Cream Cheese Brownies

These were so good. Make them. Recipe here

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French Silk Frosting

My sister and I would BEG to make this as kids. We loved it. Mainly because we just wanted to eat it on its own. It sure makes a boring cake delicious. I made some cupcakes to snack on after a little charity mud run thing I did a few weeks ago, but after all that baking, NO ICING SUGAR! And too little too late, I didn't even think about this recipe! No cupcakes for anyone (in fact, I threw most of them away). This icing recipe is from my mom who got it from somewhere, who knows, but when I googled it, a blog my Aunt contributes to came up, so it must be in the family :) Here is the recipe.

You can leave it  at room temperature, and it will be very smooth & spreadable, or if you chill it too long like me, you can spoon it out, and it will look like this glob. But, I kinda like this blob, after seeing so many perfectly decorated cupcakes, this is a fun change.

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Strawberry Cheesecake

I made a cheesecake last weekend for my wedding anniversary. My husband isn't a huge sweet tooth, so it's hard to make him a sweet treat, as he doesn't really care...I suppose I used my anniversary as an excuse to make cheesecake, didn't I? Either way, we both enjoyed it, one of us more than the other.

I used a recipe that called for the ingredients I had on hand, but wow, there are a lot of cheesecake recipes out there. I have a fabulous cookbook FILLED with cheesecakes, each one barely varying from the next, but I still want to try all of them. The recipe I ended up using was from this book. I did my own base, and my own topping.

This cake baked up amazingly. NO CRACKS! And then I covered it with a mess of strawberry sauce. I think I did this last time I made a baked cheesecake too :(

Ingredients:
Base -
250-300g crushed Chocolate Cookies (Arnotts Choc Ripple / Oreo crumbs in North America, or whatever cookie you like best)
125g (1/2 cup) melted Butter

Cake -

500g Cream Cheese, softened
2/3 cup Caster Sugar
1 tsp Vanilla
1 tbsp Lemon Juice
4 Eggs

Topping -
1 punnet (250g) Strawberries
1/4 cup - 1/2 cup Sugar (optional)

Method:
1. Preheat oven to 180°C / 350°F
2. Prepare 20cm / 8" springform cake tin with baking paper, or grease. I always use baking paper, so I can get the cake out of the tin easier.
3. Melt butter & combine with crushed cookies / crumbs. I crush cookies in a large ziplock with a rolling pin. You can also use a food processor. Press mixture into your tin. Using a flat bottomed cup works really well.

4. Beat cream cheese until smooth with electric mixer. Add sugar, vanilla & lemon juice and beat until smooth.
5. Add eggs, one at a time, beating between each addition.
6. Poor mixture over base & bake for 45 minutes, or until done (just firm to the touch). Turn oven off, and open oven door slightly. Allow cake to cool completely in oven, with door ajar. Once cool, refrigerate until time to serve.

7. To make strawberry sauce, you can use your favorite method, or this method, which I just made up; I don't know if there is a proper way to do this. I cut up all the berries I want to use, add some sugar, and stir over medium heat. Once the mixture is hot, I will sometimes crush some of the berries with a potato masher to make more of a sauce. I cook until just boiling, and then allow to cool. Do not allow to burn!

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Mini "Pies"

I made a proper pie once. It was awful. But I've since learned that it was my oven's fault, not mine (my oven has given me a lot of grief). I guess I've been scared to go to all that work again in case I get let down. So, I've been making these little guys for a while, in different forms. It's not really a proper pie, but it's a quick & painless substitute when I want dessert without too much trouble.

I noticed my favorite Bakerella recently did a little something similar here. Her's look amazing!

Ingredients:
1 Granny Smith Apple
I sheet puff pastry or shortcrust pastry
1/2 cup sugar
1 tsp cinnamon
Raw sugar for dusting

Method:
1.Cut your pastry sheet into 4 pieces & preheat oven to 180°C / 350°F (or whatever your pastry sheet instructions say.
2. Cut up an apple into small pieces (preferably Granny Smith, I used a Gala in this photo, as I didn't have any Grannies)

 3. Mix sugar and cinnamon together, and toss apples in mixture to coat

 
4. Spoon apples onto pastry sheet pieces, and wrap up & pinch pastry together to form a small bowl.

5. Sprinkle edges of pastry with raw sugar & bake for about 20 minutes. Serve hot with ice cream.

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Churros

Mexican food is the latest trend in Australia, with terrible little shops popping up all over... except one. Mad Mex.  I love it. The first time I had it, I fell head over heels for their churros, and resolved to be able to make my own. But I'd give these ones I made a 7/10 sadly, but I hope it was my fault & and not the recipe.  I plan to try them again after some further research. The cinnamon ratio is way off, in my opinion, and I love cinnamon. I would halve the cinnamon, or less. I also thought that maybe the oil was too hot... or something made them a little too doughy in the middle & almost burnt on the outside. I'll have to play around, but they were still edible. The reason I picked this recipe is that the author said he'd tried a lot of recipes and none measured up. I might need to research more about dough consistency & deep frying... as you'll see in a future post about doughnuts :)

Here is the recipe, and this guys photography is fantastic. Go HERE, you won't regret it.

