Gingerbread Cookie Dough Truffles

These. Are. Awesome.

They taste like Christmas... but I'll be they're great any time of the year.

1/4 cup butter, softened
1/4 cup golden syrup
1/2 cup brown sugar, firmly packed
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 1/4 cups plain flour
1/2 teaspoon all spice
1 teaspoon cinnamon
2 teaspoon ginger
pinch salt
Dark chocolate for coating (I just used chocolate melts, but better quality chocolate wouldn't go amiss here.  The dough is pretty rich)

Beat butter, syrup and sugar with an electric beater until it's light and fluffy, about 2 minutes.  Add vanilla and then flour, spices and salt.  Beat on a slow speed until everything is incorporated.  Chill dough for 30 minutes or until it's firm enough to handle.  Meanwhile, line 2 or 3 cookie sheets with baking paper and make some space in your freezer.

Form dough into teaspoon sized balls.  Don't be tempted to make them too big as the dough/chocolate ration will too sickly!  Arrange on lined cookie sheets and place in freezer for at least 15 minutes.  Melt chocolate in the microwave, being careful not to overheat.  Using a skewer, dip truffles in chocolate and tap on the side of the bowl to remove excess chocolate.  Quickly return to the cookie sheet and repeat for the rest of the truffles.

Store in an airtight container in the fridge once they're set.  They keep well for a few days.. possibly longer if you don't eat them before that!

Perfect Match

Is there anything better than marmite and cheese???  (Except, maybe, gin and tonic!)

I forgot to buy bread at the supermarket today so I had to think up something else for the boys' lunch boxes tomorrow.  Oh for a kombini just downstairs huh ;)

This marmite and cheese scroll recipe is so simple and you'll almost definitely have all the ingredients already.  Perfect!

Marmite & Cheese Scrolls

Makes 8

8gm instant dry yeast (1 sachet) 

1 teaspoon honey

1 cup lukewarm water

2 1/2 cups high grade flour

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon sugar

2 tablespoons olive oil

Marmite

Approx 1 cup grated Colby cheese

Preheat oven to 200c

Combine water and honey in a small bowl and stir until honey is dissolved.  Add yeast and put aside for a few minutes or until it's nice and frothy.

In a mixing bowl, combine flour, sugar and salt.  When yeast mixture is ready, pour it into the flour along with the olive oil.  With an electric mixer, beat with dough hook on a medium speed until ingredients are combined.  Increase speed to high and knead for 1 minute.  Leave dough to rest in a warm place for 15 minutes.

You can knead the dough by hand if you don't have a mixer, it'll just take longer (and you might need that G&T).

Roll rested dough into a rectangle, approximately 1cm thick.

Thinly spread marmite over all but the top 3cm of the rectangle.  Make sure you go all the way to the other three edges!  Next, generously sprinkle grated cheese over marmite.

Starting at the bottom edge, roll dough into a long sausage.  Use your fingertips to wet the top edge with water and seal the roll.  Cut into even sections.  I like to cut in half, then each half again, and again to get 8 even scrolls.

Place rolls snugly into a lined cake tin.  I used a square tin tonight, but a round one will do fine!  Bake for 30 minutes at 200C.  If you love cheese (you know you do!) sprinkle a bit more over the top of the scrolls about 5 minutes before they're due out of the oven.  Yum!!

Awesome in a Pie

I've been saving this one up for this week as Mr B didn't seem too keen (maybe because of the leeks?!) when he was home.  We had roast chicken for lunch on Saturday so this was a perfect opportunity to use up the leftovers!  You need about 1/2 a cooked chicken, or you can use two chicken breasts baked in the oven and then roughly shredded.

Julia's Chicken & Leek Pie
(serves 4-6)

1 tablespoon olive oil
1 large leek, very thinly sliced
2 tablespoons dijon mustard (or more, if you like.  Pretty sure the amount I threw in was more!)
Dash white wine (Selaks sauvignon blanc tonight)
1 household tablespoon flour
1 small can whole kernel corn, drained
Approx 1 cup salt-reduced chicken stock
400gm creme fraiche - Tatua creme fraiche is on special at Countdown this week.  You could substitute Philadelphia Cooking Cream but it will alter the flavour slightly
1 T fresh thyme, if you have it
1/2 cooked chicken, roughly shredded
1 block frozen puff pastry, thawed, divided

Preheat oven to 200C (190C fan forced).  Spray pie dish with cooking spray.

Heat a large frypan over a medium heat.  Saute leeks in olive oil until soft.  Reduce heat slightly then add mustard and flour.  Stir through and then add wine and keep stirring till the flour has thickened the liquid.  Slowly add chicken stock, a little bit at a time.  Stir and allow the stock to be absorbed into the leeks before adding more.  You need to keep the mixture quite thick.  

Add fresh thyme now if you're using it.  Turn off the heat and add the corn, then the creme fraiche and stir until well combined.  Add lots of cracked pepper now (or not, if you don't like it) and the shredded chicken.

Divide pastry (2/3 - 1/3) and roll the larger piece to line your pie dish with a bit hanging over the sides.  Pour chicken and leek mixture into pie dish and top with the rolled smaller piece of pastry.  Fold edges over to seal and brush with egg wash.  Pierce the top of the pie with your knife a couple of times to allow the steam to escape too.

Bake for about 25 minutes or until pastry is golden.  Allow to rest for about 10 minutes before cutting into it - this will allow the cream to thicken up again!

Here's hoping the boys enjoy it tomorrow else I'll be eating pie for the rest of the week! ;)

Easy Peasy Fish Cakes (or Post-Rugby madness)

So easy Ms Comer's cat Basil could do it!

I made these solely to use up some leftover mash and veggies from Sunday night, but they were so good I had to share! 

Fish cakes (makes 6)

2 185gm tins flaked tuna, drained

Approx 1 cup mashed potato

1/2 broccoli, chopped roughly and steamed

1/4 cup edamame (soy beans, get them in the frozen section at Countdown)

Parsley, finely chopped

Salt and pepper to taste

Flour

2 tablespoons olive oil 

Blend steamed veggies in a food processor or blender till you have a chunky purée.  Combine in a bowl with drained tuna, mash and chopped parsley.  Season now if you want to.

Form palm-sized fish cakes, about 2 cm thick.  Coat lightly with flour and set aside.

Heat oil in a large frying pan over medium heat.  I cooked 4 fish cakes at a time, for about 5 mins on each side.  You want them to be crispy and golden brown.

The boys had theirs with baked beans, peas and sweet corn after rugby practice tonight and wolfed them down!  Mr B and I had ours with a big salad, garlic aioli and chilli sauce.  Yum yum.

Ps - you can easily substitute any steamed veggies for the broccoli and edamame: peas, courgette, carrot...

Back into it

Mike has recently gone back to work (shocked?!?!  We were!) which currently involves traveling to India for several weeks at a time.  Hence the radio silence at this end: eggs and beans on toast for tea don't make particularly interesting blog posts!

Well, he's back this week so we've been having more interesting meals again... And baking too!

We've also been blessed with some amazing weather over the past couple of weeks, very different to the crazy storms we had last month.  Callum is adamant Spring is here already and I've even been able to hang washing on the line again - hooray!  Our lemon tree is heaving with juicy lemons so today's job was using a few of them up:

Lemon & Rosemary Chicken

2 tablespoons fresh rosemary, chopped

2 cloves garlic, roughly chopped

1 tablespoon good olive oil

1-2 tablespoons pine nuts

Juice of one large lemon, plus one lemon thinly sliced

Salt and pepper

4 small skinless, boneless chicken breasts

Preheat oven to 180 C.

Roughly combine everything except the chicken in a food processor or with a mortar and pestle (you want it to stay chunky).  Place lemon slices in the bottom of a baking dish, put the chicken on top and then spoon lemon and garlic mixture on top of breasts.

Bake chicken until cooked through, about 25 minutes depending on the size of the chicken breasts.

Tonight I'm serving this up with couscous, sautéed silverbeet and lots of green beans.

Rainy Day Bunny Cake

With a cold, wet Wellington winter's day ahead, I suggested baking a cake to the boys this morning.  Mike got in first and requested a carrot cake (I think Daniel wanted another race car!) so after checking we had enough carrots, the two boys and I got busy baking.

Callum came up with the name Bunny Cake, presumably because rabbits eat carrots :)

175gm brown sugar

2 large eggs (I used free range size 7 egs)

150ml rice bran oil

200gm wholemeal flour

2t baking powder

1t baking soda

3t mixed spice

Grated zest of one lemon

200gm carrots, peeled and grated

110gm sultanas

50gm desiccated coconut

50gm chopped walnuts 

Grease and line 2 round cake tins.  Preheat oven to 170 C (160 fan forced).

Whisk sugar, eggs and oil for 2-3 minutes until sugar has dissolved.  Combine flour, spice baking powder an soda in a bowl and then stir gently into egg mixture, followed by remaining ingredients.

Divide batter equally into prepared tins and bake in middle of the oven for 25 - 30 minutes, or until skewer inserted into centre of the cake comes out cleanly.

Cool in tins for 10 minutes or so, then turn out onto a wire rack.  Once cakes have cooled completely, sandwich together with a layer of cream cheese icing, then top with the rest of the icing and some crushed walnuts.

Cream cheese icing

2 tablespoons butter, softened 

1/2 package (125gm) Philadelphia cream cheese 

1 1/2 cups icing sugar

Juice and zest of one lemon

Cream butter and cream cheese till smooth.  Add sifted icing sugar, about 1/4 cup at a time.  Add juice and zest and continue to beat until soft and fluffy.

No Butter Cookies

Not getting much done in the kitchen (or around the house!) this week as Mr B is working hard on getting the new bathroom finished.

Here's a great store cupboard recipe for spice cookies though - good for keeping hungry tradies happy at morning tea time AND dairy free.

1/2 cup oil (I use rice bran oil, but any vegetable oil is fine)

3/4 cup brown sugar

1 egg

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1 1/2 cups plain flour

1 teaspoon cinnamon

2 teaspoons ground ginger

pinch salt

Preheat oven to 200 C and line a couple of baking trays.

Mix ingredients in the order listed.  Roll into walnut sized balls and press lightly with your thumb to flatten if you like.

Bake for 8 - 10 minutes.  Cool on tray for a few minutes before removing to a wire rack.

Makes around 30 cookies.

Penne al Salmone

I don't think I'll ever get this tasting quite as good as the version Mr B ordered in Tuscany.  But it's good enough to take us back to that wonderful day of shopping and eating!

Penne al Salmone

Serves 2

Approx 1 cup of dry penne pasta

1 tablespoon olive oil
1 clove garlic, peeled and sliced
100g smoked salmon slices

1 tablespoon butter
1 tablespoon flour
1/4 cup cream
1/4 cup milk

Cook pasta until al dente in a pot of salted, boiling water.  DO NOT add olive oil to the pasta water, unless you want your sauce to slide right off!

Meanwhile, heat the olive oil over a medium heat and add the garlic.  When the garlic is fragrant, add the salmon.  You can turn the heat off fairly quickly, leave the salmon in the pan to take on the garlic flavour.

Mix the milk and cream well.  Then, in another saucepan, melt the butter until frothy and then add the flour.  Slowly add the combined milk and cream, stirring constantly, to make a white sauce.  Once all the cream has been added, remove the garlic from the salmon pan and then tip the salmon into the cream sauce and mix together.

