Apricots.

At our house we have two massive apricot trees and today we picked a whole lot before the birds could get to them.
Fresh fruit off a tree in your backyard is probably the most wonderful thing ever. My housemate bought some apricots from a shop a couple of weeks ago and they were completely bland compared to the ones we've picked from our backyard.

Heres some things I plan to do with the mass amount we just picked:

Apricot Jam:
Pretty much, same amount of white sugar as you have fruit.
If you have 1kg of fruit you need 1kg of sugar.
Cut up the fruit, remove any stones, cut off any bad bits, then put it in a massive saucepan with the sugar and let it sit for half an hour or so to soften the fruit, then put it on medium heat and let it slowly cook for a few hours, until a little spoonful on a plate sets in a few minutes and you can run your finger through with it keeping shape. (not runny)

Put the jars and lids you're using in another large saucepan with water and let it boil. Remove the jars with tongs and fill them while they're hot. Put the lids on straight away.
If the jars are sterilised enough it will keep in a cupboard for ages. Once its open its worth keeping it in the fridge though, just in case.

Apricot crumble
Some ripe apricots
Caster sugar
Oats
Butter
Plain flour
Brown sugar
Coconut, or flaked almonds, or anything else you'd like to add to the crumble.

Cut up the apricots in halves or quarters and remove the stones, put them in a saucepan with (for about 1 - 2 cups of apricots) 1/4 - 1/3 cup of caster sugar. Put it on a medium heat and let them stew, it should take about 20 minutes depending on how many apricots you use.

Preheat the oven to about 180.
Melt about 60g of butter, add about 2tbsp of brown sugar, about 1 cup of oats, 1/3 cup of flour, and half a handful or anything else you wanna add. If its too dry add more melted butter.
This recipe can easily be doubled or whatever if you're making a really big crumble. Same for the apricot part. And this crumble can be used for anything, I also make apple crumble, apple and raspberry, apple and rhubarb, pear, whatever. And it can make a really easy dessert if you get tinned pie fruit, I love always having a can handy for random dessert-craving. You can make one up in about 15 minutes easy.

Once the apricot is stewed and the crumble is made, put the apricot in a little pie dish or ramekins or whatever you want to use and top it with the crumble. Then bake it for about 15 minutes just until the top is brown and crispy.
Its wonderful with custard, or icecream.

Apricot muffins (makes about 3-4 large ones)
60 g butter, softened
1/4 cup caster sugar
1 egg
3/4 cup flour
1/3 cup milk
1/4 cup oats
Stewed apricots

Cream the butter and sugar, add the egg and mix quickly and well, add 1/4 cups of flour and tbsps of milk until its all combined and light and fluffy, then stir in the oats and apricots.
If the mixure is too wet add some more flour, but I like to keep it pretty wet so that they turn out lovely and moist.
Have the oven preheated to 180, put the muffin batter into muffin trays (you can make them big or little, it doesn't really matter.) and bake for about 15 minutes (maybe a bit longer if they're really big, shorter if they're little) until the top is a bit brown and a skewer inserted comes out clean.

Miso soup

This is so so easy and completely delicious. We make it when we just need a quick meal or need to use up vegies in the fridge.
You can find miso paste at supermarkets and probably at asian shops as well.

We used:
Miso paste
Carrot
Brocolli
Pak choy
tofu
mushrooms
wonton wrappers

But really you can put just about anything in it, or even just have it as a broth. (its awesome when you're sick)

I chopped everything up small and cut the wonton wrappers into thirds.
Start off by putting a pot of water to heat, just however much soup you want = how much water to use. I'm pretty sure there's an exact measurement for miso to water ratio, but once the water is hot I just put a big spoonful in and taste it, then add more if needed. It should be quite salty and dark brown with a kind of cloudy look. Pretty much just make it however strong you want.

Then I added the carrots 'cause they take the longest to cook. Then started to heat a frypan with a whole lot of butter (by a whole lot I mean maybe a tbsp or a little more) I fried the tofu and mushrooms in that until they were all browned and delicious.

After the carrots been cooking a few minutes add the broccoli, and then a couple minutes after that add the pak choy. I cut up the little inside leaves of the pak choy into long strips to look nice, and the larger outside leaves in little slices. The leafy bits take the least time to cook, but the white fleshy bit takes a bit longer.

