A Few of My Favourite Things !

Okay, so it’s a BIG claim. But I’m going to make it anyway. I have just made the World’s Best Banana Muffin. There. That’s it. Done.

What made it so good? Was it the buttermilk, the caramelised bananas, the addition of dark chocolate pieces? Whatever, it worked and it worked so well that I made two batches in one day. It worked so well that my son who was ‘helping’ me to hold onto his cousin’s container of muffins sneaked pieces of it while we were driving over until there were just crumbs left. All I gotta say is you HAVE to try this recipe. I know that everyone has their own best banana bread, or muffin, or cake, but really truly -this is it.

Buttermilk Banana Bread

2 eggs
3/4 cup sugar
2 or 3 mashed bananas
1/3 cup buttermilk
1 tbs rice bran oil
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 and 3/4 cup SR flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp baking soda
cinnamon & nutneg
80g butter
1/4 treacle or agave syrup
1/4 cup semi-dried bananas
1/4 cup dark chocolate pieces

1. Beat the sugar & butter until thick and pale, then add eggs and continue beating for a few minutes.
2. Add the mashed bananas, buttermilk, oil, treacle/agave syrup, vanilla extract, semi-dried banana and dark chocolate pieces
3. Stir in dry ingredients until just mixed
4. Bake at 175C until done (skewer comes out clean)

This one started as a flourless orange cake, however I had a surplus of lemons one time and decided to substitute one citrus fruit for another. It’s a really simple recipe that calls for boiling two whole lemons (or oranges) for an hour, then adding them whole (minus the pips) into the cake. It results in an ultra-moist cake and depending on how much lemon you use, a sticky-icky, eat-with-a-spoon cake. I find that two whole lemons gives you a stickier cake than 2 whole oranges does so you can use 1.5 lemons instead if you want to be able to hold a slice with your fingers. This time, I also replaced 50g of almond meal with desiccated coconut and this can also help it to be less sticky.

2 whole lemons
250g almond meal (you can substitute 50g of this with desiccated coconut)
250g caster sugar
5 eggs
1 tsp baking powder

1. Wash lemons well then cover with cold water in saucepan and bring to a boil. Simmer for 2 hours then drain and allow to cool before processing into a pulp (remove pips first)
2. Cream butter and sugar until thick and pale
3. Fold in almond meal, lemon pulp, baking powder until just mixed
4. Bake at 170C for 1 hour until skewer comes out clean
(For a short cut, you can process the lemons, then add all your other ingredients into the food processer. I found that this worked pretty well too)
5. Decorate with butter cream if you wish

I was wondering aloud what type of cake to bake for my 3 year old’s birthday party when he suggested a strawberry cake. Not The Wiggles or a dinosaur or a car. No, he really wanted a strawberry cake.

I used the basic vanilla cake recipe from my recently acquired Planet Cake book to bake a round cake and a bundt cake. I scraped the beans from a whole vanilla pod instead of using extract and I think it it elevates the flavour to a whole new level.

After baking, both cakes were halved and sandwiched with warmed marmalade (with all the chunky bits removed) then I stacked the bundt cake on top of the round one to create a dome. The hole in the middle was filled with blueberries and black cherries before lightly whipped cream was applied and smoothed. Decorating the cake was super easy – thinly sliced strawberries spiralling from the base to a top crowned with a single strawberry and bright yellow stars piped around the base and the top. I really love the way the design has come off – stylish and elegant. Maybe too elegant for a 3 year old party?

My son’s favourite bedtime book currently is Annabel Karmel’s ‘Mummy and Me Cookbook‘ so I made the blueberry and lemon cheesecakes (minus the blueberries). Taking inspiration from these, I piped the lion’s mane then added the face with fudge icing.

My boy also loves cheese sandwiches, so I pulled out my round cookie cutters to cut out the mane from bread and the face from sliced cheese. A smear of vegemite to colour the mane then the face drawn in with fudge icing again Easy!

