white chocolate & peanut butter cupcakes

My mum has been spoiling me lately with cookbooks; added to my collection are 'The Golden Book of Chocolate', 'The Golden Book of Cookies', 'Chocolat', 'The Le Cordon Bleu Collection' (which is a collection of 20 titles) and let's not forget dad who picked up several foodie DVDs in the recent sales. Anything food related leaves me giddy with excitement and I've been eagerly pouring through the latest new additions with a fine toothed comb - selecting recipes to make and try out. My eyes fell for the white chocolate peanut butter cupcakes in 'The Golden Book of Chocolate' (which is a collection of over 300 recipes).

Preheat oven to 180 degrees. Line a 12 hole muffin tray. In a large bowl, beat together 60g softened butter, 125g crunchy peanut butter, 100g dark brown sugar and 1 tsp vanilla extract until creamy. Add in 1 egg until blended. Sift in 150g wholewheat flour, 50g plain flour, 1 tsp baking powder and a pinch of salt and beat into the mix with 125mL milk. Stir in 180g white chocolate chips. Spoon the batter into the prepared cups, filling each two-thirds full. Bake for approx. 25 minutes.

Here's how they look in the cookbook compared to how mine's turned out.

Cool on a wire rack. I actually find it strange that this recipe calls them cupcakes, they actually taste and look more like muffins. I always see cupcakes as being a lot more moist and sweet. 

This is the perfect recipe for the peanut butter fanatic - a bite into this leaves you with peanut butter stuck to the roof of your mouth. The white chocolate provides a little bit of sweetness but if anything, it's the peanut butter which will get your attention. 

kintaro @ young st., neutral bay

This particular night, we'd had our heart set on going to Ryo's Noodles in North Sydney but after missing a turn and driving  too far forward, we found ourselves in Neutral Bay. There's actually quite a lot of restaurants in Neutral Bay and I guess one of the reasons why we don't go as often as we could is because it's so far away. Well chance had it that we were in the area and took our pick of restaurants to try - being that we were after Japanese noodles, it only made sense that we picked Kintaro Restaurant: a Japanese restaurant serving up home-style Japanese food.

Sometimes I think I should go to restaurants carrying a notepad and pen to write down the name of dishes. This dish had a much fancier name than I'm going to give it - I'm calling it the Baked Eggplant with Miso. Being as it's baked, the skin of the eggplant is way too tough to eat (I tried) but the inside is gloriously soft and melty and very delicious.

Seafood Hotpot which is a decent serving for 2 people. For a cold night, it was great to get some warm soup inside us.

Sukiyaki Don. They actually had Sukiyaki on the menu but given we wanted to try the seafood hotpot also, the Sukiyaki Don was the perfect item to order; this way we got to try both.

There's an extensive menu on offer here; much more so than you would get at an average Japanese restaurant. I find most of the newer Japanese restaurants simply serve up the typical Sashimi, Sushi, Udon, Teriyaki Chicken... definitely not the case here. You'll find some more foreign names popping up across the menu - that's how I came about to order the Baked Eggplant and really, it was a most pleasant surprise.

If you're planning to come here, there's ample parking on the side streets nearby but suggest you make a booking. The restaurant filled up soon after we stepped in. Oh - and it's very toasty inside the restaurant; making it perfect for a cold winter's night!

thai noodle hut @ victoria rd., gladesville

The boy and I have been venturing further afield to look for good places to eat. Our latest suburb seems to be Gladesville where we've been to Been Read and now Thai Noodle Nut which I thought was rather damn good. The boy was a bit skeptical at first as not soon after we stepped in and sat down, the exhaust fans to the kitchen didn't seem to be working and the whole restaurant seemed to steam up and we were looking at each across the table through a mist of fog. I'm not even exaggerating here. Our vision either improved or the steam actually went away but once the food came to the table, we got busy eating so did forget about it.

A generous serving of Pad Thai. Slightly drier in texture than most other Pad Thai's I've had but delicious nonetheless.