At the very end I added the wonton wrappers. Add them one by one in different spots in the soup or they'll all stick together, that might happen anyway but this will prevent it.

Lastly I added the fried tofu and mushrooms. When I serve it I usually use tongs to divide out the vegies, and then ladel the broth over the top.

Voila!

Tomato macaroni and cheese

This is a very popular meal in my house, and was in my old house too. My mum got the recipe from Jamie Oliver which can be seen here. I just kind of improvised the ingredients and method from seeing my mum make it, hers is better but this one is still pretty fabulous.



Ingredients
One packet of hollow pasta of your choice
About 500ml cream
A jar of pasta sauce or a tin of diced tomatos or a whole lot of diced fresh tomatos
One or two cloves of garlic, crushed or diced really really small
A handful of breadcrumbs
About 2 cups of grated cheese, but more is okay too
Some fresh or dried herbs

Put a large pot of water on to boil and salt it, when its boiling add the whole packet of pasta and stir it occasionally.

While waiting for the water to boil and the pasta to cook begin the prep - crush or finely chop the garlic, open the tin of tomatos and the cream, grate the cheese, get the herbs. Put it all except for about a 1/3-1/2 cup of the cheese (more if you want) in a bowl and mix. Mix the last of the cheese with the breadcrumbs and some more herbs.

Once the pasta is cooked drain it, and then mix in the creamy sauce. If its not saucy enough add some more cream. Put it into a tray and then sprinkle top with the breadcrumb mix.

Bake for about 15-20 minutes at about 180, until the top is a bit brown and the cheese is all melted.

Christmas Feast pt. 3

The salad and gravy.

These were the easiest parts of the meal, but quite essential.

The salad was made up of a base of baby salad leaves, baby spinach leaves, and rocket. I also added tomato and cucumber, and made a dressing of olive oil, salad vinegar, lemon juice and seasoning. Easy as!

The gravy I made from all the juices at the bottom of the pans of chicken, with some chicken stock, butter, and flour added. I put the stock and juices in a saucepan and added butter, then flour and stirred it until it thickened.

And that's it! I don't have a photo of these ones, but heres one of the finished plate!

Christmas Feast pt. 2

The Vegies

I did both roast and boiled vegies, I wanted to do steamed but we don't have a steamer big enough so I just boiled them.

For the roast vegies I just used potatos and sweet potatos and onion, peeled and cut into about the same size chunks (the onion I cut into wedges). I covered them with oil and dried herbs and roasted them at about 200 for half an hour.

This photo is prior to cooking, the one below is the only one I really have after they're cooked, and you can see the rest of the feast along with them!

For the boiled vegies I used brocolli, baby carrots, and snow peas. I peeled the carrots and then cut them in half across, and then each half into 4 pieces. So they were like little carrot sticks. I just cut the little bunches off the broccoli, the really big ones I cut in half so they were all about the same size. The snow peas I de-stringed and then cut in half.
I boiled a massive pot of water and first added the carrot, and let them cook for a few minutes before adding the broccoli, and then a minute or two after that the snowpeas. Then its only a minute or two more til they're all cooked.
I served them just like that, but they'd be really nice with a bit of melted butter and salt.

Christmas Feast pt. 1

Christmas is awesome. And one of my favourite parts is the food. I had my family over for lunch this year and wanted to take full advantage of finally having a large kitchen, and a hungry group of people to feed!

I made roast chicken drumsticks, roast potato and sweet potato, boiled vegies, and salad. And will be writing blogs about them one by one !

Roast Chicken

Chicken drumsticks (Or wings, or whatever)
Plain natural yogurt
Olive oil
Dried herbs
Salt and pepper
Honey
and anything else you'd like to add.



I made up the marinade (everything but the chicken) using about 1 - 1 1/2 cups yogurt, 3-4 tbsp oil, tbsp dried 'mixed herbs' (oregano, thyme, majoram) 1 1/2 tbsp honey and a good amount of salt and pepper and some sprigs of rosemary from the garden which I rolled in my hands a bit to release the oils. But that was for about 25 drumsticks.

I put it all in a massive bowl and marinated it overnight, making sure it was all mixed together and covering all the chicken.

