A Few of My Favourite Things !

Ever since I saw these Horlicks cookies here, I’ve been dying to make them. With Chinese New Year coming up and it being the Year of the Rat, I decided to go with a modified look to suit the theme.

Using Umbrella Cookies (also known as Pigs Ears cookies I am told) for the ears was a good idea in theory but much harder to put into practice as they didn’t want to stay on. I also tried using pink chocolate chips for the nose but they turned brown in the oven but the gel icing worked out well instead. I made a half batch of rat cookies then decided to be lazy and make normal ones with the rest of the batter!

Wishing you you very happy and prosperous year.

Sometimes you need a reliable and safe recipe that doesn’t require much preparation. This was certainly the case last week when I needed to organise lunch for the TMPC crowd. I’m in the middle of getting ready for our move so I didn’t really have time to cook anything that was going to take too much time or effort. Fortunately, these two dishes worked out really well although it was the first time I had tried either!

I flicked through some recipe books and finally settled on an easy Chicken & Mushroom Bake recipe. All you need to do for this is saute some onions, brown some chicken pieces then place these two ingredients in a tray with some mushrooms, condensed cream of mushroom (or chicken) soup, water and some cream. Bake at 190C for 60 to 90 min until the chicken is tender.

Dessert was equally easy to make. Layer sliced panettone drizzled with cranberry juice with berries and cream.

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!

This dessert is definitely a showstopper – a dark meringue base smothered with King Island cream then topped with mixed berries.

It just looks the very part of a decadent dessert and delivers on taste too. The huge chunks of chocolate bits in my pavlova formed a lovely textural contrast to the chewy base while the tartness of the berries off-set the sweet chocolatiness of it all .

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!

The scene between A and myself as we are walking down Elizabeth Street towards Flinders Street Station:

A: “So how was your day?”
Me: “Busy. I’ve been working on the catering and merchandising for the office launch”
A: “I was going over the invitation list for the launch and wondered if we should send an invitation to S. & H. What do you think?”
Me: “That sounds like a good idea but I’m not sure…..BEARD PAPA!” (stopping dead in my tracks)

I didn’t quite scream those words out but I definitely said it loudly enough for A. to freeze in his tracks and wonder who was about to attack us.

Anyway, the news is that Beard Papa has opened it’s first Victoria store on Elizabeth Street, near the Flinder Street corner. It’s just a shop front actually so it’s more difficult to hear their “IRASHAIMASE!” greeting.

Get there and get one (or twelve)!

Like most of you, I think about food a lot. What we’re going to have for lunch, for dinner, what I’m going to cook for tomorrow, for the next day, for the next week. But most of all, I think about all the desserts that I would like to bake, the biscuits that my work colleagues are going to love, the cake I would like to share with my friends. There are so many goodies that it’s always difficult for me to settle on one thing. My mind is always leaping here, there and everywhere trying to decide what to bake next.

So this month’s SHF challenge from Jennifer, to post about our most craved dessert, just about had me tearing my hair. How to choose? How can anyone be expected to choose??? ARRRGGGGGG!

To be honest, I don’t actually have one dessert that I crave with a passion above everything else. When faced with a dessert menu, I normally chicken out of having to make the final selection by pointing out about 3 choices then leaving it to my husband to order.

But I remember one cake that mum used to bake when I was in primary school that I had the greatest fun eating. An INDONESIAN LAYER CAKEthat I could savour slowly by peeling off and letting each fine layer melt in my mouth. This cake takes the baker 2 hours in front of the oven to bake so the only ones I’ve had recently are not very good store-bought ones.

It was time. I browsed through several recipes on the internet and got mum to read hers to me over the phone. Making a couple of alterations here and there, I mixed together the batter and brought a stool over to the oven in preparation. For this time-consuming cake, a spoonful of batter is ladled into the baking tin and grilled, then the next spoonful ladled on and grilled, and so on until all the batter is used up.

Based on my internet research, each layer should be grilled for 5 to 7 minutes – WRONG!!! My cake turned out completely overdone and burnt in some sections. Imagine my disappointment after spending 5 hours baking this THING! I couldn’t let it defeat me though so I tried it again the next day. This time, I listened to mum and only grilled each layer for a mere 2 minutes, taking me around 2 hours in total – PERFECTION!