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Strawberry Pear Dessert Smoothie

I am entering this smoothie recipe into a competition to win a new blender (cross your fingers for me). It's been a favorite drink of mine since I invented it (I'm very smart) 9 years ago.

Ingedients:
Frozen Strawberries (1-2 cups, or about a punnets worth 250g and freeze if you can wait)
Frozen Pear (cut up a pear or two and freeze them)
Ice cream, 2 scoops plus more for serving
Yogurt (optional) any flavour, I like Vaalia french vanilla flavour 150 g size.
1 Tsp Vanilla
1 Cup Milk

Method:
1. Cut up strawberries and freeze, or buy frozen strawberries. Cut up a pear and freeze, if you have the time, otherwise a fresh pear will do just fine.
2. In a blender, add strawberries, pear, milk and vanilla, and blend until smooth. Add ice cream and blend again.
3. Serve with another scoop of ice cream, and top with fresh strawberries. Enjoy! Makes about 1 litre.

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Lemon Layer Cake

I went to the most beautiful baby shower ever.  It was magazine worthy. I took a million photos, and here are some of my favorites:

I was asked to make a cake for the shower, and I was kind of nervous, as I knew there would be a lot of people there I'd never met before. That's a lot of pressure to make something nice, and I don't make many special cakes. I've made a few, but nothing spectacular, but I love to bake so I figured I could pull off something without too much skill. I'm not much of a decorator, but I have a nice selection of piping tips and bags, and I saw this idea of easy icing roses ages ago, and I wanted to try it. Perfect occasion. I'd also been seeing all those beautifully coloured layered cakes, so decided to try that too.

I got the recipe from here, using the lemon filling & icing as well.

I wanted to dye the layers nice shades of pink & purple. I added too much dye. I use the gel dyes, and used what I thought looked good in the batter. I actually used 3 different shades, but as you can see, it looks like 2. They seem to end up darker after baking. I wanted a really pale layer, then a bit brighter, and then a purple layer. Oh well. Lesson learned. Use LESS dye, a small enough amount that you think it's not enough.

I'd only done a filling once before this, and it didn't work very well. This time, I was lucky it worked. Here is the number one tip to adding a filling to a cake - DO AN ICING BARRIER! Pipe a healthy ring of icing along the outside of each layer that will be filled. This creates a wall that the filling will not squish out of. My cake was sliding around all over the place. I didn't do this barrier, so I propped it up in the fridge against large bowls, and stuck toothpicks all over the place. Not the simplest solution. Another lesson learned.

My next tip is to spread a thin layer of icing all over the cake once the filling is set, or once you are confident you won't push the cake over. A nice thin layer will smooth the cake out, and make a clean surface to decorate on. How many times have you gone to ice a cake and crumbs end up being pulled off the cake, and mixed in with the icing. Not pretty. Let this thin layer set in the fridge (or wherever you want)

To create the roses, you pipe circles, but backwards. So, you begin in the middle, and pipe to the outside. I tried almost ALL of my tips, but the nicest looking one was a 5 or 6 pointed open star tip, and a small one at that. Those large M1 tips are too big, in my opinion. Maybe on a large cake they would work. It's also A TON of icing using the M1 size. I don't know what my size was, but it wasn't tiny either. A medium size tip. Sorry I can't be more helpful, but a lot of tips don't have their size written on them.

This cake was delicious! It was so full of lemon flavour (as the buttercream icing was also lemon!), it was intense, but so amazing. Everyone seemed to enjoy it too, and that's what mattered to me!

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Oreo Cheesecake & Chocolate Fudge Sauce

I made this for dessert a few weeks ago, and I absolutely loved it. I added some fudge sauce, and used different cookies in the base, and it turned out great. This was when my oven wasn't working, so I had to try some oven-free recipes for a change.

Oreo Cheesecake:
Here is the recipe.  Australia doesn't have graham crackers, or anything close, really. So, I took it as an opportunity to add more chocolate, and I used Arnott's Choc Ripple Biscuits. I added 2 tbsp of white sugar, and omitted the brown.