Drain the cooked pasta, reserving the water.  Add pasta to the sauce and mix well over a low heat.  Add 1/4 cup of pasta water if the sauce has thickened too much.  Your pasta should now be just coated with beautiful, creamy salmon sauce.

My boys LOVE this dish, if Mr B will actually let them share ;)

Kitchen Nightmares

We've all had them!  In fact, my Dad (and my sister AND my brother) just love telling the story of my "first" kitchen disaster: serving up cold scrambled eggs and beans on toast because I was too inexperienced to have everything ready at the same time.  Apparently that's one story that just never gets old.

We had an old friend visiting from out of town last night.  A good friend, but someone we hadn't seen in 5 years so I was looking forward to cooking something different.  An old stand by by from our Singapore "menu" but something I hadn't cooked in a while (or at all since we arrived back in New Zealand), thai red curry with prawns.

I spent most of Wednesday morning combing the shelves at Countdown and Yan's Supermarket and then of course had to make another "quick" visit to Countdown again on Thursday for a few more vital ingredients.  Another hour of chopping and prepping and then I got down to business, grinding up a thai red curry paste in my mortar and pestle.

Lesson #1: You will nearly always regret buying kitchen tools from the Warehouse.

My curry paste was *almost* ready and smelling amazing when disaster struck: the mortar splintered into a thousand pieces rendering my curry paste inedible.  Fortunately I managed to rustle up a quick salmon pasta instead, so poor old Mr B and our friend weren't going to be left to fade away.  But I am still disappointed that I didn't manage to make the curry.  Oh well, another day perhaps!

What are some of your kitchen disasters?  And where can I find a decent mortar and pestle around here?!?!

Happy Birthday Mr B!

Absolutely knackered today after cooking up a birthday storm for Mr B.  So I'll just post a few pics of all the party food!

Race car cake (requested by Callum)

Birthday lunch

Racing teddies

And a change of pace for dinner: gyoza followed by tonkatsu.  Yum yum yum!

Nana Rosie's Apple Pie

Whenever my family get together it's usually around a table full of food: Uncle Mark's curry, Aunty Dolly's desserts, Aunty Shirl's corned beef pie and mushy peas.. And Nana Rosie's apple pie.

A couple of weeks ago, John-the-Electrician came to do a few more jobs in the almost-finished kitchen.  He also brought round a bag full of apples from his garden!  So the first thing I did was call Nana Rosie for a quick lesson in making pie.

I've changed her measurements to grams, and used all butter rather than butter and lard (sorry, Nan!) but here it is for posterity :)  

4-5 cooking apples, peeled and roughly chopped

1 tin blackberries (optional)

2 household tablespoons caster sugar

240gm self raising flour

2 flat household tablespoons sugar

115gm cold butter, chopped 

(or 60gm butter and 60gm lard)

Approx 100ml cold water

Place apples and 1 tablespoon sugar in a microwave proof dish and heat, covered, on high for 3-4 mins.  Remove and allow to cool.  Drain blackberries and set aside.

Rub fat into flour till it resembles breadcrumbs.  Add cold water slowly and mix with a knife until dough just comes together.  You might not need the full measure of water, or you may need a little extra.  Turn pastry onto floured surface and knead a couple of times.  Divide roughly 2/3 for base and 1/3 for pie lid.

Roll out base and line a lightly greased pie dish.  Refrigerate while you prepare the lid and filling.

Combine apple, blackberries and remaining 2 T sugar.  Put apple and blackberries into lined dish, put lid on top and seal.  Brush lightly with milk and pierce top with sharp knife to allow steam to escape.  Sprinkle with a wee bit of caster sugar.

Bake for 40 - 45 minutes in a moderate (180 deg) oven or until pie is golden and pastry is cooked through.

You could add cinnamon and vanilla to the apple filling, but if you're lucky enough to have home grown apples, leave it out and enjoy the apples and berries as they are :)  Serve with cream or (my favourite) vanilla ice cream.

