Tutti-Frutti Flapover Pie

Sam refers to this as a "Tutti-Frutti Flapover Pie", I think this is a cute name! So I'm gonna keep it.

His pie is filled with nectarines, blueberries, blackberries, banana and apple. Mine had apples and blackberries - take away from this that any old fruit/ combination there of will do!

I make my pastry with wholemeal flour and brown sugar, both of which contribute to a more nutty tasting, brown effect. The brown sugar helps to counter the slightly drying effect of the bran in the flour.

I chuck a little ground almonds in through my fruit, partially because I like the taste, but mostly to soak up any extraneous fruit juices!

This is a deceptively simple, but impressive dessert - I encourage you to give it a go!

Souper Thursday: Asian-Esque Beefy Broth

So; I mentioned last week (on what would have ideally been last Thursday; but was, if fact, last Friday... Whoops!) that it's a Swedish Tradition to serve soup on Thursdays. Which is awesome.

I'm using my love of Sweden and Swedish culture to influence what I am now referring to as "Souper Thursday" wherein I force my family to eat soup every Thursday. Thus far, this proposition has gone down remarkably well. It is coming into winter in NZ, after all.

I like soup.

This is an easy soup. It looks fantastic and classy.

Look at that classy soup. With that fancy, mixed focus photography.

But all it is is beef stock boiled with a couple of star anise and a few, whole cloves before being poured over vermicelli noodles and thinly sliced beef (here I used schnitzel)... Topped off with some bean sprouts and julienned carrots and cucumber, a soft(ish) boiled egg and sprinkled with fresh coriander and finely sliced chilli and spring onion.

And that's it. Honest.

In other news I'm about to move (back) out of home and down to my beautiful capital city... in the hopes that being in the city I want to work in will improve my chances of being actually employed.

I'm excited because this will be my first time cooking for one in my "natural" (or rather "familiar") environment! I will now be able to augment my previously "flat friendly" meals with meals and baking designed for one. Because, although I am no longer a student (I graduate in December - WOO!), I will still be on a budget, and cheap, flavourful and healthful food will still be my aim!

Here's to an exciting, if unknown, future together: you, me and this blog!

Skål!

Taste & Create: Peanut Butter Cupcakes with Chocolate Peanut Fudge Frosting

Taste & Create is  blogging event I participate in on an (almost) monthly basis... my post a reliably a day or two late... which is a reflection on Life and its tendency to get in the way and my own, blogging laziness - the actual process of reading my partner's blog and planning what I'm going to make is a lot of fun! That's why I keep coming back... that, and I love getting the feedback from someone else trying out my recipes.

So, if you're reading this, and you're a blogger too - you should sign up! The people are really lovely and it's a lot of fun! Also - it forces a person to post at least once a month... encouragement some of us need more than others... *ahem*

This month I was paired with Carol of No Reason Needed... her blog is a combination of food, family and Life - it's a fun and interesting read!

I had planned to make her Chicken Tetrazzini with Crescent Rolls, but I was called into work that day and my mummy made the Tetrazzini sans crescent rolls for me... but I couldn't submit something I didn't make! That would be cheating!

...So I kept on reading... and eventually stumbled across Peanut Butter Cupcakes SOLD!!!

OM NOM NOM!!!

Now, I didn't have any chocolate to melt to make the ganache suggested by Carol's daughter Dakota, so I decided to create my own peanut butter fudge frosting... and wow. Just. Wow. I'll share the recipe for that with you guys too!

Back to the original recipe - I did my best to follow instructions! I did, however make only a third of the recipe which is four cupcakes! The perfect number for two people!

In my thirding - I misread the quantity of baking soda called for and accidentally put in the full amount... I've corrected this for my version down below though... and that is the only factor that spoils these rather delicious cupcakes! I'll be making them again for sure, and I think you should too!

Apple Streusel Inside-Out Cake

This is an amalgamation of two recipes and two ideas... I was asked, by my mother, to make a dessert for a dinner we were having that would use up some apples we had lingering in the fridge. There were only three - so not enough for baked apples... and I didn't feel like making Apple Pie en miniature either... So apple cake? Yeah - I like apple cake. I love the streusel topping! But... I want something more - I want to make it interesting! I know- what about cheesecake/frosting on the inside?!

I combined and played with two recipes to make this one, inside-out cake the first was Catherine Bell's 'Apple Spiced Streusel Coffee Cake' and the second came from a cookbook written by a family friend the recipe was called 'Chocolate Surprise Muffins'. The muffins have a surprise, cheesecakey centre that I recreated for this cake. Which is not, by the way, a diet food. By any stretch of the imagination!

The result was a tasty cake with a delicious, crunchy topping and a surprising, creamy centre - well worth recreating! Though I do say so myself...

Peanut Chocolate Cookies

I looove peanuts! In fact, I looove just about every nut I can think of... :) But peanuts are pretty awesome. Especially because they're affordable even when you're broke. Unlike almonds and macadamias... Snobs.

I wanted to make a really peanut-y peanut and chocolate chip cookie! But I didn't have a recipe that was going to offer what I wanted it to - so I developed my own!

I thought about substituting all the butter from an original recipe for peanut butter - but Google suggested that that wouldn't work... So I subbed half. I also halved the quantity of sugar (surprise!) and made the chocolate chip measurement half chocolate chunks/half salted, roasted peanuts, added in some refrigeration time... and then I made the cookies HUGE!!!

I don't know why I do this. I like crunchy cookies. And I like gooey cookies. But I do not like cakey cookies. I know this. And I also know that taking a "should be" crunchy cookie and making it HUGE will result in a cakey cookie... and therefore I won't looove it... but I find the allure of a ginormous cookie too strong! And have yet to learn to listen to my inner voice which says "Kat. No."... but that voice does seem to know only those two words... so I've learned (learnt?) to drown it out!

In an effort to combat the huge cookies = cakey cookies equation I did refrigerate the dough for about an hour before baking them. Apparently something to do with the butter melting from scratch inside the cookies helps ensure fudginess? Or something... I can't quite remember the mechanics of it all! I think if I hadn't subbed half the butter for peanut butter this may have worked... but as peanut butter isn't famous for its melting properties... gooeyness was not achieved.

The flavour was great, though - so I'd recommend that future cookies are made normal sized and enjoyed two at a time. With milk. All cookies should be enjoyed with milk. :)

P.S. My favourite chocolate chip cookie recipe makes HUGE and gooey cookies... but the amount of butter required is astronomical... and convincing my Mother that making them is a good idea is not an easy task... but watch this space!

Cupcake EsCUPades

So, no recipes today... But an example of experimentation... As we all know, cup cakes are awesome! (Except when enterprising persons unknow turn them into Cup Cake Cakes) Recently I've been trying to create new and exciting Cup Cake flavours...



Left: Afghan Cup Cakes, Top Right: ChocoCaramel, Bottom Right: Lemon, Honey, Nutmeg.

I have yet to create a perfect result, which is why I'm not posting a recipe today, but I think it's important to document the process!

The cake part of both the ChocoCaramel and L, H, N cupcakes turned out well. As always, I've dramatically decreased the sugar (not that you'd notice...) and slightly decreased the butter. However, with cupcakes, when you decrease the butter you've gotta increase the milk by a tablespoon or two so as not to let the mixture get too dry. The icing on both these cup cakes, though was a FAIL. Well, not so much in the case of the ChocoCaramels - it tasted good and looks Okaaay... But I personally perfer my cupcakes with buttercream, and because this icing is prepared hot that fluffy texture just isn't possible. Also, those puppies were sweet! The L, H, N cupcakes, on the other hand, tasted Okay, but looked DISGUSTING - in an effort to get an extreme lemon hit in I overdid the juice and the icing separated! Not too sweet was a plus though!

The most recent, Afghan cupcakes, were me trying to improve on the famous cookies (heresay, I know...). However, as I feared the cornflakes, without the dryness of cookie batter went a little soggy. I think that the answer to this one would be to put the walnuts IN the cupcake and the cornflakes ON the cup cakes to retain that all-important CRUNCH, as you can see from the photo (and I'm rather proud of that one...) we didn't have any walnuts, so I'm already testing out the cornflake on top theory!

And that's it for today, my lovelies... Has anyone else experimented with cupcake and wanting to share? You should invite yourself over and we can have a cupcake party!

:)

Orange, Coconut, Evapourated Milk Cake

So the trimester is coming to an end... Exams are looming, study is being avoided and Kat is inventory-ing the cupboards trying to work out how to use what's left lingering without having to buy in more...

Hmmm... now, I have a tin of evaporated milk. I can remember that I bought it for a recipe but that I never got around to using it... But now, not only can I not remember which recipe it was for, but looking through my books I can even work out which recipe it might be.

Pair this with some yummy home-grown oranges that my Mummy sent me back to Wellington with at the beginning of this term... They were delicious until they got to the point where they were too rip for Kats to eat... I'm real picky about fruit, unfortunately!

Chuck in some Google searching and this is what you get...

The finished product: a four layer Orange, Coconut and Evaporated Milk Cake with Orange Curd Cream filling/frosting drizzled with 85% Cocoa Solid Chocolate to cut the sweetness.

There wasn't anything out there that exactly replicated what I wanted, so I had to do some creative developing of my own... But the results were pretty spectacular, if I do say so myself...

Not bad for a cake made out of cupboard scrapings!

Recipe after the jump...