What to bring for morning tea?

Went to visit my friend the other day (well, the other week now, this blog post has been sitting in my drafts too long!) who had recently had a baby. I LOVE baby cuddles. Wanted to take something along for morning tea/lunch and it had to be dairy free both for her and two of my kids. And I just really didn't feel like making anything sweet. But grocery day was approaching (and I only shop fortnightly so by the end of the fortnight, supplies start dwindling), and I wasn't feeling very inspired. So I was flicking through my trusty old Watties cookbook and came across the recipe for sausage rolls. I had never made my own sausage rolls before. I do have a friend who regularly makes them, and I'm a sucker for them, but for some reason I just never made them myself.

 

I compared the recipe in that book to some more recipes I googled and decided I would keep it simple and use the recipe from the book - it doesn't contain breadcrumbs as fillers for starters, and I had all the ingredients on hand. If wanting to make them dairy free, make sure your pastry is dairy free. The Pams low-fat flaky puff pastry is, that is what I use.

 

And as per usual lately, the photo is crap - taken on my phone, and also just a quick snap before the last couple of sausage rolls were snapped up, but better than no photo right? Or is it? haha

 

 

 

 

Sausage Rolls

courtesy of Watties Kiwi Favourites Cookbook

 

3 sheets pre rolled flaky puff pastry

450g sausage meat

1 tsp dried mixed herbs

1/2 onion, finely diced

1 egg, beaten

 

Preheat oven to 220*c

Cut each pastry sheet into 2 pieces

Place sausage meat in a bowl and mix together with the herbs and onion. Divide the sausage meat into 6 portions. Form each portion into a sausage shape and place on a piece of pastry.

Brush the edge of the pastry where it will join with beaten egg. Roll the pastry over to make a long roll. Cut into 5 sausage rolls and place fold-side down on a lined baking tray.

Make small cuts on the top of each sausage roll or prick with a fork, then brush tops with beaten egg.

Bake for 12-15mins or until cooked and golden.

 



Happy Birthday to ME!

Friday was my birthday, and my wonderful husband who very rarely attempts to bake (and when he does it is normally a packet mix), baked me a cake. From scratch. It's a cake I had only baked once before myself, for mr 5's birthday a couple of months ago. It was easy, and delicious!

 

Turns out, it was easy enough even for hubby to make it PERFECTLY. It was SO good. Caramel Cake. I am a sucker for anything caramel. Probably my favourite flavour in the whole world. Yum.

 

So yeah, today I share with you the recipe, as promised on my facebook page. It is a great recipe, you must try it. It would make scrummy cupcakes too. It's a dangerous recipe - will make me fat if I keep making it, so I must resist. Instead you guys must give it a go, give me your verdicts :)

 

This recipe was posted on the TradeMe message boards, that is where I originally found it months ago.

 

Excuse the photo, a) it's taken on my phone again (really must go buy a new camera!), and b) I only remembered to quickly snap a pic before we devoured the last couple of pieces!

 

 

 

Caramel Cake

100g Butter (or marg)
1c Sugar
1 Egg
1Tbsp Golden Syrup
1c Milk (or milk alternative... rice milk works fine)
1tsp Baking Soda
1 ½c Flour
1tsp Baking Powder
Pinch of Salt

Cream butter and sugar. 
Add egg and beat well. 
Melt golden syrup and milk, when warm add baking soda. Add this to creamed mixture. 
Add flour, Baking Powder and salt. 
Pour into prepared tin. 
Bake 180*C (350*F) for 30mins.

 

Icing
2Tbsp Butter
4Tbsp Brown Sugar
1Tbsp Milk
Icing Sugar

Melt butter and Brown sugar together, add milk and bring to the boil. 
Add enough icing sugar to make spreading consistency.

So glad we don't have carpet

School holidays started this week, and we have been having a lot of fun so far. The biggest hit so far has been playdough. In nearly every house I have lived in with kids, I have had carpet in the dining room. Seriously, not a smart move really. Finally we are in a house with hard floors. Which means we play with playdough a lot more often now as I'm not scared it's going to get trodden into the carpet!

 

I shall share with you my favourite playdough recipe. It's a cooked dough, which doesn't suit everybody, but I prefer it as it feels so much nicer and silkier to play with and doesn't leave that yucky dry salty feeling on your hands like some other recipes do. And it's really nice to play with in winter just after cooking it!!

 

 

 

 

Playdough

 

1c flour

1/2 c salt

1c water

1 Tbsp Oil

2 tsp cream of tartar

food colouring

 

Combine all ingredients in a pan and stir.

Cook over low heat stirring until a ball forms, then knead until smooth.

