A Few of My Favourite Things !

A very good friend of mine, P, who just recently got engaged – CONGRATULATIONS!!! – came by to visit our new place last weekend. Can you believe that she not only brought along a birthday present for me, but asked if I would be her bridesmaid. Are you kidding? I’ve been looking forward to this day forever and now I’ll get to be a part of it too!

The present was an item that had been on my wish list for some time now – an Avanti Cookie Press and Icing Set! Of course I wanted to put it into action straight away but had to wait until this weekend – what a long week it was. It wasn’t that easy to use initially – or maybe that’s just me! – and I had trouble getting the first few cookie shapes to stick to the cookie sheet. I ended up trying out two other templates and managed to work out the right amount of dough to push out to get some decent looking cookies. With the flower-shaped cookies, I stuck some diced glaced apricots in the middle partway through baking to prevent them from burning. These are for a coworker moving into our building and for three gorgeous girls who are turning six this week. I also made some loveheart cookies for P to thank her for the great present.

Here’s myrecipe – a combination of the recipe presented by Avanti and one that I found on the Better Homes and Gardens website:

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This photo was taken last summer on a swelteringly sticky day. Our air conditioner was on full-blast trying to keep the heat out of our bedroom, which has a tin roof. I guess Tasha was trying to create more surface area for the cool air to reach! How lady like, huh? (giggle)

This is a continuation of the post on our Amsterdam/Brugge trip. We came across so many delicious looking cheeses and pastries whilst in Amsterdam that it’s a pity that we couldn’t try EVERYTHING (tempting though it was!). In one of the cheese shops, we came across a slab of Indonesian Layer Cake. Also known as Specot or Spekkoek, this deliciously spicy cake is made up of many, many thin layers and is highly time consuming to make (it used to take mum about 2 hours in front of the oven to bake one). Each layer of batter is grilled for 2-3 min before the next layer is spread on top of the baked layer and grilled for another 2-3 min. Unfortunately I don’t have a photo of this but you can check it out on one of Adam’s posts. This particular Indonesian Layer Cake was spicier and more delicious than any other that I had ever tasted before. (Final photo is of Antwerp station).

This is a continuation of the post on our Amsterdam/Brugge trip. We came across so many delicious looking cheeses and pastries whilst in Amsterdam that it’s a pity that we couldn’t try EVERYTHING (tempting though it was!). In one of the cheese shops, we came across a slab of Indonesian Layer Cake. Also known as Specot or Spekkoek, this deliciously spicy cake is made up of many, many thin layers and is highly time consuming to make (it used to take mum about 2 hours in front of the oven to bake one). Each layer of batter is grilled for 2-3 min before the next layer is spread on top of the baked layer and grilled for another 2-3 min. Unfortunately I don’t have a photo of this but you can check it out on one of Adam’s posts. This particular Indonesian Layer Cake was spicier and more delicious than any other that I had ever tasted before. (Final photo is of Antwerp station).

Along with everyone else, I’ve also volunteered to do some recipe testing for the Good Home Cookbook. The first recipe that I tried was pretty straight forward – Glazed Onions (cooked with dry sherry). They suggested it aa topping for steaks and burgers but as this is not really normal fare at our place, I decided to use it for an onion tart instead.

Now, I’m really not into making pastry at all. I tried it once in a baking class about 12 months ago, but it seems like too much work to lazy ol’ me! Unfortunately, the only casing I could find at our local supermarket was labelled pastry flan. There was a recipe on the back of the packaging for a spinach and feta tart, so I didn’t realise that it was actually a sweet pastry. After mixing the glazed onions together with some eggs and cream, salt, pepper and nutmeg and pouring into the tart casing, I baked it at 170C for about 15-20 min. I thought it looked pretty wonderful and brought some into work for everyone to try. I didn’t mind the taste cos I have a sweet tooth anyway, but the overall feeling was that it was too sweet for a savoury tart.

I made some coconut macaroons on the weekend for a friend, B, who was celebrating his 30th birthday. Years ago, I made these for him as a Christmas gift and he still remembers them. When he received his party bag of cookies last week, he asked if they were the macaroons I used to make.

There was a toss-up between 2 recipes: the Donna Hay recipe consisted of only 3 ingredients- shredded coconut, sugar and egg whites- whilst the Nigella recipe also included almond meal and coconut essence (or vanilla). I liked the thought of adding almond meal and so chose to go with Nigella’s recipe from How to be a Domestic Goddess. I didn’t have any almond meal in the pantry so I actually ground some whole almonds using my food processor. WOW, what a difference in aroma from the usual bland, store-bought stuff! I also didn’t have ay cream of tartar, so I used about 1 tsp of lemon juice as a substitute. The cookies turned out beautifully – dense and flavoursome. I would definitely use this recipe again.

This is my favourite photo of Bella and Tasha. They were only about 5-6 months old at this stage and when I used to (try and) work at home, they would crowd in front of my notebook and stick their heads in the way so I couldn’t see what I was doing. They learnt not to walk over the keyboard, which is why they are both sitting quietly on either side with their heads tilted like that.

Cat food bloggers unite every weekend and share photos of your gorgeous kitties with us! If you would like to join us, leave a comment with Clare at Eat Stuff together with your permalink! and add a “weekend cat blogging” tag to your post.

Check out Kiri at Eat Stuff;
Kelly at Anne’s Food;
Gideon Greve A Cat in the Kitchen;
Smudge at Farmgirl Fare;
Miles at My Adventures in the Breadbox;
Indrid at Tigers & Strawberries;
Neighbourhood kitten at Masak Masak;
Tsar at Cook & Eat;
Abe at Restaurant Widow;
Callie at Sweetnicks.

We took a detour through Victoria Street last weekend, on our way home from the Collingwood Farmer’s Market. Of course, I then had to detour during our detour into the grocery stores, which turned out to be a good thing as I discovered something new – hickory kernels. These came in handy little snack packs and resemble miniature walnut kernels. We don’t have many hickory-flavoured products here, so I guess I found their taste a little unusual – sweetish, but flavoursome.

The Chinese Mid-Autumn Festival, also known as the Mooncake Festival, falls on the 18th September this year and the shops have already started selling mooncakes. Traditional mooncakes are filled with lotus seed paste and can contain one (or more) salted yolks in the middle. My favourite part of the mooncake is the ‘skin’, but as it would be terribly rude to eat just the skin from mooncakes and leave the filling, I’ve found another solution- the little pig! This is made with just the skin and has no filling in the middle. Perfect!

This is great, fellow-foodbloggers! Please visit this site and place a marker. I’m sure there are more of us down under than what’s showing at the moment (three).

For my birthday celebration, I made some chocolatey chilli-chocolate shortbread biscuits to fill some party bags with. To complement these cookies, I also baked some Cheesy Rounds which were based on Nigella’s recipe for Cheesy Feet in Feast. As the chilli-chocolate shortbread were chilli-flavoured (hence the name), I also added some chilli powder to Nigells’ recipe. I didn’t have any small cookie cutters (let alone one in the shape of feet!) so I just rolled the dough into a log and cut rounds from it. I didn’t bother refrigerating it first (too impatient), so it was a little crumbly but I just used a sharp knife and it turned out okay. Here’s the recipe, Niki: