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apple pie

Monday, May 7, 2007 @ 7:47 pm
Filed under cooking and recipes, stuff n nonsense

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Yesterday was both my husband’s and my sister’s birthdays. They usually have to share the family celebrations - my sister’s partner is my husband’s brother so it is more intertwined than most! This year, due to Emma’s chicken pox, we didn’t want to risk exposing Grace (my niece who is almost 2) so we just had a special birthday dinner with the five of us this year.

In our family, the Birthday Person gets to choose whatever dinner and dessert their little heart desires. Some smaller people have been known to request things like “cheese on toast” “Batman’s Surprise” or other such delicacies over the years. Just another way to spoil the special person.
As requested, I made Pepper Steak for Paul (and Steak Dianne for the rest of us) and it was so yummy! I also spent hours making a double crust apple pie which was divine.

Here is the birthday boy himself:

Doesn’t he look so happy to be photographed? It’s because he knew I was gonna blog it. He was right.

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chocolatey goodness

Saturday, April 7, 2007 @ 4:53 pm
Filed under cooking and recipes, stuff n nonsense, tutorial

This is what I did this afternoon:

I had two very eager (and greedy) helpers of course. Once we had used up our Easter moulds (must buy more for next year) I hunted around for anything else that was suitable. The arrows, “donut” shape and stars are from those silicone rubber shape ice cube trays and the numbers were made using some biscuit/sculpey cutters.

We had fun adding crushed Violet Crumble, crushed nuts, and hundreds and thousands.

Making these is easy - first get yourself a metal bowl (if possible, plastic would do) and break up your chocolate into small pieces, or use the “melts” that come in bud form, and put them in the bowl. The bowl needs to fit snugly over the open saucepan.

You might want to get creative and sprinkle hundreds and thousands, crushed nuts etc into the mould first, or pour some chocolate in, then sprinkle, then more chocolate for a layered effect. You can also layer white and milk chocolate by letting the first layer set a bit then add the second.

To melt the chocolate just get a saucepan of water and boil it, then take it off the heat. Put your bowl of chocolate on top of the water and mix and mix until it all melts. Yum.

Taste a bit, fend off the greedy children helpers and then pour what is left into your moulds. Don’t worry too much about the inevitable mess as you pour, just get the moulds filled and then do your best to wipe or scrape around the edges.

Let them set for about 20 mins and pop/wrestle them out, take photos for your blog, clean up all the messy chocolate everywhere (or let your helpers loose and worry about their teeth later) and then put your feet up with a handmade chocolate. Don’t forget to send the helpers outside for a run around to get out some of the excess energy that eating all that chocolate gave them.

Enjoy! Happy Easter!

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the best apple cake

Monday, March 19, 2007 @ 11:13 pm
Filed under cooking and recipes

Today it was a rainy day and a good day to stay inside baking. This is the BEST apple cake. I am including the recipe below:

This recipe came from my mum and I have been making it for years too. I just doubled everything to make two cakes, as shown above. One is already gone - oops! I tell you, it’s so good, you can’t stop!

2 apples (I always use Granny Smiths)
250gm (4 oz) butter (half a stick)
1 egg
1 1/2 cups plain flour
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp allspice
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp nutmeg

Peel and chop the apples and put them in a large bowl with the sugar. Melt butter, beat the egg and combine the two. Mix butter/egg mixture into sugar/apples bowl. Sift in flour, baking soda, and spices. Stir just enough to mix.

Spoon into greased tin. Cook for 50-60 mins at 180 C (350 F) then dust with icing sugar when cool.

I would love to know if you make this and what you think of it so please do let me know.

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Easter Treats

Monday, April 10, 2006 @ 10:59 am
Filed under cooking and recipes, those crazy kids

Last week at Emma’s playgroup, the kids all made some yummy Easter Treats, which were gobbled up very enthusiastically that same afternoon. Lucky they had some friends over to help - and I kindly helped too!

This was such an easy Easter craft. The first thing you need is some Arnott’s Milk Arrowroot biscuits - now I don’t know if these are available anywhere else, but they are an Australian staple, given to teething children to suck and slobber on or eaten by older kids with a bit of butter smeared on top. The best thing about these biscuits is that they are oval - Easter egg shaped! Perfect for decorating and eating up yum!

We had some icing in a few different colours and lots of bowls of sprinkles, hundreds and thousands, M&Ms and anything else we could find with lots of artificial colours. The kids just dipped the icing covered biscuits in the bowls and stuck things all over them and put them in their little card Easter basket to wait for the icing to dry. That’s all there is to it!

So easy and so yummy!