. Which I don’t own and certainly have never heard of.. Oops. I asked the internet and we all agreed I could make do with silicone muffin pans lined with patty pans. I am not convinced these are a common pan in Australia, I can’t seem to find them on many local sites. I could be wrong though, we all know I am not completely au fait with the baking world! If I were to make these again I would invest in 2 x 6 hole pans first, I think the end result would be a lot prettier.

After a disastrous attempt at cooking a chocolate pavlova recently I learned about the difference in temperatures in a conventional oven versus a fan-forced oven. I know… this is probably common knowledge to most people but I do like to think of myself as an individual. Anyway, it’s lucky I know about that now or these cakes would have been cactus, as it was they were a little too brown on the bottom. This is the second time that’s happened on the middle rack so I’ll move them a little higher next time.

Burnt bot bot


The recipe itself was easy to follow, and the steps were simple. Mess was minimal as you don’t need a lot of bowls to make it and they were cooked within half an hour. I loved sifting the flour, sugar and spices, it smelt so Christmassy though I did sneeze like all get out from inhaling the spices floating through the air.

The batter was pretty thick, which made it difficult to get into the patty pans. The recipe makes 8 cakes but a couple of my cakes merged and were a bit uneven on top – does anyone have any fail proof ways of making individual cakes that are even?

Worth licking out the bowl

This is what they looked like when they came out of the oven

Fresh out of the oven


The glaze was pretty delicious, I am a sucker for anything with zest in it, but frankly – the cakes looked a bit rubbish. Also, my glaze was very yellow – maybe I had a bit too much zest. Here’s a pic of one of the better ones.

Yummo!


Mick and I tried a cake after dinner, the rest will go in to work tomorrow and I will report back on their verdict.


Here’s Mick’s feedback:
Presentation – 6/10 – I totally agree with this – he even posted a photo of the cake on Twitter calling it the “Elephant Ginger Cake” – cheeky.
Taste – 9/10 The cake wasn’t too gingery and the flavour of the orange glaze complimented the spices.

Texture – 10/10 – Wow. Big score. The cake was amazingly light but still moist. My only concern was the slightly overcooked base.

This is the first recipe I’ve tried from this book and I am pleased with the result, especially the taste. I’ll work on the presentation. I would definitely make these at Christmas, the flavours and scent of the spices and orange really give them a festive air.

Visit booko.com.au to compare the online stores for the lowest prices.

CAKES – makes 8
2/3 cup (100 grams) plain (all-purpose) flour
2/3 cup (100 grams) self-raising flour
1/ teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda (baking soda)
2 teaspoons each of ground cinnamon & ginger
1/2 teaspoon of ground cloves
1 cup (220 grams) of firmly packed brown sugar
2/3 cup (160 ml) buttermilk
2 eggs beaten lightly
100 grams (3 ounces) unsalted butter, melted

GLAZE
1 cup (160 grams) icing (confectioners’) sugar, sifted
1/2 teaspoon of finely grated orange rind
1 tablespoon of strained orange juice
2 teaspoons of hot water

  1. Pre-heat oven to 180°C/350 °F (if fan-forced decrease by 10 – 20 degrees). Grease and flour eight holes of two 6-hole (3/4 cup/180ml) mini fluted tube pans (if you have them!)
  2. Sift flour, soda, spices and sugar into a medium bowl. Stir in buttermilk, eggs and butter. Divide mixture into pan holes. Bake for about 30 minutes. Turn cakes over immediately onto greased wire rack over tray. Cool.
  3. Mark orange glaze. Pour over cakes; stand until glaze is set.

ORANGE GLAZE
Stir ingredient in medium bowl until smooth

*EDIT* My darling friend Ruthie left this comment on Facebook
Re getting cakes the same size, use an ice-cream scoop or measuring cup and level off so each cake has the exact same amount of batter. You’ll still get slight variation due to hot/ cold spots in your oven but overall they’ll be pretty much the same :)

Something to do..

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After wrapping up two weeks on the couch recuperating from surgery I’ve decided I need a hobby. I’ve analysed my life and this is how I spend my spare time:

  • Cleaning
  • Patting the cat
  • Op-shopping
  • Shopping
  • Watching tele
  • Wasting time on the internet
  • Moaning about being bored
  • Talking about losing weight and then failing to do much about it

I used to blog a lot as well but I’ve even been too lazy for that lately preferring to bang out tweets and status updates on FB.

Anyway, I’ve decided to start baking. I’m not a natural baker, I’m the sort of person that can slap together a meal out of veges and meat but lack the discipline to be good at baking.

I’ll blog about it along the way and hopefully reclaim my passion for blogging as well. Never fear, I am not going to eat all I bake (see last bullet point above) but I do foresee that everyone is going to be very well fed..