 

It is very liquidy to start with, then turns into a sticky mess. When it starts to come together it will still be quite sticky, that's ok, just put it on a board and knead it. It will go all nice and smooth.

 

 

 

Then you can have fun playing with the playdough! The other day we got out some Popsicle sticks and used them to make funny shapes (the kids were 1 and 2, gotta keep it simple). They had great fun, and we got to talk about the different colours and everything - can turn it into not only a tactile experience but a learning one too with colours and shapes and whatever else.

 





Birthday Season

First we had mr5's birthday about 6 weeks ago, then DH's has just been. For his birthday cake, I dug out my old chocolate mud cake recipe at his request. It is far from dairy free, and never tried to make it dairy free so I do not know if it would work too well - you could find a dairy free chocolate, but no idea if it would turn out with using marg instead of butter - I suspect not. Some recipes just cannot be adapted lol. It is a beautiful cake, very rich! Please excuse the photo quality, I am stuck using my cellphone for pictures at the moment and it has a useless camera on it. Really need to get around to buying myself a new camera!

 

 

 

 

Chocolate Mud Cake

 

250g Butter

1 1/2 cup Hot Water

200g Dark Chocolate (I think I actually put in closer to 250g!)

2c Caster Sugar (I used about 1 1/2c)

1/4 c Cocoa

1Tbsp Instant Coffee

1 1/2 cup Self Raising Flour

2 eggs

1 tsp Vanilla

 

Icing:

 

125g Dark Chocolate

125g Unsalted Butter (I used normal butter... would have tasted nicer with unsalted though)

 

 

Melt the butter with the hot water in a pot over low heat. Add the chocolate and sugar, stirring till smooth.

Gradually beat in the dry sifted ingredients.

Add eggs and vanilla, beat well.

Pour into a greased/lined 25cm cake tin.

Bake at 150*c for approx 2.5 hours (I found, baking in my fan forced oven at 120*, It was cooked in less than 2 hours - so do keep an eye on it).

 

Icing:

 

Melt chocolate and butter and beat with a wooden spoon until smooth. Pour over cold cake and smooth out.

Dinner time musings

So as I was cooking dinner this evening it occurred to me that I haven't shared this recipe with you lot. It comes from the same cookbook as my Saucy Meatloaf and the one I based my Devilled Sausages recipe on. The Watties Kiwi Favourites Cookbook. Seriously, my favourite cookbook ever. I used to make a Cottage Pie throwing together ingredients and thought it tasted pretty good. Then hubby brought home this cookbook, made this cottage pie, and I was converted to using the recipe!

It is one of my favourites, it's easy to make ahead of time and refrigerate until time to cook it (just remember if you do this it may need longer cooking time to get up to temperature). And it just tastes so damned good. The bacon really makes it I think. I use el cheapo rolled bacon because I'm el cheapo myself, and I use a good 5 or 6 rashers instead of the 2 they say to use. mmmMMMmMMMmm!

I don't have a photo of my finished product as a) it's still in the oven, and b) it doesn't plate up very prettily haha, so I have taken a photo of the picture in the recipe book! Cheater aye!

Cottage / Shepherds Pie

(You can only call it Shepherds Pie if it's using lamb mince... it's a random pet peeve of mine when people call it Shepherds Pie using beef haha!)

From the Watties Kiwi Favourites Cookbook

 

 

4 large potatoes, peeled and cubed (I do a mix of kumera and potato)

1 egg, beaten

500g lamb or beef mince

2 (or 5 or 6..) rashers of bacon, diced

1 onion, diced

3 Tbsp Tomato Sauce

1 Tbsp Worcestershire Sauce

1 tsp prepared mustard

1/2 tsp yeast extract, marmite or vegemite (it's a no brainer really, use vegemite!)

1-2 cups frozen mixed veges

1/2 cup cheese,grated (optional)

 

Preheat oven to 180*c

Cook potatoes in a saucepan of boiling water, drain, season with salt and pepper and mash. When cooled slightly quickly whip through the beaten egg (this is how I always do my mashed potato now, makes them so soft and fluffy without the wet taste of using milk and much better for you than using butter/cream/milk/whatever)

Heat a dash of oil in a frying pan and brown the mince and bacon, then add the onion and cook for a further 2 minutes. Add tomato sauce, Worcestershire sauce and mustard. Dissolve the yeast extract (VEGEMITE!) in 1/2c boiling water. Add it to the mince with the frozen mixed veges and cook for a further 2 minutes before placing in an ovenproof dish.

Top with the mashed potatoes and sprinkle with cheese (if desired).

Bake in the preheated oven for about 20 minutes or until the pie has heated through and the cheese has melted.

Welcome Back to me!