When it came time to cook I layed them all out on a tray so that I could fit as many on the tray as I could, but so they weren't overlapping. I drizzled them with more oil and then roasted them at about 200-220 for at least 35 minutes, until they're nice and brown and crispy on top.
I didn't, but you can turn them over halfway through to cook a bit more evenly and get colour on all sides.

Homemade Vanilla essence

You will need:
Some small jars or bottles
Vanilla pods (at least one per jar)
Vodka

I just found some little jars at a $2 shop, but only because I couldn't find them anywhere else and I was running out of time. You can find some really nice ones on Ebay and other websites.
I got 5 vanilla pods from a nut shop, and a bottle of vodka.


Cut the vanilla pods in half longways, and then in half again (or just to whatever fits well in the jars) and put the pieces in the jars. I had 4 jars and put 1 1/4 pod in each one.

Top up the jar with vodka, and thats it.

I put glad wrap over the tops underneath the lids, and then wrapping paper tied with ribbon. But if the lids are really tight that's not necessary. (except to make it look pretty)

Then you leave them for at least a month, after that they're good to go.
I'm not sure, but I've read that you can just top up the jars with vodka once they're running low, and then leave them a few more weeks for the vanilla to infuse.

I made them for my family for christmas, and they're a perfect gift. And its very easy to make a lot all at once.

Bread

Fresh homemade bread is probably the most wonderful thing ever. I grew up waking up to the smell of fresh bread about every week, and having butter and vegemite on a fresh, still warm from the oven, slice of crusty bread is the best breakfast anyone could want.



I use my mums recipe which (from memory) is as follows:
2 cups plain flour
tsp dried yeast
1/4 cup of oat bran or cornmeal or something of the like
1/4 cup oats or grains of some sort
tbsp oil, or an egg
1/3 cup ish of warm water

Today I didn't use oat bran or anything of the like because we don't have any.

I got a massive bowl and put everything in it, I did a double batch so that I could make one loaf and also a pizza base for dinner, using both an egg and a tbsp of oil.

Then I put the dough hooks in our hand beater and mixed it a bit, and then slowly added water until it formed a dough. You want the dough to be moist, but not too wet or sticky. If you find you add too much water just add a little more flour and knead it in by hand.

Once everything has been incorperated in, clean some bench space and flour it, then put the dough on it and knead it for about 10 minutes, it should become very smooth and stretchy. If you find it too sticky, put some oil on your hands and put a bit extra flour over it and knead the flour in until its not sticky anymore.

Then get another big bowl (or just clean the first one..) and oil it, then put the dough in it and let it rise for as long as you can, until its at least doubled its size. Leave it in a warm spot, I put the oven on for a few minutes while I was kneading it and then turned it off and let it rise in the oven with the door open, but if its a warm day just on a bench or windowsill in the sun will work fine.

After an hour or so check it out, if its become massive knead it down a little again, and then put it into greased tins and let it rise for a bit again. I usually flatten the dough out a little and then roll it up and put the seam at the bottom of the tin, that way you get a pretty perfect end product. If you want you can cut a few slits in the top, or just one down the middle. You can also easily turn it into rolls, just break off handfuls of the dough and roll them up and put them on an oiled tray. (or pretty much do whatever you want, plait it, twist it, make faces out of it..)

Have the oven preheated to 220, and bake the bread it that for 10 minutes, then lower it to 180 and bake for a further 35 minutes. You can tell when its done by tipping it out of the tin and tapping the side, it should be crusty and sound kinda hollow.

Lasagna

You will need:
Sauce -
200-400g ish of Mince meat of some sort (generally beef? but whatever really)
A jar or two of tomato pasta sauce, or tinned chopped tomatos, or a bunch of finely diced tomatos
A largish brown onion finely diced
Optional herbs/vegetables/garlic/whatever you want to add (grate the vegies, finely chop garlic)

Bechamel -
Butter
Flour
Milk
Optional cheese

The rest -
Lasagna sheets, from the shops or homemade.
Cheese

Fry the onion and garlic (if you're using it) in some oil over medium heat. Once soft add mince and fry until all browned and cooked. Add the vegetables if you want to, and then the tomatos or tomato sauce or the canned tomatos and let simmer for a while. Stir occasionally.