Caramel Date Pudding

One of the best things about coming home has been experiencing actual SEASONS again.  Tropical weather, and swimming every day, is fantastic but it does start to feel a bit like Groundhog Day after 5 years.  We were extremely lucky to come home to one of the best summers in years in Wellington, but now the cooler weather is here I am really enjoying making real "puddings" and eating them in comfort rather than 35 degree heat!

I made this pudding a couple of weeks ago, it is delicious with a big scoop of Tip Top vanilla!

Caramel & Date Pudding

60g butter
1/2 cup milk
3/4 cup firmly packed brown sugar
1 1/2 cups flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 cup chopped pitted dried dates
1/2 cup chopped walnuts (optional)

For the sauce:
40g butter, melted
1/2 cup milk
1/2 cup firmly packed brown sugar
1 1/4 cups hot water

Preheat oven to 160 deg fan-forced.  Grease an oven proof dish (around 8 cup capacity).

Combine first measure of butter and milk in a saucepan and stir over a medium heat until butter is melted.  Remove pan from heat and stir in first measure of sugar, flour and baking powder until well combined.  Add dates and walnuts, if using.  Spoon mixture into prepared oven dish and smooth the surface.

To make the sauce, combine remaining butter, milk and sugar with hot water in a heatproof jug (or a bowl if you don't have a jug big enough!)  Carefully pour the sauce over pudding by pouring it over the back of a spoon.

Bake for 35 minutes or until sauce is bubbling.  Serve immediately with ice cream.

If (!) you have left overs, it'll keep well in the fridge for a couple of days.  Just zap in the microwave, 30 seconds on high to reheat.  It won't be as saucy as the first time but it'll still taste amazing!

Lemon Yoghurt Cake

A couple of people recently suggested I start a food blog ... so I thought I'd resurrect the one I started way back when...

To get back in the swing of things, here's my famous-in-Lower-Hutt Lemon Yoghurt Cake.

125gm butter, softened
2 t grated lemon rind
1 c sugar
3 eggs
1 c plain flour
1 1/2 t baking powder
1/2 c greek yoghurt
juice of half a (large) lemon

1/4 c lemon juice
1/4 c sugar

Beat butter, lemon rind, sugar and eggs together until light and fluffy.

Sift flour and baking powder together.  Mix yoghurt and lemon juice in another bowl.  Alternately fold flour and yoghurt into egg mixture, mixing until smooth.

Pour mixture into a greased, lined 20cm round cake tin.  I use a springform one as it makes things easier once it's out of the oven.

Bake at 160 C (fan forced) for 45 mins or until cake springs back when lightly touched.  Leave in tin for 5 - 10 minutes before turning out onto wire rack.

While cake is baking, combine lemon juice and sugar in a small saucepan.  Stir over medium heat until sugar is dissolved.  Pour syrup over warm cake (put it on a plate first else it'll end up all over your bench!!)

ANZAC biscuits

I love making these every April, especially when I have the boys to help.  Got to love making new family traditions!  This recipe is from my Mum who got it from an old Australian Women's Weekly.  These biscuits and lovely and chewy, unlike the original Edmonds recipe which makes a more crunchy, oaty biscuit.

1 c rolled oats
1 c plain flour
1 c brown sugar, very firmly packed
1/2 c dessicated coconut
125gm butter
2 T golden syrup, be generous
1 T boiling water
1/2 t baking soda

Preheat oven to 160 C (fan forced).  Mix dry ingredients together in a bowl.

Melt butter, syrup and water in a saucepan over medium heat.  Stir in soda and pour the resulting frothy mixture into the dry ingredients.  Mix well with a wooden spoon.

Drop teaspoonsful onto lined cookie trays with plenty of room for spreading (they should double in size and will be quite flat).  Bake in a moderately slow (160 C) oven for 15 minutes or until edges are brown.

Makes 25 - 30 biscuits.