So, we bought our first house recently, and a little over a week ago we moved in. We are all settled now, and I have no excuse not to blog anymore other than being right out of the habit and not having a lot of spare time.

My last post was about lemons - far too long ago! Well, today it's about grapefruit! I was given a massive box of grapefruit a few weeks ago - bad timing really as it got caught up with the packing and moving. So I have lost several grapefruit to them going bad, but I still have about 20 or so perfectly good ones. Far too many to just eat, so I am playing around with recipes.

Today I bring you muffins as I like muffins - quick and easy, freeze well for school lunches etc. It's a recipe I adapted, the original recipe looked good but it uses the pulp after squeezing the juice, but the grapefruit that I have are full of pips, and well, it would have been one hell of a job to sort through the pulp, so I omitted it. I upped the juice, substituted a few ingredients, added some grapefruit curd, changed a few things, and well yeah, this is the end result!

 

Grapefruit Muffins - makes approx 16 medium muffins

Recipe adapted from South in your Mouth

1 1/4 cups Freshly squeezed grapefruit juice (took me 4 medium grapefruit)
1/2 cup Oats
1/2 cup Coconut
3/4 cup White Sugar
1/3 cup Brown Sugar
2 Eggs
1 1/2 cup White Flour
1 tsp Baking Soda
1/2 tsp Baking Powder
1/2 tsp Cinnamon

In a medium size saucepan, bring the juice to the boil. Remove from heat and add the oats and coconut. Sit aside for roughly 20 minutes (I left mine for less, impatient!)

In a large bowl, mix together the remaining ingredients. Add the juice/oat mixture and combine.

Spoon mixture into the muffin tins filling only partway, add a generous dollop of grapefruit curd, then top with the remaining mixture.

Bake at 180*c for roughly 20 minutes

Now, I have just moved house, so my recipes from now on may reflect how long things were baked in my new oven which is fan forced. My old oven wasn't. These took me 20 minutes at 170*c, however I would have baked them at 180 in my old oven, and likely taken longer.

They didn't rise much so are quite flat on top. But overall they taste pretty good and they used up a few grapefruit so that is all good.

 

Now, as I mentioned on my facebook page, I had never tried to make curd before using margarine instead of butter. Well, I tried it with marg in the grapefruit curd, and ya know what? It jolly well worked! Fantastic. Grapefruit curd doesn't taste nearly as nice as lemon curd though! I added a squeeze of lemon juice in there, but next time if I want to use grapefruit in it I think I might do half half with lemon.

Anyways, the recipe:

Grapefruit Curd

(yes this is the same as my lemon curd recipe, just using grapefruit...)

4 eggs

zest of 2 smaller sized grapefruit, finely grated
125ml grapefruit juice, strained (can make that up with part lemon juice too)
150g caster sugar (I just use normal sugar, it's fine)
100g butter (or margarine works fine too)

Lightly beat the eggs and strain through a sieve (this step is important, stops the bitty egg white bits you can get otherwise)

Combine zest, juice, butter and sugar in a small heavy bottomed saucepan. Gently heat and stir until the sugar dissolves and butter melts.

Remove from heat and whisk in the egg. Place back over low heat, stirring constantly until the curd thickens.

 

Enjoy!

Lemons!

My lemon tree has not been my friend this fruiting season. I believe it has ONE green lemon on it so far, and that's it. Last year it had a good fruiting season, and I have been told they tend to do every 2nd year (damnit). Never mind, I ended up getting a big bag of lemons when I was at a friend's house not long ago. Her tree is far from short of lemons! So jealous.

My favourite thing to do with lemons is make lemon curd! And this recipe is awesome. My friend Nicola gave it to me, the same friend who gave me her brownie recipe that features on here which I also used in the base to the peanut butter truffle brownies too. She has some yummy recipes that lady!

Anyways, back to lemons, and more importantly - the curd! I haven't ever tried to make this with margarine, only with butter. I have a gut feeling that it won't work without the butter, and I do not want a failure with my precious curd. However, if you try it with a dairy free spread, please do let me know if it turns out!

Lemon Curd

4 eggs

zest of 2 lemons, finely grated

125ml lemon juice, strained

150g caster sugar (I just use normal sugar, it's fine)

100g butter

Lightly beat the eggs and strain through a sieve (this step is important, stops the bitty egg white bits you can get otherwise)

Combine zest, juice, butter and sugar in a small heavy bottomed saucepan. Gently heat and stir until the sugar dissolves and butter melts.

Remove from heat and whisk in the egg. Place back over low heat, stirring constantly until the curd thickens.

You can then use the curd in baking, desserts or just as a spread. I jar mine, and have on toast or crumpets, and often make yummy muffins with lemon curd middles (I guess now I have mentioned that I better bake some and blog about them aye?)