Dragon Rambles

I haven’t forgotten I was going to share my xmas feast and recipes with you all, but I’ve been out all day and just come home. I’ll share the cupcakes with you today and come back tomorrow for the rest.

I’ve made these cupcakes twice: once with blueberries and once with boysenberries and strawberries. You can use whatever you want. The first time I made a cream cheese frosting, but the second time I had no cream cheese in the house so made a buttercream one instead. I’ll give you info to make both so you can choose which you want to prepare. If you use metric cup measurements, this’ll make about 18 cupcakes, otherwise (if you’re using american cups) it’ll make 12. Either way, the quantities as read, but if you’re using the metric cups, make the teaspoon of baking powder a rounded one instead of a flat one.

Berry puree

First step is to make a berry puree. For the blueberry cupcakes I used two punnets (400g in total), for the boysenberry-strawberry cupcakes I used one cup of boysenberries and three of strawberries.

Put your berries (fresh or frozen) into a pot and cook over a low heat (stirring occasionally) until berries have become mush and then reduced down so that most of the liquid has been removed. This should end up a nice thick consistency, but still easily pourable. Cool slightly then put through a blender. You’ll still end up with berry bits, go with it, these are nice to have in your cupcake. You will want to have 1.25 – 1.5 cups of puree for each batch of cupcakes.

Oh and if you’re using blueberries, your wooden spoon will be stained purple, the other mix I made turned it wine red. I’m thinking I should dye all my wooden spoons this way

Cupcakes

2 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup of baking margerine (or butter, but the veg fat makes for lighter cupcakes, use the sort from a tub rather than from a brick)
1 1/2 cups sugar
2 large eggs
1/4 cup milk
1/2 cup berry puree
1/2 teaspoon vanilla

In a large bowl, cream together the butter and sugar until pale and fluffy. Add one egg at a time, beating just until incorporated.

In a medium bowl, sift together the flour, baking powder and salt. In a small bowl, mix the milk, berry puree and vanilla.

Add half the dry ingredients, then all the wet, then the other half of the dry to the butter mixture. Mix just until incorporated after each addition. Do not overbeat!

Spoon into lined muffin trays. Put a dollop of puree on the top of each cupcake and swirl. Bake at 175C (350F) for 20-25min, until cooked through. Cool for 10min in tin before moving to wire racks. Cool completely before icing.

Cream cheese frosting

225g cream cheese, room temperature
90g butter, room temperature
1/2 cup berry puree
3 cups icing sugar, sifted

Beat the cream cheese and butter until light and fluffy. Mix in the berry puree until just combined. Add the icing sugar gradually and beat until smooth and spreadable.

Buttercrean frosting

140g butter
300g icing sugar, sifted
1/2 cup berry puree

Beat the butter until light and fluffy. Add the icing sugar gradually and beat until smooth. Add puree and beat until smooth and spreadable, but don’t overbeat.

And voila, enjoy! These can be refridgerated or frozen, just serve them at room temp.

But a word of warning. Be prepared to serve them in pairs like shown above, because you’re going to want more than one.

Did I say that with the leftovers from Mon’s buffet that I had my xmas lunch and wouldn’t need to cook anything extra? Yeah, well, I may have changed my mind…

I’ve been in the kitchen today since 10am and am taking a quick break for lunch. I’m getting everything done today so that all that needs doing tomorrow is reheating or popping things into the oven.

So far I’ve made a root veg soup, which I figure will make a nice starter before or after those finger food leftovers. I’m putting together a potato gratin, and cheese and spinach flan. And probably another dish but I haven’t yet decided what. And since one dessert is just so last century, I’ve made some boysenberry-strawberry cupcakes to go with the chocolate mousse. And depending on how I feel later, and what ideas I have, combined with what ingredients I have in the house, I may make a third dessert.

Now, how many people am I feeding?, you may ask. Just me . So this will keep me fed for a week, but with enough variety that I’m not having the same thing every day. Just think of all that crafting I can do when I don’t have to stop and cook meals

I’ll be back in blogland on Boxing Day to share photos of my xmas feast. And hopefully a pic of xmas day knitting (I’m wanting to knit my first sock). But until then….

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

I hope you all have a great day, whatever you end up doing.

Ok, so maybe my plan for the weekend was a little ambitious. I finished everything for our xmas lunch today with 5 min to spare! And the fudge is still waiting to be cut up.

But everyone enjoyed the food so it was all worthwhile. And despite all our best efforts, there are leftovers.

Which are now in the freezer, that’s xmas lunch sorted Oh, and I decided to change those vegemite scrolls to a chilli relish one instead. Very yummy.