A fiery bowl of jungle curry. I love spicy food and the more spice the better. My nose always runs when I eat spicy food so I look a bit stupid but at least I'm enjoying my meal!

Tom Yum Soup - I really want to learn how to make this. Again a spicy choice but packed with lots of seafood and mushrooms and a soup I wish came in a bottomless bowl.

The great thing about eating Thai food is that it's never expensive and you always get a meal that is packed full of flavour and leaves you with just the right amount of fullness - Thai Noodle Hut was certainly no exception. The restaurant was packed the night we went - lots of families, couples and plenty of people stepping in to grab some quick takeaway. From ordering, the food doesn't take long to get to the table. To be very honest with you, there's not much service here, you order and pay at the start and once they bring the food to the table, they don't really interfere with you. We actually left the restaurant feeling a little odd thinking we should at least say bye but the waitresses were busy behind the counter doing their own thing. But I guess sometimes that's what I'm after in meal, a good meal and very little interference from the staff asking me how my meal went - well let me just say now, it went fine thank you!

comfy apple crumble

Between my mum and I, we have an awful lot of gadgets at home. The bread machine permanently lives in the laundry now as we've stopped using it, I have a donut machine, an ice shaving machine, a waffle machine, a takoyaki machine, a jaffle maker, an ice cream machine, a soft serve machine (which mum got for her birthday this year) and there's still the regular appliances like the steamer, the sandwich maker, the toaster which adorn our kitchen benches. I really didn't think we'd need an apple peeler when some of our machines at home haven't even been used but I've changed my mind, this is one of the coolest gadgets I've ever seen!

Here's the apple peeler at work. The apple goes in one side, you crank the handle on the other and off it peels and cores the apple.

The peeled, cored and slinkified green apples are now ready to be used for a comfy apple crumble. The recipe is from Jo Seager's 'Everyday Cooking'.

Preheat oven to 180 degrees. Coat a baking dish with non stick baking spray. Slice the 'slinkified' apples and place them in a layer in the prepared dish. Mix the juice of 1 lemon with 1/2 cup water and drizzle over the apple slices. Place the grated rind of 1 lemon, 1 tsp ground cinnamon, 3/4 brown sugar, 1/4 cup flour, 1 cup rolled oats and 100g softened unsalted butter in a bowl and mix well. Sprinkle this over the apples.

Bake for 40 minutes until bubbly and golden brown.

Absolutely delicious served with plain vanilla ice cream (I do recommend Connosieur).

With the cold weather, I've been doing a few tray bakes and puddings and this comfy apple crumble has been one of my favourites. Best enjoyed warm but reheats pretty well the next day - just put it back in the oven at 180 degrees for about 15 minutes. One of the things I really loved about this recipe was the hint of lemon you get when you bite into the baked apple - absolutely delectable and really one would hardly think that putting sour green apples with lemons (which are also sour) would make for such a comfort dessert (it definitely wasn't one bit sour at all!) 

tara tea room @ george st., the rocks

Tara Tea Room has been on my list of places to visit for awhile now. I remember reading about it here and also here. What cute little tea cosies they have! And if you're a big fan of teapots, tea, scones, jams and a lazy afternoon of being like a nanna, this is exactly the place you should be. You can actually miss it when you walk down the road so look out for the Irish Design Shop and walk towards the back where you'll find Tara Tea Room.

On this visit, the boy and I opted for two devonshire teas. Each devonshire tea comes with a pot of tea and a plate of two scones with sides of jam and clotted cream. English Breakfast is my tea of choice with the boy opting for a pot of Earl Grey for something a bit fancier.

Plain Scones and also Cherry scones were on offer this particular Sunday.

A perfect way to spend a Sunday afternoon!

The scones here come on the large side so I had help from the boy finishing my two. Taste wise, these are certainly the best scones I've had (although occasionally I make a pretty mean scone too!) I love the display of tea cosies (and was close to buying the one that looked like an owl) and tucked in where we were (away from the hustle and bustle of the Rocks markets), this was the perfect way to end the weekend. They also have different flavours on scones on rotation depending on the day/time of day so plenty to bring you back for another visit!