lemon polenta mini cakes

When asked why I keep buying recipe books when I have so many anyway, there's many number of reasons which I can offer. I buy recipe books because they have recipes I want to make in them; I like that particular author; I want to learn about a different style of cooking and every now and then, I'll buy a recipe book for that one recipe and 'Manna from Heaven' by Rachel Grisewood was one of those books that I bought for this very reason. 

The recipe in the book is for a 24cm round Lemon Polenta Cake but the recipe also suggests that you can make mini cakes and a photo of the mini is actually what's featured in the book for this recipe. Having made and tried the recipe now,  I'm hands up in favour for the mini cakes - not only are they adorable to look at, they are just the right size as a mini treat throughout the day.

Following recipe is for 24 mini cakes which I quadrupled for my catering do. Unfortunately, things didn't go as smoothly as planned and I urge you to check whether you have non-stick cooking pans at home before you pour your batter into one. Out of the 4 trays I made, only one tray made it through.

Preheat oven to 150 degrees. Grease a 24 hole mini muffin tray. In a large bowl, cream together 225g softened unsalted butter and 225g caster sugar until lump free. Slowly beat in 3 eggs, then fold in 110g ground almonds, 110g shredded coconut, 110g polenta, zest of 2 lemons, juice of 2 lemons, 1 tsp baking powder and 1 tsp vanilla essence.

Pour into strictly non stick baking tins. Bake for 20-30 minutes, or until golden.

Cool in the tin.

Turn out on a wire rack. Sadly, this was my one tray of cakes that managed to safely unmould from the tins. The others stuck and ended up having to go into the bin.

Place in colourful cupcake liners.

To make the icing, combine together 225g icing sugar and about 3 tbsp lemon juice in a bowl until smooth. Drizzle over the top of the mini cakes, leaving the icing to set before you tuck in.

I ended up eating a lot of the cakes that didn't manage to unmould from the tins and didn't try it with the icing but I can attest to the fact that the recipe is a keeper. The texture of the cake is similar to a friand but  with even more crumb (which is why a non-stick pan is required as trying to unmould these, I had the cake wanting to break up no matter how delicately I tried to remove them.) If you're thinking that keeping these in the oven for longer might help, it didn't because too long in the oven, the outer of the cakes gets very brown and very thick and sticky to eat.

So in the end, there was just the one box of lemon polenta cakes for my catering do. Hardly enough to feed 100 but I hope that the ones that got to try it out liked it!

blue chip chocolate chip cookies

If I were to speak about foodies in general, I'd say that the one defining character about foodies is the passion to search out food and learn more about it. There's other things which come with being a foodie and in my case includes the hoarding of cookbooks, the purchasing of food shaped toys and ornaments and above all else, having say 20 chocolate chip cookies recipes (the majority of which I haven't tried making) yet I'm constantly in search of that extra one, or maybe two. There's never really quite enough!

I've recently had my copy of David Lebovitz's 'The Great Book of Chocolate' sitting by my desk and after making his recipe for congo bars, then chocolate cashew cookies, I'd gradually marked out the next recipes in line to try and lo and behold, welcome to the almighty 'Blue Chip Chocolate Chip Cookies'!

After several trips to several supermarkets over a span of weeks, the Nestle chocolate chips didn't go on sale (they are usually my brand of choice) so I resorted to trying out the Franklin's No Frills dark chocolate chips. On opening up the bag, the chips were a lot smaller but hey, just over a dollar for a bag of choc chips compared to the Nestle ones which were going for $4.25!

Preheat oven to 150 degrees. Line baking trays with baking paper. In a large bowl, beat together 100g caster sugar, 120g firmly packed light brown sugar with 115g soft unsalted butter until smooth. Then mix in 1 large egg, 1 tsp vanilla extra and 1/2 tsp baking soda. Stir in 175g plain flour and 1/4 tsp salt. Mix in 200g chocolate chips and 130g chopped toasted walnuts.

Scoop the cookie dough into roughly 1 tbsp balls, spacing them apart on the baking sheets.

Bake for 18 minutes or until pale golden brown. 

Remove from the oven and cool on a wire rack.