There was only a little dessert left over, as what we didn’t gobble down ourselves, I pimped off to others in the building. But I saved myself a blueberry cupcake, since I hadn’t had one at lunch. And those belgium biscuits were a welcome leftover too.

My kitchen and dining table are war zones but I have every intention of leaving it alone for tonight. Instead, I’m enjoying cheese and crackers for dinner, and I’m going to start putting a dent in that extra choc mousse (I made single serves so there is of course WAY more left).

Tonight, I should really be cutting up the fudge and making that softie that I ran out of time to do this weekend. Both jobs should really have been done LAST weekend, but you know how it goes… You get lazy and you just can’t be bothered

So am I doing them tonight? Nope. I need to have them ready for Wed, so I’ll do them tomorrow. Of course, tomorrow night I’ll be cursing myself, but for tonight I’m going to sit down to Sabrina (the Audrey Hepburn version), with my choc mousse and a skein that I need to wind as I’d like to knit some socks on xmas day. Or at least one of a pair.

So fingers crossed, I’ll return here on Wed with photos of the softie all made. In the meantime, happy xmas prep to you all. Oh, and those who commented on yesterday’s post… I’ll email you tomorrow.

I’ve been absent for almost two weeks. Sorry about that. Been busy job hunting and had a lot less craft time than I’d like. This weekend I’m busy making my yearly chocolate offering. This year I decided on fudge, instead of the usual chocolate truffles. Because it’s faster. All of the fudge I’m making has chocolate in it, be it dark, milk or white. On the list is: choc-walnut, rum and raisin, rocky road, peppermint, white-choc pistachio, cherry-coconut, and choc-caramel. Two have been made, I’m just waiting for my grocery order to be delivered, because when I was stocking up on Monday night, I forgot to get butter!

I’m also busy preparing food for our group’s xmas lunch at work tomorrow. Normally we just head to the local pub and have burgers or such, this year I thought it’d be fun to cater for it myself, as I haven’t done that since I moved here. I’m going for a finger food buffet. So I’ve got cheese and spinach filos, mushroom quiches, mini pizzas, vol au vents, vegemite scrolls, rosemary and cheese biscuits, cheese and cracker platter, and a fresh veg platter (celery, carrot, cucumber) with homemade french onion dip. I figure that should be enough savouries. On the dessert side, I’ve got eclairs (going to try my hand at chiox pastry for the first time), belgian cookies, date and pecan pinwheels, something chocolate (either choc mousse or little choc cakes), and something fruity (haven’t decided what but I have both blueberries and strawberries in the freezer so hopefully I’ll think of something).

And I also need to try and make a softie. Never made one of those before, so this should be interesting. So, today will be busy, although there’s onlu so much food prep and cooking I can do today, the rest will have to be done tomorrow morning.

On the craft front, I showed you my first colourwork mitt, well I didn’t wait until the next weekend to start the second mitt, in fact I was finished last Thurs and had already started wearing them to work before last weekend.

Not a great photo, and please ignore the mess on the floor, but here they are.

Since I spent a week of knitting time on these, by cardi was ignored. But I picked up Hazeline last weekend, and it was then sitting just two rows short of finished until yesterday evening, when I finished it. It still needs to have the top grafted together and then be blocked, but here it is.

So, there is me all caught up. I hope you’ve all been well. I’ve been slowly catching up with everyone’s blogs from my blogland absence, but there were a lot so any comments I left were rather short. Sorry about that. Ok, back to food prep. Everyone enjoy the rest of your weekend.

What’s that you say? It’s not my birthday? Oh well, then. Happy Tuesday?

It’s massive and heavy and has lots of yummy things to make.

Nothing says holidays like having a week day pancake breakfast. So yesterday, my second day of holidays, I got up to spoil myself in the kitchen. I had a punnet of blueberries in the freezer, so decided to really spoil myself and make blueberry pancakes.

Basic Pancake Recipe

1 cup plain flour
1/8 tsp salt
1 egg
3/4 cup milk

Sift the flour and salt into a bowl.
Add the egg and milk and beat until smooth.

Notes:
This recipe uses metric cups, but if you have the american sizes, this will still work. Just add a little less salt. The proportions will still be the same. Maybe just use a medium egg instead of a large or extra large one.
For blueberry pancakes, I just threw in a couple of handfuls of blueberries to the batter and mixed them in, just prior to cooking. But I have teeny tiny hands, so go with the number of handfulls that feels right to you.

Cooking these are fun, because when the first side is cooking and the blueberries are just sitting there, it doesn’t look like it’ll work. Then you get to flip it over and press down and yum!, the treatment the blueberries go through… Well, try it, you’ll see how delicious it makes them.