If you are serving popcorn cones at a kids party, be prepared to vacuum up stray kernels from the couch and carpet. Oh, and to pick them up from behind the bed and cupboards for the next week or so.

The lions would have been lonely by themselves so I made some clowns to keep them company. These featured in A’s birthday party a few years back but this time I made marble cupcakes instead of using using Nigella’s Burnt Butter cupcake recipe. I had piped the mouths the night before only to find that the gel icing ran onto the butter icing overnight. So mum cleverly and painstakingly cut little think strip from the edge of canteloupe slices to create new little smiley mouths for them. What a great job!

Happy 3rd Birthday to my little darling…

These eye-catching cupcakes were so popular last time I baked them that I decided to do them again for a 1st Birthday Party. Everyone wonders how you get the cake in the cones and the answer, of course, is that they are baked in there. Exactly the same as you would normally bake cupcakes but substitute cupcake cases for flat-bottomed cones. My dilemma came in the form of transportation. These cupcakes were top-heavy with the weight of the frosting so how could I ensure that they got to the party venue intact? Lightbulb moment! I remembered that we used to melt wax into birthday candle holders to make the little candles stay. Of course, I used something far more delicious than wax. I painted the bottom of the cones with melted chocolate and stuck them onto my cupcake tray and let the chocolate set overnight. Those cupcakes didn’t budge the next day when I was carrying them to the car but then I was beset by doubts about whether they would come off when the partygoers tried to remove them. I needn’t have worried after all. A few jiggles and the cupcakes were theirs for the tasting.

Another clipped out recipe made! This one is from Gourmet Traveller September 2008, a dessert served at The Connaught. It’s a little more complicated than your average brownie but is also well worth the effort. It consists of three layers and is definitely not a one bowl kinda dessert.

The bottom layer is a moist chocolatey brownie studded with walnuts (macadamias if you follow The Connaught), the middle is caramelised banana slices and this is all topped with a dark (milk in the original) chocolate mousse. Here’s what it looks like:

I wanted to gift a few of these to a friend whose parents are visiting from Sweden but the brown paper casing had become saturated with oil from the butter. So, I picked up some cute fabric from Lincraft to wrap around the individual cases. One cake also went to a neighbor who is celebrating her birthday this week. That leaves two one for us!

Chocolate & Walnut Brownie

200g butter
100g dark chocolate
3 eggs
210 caster sugar
100g plain flour
100g walnuts, coarsely chopped

1. Melt butter & chocolate in a heatproof bowl over a saucepan of simmering water, stirring occasionally until smooth.
2. Whisk eggs & caster sugar until thick & pale, fold through the chocolate mixture, then fold in flour and walnuts.
3. Spoon into individual paper cases & bake until just firm to touch (15-20 min). Cool completely

1 tbs finely grated ginger
2 bananas, sliced
100g brown sugar

1. Heat brown sugar in a large frying pan over medium-high heat until melted (2-3 min)
2. Add ginger, stir to combine, then add bananas in a single layer and cook, turning occasionally, until caramelised and tender.
3. Arrange on top of brownie, squashing to make a uniform layer & leave to cool.

2 eggs
55 g caster sugar
3/4 tsp gelatine, dissolved in small amount of very hot water
5g Pavlova Magic (or eggwhite powder)
300ml thick cream
200g dark chocolate, melted & cooled slightly

1. Whisk eggs & sugar in a heatproof bowl over a saucepan of simmering water until thick * can hold a ribbon (10-12 min). Remove from heat.
2. Whisk in gelatine & Pavlova Magic powder.
3. In a separate bowl, whisk cream until soft peaks form. Add melted chocolate and fold to combine then fold in egg mixture.
4. Spoon mousse over caramelised banana and refrigerate until set (2-3 hr).

I love flicking through magazines and newspapers looking at recipes but I rarely clip them out because I know that I’m not likely to get around to trying it out. However, I love banana cake and when I saw Patrick Craig’s Caramelised Banana cake recipe in one of the Melbourne papers (I forget which), it sounded so good that I had to tear it out. This was in July last year and I have only just made it today, but I DID actually get around to making it – woohoo!