If you are looking for a chocolate chip cookie recipe, look no further, this one is it! Out of the oven, these cookies are soft in the centre with a slightly crispy outer and had I not told anyone that I'd made these, you would think these came straight out of the oven at Mrs Field's (and allow me to side track here, I actually bought mum the Mrs Field's cookbook for Christmas one year and the chocolate chip cookie recipe in the book tastes nothing like the real thing!) Anyway, once these cookies have cooled down, they then taste more like the Amos cookies which are also my favourites - have I convinced you enough to make this recipe?

And hey, who said you needed to use the best chocolate you can get hold of for baking - these No Frills ones from Franklins tasted great and did that squidgy melty thing when they came out of the oven which made me grab cookie after cookie till I had to stop myself as I was making these for my catering do. So yes, I'm converted and if you haven't tried No Frill dark chocolate chips before, I do suggest you give them a go. I nearly can buy 3 bags of these as opposed to one bag of Nestle chocolate chips, I think the choice is quite obvious!

peanut butter cookies

I was very lucky to be offered the opportunity to cater again for my friend's church and just like last time, the brief was open as to what I would make - I bounced a few ideas off my friend but was still making changes at the eleventh hour due to various unforeseen mishaps which I'll come to recount. The only addition to the brief was to make the quantity for each item (the catering was for 100) as opposed to making lots of different things. It seemed easy enough when my friend first mentioned it but after baking tray after tray of cookies to hit the hundred mark, it really wasn't quite as easy as I thought it would be!

If you've followed this blog for some time, you'll probably notice that a lot of the recipes I make are quite simple; I do experiment on the occasion but coming home from work with maybe an hour or two to spare, the amount of time really lends itself to simple recipes which are quick to whip up. Lately, I've been trying a few new ingredients just to shake things up a bit and I guess make eating sweets (of which I eat a lot) a bit more healthy. Here's the jar of organic rice syrup I picked up to make this recipe of peanut cookies.

FYI: I quadrupled the following recipe to get the quantity I was after. I also replaced the ground peanuts for just crunchy peanut butter which is another ingredient in the recipe. Start by preheating the oven to 160 degrees. Line baking trays. In a large bowl, sift together 80g plain flour, 40g wholemeal flour, 1/8 tsp and baking powder. Add in 60g rice syrup, 50g maple syrup, 110g crunchy peanut butter and 50g grapeseed oil and mix well. The cookie dough should be soft and sticky.

Take about 1 tbsp cookie dough using a spoon and place on the prepared baking tray. 

Flatten cookie with a fork. Repeat with the remaining cookie dough.

Bake for 15-20 minutes or until light golden brown. Remove from heat and leave to cool on a wire rack. The cookies will be soft coming out of the oven so let them cool down to harden up. Store cookies in an airtight container at room temperature and this should last you about 10 days.

This recipe was meant to make 25 cookies and having quadrupled the original recipe, it would make sense that I would come out with 100 cookies or more (as I tend to make my cookies on the small, bite size) but I just managed to get about 70 or so. A little annoying as the plan was to hit 100 and I reckon the picture in the book deceptively make the cookies look bigger than the should be but then again, I should've remembered that it's quite common across Japanese/Chinese cookbooks where the serving sizes are generally a lot smaller than the recipes you'll find in English/American cookbooks.

Taste-wise, the rice syrup definitely made a huge difference - the cookies came out sweet but without the teeth numbing sweetness which most recipes tend to sway towards. Rice syrup is a little more expensive than caster sugar but reading about it, there's health benefits to be accrued at the expense. Anyway, I picked up an extra jar today for just under $5 so hopefully will try a few other different recipes with it and see how it turns out!

bacco wine bar & pasticceria @ qvb

I had every intention to go to Sugar Hit this year but as it more or less happens every year, something seems to come every time I want to go and then the end of October comes by and I actually haven't made it to one! Bizarrely, I tried to go to the Bacco Sugar Hit twice. The first time, a friend had organised Sugar Hit for a weeknight at Bacco's Chifley Square store - the boy fell ill that time and we didn't end up going. The second time I planned it for a Thursday night and said to the boy, let's go to the QVB store, actually have dinner there and then we'll definitely won't miss out on Sugar Hit, and yes, I still missed it!