Once the sauce is simmering, melt about 2-3 tbsps of butter in a saucepan, put the heat low and then add 1/4-1/3 cup of PLAIN flour, stir well and make sure there are no lumps, don't stop stirring and let it slightly brown to cook out the flour. Then add about 1/2-3/4-1 cup milk, I usually add maybe 1/4 cup and then mix it all in and then add the rest. I don't know why I do it that way, and I don't think its necessary or makes any difference at all. Keep stirring it over low heat until it thickens, then take it off the heat. I usually add some cheese to it as well.

To assemble your lasanga:
I think traditionally you put bechamel on the bottom, but I don't like too much of it so I don't. If you want to, maybe make more bechamel or there won't be enough..
I do it like this: Meat sauce, lasagna sheets (fit as many in the tray whole as you can and then break bits up to fill in gaps), meat sauce, lasagna sheets, meat sauce ..until theres no sauce left. Then put some bechamel on the top, spread it out a little, then top with cheese.
Bake at about 180 for 15 or so minutes until the top is browned and delicious.

Rainbow cake

Its someones birthday tomorrow! And I don't really know them, so cake is an obvious present-solver.
Usually I do cupcakes, but I wanted something easier to carry, and recently I've gotten more into cakes then cupcakes, and also by making a cake there was leftovers and my housemates are loving me so much.

I made this cake mixture and then divided it into 5 bowls and made them red, purple, blue, aqua-ish and orange.

Then I put one colour at the bottom of a greased tin and spread it out a little, then put another colour on and spread it, and so on until all colours were used and the batter was spread almost all the way to the edge.
Then I baked it and cut a nice square out of it.


Tomorrow I'm going to ice it and cover it in sprinkles, and probably a happy birthday message. I'll post up photos when its all done :)


BTW my icing recipe is:
About a tbsp of butter melted in a saucepan (purely because we don't have a microwave yet, if you have one use it instead of a saucepan >.<)
Then add icing sugar and tsps of hot water until you reach the right consistency and quantity.
For this one I'm going to seperate it into bowls and add colours, then put small blobs of it over the cake, then spread it around, hopefully making an awesome rainbow swirly icing. Then I'll pipe happy birthday on top once the icing is set (if you don't make a large quantity of icing and so don't have much water in it, it will be a lot greasier and not set hard. If you're just making a small amount just use a tsp of butter, unless you want it greasy and soft that is.)

My basic cupcake recipe

If I'm gonna dedicate a blog to my cake, I have to do one for my cupcakes. I make these for every occasion ever. I got it from my year 10 foodtech teacher, who was awesome. And I've been using the same recipe for 2 and a half years now.

You need:
3/4 cup SR flour
1/4 cup caster sugar
1/4 cup (60g) butter
1/3 cup milk
1 egg

Soften the butter, the best way is to just leave it out of the fridge for an hour or so before use, but you could also dice it up and microwave it on low for about 20 seconds, don't let it melt though or it won't work. Then cream it with the sugar. Add the egg and beat. Then gradually add 1/4 cups of flour and tbsps of milk until all combined.
Bake at 180 for about 10-15 minutes. Depending on the size of the patty pans.

And you can srsly add anything to these, same as the cake.
Take out a tbsp or 2 of flour and replace it with cocoa for chocolate.
Or add chocolate chips, peanut butter, apple, raspberries, white chocolate, nutella, cheesecake mix, foodcolouring (such as in these), or any sort of artificial flavouring you want.

My basic cake recipe

Firgured I may as well give this its own post since it features in so many others, but none in which it is plain.

This is the easiest, quickest, most mess free cake recipe I have ever found.
You will need (You better appreciate this Adria)
1/2-3/4 cup SR flour
1/2 cup caster sugar
1/4 cup melted butter
1/2 cup milk
1 egg

Then you just put it all in a large-ish bowl (in the order above, but I don't think it really matters) and beat it for a few minutes until its all combined and smooth. I usually put just 1/2 cup of flour in, and then add more if its too runny.

Then bake it at 180 for about 15 minutes (depending on the tin you use..) in a greased and if you wish lined tin until a skewer comes out clean. Take out of tin immediately and cool before icing.