This isn’t your everyday banana cake as it does include the addition of pineapple pieces, as you would find in a Hummingbird Cake. However, I couldn’t find any cans of pineapple pieces in the pantry so I decided to swap it with lychee instead. Now, that probably sounds strange initially because I certainly haven’t ever seen a banana cake with lychee before but it actually works really well as the flavours are not too dissimilar.

So, onto the recipe itself:

1. Combine 2.5 cups plain flour, 1.5 cups caster sugar, 1/2 cup chopped walnuts, 2 tsp baking powder, 1.5 tsp baking soda, 2 tsp cinnamon, 1/2 tsp salt
2. In a separate bowl, lightly whisk 5 eggs and add 1.5 cups olive oil then add to dry mixture
3. In a hot pan (no butter, no oil), quickly caramelise 2.5 cups chopped banana pieces & 400g lychee pieces
4. Add fruit to cake mixture & pour into 22cm round cake tin (or a loaf tin & some muffin caese!)
5. Bake at 180C for 30 min or until cooked through (I had to bake for 50-60min).
6. Serve with whipped cream (or ice cream)

We prayed for a beautiful day for EJ’s birthday party, and lo and behold, it went from a week of high 20C’s to a sunshiny 24C with a cool breeze. Absolutely perfect for a little teddy bear picnic!

On his last overseas trip, A. had brought a bear cake tin home from William Sonoma so there was no question of what kind of cake I should bake, just how I would dress him. After receiving an inspiring idea from my websearch on how to decorate my cupcakes, I decided that the big bear would be dressed simply in a pair of blue speedos.

Balloons, sausages, tables, falafels, cupcakes, cake all made it to Speaker’s Corner at Birrarung Marr before 50 friends and 20 or so children gathered for the celebration. We ate, talked, laughed while the kiddies ran around and got grubby in the dirt. What a day! (and what a year it has been!)

You can’t see the wording, but ‘Speedo’ is written across the back of his swimmers.

The little girls at the party couldn’t decide which cupcake to pick! My niece ended up with one of the two green mermaids. I also laughed when a friend’s little boy told his daddy that there was a boy bear on his cupcake and one with boobs!

Look at what a gorgeous day we were blessed with. I love this shot of all the little girls running after and hassling the one boy.

Before EJ, I had no idea how daunting the task of motherhood is. I don’t know how I would have survived the first three months without the support of all those mums out there so this is a visual thank you.

These look really professional but are dead easy to make. Put together the cupcake batter of your choice, fill some flat-bottomed cones two-thirds of the way up and bake as usual. Whip up a buttercream frosting and decorate with colourful sprinkles, hundreds-and-thousands and cute animal or flower motifs.

Santa should come see me when he is need of someone to guide his sleigh. All my reindeers seem to be named Rudolph.

A. thought that these reindeers were far to merry looking to be eaten. The hardest part about making these were getting the pretzels to break in the right spots. Between A & I, we managed to waste more than half a pack of pretzels that didn’t look right for the antlers!

Using Nigella’s recipe for a Strawberry Meringue Layer Cake, I made these baby cakes for A’s birthday. The base was far less sponge-like than I had imagined and more like a shortcake, with a biscuity bite.

There was way too much egg white for the amount of batter I had in the paper bases butI used it all anyway. The meringue top puffed up beautifully in the oven and would have looked a treat that way however I specifically wanted to layer King Island pure cream and strawberries on top of mine. So, off the foamy meringue heads went – a good decision too because the cake is sweet enough on its own (although I have noticed that I’m not as fond of sweet things as I used to be…). They looked great with sparklers although these left tiny little black sooty bits on the pure white cream

More strawberries later on, coutesy of Edible Blooms. These were really amazingly fragrant and sweet and juicy, everything a strawberry should be. Easy to make too, if you are so inclined. Just arm yourself with a few skewers and a head of lettuce!