So we had dinner at Bacco on a Thursday night, the plan of attack was to shop first, then sit down for dinner close to 8pm and then we'd be there just in time for Sugar Hit to start at 9pm. All was going well, we had the Caprese Bruschetta to start off dinner - those tomatoes kept rolling off the sourdough!

Busiate Al Sugo di Anatra - House made wholemeal busiate pasta with duck ragu, part and mixed wild mushrooms. It's not a saucy pasta but there's just enough liquid in it to hold the pasta together - I loved it!

Costolette di Vitello - Wood fired grilled grain fed veal cutlet served with pumpkin puree and asparagus. The veal is extremely tender and I have a photo of the the boy in a suit holding the bone and trying to eat off the last scraps of meat - definitely recommend ordering this dish.

Here's where Sugar Hit didn't quite work. On the menu under 'Dolci' is Misto di Dolci where you can select three desserts from the pasticceria. When you think about it, it's $20 a head for Sugar Hit yet for $15 you can select three full sized desserts to sample; the desserts are also at your choosing, I guess I'll do Sugar Hit next year! Here are the Tiramisu, Pear Caramello (my favourite) and Cappucino Tart (which had popping candy sprinkled on the top and made the boy think his mouth was exploding for a second).

So that's my story of how I tried to go to Sugar Hit this year (twice to the same place) but didn't actually end up going. Not a huge loss I guess, there's always next year and well, in place, I had a rather lovely dinner with the boy where we were both comfortably full. Bacco in the QVB is really quite a nice and convenient location to eat at and *sigh* I can easily while away my day looking into their dessert cabinet!

coconut & cherry banana bread

I remember when I was a teenager, my mum used to tell me that I didn't need so many clothes and that I should save my money for other things; that no one is really going to remember what you wore the other day or last week. It took me awhile to see the point in her logic and to this day, I'm still guilty of splurging on extra clothes that I don't need but well, that's all part of being a girl! Over time though, I have gotten a lot better and yes I might be looking a bit daggy in my reworn clothes but hey, like mum said, no one has actually commented or said a thing!

Now with books, that's a completely different matter. It's actually only been in the recent couple of years that I've started hoarding my cookbooks and now they are overspilling off the bookshelf and onto the floors. All my bookshelves are full now and I've taken to arranging them in neat 'big' piles and well, I tried to stop myself from buying them but unlike clothes, each and every cookbook is so very unique that it's really quite hard to say no. Well as I'm struggling to stop myself from buying them, the only other solution is to use them and hey presto, that's exactly what I'm doing!

My go to recipe book at the moment is Nigella's 'Kitchen'. Here's an extremely easy recipe for coconut & cherry banana bread.

Preheat oven to 170 degrees. Line a loaf pan with baking paper. Melt 125g unsalted butter in a saucepan and take it off the heat. Peel and mash 3 medium sized bananas in a small bowl. Beat 150g caster sugar into the cooled, melted butter, then beat in the mashed bananas and 2 eggs. Fold in 175g plain flour, 2 tsp baking powder and 1/2 tsp bicarb soda. Finally, add in 100g dried cherries and 100g dessicated coconut. Fold well so that everything is incorporated, then pour into the lined loaf pan. Bake for 50 minutes, check with a skewer to see if the loaf has cooked through (the skewer should come out of the cake clean).

Once out of the oven, leave it in the tin for 10 minutes. Then carefully slip the cake out of the tin onto a wire rack to cool. Slice away and eat!

I mentioned I was in love with frozen cherries, well I'm quite the bit in love with dried cherries (this was the bag I picked up at Sweetness the other week after a lengthy trawl through Sydney looking for them). Used in the loaf, the dried cherries don't taste the least bit dry at all. Through the baking process, they seem to plump up and absorb a bit of water (sort of like when you soak raisins/currants in water and they come up rather juicy). Great thing is that I hardly made a dent to the bag of cherries so I have plenty more to experiment with, the cherry chocolate cookies I was thinking of the other day might just be it!