The result 36 eggs and 25 layers later…

It’s not a flashy look-at-me-I’m-so-gorgeous kind of cake but it is buttery and perfect for a pick-me-up at teatime. Especially if you eat it layer by layer.

I almost typed in Anzac Cookies, but that would have just been SO wrong as these biscuits were originally baked during WWI by wives and mothers for the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) soldiers. Luckily I caught myself in time and wisely used the term ‘biscuits’ instead. Anyway, a rose by any other name and all…these taste pretty good!

There’s an ongoing debate as to what exactly is a brownie - a cake, a cookie, a sheet cookie, a bar, a slice? But a brownie sits in a separate category all together. It should be denser than a cake and fudgier rather than light and fluffy.

I trawled through a large handful of recipes trying to decide which would produce a great brownie but most of the recipes I came across used baking powder. How could this produce a dense and fudgey brownie? Dissatisfied with the results of my search, the only solution was to create my own recipe.

Using a few of the recipes as a rough template, I reduced the amount of flour and sugar and left out the baking powder altogether. The chocolate and butter was melted over simmering water and the rest of the ingredients mixed in with a wooden spoon. By not beating the eggs, sugar and butter, I managed to avoid aerating the batter and this resulted in a dense, fudgey, amazing brownie…oops, blondie. I forgot to mention that I mainly used white chocolate instead of milk or dark.

It was great straight out of the oven and we’ll find out tomorrow how it tastes after sitting overnight.

Cin’s Blondie

200g white chocolate, roughly chopped
150g butter
2 eggs, lightly beaten
1/2 cup raw sugar
1 tsp vanilla essence
1 1/2 cups pl flour
1/4 tsp salt
50g dark chocolate, roughly chopped
1/2 cup toasted almonds, roughly chopped

1) Melt 1/2 white chocolate & butter in bowl over simmering water. Remove from heat.
2) Stir in sugar, eggs and vanilla essence
3) Mix in flour&salt mixture
4) Fold in rest of chocolate and almond pieces
5) Bake in 20cm square tin at 160C until skewer comes out clean but with crumbs. Don’t overbake.

Of course, you can’t enjoy brownies or blondies on your own so I have to share this recipe with the rest of the Brownie Babes over at Myriam’s place.

Walking around Shanghai one evening we came across a place that was grilling lamb kebabs over a charcoal fire. We looked up at the shop frontage to see the shop name appearing in Arabic script next to the picture of a mosque. The music that wafted towards us along with the smoke was definitely Arabic although the workers looked just like extremely fair Chinese. Following some research, I realised that there is actually quite a rich Islamic heritage within Chinese history.

Towards the evening, long queues snaked across the street waiting for the lamb kebabs to come off the grill. Not wanting to wait, we just picked up some interesting-looking bread. The dough is mixed with pieces of lamb (chewy for the most part) and fat and baked into a fragrant flat loaf with a crusty exterior.

Next to the bread is an egg custard tart from Lilian Bakery, a franchise that has several branches scattered around the city. A connoiseur of egg custard tarts, A has decided that this is best one we have had so far and I am inclined to agree. The custard, which is wobbly and just eggy enough to lure me but not put A. off, is held together by a flaky pastry shell. Utterly divine!

Somewhere between a roti and a naan, this sesame seed-coated bread is fried in a large flat pan which gives it a crispy shell. We had a great version the first time then had a lot of trouble finding elsewhere. The second one turned out to be too soft and mushy to be enjoyable.

This is a Chinese delicatessen! Every second shop in Shanghai seemed to sell a variety of preserved and dried foods, biscuits and sweets, as well as herbal ingredients. Most of the preserved meat were vacuum packed in foil wrappers, making it difficult for non-Chinese reading people like us to determine what each contained – feet, chicken wings or tongue, just to name a few. This shop made it somewhat easier although I can’t imagine buying that porcine face mask. It reminds me rather creepily of Hannibal – eeeuughhh.

Adventures in Shanghai – Part 1
Adventures in Shanghai – Part 2
Images of Shanghai