And you can pretty much add anything to it, to make it chocolate just stick with 1/2 cup of flour and add 2 or 3tbsp of cocoa.
Add a tsp of vanilla essence to make it vanilla.
Or just add awesome stuff to it:
Raspberries and white chocolate chips.
Peanut butter.
Apple and cinnamon (and sprinkle the top with brown sugar and cinnamon before baking)

And here it is featured in some of my other posts:
Black forest cake
Alice in Wonderland cake

Epic toast

So I got late-night hungry and went to investigate the fridge and came up with this. Then I had to go make it again because it was so good.

It goes like this:
Toast, buttered. With avocado on it, a little salt and lemon juice, then diced tomatos, then scrambled eggs, then some mersey valley spring onion cheese.

Omnomnom.

Roll'd chicken with mushroom red wine sauce

On the last day of a week-long course I did we were trying to use up all the leftover stuff so our amazing teacher left us to our own devices. We'd made bechamel earlier in the day and had to use it somewhere in our dish.

I got a chicken breast fillet and sliced it in half but not quite all the way through to get a thin long wide peice.
I sprinkled it with basil and garlic and then rolled it up, and put toothpicks through it and baked it at probably about 180 for 15 minutes. Once its out slice it into a few pieces.
Meanwhile I sauted some mushrooms in heaps of butter, deglazed it with red wine, and then added the bechamel.
Then let it drain through a sieve to get rid of the mushroom and be left with a smooth sauce.

I served it with cherry tomatos and baby spinach and coriander leaves. It was epic.

Toffeed strawberries

Featured here with a happy grater.

These are so easy. And they can go with anything.
I made them to go with a flourless chocolate cake and icecream, but they'd be awesome on pancakes, cupcakes, pudding, icecream, every type of cake ever, french toast, scones, srsly anything. Well maybe not ANYTHING but pretty much.

Chop up some strawberries, depending on how big they are, in halfs or quarters.
Put them in a saucepan with about 1/4 cup caster sugar and a little water and let them cook. The toffee will stick to the pan, and a lot of it will stay there rather than be in with the strawberries, but don't stress about it. It is still delicious. However, make sure you start soaking/cleaning the saucepan straight away otherwise it will be stuck. forever. and ever.

Orange and pumpkin salad.

I made this for a function we did in my hospitality class this year to go with buffalo wings (if I can find the recipe I will post it), it is amazing.
Its really really easy and completely delicious. Vary the amount of pumpkin and orange depending on whether its gonna be a side salad or a main in itself.

Cut some pumpkin into small cubes, drizzle with olive oil, salt, pepper, powdered chilli, herbs, garlic, and whatever else you want.
Bake it for about 15 minutes at 180.

Cut the skin off an orange and then cut out the segments.
Wash some baby salad leaves (I used spinach and rocket)
Combine it all and drizzle with some dressing (I think I did olive oil, mustard, and orange juice)

Black forest cake.

I made this for my friends birthday.
Starting off with a massive chocolate cake, using this recipe but doubled.

Then I cut it in half and filled it with cream and sliced up cherries. Then covered it with chocolate ganache.

The edge is chocolate, made by melting some chocolate and spreading it over some baking paper, then wrapping it around the cake and letting it set. Then peeling off the baking paper.
You can make it even prettier by drizzling some white chocolate on the baking paper first, then putting the milk or dark chocolate over it.

I topped it with piped cream, cherries, and chocolate drizzle.

Baked potatos

These were another thing inspired by something I stumbled upon, I'd previously made two similiar things:
baked potatos where you scoop out the middle and mash it with cheese, sour cream, spring onion, then put back in skins and bake.
And also tomatos with the middle scooped out, filled with rice, pesto, and an egg on top then baked. This one was a potato with an egg baked in it, but I mixed in a few other things with it.

First bake the potatos in some foil at 200 for about 45 minutes.

Then once they were cool I sliced off the tops and scooped out the middle, and mashed it with a spoon of sour cream and some cheese.

I finely diced some tomato and mixed it with fresh thyme. Then put a spoon of it at the bottom of the potato shell, then a spoon of the mash, then I spooned some egg into each one (because these were small potatos I only needed 1 egg for all four, but if the potatos are big enough use a whole egg).

Then I baked them for about 15 minutes and served it with soup

This photo is terrible, oops.