I put them in a stack on my plate and poured on maple syrup. So here’s the end result…

Oops, I guess someone ate them. Well, technically, this IS the end result

Around this time last year, one of my office mates left for greener pastures. Well…. maybe not greener, but hopefully less frustrating than his job in Cardiff had been. Since he’d been sround for a while and was well liked by all, I thought this parting deserved a good cake. And since I love to bake and had several ideas of what to make, I actually made several . Since he is german, I felt that one of my offerings should definitely be an authentic black forest cake. Little did I know how much I’d have to hunt around Cariff one Sunday to find the all important bottle of kirsch. Luckily, he chose to leave in summer, so finding cherries was no problem.

Now making a black forest cake is serious business and if you decide to make one, you have to allow several days. The first step is to pit the cherries and soak them in kirsch. Well, I’m no expert at pitting cherries whole, so I decided to halve them instead. I figured this would save me having to halve them later and had the added bonus of allowing them to soak up more alcohol. This could also be why I used twice as much kirsch as the original recipe suggested for this step. So, cherries halved, pitted and getting drunk? Ok, leave that soaking overnight.

Next morning, bake the cake. There are two ways you can do this: make one big cake and slice into three portions or make three smaller cakes. I know my limitations and that includes knowing there was no way I was going to be able to slice three layers from a cake, so I went and bought three shallow cake tins so I could take the sane approach.

When these have completely cooled it’s time to start building the cake. First take a toothpick (cocktail stick to some of you) and poke holes through the cakes. Then give each layer a liberal sprinkling of the kirsch that your cherries have been pickling in. I think my addition was midway between a sprinkle and a douse. Leave the layers while you are making the icing so they can start to soak up the alcohol. Hint: you may want to have put each layer onto a sheet of baking paper before you added the alcohol so they are easier to pick up and layer.

To build the cake, take the first layer and place on a cake board. Spread half of your icing over the base and cover with the pickled cherries.

Top with second cake layer and repeat.

Top with third cake layer and then cover the whole cake in cling film. The cake now goes in the fridge for 1 to 2 days to allow allow all that lovely kirsch to soak through the cake and make it nice and moist.

The morning that you are going to serve the cake, make the cream topping. Cover the cake with the cream, put grated chocolate around the sides, pipe some cream edging around the top of the cake and finish up with decorating the cake with some whole, fresh cherries.

Black Forest Cake

1 2/3 cups flour
2/3 cup cocoa
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
1/2 cup butter or baking margerine
1 1/2 cups sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
1 1/2 cups milk

Filling
1 cup kirsch
1/2 cup butter
3 cups icing sugar
1 pinch salt
1.25kg cherries

Cream topping
2 cups thickened cream
1/2 tsp vanilla
1/8 cup kirsch
2 Tbsp milk powder
2 Tbsp icing sugar

Put aside approx 10 cherries for decorating top of cake. Halve the rest, remove the pits and soak in a cup of kirsch overnight.
Preheat oven to 175 deg C. Line bottom of three 20cm round cake pans.
Sift dry cake ingredients together. Cream the butter and sugar. Add the eggs and vanilla and mix well. Pour evenly into the cake pans and bake for 20min or until toothpick inserted in middle comes out clean. Cool cakes and remove from pans.
Prick tops of cakes with a toothpick and pour 1/2 cup kirsch (from the cherries) over the cakes.
To make the icing, beat butter until light and creamy. Add the icing sugar, salt and mix well. If icing is too thick, add some of the kirsch from the cherries (think I added about 1/4 cup, but can’t quite remember).
place base layer on top of cake board or tray, spread half of the icing over the top and cover with the halved cherries. Cover with another layer and repeat. Top with third cake layer then cover and sit in fridge for 1 to 2 days to allow kirsch to soak through cake and become moist.
The day the cake will be served, prepare the cream topping. Whip the cream until it forms stiff peaks. Gently fold in milk powder and icing sugar. Add vanilla and pour in kirsch until it becomes a good conistency (note: don’t use the kirsch from the cherries or your cream topping won’t be white). Spread cream over the cake and down the sides. Cover sides with grated chocolate and decorate the top with extra cream topping and fresh cherries.

One of the girls at work asked me if I’d make a cake for her daughter’s birthday as she likes the goodies I bake and bring in. I agreed and started plotting. I found out that her daughter likes turtles (very good taste), so used that as my starting point. I was originally thinking of trying for a 3D cake, but didn’t have the right size cake pans to start with that, and on more thought I started thinking that much sugar was probably not a good idea for a little girl. So this time around I decided to go for something simple and make turtle cake toppers.