For the chocolate sauce, I used this recipe from Company's Coming Sweet Cravings, but I slightly changed a few things.

Chocolate Fudge Sauce:
Ingredients:
1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips, or dark chocolate
1/4 cup butter
2/3 cup corn syrup, or glucose derived from corn (which is a lot thicker than corn syrup, but still works fine)
1/2 cup hot water
1 1/2 tsp instant coffee (optional)
1/16 tsp salt

1 cup icing sugar
1 1/2 tsp vanilla

Method:
Measure first 6 ingredients into a saucepan and heat over medium until mixture is smooth, and chocolate is melted. Be sure not to burn mixture, and stir constantly. Remove from heat. Sift icing sugar into a bowl. Poor a small amount of chocolate mixture into the icing sugar to form a paste. Poor the rest of the chocolate mixture in, and mix until smooth. Add vanilla and beat. Sauce thickens in the fridge, or add more icing sugar to achieve desired consistency. I find you can really taste the coffee, so it's more of a subtle mocha sauce, I think.

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Caramel Date Cupcakes

I've been away again, for quite some time, I see. I've been back a few times, written a post or two, and then not finished it for whatever reason, thinking I would get back to it soon... I guess always think my breaks will be shorter than they end up being. But I suppose if breaks mean my life is busy, then that's not such a bad reason to stop blogging. But I've been itching to get back on here again. I keep meaning to add more content, even if it's without commentary. I'd like to add more of a photo-journal type thing on here too. I love looking at my old blogs, and remembering the lovely days out and about, or cute creatures I tend to photograph...

I would still like to add to my list of recipes I have growing here.  My oven was out of commission recently, for over 2 months, and I was devastated. I had to get a little creative, so I tried a few different, non-oven, recipes I've been a little nervous to try... a few worth mentioning here.

I also keep trying to remember a favorite recipe for this-or-that and realize I haven't documented it here yet. I'd like to keep tabs on these things in some sort of organized way...not loose papers pinned to my cork-board... or in a pile on top of my printer (printers make great shelves if you use the cassette feeder!)

AND FINALLY, here is a fantastic recipe I slightly changed from a Women's Weekly cookbook I received for my birthday last year. I pretty much omitted the chocolate from the original recipe, and then made a caramel glaze instead. Chocolate, as much as I love it, seemed wrong in this instance (there is 1/2 cup semi-sweet / dark chocolate chips added to the batter, if you feel up for it, and a chocolate glaze icing in the original recipe).

Ingredients:

Cakes:

1 3/4 cups (250g) seeded dried dates

1 1/3 cups (330ml) boiling water

1 tsp baking soda / bicarbonate of soda

125g (just less than 1/2 cup, approx*)  butter, softened

3/4 cup (165g) packed brown sugar

3 eggs

1 1/2 cups (225g) self-raising flour / self-rising (or use this recipe to make it, if you don't have any), sifted

‡°‡

Icing:

60g (1/4 cup, approx) butter

1/2 cup (110g) packed brown sugar

2 tbsp cream (or milk)

3/4 cup (120g) icing sugar

Method:

1. Preheat over to 180°C / 160°C fan forced / 350°F.

2. Prepare16 cupcake pans with liners or butter / grease.

3. Bring dates and water to a boil in a small saucepan. Remove from heat, stir in soda, and let sit for 10 minutes. Blend mixture until smooth, and cool another 10 minutes.

4. Beat butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add eggs, one a time, beating beating between each addition.

5. Stir in flour and date mixture.

6. Fill cupcake tins, and bake for about 25 minutes. Allow to cool 10 minutes before turning onto wire rack.

7. Prepare icing by stirring butter, brown sugar and cream in a small saucepan over heat until sugar dissolves. Then bring to the boil, and simmer, stirring constantly, for 2 minutes. Remove from heat, and slowly poor into icing sugar, beating as you go, to avoid lumps.

8. Spread onto cakes, and enjoy :)

 

 So moist, and just the right amount of density to not be so cupcake-y. This could be a real dessert! With some vanilla ice cream, of course.

* the reason I have so many measurements, is that I know this blog is read from mainly Australia & North America, and therefore everyone can use these recipes. I found it very frustrating when I first moved to Australia to find that most recipes required a scale. I still rarely use one, so I have found ways to convert most measurements. Also, Australian & North American measurements are slightly different (Tbsp size, etc), but they usually don't make a difference in the outcome of the recipes - I have never noticed a difference.

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