Rainbow cupcakes

These were for a party I invited myself to, I scored the invite by promising rainbow cupcakes in return.

This is my cupcake recipe. Its wonderful.

I divided the mix into 5 bowls, and made them orange, red, purple, blue, and green. And spooned each colour one at a time into patty pans.

Once they were done I iced them with cream cheese icing (pretty much cream cheese with icing sugar added, make sure you don't add too much of the sugar or it will go too runny) then I put rainbow sprinkles on them.

Fish and chips

This is unbelievably simple.

For the fish:
Crush some salada biscuits (or chips, or savoy crackers, or cornchips, whatever) until they're quite small crumbs. Crack an egg into a dish and slightly beat it. And put some plain flour in another dish.
Take your fish (I used Bassa, but use whatever you want) and put it in flour, then egg, then the crumbs.
Fry it on one side until you can see it cooked more than halfway up the sides, then flip it onto the other side until its cooked though. Try not to flip it more than once, doing so can make the crumbing start to fall off.

For the chips:
Preheat oven to about 200.
Peel your potatos and cut into chips. Boil for about five minutes until almost all cooked through. Then spray some oil over them, and any seasoning you fancy (I used thyme from our garden and salt) and bake until crisp and browned.

For the tartare*:
*not real tartare.
I tried to make tartare but the mayo failed, so I just mixed some yogurt, finely chipped cucumber, and lemon juice.

Alice in Wonderland cake

A friend of mine had an Alice in wonderland themed party, and it has kind of become my trademark to make cupcakes for peoples birthdays.

I'd heard and seen about so called 'topsy turvey cakes' and decided that it would be perfect for my AIW cake.
I made 3 cakes, 2 quite large, but thin-ish triple chocolate ones, and one smaller, taller white chocolate and rainbow. The cakes were made using this recipe, but you can use whatever you want.

For the triple chocolate cakes I added extra cocoa, and chocolate chips (dark and milk).
And for the white chocolate I didn't add cocoa and put white chocolate chips in, and when putting in the tin I took a 4 spoons of batter into 4 bowls and added colours, then fill a tin half full with the plain batter, put the colours on around it, then top with the rest of the plain batter, then swirl around with a knife.

Once cooked I froze them to make them easier to cut.
Heres a video of how to make it topsy turvey, because I tried and failed at explaining it myself. I just did 2 quite small layers compared to the video, with the triple chocolate on bottom and the white chocolate on top.



Once the cake was assembled I covered it all with white chocolate ganache.

To decorate it, I made chocolate cards. I got a pack of playing cards, and using a piping bag with a really thin nozzle I piped dark chocolate over the design, you have to get the chocolate to a particular temperature. Too hot and it will just spread out and not keep to the shape of the design, but too cool and it won't pipe easily. I don't remember how I did it, but once you melt the chocolate just let it sit for a minute or two until its still quite runny but not super hot.

Once they're completely hard spread white chocolate over the back, and let harden again. The cards quite easily just peeled off for me, but if you use really papery cards it might be worth greasing them a little.

I cut hearts out of strawberries, and piped pink white chocolate ganache on the top in hearts too, then drizzled dark chocolate over them.
I places the chocolate cards on the front, and some tic-toc biscuits on the back. And piped a Happy Birthday message on top.

Bacon pancakes

So I stumbled upon a recipe for these (will post link if I ever find it again..) and when my housemate bought home bacon figured it was time to try it.

Its pretty simple, you make a pancake batter, mine is:
Put 1 egg about half a cup of milk in a bowl, mix, add about 1/4 cup sugar (caster or brown works best, brown if you want a more caramel-ey sweet) and then gradually add SR flour until its a pancake-batter consistency (probably about a cup)

Then fry your bacon, we used short rindless bacon and I cut it in half to make smaller pancakes, but you could do whole pieces of bacon and make them larger if you fancy. Once the bacon is ready on the first side flip it, and then spoon the batter over the top. Flip them once bubbles rise to the surface and pop without closing over again.

We just ate them as they were, but they would be wonderful with maple syrup (canadian style) or even icing sugar sifted over them (or both). Or could easily be made savoury by omitting the sugar from the batter (and maybe adding some cheese or herbs) and served with tomato and sauted mushroom.