I decided on mudcake. Apart from it being delicious, Monika had mentioned she would like a chocolate cake and this is one that keeps well. Also, I could bake it Thursday night and decorate it Friday evening ready to be picked up Sat morning. First though to pick the recipe.

I’ve made a great one before (in particular a choc-mint one for Vicky’s 30th), but for the life of me I couldn’t remember what recipe I used, or even if I still had it. Some of my favourite recipes were unfortunately lost in the move here. So, on Thurs I baked a mud cake from the Donna Haye cook book I have. Of course I didn’t notice until I was making it how much flour was in it – or rather how little. It seemed this was a bit too much of a dessert cake and not really right for what I wanted. After it was finished baking, it was obvious that I was right, this cake wasn’t right.

So next plan, bake a different recipe and make the cake toppers on Friday night and decorate Sat morning. I got home early to get a good start on the cake. This time I picked the recipe that Vicky posted on her blog last year. Unfortunately I forgot to set a timer and by the time I realised, the cake had been baked for almost 30min too much. It wasn’t burnt, but I new that it would be too dry. Time to bake another.

Of course, by this time I was out of butter and eggs, and running out of chocolate. I had to stop at the shop to get some fresh strawberries anyway so off I went. First shop had no strawberries. This started a panic hunt as I had to go to several shops to find some. Finally I tracked some down and off I went home to bake again. Of course, in the hunt for the strawberries I forgot the butter so had to go and get some from the corner store. I was a little worried because I could only get salted butter. Gotta be worth a try. There was going to be a stack of sugar in the cake so surely that would offset the salt. So finally, 9pm and I’d collected the ingredients, time to bake the third cake – this time, setting an alarm.

Third time seemed to be the charm, yummy cake made and cooling on the counter. Alarm set for 6 am to put it all together. Crash time.

Next day an early start and a danish for breakfast saw me building the cake. Not a bad effort given it’s been such a long time since I did anything like this. Looked good enough to eat ..

And the turtles didn’t look too bad for a first attempt. Monika seemed happy too, so I’m counting the cake a success.

A couple of weeks ago I made some gorgeous cupcakes. I’m not the only one who thought they were great either. I took them into work and they were gobbled up in no time. I tried one of Martha Stewart’s recipes for chocolate cupcakes, then added a teaspoon of peppermint or orange extract. They’re low fat too, but of course what I put on the top of them wasn’t I used a choc fudge frosting and used a jaffa (the kiwi ones of course) or half a mint stick to decorate the top.

For those who want to give them a go, they are incredibly easy to make. here’s the recipe. I used plain milk instead of buttermilk as I didn’t have any on hand. I got about 18 cupcakes from one batch.

Choc cupcakes

1 1/2 cups flour
3/4 cup cocoa
1 1/2 cups sugar
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
3/4 tsp baking powder
3/4 tsp salt
2 eggs
3/4 cup buttermilk
3 Tbsp vegetable oil
3/4 cup warm water
1 tsp peppermint or orange extract

1. Preheat oven to 175ºC. Line standard muffin tins.
2. Mix together all dry ingredients.
3. Add all the liquid ingredients and beat with a mixer on low speed until smooth.
4. Divide batter among muffin cups .
5. Bake, rotating tins 1/2 way through, until skewer in centre comes out clean (about 20 min).
6. Cool in tins on wire racks for 10 min. Transfer cupcakes to racks and cool.

I set a resolution this week to not work 10+ hr each day, and so far that’s going quite well. So after starting work at 6am this morning I packed up and headed out at 3pm. It’s a lovely wet day, and that always gives me the urge to bake, so since I was home so early I finally baked something that has been on my list for a few months…. peanut brownies!

When I was in NZ in Oct I picked up an Edmonds cookbook. I’ve been wanting one for ages as it’s essential for every kitchen. Well, every kiwi kitchen, and I’m still enough of a kiwi that I agree. They were really easy to make and while I haven’t eaten them in years, that first bite was so very familiar.

If you too want to make these yummy treats, here’s the recipe.

Peanut Brownies

125g butter
1 cup sugar
1 egg
1 1/2 cups plain flour
1 tsp baking powder
pinch of salt
2 Tbsp cocoa
1 cup peanuts (redskin or roasted and husked – just not salted)

Cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add egg and beat well. Sift flour, baking powder, salt and cocoa together. Mix into creamed mixture. Add cold peanuts and mix well. Roll tablespoonsful of mixture into balls. Place on greased (preferably, lined as that’s the easiest way to get them off) cookie trays. Flatten with a floured fork. Bake at 180ºC for 15min or until cooked.